Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe says Faye’s portrait of Vincent in the movie was drawn by a Chinese restaurant worker. The man had seen Vincent once and drew him from memory. Watanabe said animators who tried to draw badly still made it look too good, so the team looked for someone who was genuinely bad at drawing. “Even when animators try to draw badly, it comes out well.” That is how the worst portrait in the film ended up being real.

AMRO Director/CEO Yasuto Watanabe, Chief Economist Dong He, and Deputy Directors Joong Beom Shin and Abdurohman welcomed Atsushi Mimura, Japan’s Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, and his delegation to AMRO in Singapore. They exchanged views on the ASEAN+3 Finance Process, regional financial cooperation, and closer collaboration with international financial institutions. AMRO appreciates Japan’s leadership as ASEAN+3 Co-chair and its continued support for our work to strengthen regional economic and financial resilience.

AMRO Director/CEO Yasuto Watanabe reflects on his first year leading AMRO, the region's challenges & his priorities to ensure AMRO remains ready to safeguard the region's resilience and stability through rigorous surveillance, member-focused policy advice, and deeper cooperation.

Writing for Central Banking, Yasuto Watanabe and Takuya Yoshioka emphasize that capital-flow volatility does not tell the whole story. Volatility and vulnerability need to be assessed separately: large market movements may be manageable, while calm markets can mask leverage, concentrated exposures, or liquidity mismatches that could amplify the next shock.

Reflecting on his discussions at the IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, AMRO Director/CEO Yasuto Watanabe highlights how different risks operate on different clocks. He proposes a simple framework for policy action: ACT—Agile policymaking, Credible communication, and Targeted measures.

At the roundtable “Tokenized Money, Borderless Growth: How Tokyo and Thailand Can Build ASEAN’s Next Financial Corridor,” organized by @FinCityTokyo_EN, AMRO Director/CEO Yasuto Watanabe highlighted that economies have different needs and that there is no single model for cross-border payments. Regional integration will depend on whether different models can work together, moving from bilateral links to multilateral networks.