could be considered an entertainment film, and submitted a report to Kurtz summarizing the elements of what he considered an entertaining film, but it was rejected. Next, Miyazaki proposed Fujioka with ideas such as "the story of a young man turned into a beast and a princess in the age of provincial wars," which later became Princess Mononoke, "the story of Demon Extermination of a princess and her wolf," which was based on the American comic ROWLF, and Yara the windmaster and Princess of the dorok derived from it, which later became the image source of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. However, Fujioka had no authority to intervene in the scenarios, and Kurtz never adopted them. Miyazaki then left Telecom on November 22, 1982 without waiting for Takahata to join. Miyazaki later described his involvement on the film as "the worst experience he has ever been through". Takahata, who joined the project in just after Miyazaki had left, tried to construct a story based on Peter Pan and Where the Wild Things Are, among others. He then adopted Bradbury's idea and came up with a story structure in which "the main character is split into two positions, each of which becomes a component of the story." This structure was later carried over to Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday. On March 12, 1983, Takahata also clashed with Kurtz over a scenario and left Telecom. The directors who succeeded the duo were Andy Gaskill and Yoshifumi Kondo, but both soon retired from production. At that time, Kineto TMS was frequented by animation professionals who had heard rumors of the project or were interested in Japanese animation. John Lasseter first met Hayao Miyazaki here and began to interact with him thereafter. Brad Bird is reported to have informally painted a few image boards. Brad Bird and Jerry Rees also worked on the film through the American department as animators for a month, while at the same time working on an unproduced adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit with Gary Kurtz. During production, the two would regularly ask animators what they were doing, and the response they were commonly given was "We're just illustrating what Bradbury is writing." Upon meeting Bradbury in person and asking him about the story he was writing for the film, he replied "I'm just putting in writing what these wonderful artists are drawing." Bird and