Future Man (蟻人間物語/Ari
Ningen Monogatari, 2008) is Ryo Hirano’s
second animated short. The Japanese title
literally translates as “Ant-Human Story”.
While a student at Tama Art University, his class was assigned a project
in which they should make something about living beings. In preparation for this film, he read up on ant ecology and used
this knowledge as the basis of his film.
According to Yuki Harada’s
interview with Hirano on his website Public Image
last summer, one of the details that struck Hirano as being remarkable was that
scientists who study ants found that their behaviour is not driven by sympathy
or love for the ant queen but that it is the drive to maximize
one’s DNA. My biologist husband tells me that this is the evolutionary theory that
Richard Dawkins famously put forward in his book The Selfish Gene
(1976).
(1976).
In Future Man, Hirano substitutes humans for the ants. Naked male figures with Frankenstein-esque
square-shaped heads gather supplies for the colony to the strains of Strauss’s The Blue Danube. They need to defend their food stores from himizu (Japanese Shrew Moles) whom they also kill and consume.
Inside the colony, Hirano depicts drones caring for infants, and small children
fighting over himizu meat like dogs. At the
centre of it all is the corpulent body of the queen ant-human who smiles
benevolently at her drones.
The tranquil scene takes a dramatic shift when a monster with sharp
teeth at the end of long tentacles attacks the colony. The drones react in a panic, but the queen
ant-human remains tranquil until she is directly attacked. At the end of the film, the colony lays in
ruins, with bodies strewn everywhere.
The only glimmer of hope is an infant who crawls into a beam of sunshine
and stares up at birds flying in a peaceful blue sky. The image then expands upwards out of the
colony all the way into the universe where decaying relics of satellites and spaceship
circle the planet earth. If one looks at
the planet earth from outer space, the human race is really not so unlike a
colony of ants. Although we do fancy
ourselves the greatest species on the planet, we are really just small specks of
dust in the vastness of the universe.
Watch the film for yourself:
Learn more about Ryo Hirano on his official website.
Filmography
2007 udara udara (うだらうだら)
2008 Future Man (蟻人間物語/Ari Ningen Monogatari)
2008 Midnight Zoo (深夜動物園/Shinya Dōbutsuen)
2009 music video orchestra (collaborative work for Omodaka)
2009 The Kappa’s Arms (河童の腕/Kappa no Ude)
2009 Ichigwankoku / One-Eyed Country (一眼国/Ichigankoku)
2009 Guitar (ギター)
2010 Kensaku Shōnen (検索少年, Tabito Nanao music video)
2011 Hietsuki Bushi (ひえつき節/Omodaka music video)
2011 Space Shower TV Station ID
2011 Holiday (ホリデイ)
