This
animated short is an homage to the port of Yokohama by three artists who love
the city: the stop motion animator Yūichi
Itō (I.TOON), the photographer Hideo Mori (amano studio), and the composer Miyuki Onitake (onitake).
The film consists of three vignettes: “Chat”, “Once Upon a Time in Red
Brick Warehouse”, and “The White Seamew”.
“Chat”
With his animated
short Harbor Tale (2011), Yūichi Itō
brought the buildings of Yokohama to life with his unique mixture of stop
motion and computer animation, a technique he dubs Neo Craft Animation. This
follow-up film features the star of Harbor
Tale, Mr. Brick, and some of Yokohama’s most famous architectural
landmarks. The Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse (横浜赤レンガ倉庫) historical landmark site is comprised of two red
brick warehouses built in 1911 and 1913.
In this first vignette, Mr. Brick watches as the two warehouse anthropomorphise,
with windows for eyes, and greet each other.
“Once Upon a
Time in Red Brick Warehouse”
This
vignette opens with an aerial shot of the pier with the red brick
warehouses. As in Harbor Tale, the ships in the harbour anthropomorphise and greet
each other as the pass by. A red brick
motif acts as a break between short montages of Mori’s photographs of
Yokohama. Itō’s animation adds surreal
touches to the urban seaside landscape such as a shipping container who opens
his eyes to look at a passerby and a fish that flies through a rainy sky. Onitake’s jaunty music keeps the atmosphere
light and playful. Mr. Brick runs
through the puddles outside Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse past “K”LINE shipping containers, and inside the
warehouse buildings.
“The White
Seamew”
Seamew (also
spelled sea mew) is another name for the common gull or mew gull – what the
Japanese call kamome. In Harbor
Tale, such a gull played an important role in rescuing Mr. Brick from a
precarious situation. This vignette opens with a wide shot of Yokohama
Marine Tower (横浜マリンタワー). As a gull
flies towards the tower, the tower comes to life. A flock of gulls flies by the tower,
transforming from clay figures into white, transparent shapes. A lone gull flies over the cityscape of
Yokohama and them through beautiful photographs by Mori of the harbourfront
area. Onitake’s lyrical music combined
with the repeated close up on the “face” of the anthropomorphised Yokohama
Marine Tower suggest that this is the tower’s dreamy, romantic vision his
surroundings. Fireworks appear in the
skyline and the film ends with a beautiful shot of Yokohama at night.
The
screening of this film at Nippon
Connection 2015 was sponsored by the Yokohama City Frankfurt
Representative Office, with additional support from the Department of International Affairs of the City of Frankfurt, JFE Engineering Europe GmbH and the ramen restaurant Muku in Frankfurt.