Nishikata Film Review: Music of the Visual World: Japanese Indie Animated Shorts

22 May 2018

Music of the Visual World: Japanese Indie Animated Shorts

Music of the Visual World: Japanese Indie Animated Shorts

Sunday, June 3, 18:15 Naxoshalle Kino

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When I heard that our animation guest at this year’s Nippon Connection would be the composer and innovator Yuichi Matsumoto, I decided to make music the theme of this year’s independent animation selection. Music and animation have had a close relationship since the earliest days of commercial animation. Many of the most innovative early animated films from Japan were the record talkies (レコードトーキー) of the late 1920s and 1930s – animated shorts designed to be played simultaneously with a record (See: Belly Drum Dance at Shojoji Temple, Song of Spring, The Black Cat, The National Anthem: Kimigayo, The Village Festival).

In Japan, the NHK (the national public broadcaster) has supported many independent animators by hiring them to do short pieces for their programming. The most prominent of these programmes is the long-running series Minna no Uta (Everyone’s Songs/みんなのうた ) which has been pairing filmmakers (both live action and animation) with music since 1961. Many early independent animators, like Taku Furukawa, Yōji Kuri, Sadao Tsukioka, Shinji Fukushima and Fumio Ooi, made names for themselves animating for Minna no Uta.

Today’s music video scene has provided a great source of income for innovative animation artists and many of the films featured here are recent music videos. I have also selected recent animated shorts where I felt that music was integral to the theme/s of the work. The first work in the programme, Moving Colors, is a group project featuring the work of 12 animation creators (aka Taku Team) with each team member representing their favourite colour. The title design is by Taku Furukawa (the Taku of the Team name). The team consists of: Takuma Hashitani (orange), Waboku (aka Wataru Nakajima, brown), Hakhyun Kim (purple) Yoshiyuki Kaneko (black), Shiho Morita (red), Moe Koyano (raspberry/turquoise), Yū Tamura (green), Yasuaki Honda (crimson), Yewon Kim (mint), Tomoyoshi Joko (blue) and Hiroco Ichinose (gold).

Many thanks to Florian Höhr for his help in putting together this programme. I am pleased to announce that animator Yuki Hayashi has indicated that he will attend the festival again this year.