L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 2 (DVD/Blu-Ray release, FR/EN, 2014)

Order from amazon.fr

When French indie label Les Films du Paradoxe and independent production/distribution company CaRTe bLaNChe  released the combination DVD/Blu-Ray L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 1 in 2013, it created a lot of excitement among alternative animation fans.  This was not only because rare films like Dreams (2011), pop art legend Keiichi Tanaami’s final collaboration with the late Nobuhiro Aihara, were being made available for purchase with English and French subs, but also because “Volume 1” indicated that there was a possibility of future releases!

Volume 2 was indeed launched at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival this past spring.  It features 8 films by 6 directors.  The DVD/Bluray finally makes Keita Kurosaka’s 2010 cult favourite Midori-ko available to a wider audience.  Fans of Kurosaka, the master of the grotesque in animation, can also delight in his even rarer 2005 short My Face. 

The discs also feature recent works by established animators Atsushi Wada and Mirai Mizue, as well as experimental filmmaker Isamu Hirabayashi.  Rounding off this impressive list of artists are two up-and-coming women directors Yoriko Mizushiri, who has been a real festival favourite since the release of her film Futon (布団) in 2012, and Yoko Kuno, whose music video Airy Me for Cuushe, has won acclaim including the New Face Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival last year. 

Here is the complete list of films with links to further information:

Midori-ko (2010) and My Face (ワタシノカオ, 2005) by Keita Kurosaka

Read my review of Midori-ko.

In a Pig's Eye (2010) by Atsushi Wada

Read my review of In a Pig’s Eye.

WONDER (2014) and AND AND (2011) by Mirai Mizue

Read my review of WONDER.

Snow Hut (2013) by Yoriko Mizushiri

Read my review of Snow Hut

NINJA & SOLDIER (2012) by Isamu Hirabayashi

Read my review of NINJA & SOLDIER

Airy Me (2013) by Yoko Kuno

L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 2 is packed in a card paper sleeve that contains both a DVD and a Bluray.  Both discs have English and French menus as well as subtitles when needed.  It can be purchased via Amazon France, 

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

The Undertaker and the Dog (葬儀屋と犬, 2010)

“Mukashi mukashi.  .  .” (Once upon a time. . .), begins Shin Hashimoto’s 2010 animated short The Undertaker and the Dog (葬儀屋と犬 /Sōgiya to inu, 2010) in the age-old opening of a Japanese fairy tale.  The story continues in the style of a typical fairy story, telling us that in a land far, far away there lived a beautiful princess.  But, if the shaky aesthetic with smeared black ink on an unevenly paint-washed background wasn’t enough to suggest that all is not what it seems in this “fairy tale”, the sight of the madly grinning princess with darkly stained lips and cheeks will surely tip you off that this is no ordinary tale.  Particularly when she runs off towards a modern cityscape and is unceremoniously run down by a taxi cab. 

This is the story of Snow White turned into a horror story.  The dwarves, painted with a smear of yellow gather around her body as flies circle around the red flower that has grown from her belly.  We then see a montage of brief vignettes: the quiet cemetery, a violent mob attacking an object (perhaps a turtle?) with sticks, a close up of a turtle, a large man dragging a cart through the mob.  The large man is the undertaker, who approaches the corpse of the princess but the dwarves try to keep him away from her so he brutally attacks them.  The scene is shot from interesting perspectives including the “camera” itself being punched “in the face” and one dwarf falling on his face with the legs of another fallen dwarf looming in the foreground. 

As the undertaker passes a fence he spots a mangy bitch walking upright on her hind legs with her overlarge breasts heaving as she leads her litter of scruffy, half-starved pups in a somber march.  He reaches into his cart, now teaming with the corpses of the dwarves and offers the bitch one of their bones.  An odd moment of kindness from a man who a moment earlier demonstrated only cruelness and heartlessness.  The atmosphere of this grotesque short is accentuated by the strangely captivating music of Hiromi Ohta. 

Shin Hashimoto (橋本新, b.1979) is a member of the CALF animation collective.  A Tokyo-based artist, Hashimoto did his undergraduate and graduate studies at Tama Art University (aka Tamabi). Hashimoto is known for his nightmarish animated shorts such as Beluga (2011), which played widely at both domestic and international animation festivals and received a Special Jury Mention at Animafest Zagreb 2012.  Check out his work on Vimeo.  To see the film in full resolution check out the new DVD/Blu-ray L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 1.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Beluga (ベルーガ, 2011)

Hans Christian Andersen’s pitiful Christmas tale “The Little Match Girl” has inspired several animators from Charles Mintz’s colourful 1937 cartoon to Roger Aller’s sentimental The Little Matchgirl (2006) for Disney.  There was even a kawaii anime short as part of Mushi Pro’s 52 Hans Christian Andersen Stories (アンデルセン物語) for Fuji TV in 1971.  Yet, no matter how hard one tries to make “The Little Match Girl” lovely, there is no avoiding the fact that it is a truly grim story. 

Thus, it is fascinating to watch Shin Hashimoto throw sentiment aside in his film Beluga (ベルーガ, 2011), which opens and closes with the traditional tale of the girl with the matches - but with a surprising, open-ended twist at the end.  Bilingual intertitles at the opening inform us that the girl could not sell any matches and so “takes shelter in a nook and lights the matches to warm herself.”  We see her hand, drawn almost as if scratched away from black celluloid, as she reaches into the box for a match.  As she lights it, instead of being warmed by memories of happier times from the past as in the original story, we are plunged into the stuff of nightmares. 

A man appears to be hanging in terror upside-down, chicks peck rapaciously at a worm brought by their mother, a barely dressed women runs frantically through a blood red forest possibly in search of her lost child.  It is a series of grotesque scenes of desperation and horrific violence with a short reprieve in the middle in which a prickly little creature and the young child stroll together in the sun.  But this moment of cheer is short lived.  They come across a man urinating on a tree and are moved to commit acts of violence on him.  The film crescendos, with the aid of an impressively dark piano and violin score by Marei Suyama (NGATARI), into an orgy of senseless violence before returning us to the cold world of the match girl alone on the street. 

The biggest mystery of this film is its title.  There are no sea creatures depicted in the film and the imagery in my mind of belugas are quite sweet à la Raffi.  I suppose it can be a brutal world for beluga as well – particularly if they encounter a polar bear or an orca. Yet the world depicted in Hashimoto’s dream sequence are not those of natural predators in the wild.  They are terrifying acts of violence for the sake of violence.  There is no denying Shin Hashimoto’s talent as an animator, but be warned, his subject matter is not for the fainthearted. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Shin Hashimoto (橋本新, b.1979) is a member of the CALF animation collective.  A Tokyo-based artist, Hashimoto did his undergraduate and graduate studies at Tama Art University (aka Tamabi). Hashimoto is known for his nightmarish animated shorts such as The Undertaker and the Dog (2010).  Beluga played widely at both domestic and international animation festivals and received a Special Jury Mention at Animafest Zagreb 2012.  Check out his work on Vimeo.  To see the film in full resolution check out the new DVD/Blu-ray L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 1.

Director:

Shin Hashimoto

Script:

Nobuaki Doi

Shin Hashimoto

Music:

Marei Suyama (NGATARI)

Piano:

Taro Honma

Violin:

Eyuko Suzuki

Sound:

MIMICOF aka Midori Hirano

The Curious Animated World of Ryo Hirano

With so many young animators coming out of art colleges these days, it is only those who have a truly unique vision or aesthetic that stand out from the crowd.  Ryō Hirano (ひらのりょう,  b.1988) is fast becoming known at home and abroad for his weirdly wonderful animated shorts.  Born in 1988 in Kasukabe, Saitama, Hirano is a graduate of the Information Design programme at Tama Art University and he is managed by Foghorn.

In 2009, Hirano was one of a group of students selected to participate in the creation of the collaborative  project “music video orchestra” for the experimental collaborative group Omodaka at the 13^th Japan Media Arts Festival.  Last year, he won the Japan Media Arts Festival “New Face Award” for his animated music video for Omodaka’s latest song “Hietsuki Bushi”.    He has also recently done a music video for OvertheDogs, a young band also represented by Foghorn.

According to Yuki Harada’s interview with Hirano last year, Hirano began experimenting with animation during the summer holidays of his first year of university.  He took courses in photography and programming at Tamabi, but felt that he didn’t really excel in those areas.  He also picked up basic training in the use of animation software while at Tamabi (source: public-image.org).  The first film Hirano ever made was an amusing short-short called “Udara Udara” which features cute little hand-drawn creatures on photographs of natural habitats.  He did the sound for this film himself (read review and watch video).

His next film was Future Man which he made as a project for a university course where they were asked to 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.  One of the details that struck him as 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 evolutionary drive to maximize one’s DNA.    In Future Man, he substitutes humans for the ants.  The many drawings that he did resulted in a 7 minute animation, which gave him a great feeling of accomplishment (read review and watch video).

His third work was Midnight Zoo.  It was based on a dream he had had where he was sucked into a zoo.  In this animation, Hirano wanted to show the connection between humans and animals.  Hirano is drawn to the grotesque (guro) tradition of art in Japan and elsewhere.  The manga of Hideshi Hino has been a major influence on him.  In his interview with Harada, Hirano states that he has always been drawn to the fantastic and the grotesque. Other major artistic influences that he cites are the manga-ka Shigeru Mizuki of GeGeGe no Kitaro fame, the independent animation of Igor Kovalyov, and Garo (ガロ) manga.

Themes that interest Hirano are the transformation of the body – which is perhaps why he is drawn to the grotesque and to yōkai (supernatural creatures).  He has said that he is “interested in the fact that even if you change the body, the essence doesn’t change” and this is a theme that he explores in his works.  Another theme is “boy meets girl” love.  He has tried to express this type of romantic feeling in both Midnight Zoo and Holiday.

Interestingly, Hirano says that he wants to make things that are sugoku guroi (super-grotesque), but that it is sometimes difficult not to overdo it.  In his desire not to overdo the grotesque elements in his work, the result  often turns out more cute than grotesque. When I read this I immediately thought of Hirano’s The Kappa’s Arms which is quite grotesque – I mean a kappa has his arms torn out and bleeds all over the place – but remains quite a cute animation on the whole.

In terms of method, Hirano tends to plan just the first and last scene in his animated shorts and the in-between part just comes naturally.  As a result of this relaxed approach, things that he experiences in his everyday life during the production process often get reflected in the finished film.  For example, The Kappa’s Arms was impacted by the death of a friend during the animation process (read review and watch film).  His work is also heavily influenced by what he reads.  The Kappa’s Arms was initially based on a kappa folktale Hirano discovered in a book, and Ichigwankoku (One-Eyed Country) was based on an old rakugo tale (read review).

Hirano’s animation has a unique look because of his use of collage.  Drawn elements are mixed with photographed images and sometimes even real objects.  He apparently prefers watching documentaries to watching animation but as an artist prefers animation to live action because he can control the final results more.  Also, with animation the audience is much more willing to go on a journey into the fantastic.  In a way, animation is Hirano’s jibun no documentary – a documentary of his inner self.  He can express what he wants to say without any uneasy feeling (iwakan).

We showed Ryo Hirano’s film Holiday at Nippon Connection this year.  It is his graduate film from Tamabi and the themes are once again love and the body.  He made the film based upon memories of the summer holidays (read review and watch trailer).  Holiday has raised Hirano’s profile as an animator as the film has been picked up by many international festivals.  In order to make a living, he continues to do commercial work such as music videos and the Space Showa TV station ID.   I hope that he finds the funding to continue making indie fare because he shows a lot of promise as an artist. 

A great deal of the information for this article was gleaned from an interview with Hirano by Yuki Harada (source: public-image.org) and through correspondence with Hirano himself.  To read more click on hyperlinked the titles below.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

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)

The Kappa’s Arms (河童の腕, 2009)

It is said in Japanese folklore that the kappa are water sprites that, like the endangered Japanese giant salamander, inhabit streams.  Mischievous creatures, the kappa have been depicted as everything from harmless creatures who challenge those they meet to various tests of skill to threatening creatures who have been blamed for drowning and the rape of women.  In recent years, kappa have featured in everything from anime such as Keiichi Hara’s Summer Dayswith Coo (2007) to Shinji Imaoka’s pink film musical Underwater Love (2011).

The indie animator Ryo Hirano based his 2009 short film The Kappa’s Arms (河童の腕/Kappa no Ude) on a story he had a read about a kappa losing its arm.  He initially developed one page of scribbles like a manga and based on that rough sketch developed the concept further.  As Hirano was working on this animation, a friend of his passed away, and this altered the story significantly.  This is Hirano’s most personal film to date, with a letter his mother once sent him when he was an exchange student in New Zealand also influencing the plot (source: Public Image)

On a flat rock in a quiet stream, two young kappa, one green and one yellow, playfully sumo wrestle with each other.  Fun turns to horror as the green kappa loses his balance and grabs onto the yellow kappa’s arm to prevent himself from falling into the water.  He ends up tearing both arms from his friend’s body, leaving the yellow kappa with bloody stumps.  The yellow kappa seems unperturbed by this until the green kappa playfully runs away with the arms.  He tries catch up with his friend but stumbles on a stone and floats away downstream.

The yellow kappa’s arms struggle free from the green kappa and jump into the stream as well.  The green kappa then spots his friends lifeless body and dives into the stream to try to rescue him.  The tearful green kappa and his friend’s arms wash up at a seaside resort and in this new mysterious habitat with strange visitations from a rainbow coloured triangular UFO, the green kappa faces the grief of having lost his friend. 

The Kappa’s Arms is a mixed media film that mainly relies on cutouts for the character movement.  The soundtrack mainly consists of natural sounds (flowing stream, bird calls) until the dream-like sequence at the end when Hirano adds music to the mix.  It is one of Hirano’s most straightforward stories and demonstrates his love of the grotesque (guro) in manga and animation.  Friendship conquers all in this little story.  .  .  just not in the way that you might expect.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Watch the film for yourself on Hirano's official Youtube channel.

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)

Ichi-gwankoku: The One-Eyed Country (一眼国, 2009)

Children watch the freak show.

The animator Ryo Hirano has a love of the grotesque and the absurd, from the yōkai manga of Shigeru Mizuki to the independent animation of Igor Kovalyov (see his interview with Public Image)  Hirano’s animated short Ichi-gwankoku (The One-Eyed Country, 2009) was inspired by the rakugo story of the same name Ichigankoku (一眼国 --- Hirano just chose a different Romanization method for the title). 

Rakugo (落語) is a traditional art of comic storytelling which dates back many centuries.  Many of the classic rakugo tales contain elements of the grotesque.  One well known example to fans of indie animation is Atama Yama (Mt. Head), which Kōji Yamamura adapted in 2002 and tells the tale of a stingy man who has a cherry tree grow out of his head. In the popular story Ichigankoku, the owner of a freak show hears from a travelling priest about the existence of a country of one-eyed people.  He sets out immediately for this land in the hope of capturing a one-eyed child to bring back and use in his show.  However, the tables are turned against him when he comes to the land of one-eyed people, for he himself is captured because he has two-eyeds and is caged and put on display as a freak himself.

Hirano captures the absurdity of the story right from the get-go with a one-eyed chicken who is almost run over by the freak show vehicle and the stampede of children that follow in its wake.  The caged two-eyed man is humiliated even further in his cage because he is naked and shivering.  Not only do the one-eyed children stare at the man in shock, but they also cruelly throw things at him and laugh at his plight.  In a further act of violence, the freak show owner whips the naked man

Collage of drawn and photographic elements

In contrast to this dark, violent scene, a priest and a caged tanuki are sleeping at a roadside shrine.  The tanuki –creatures famed for their powers of transformation – delightedly captures a falling ginkgo leaf and uses his magic to escape from the cage.  From his covered cage, the two-eyed man peaks through a crack in the curtain to observe the one-eyed world around him and spots the tanuki walking by with a leaf on his forehead.   

The man’s view abruptly comes to an end when he is further abused by passersby.  He is knocked unconscious by a can to the head and has a vision of a terrifying giant three-eyed creature.  He runs from this giant but is easily captured and the giant pulls one of his eyes out of its socket.  When the man awakes, he discovers that he now has only one eye.  His eye, with an odd tail wiggling like a fish out of water, stares at him from the other side of his cage.  He tries to capture the eye, but it escapes.  He looks out the window and sees the tanuki with the gingko leaf has captured his wayward eye on stick and is licking it like a lollypop.  The poor naked man sits in disbelief at his fate, scratching his head.

A mix of European and Japanese cultural influences - but they somehow seem to fit this strange land.

If it weren’t for the Japanese elements to this story (tanuki, the Jizō bodhisattva statues, etc.), I might have thought it was by an Eastern European animator because of the look and feel of the piece.  What really makes Hirano’s work stand out from other young animators is his fearless use of collage and mixed media.  Photographic images are layered with drawn images in unexpected and interesting ways. 

Whereas the original rakugo story is amusing because of the irony of the fate of the freak show owner, Hirano shows a different side to the story that shows the value of the story to modern audiences.  We as an audience can scratch our own heads along with the old man and wonder if it is better to be one-eyed and fit in with the others or to remain oneself in the face of violence and cruelty. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Watch the film for yourself on Hirano's official Youtube channel.

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)

Eiichi Yamamoto’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

Back by popular demand, individual questionnaire responses from Laputa Animation Festival’s publication of the Top 150 Japanese and World Animation (2003). 

Biographical information about the great animator Eiichi Yamamoto (山本暎一, b. 1940) in English is unusually sparse on the internet considering that he is one of the top anime directors of his generation.  It is somehow fitting that he was born the same year that Fantasia was completed by Disney, for his contributions to animation have been equally bold and groundbreaking as the work done by James Algar, Wilfred Jackson, et al.

Born in Kyoto during the Pacific War, Yamamoto’s father was called up for service and as an infant Yamamoto’s mother and her family moved to Shōdoshima where they stayed for the duration of the war.  The island is famous for its olives, soy sauce, and wild monkeys.  .  .   as well as being the setting of Keisuke Kinoshita’s classic film Twenty-Four Eyes (二十四の瞳, 1954).  As a school boy, Yamamoto already dreamed of becoming an animator and upon graduation from high school he got work at Otogi Pro under the anime pioneer Ryūichi Yokoyama (横山 隆一, 1909-2001).  He worked on the productions of Fukusuke (ふくすけ, 1957) and Otogi's World Tour (おとぎの世界旅行, 1960) before meeting Osamu Tezuka (手塚 治虫, 1928-89) in 1960.

In 1961, Yamamoto became one of the founding members of Tezuka’s Mushi Productions and he took on the task of animating Story of a Certain Street Corner (ある街角の物語, 1962) which won much acclaim including the first ever Noburo Ofuji Award at the Mainichi Film Concours.  He worked with Tezuka on the original Astro Boy Series and directed the Kimba the White Lion series (1965-7) and feature film (1966).

Yamamoto is perhaps best known for his work on the Animerama (アニメラマ) trilogy of films: A Thousand and One Nights (千夜一夜物語, 1969), Cleopatra (クレオパトラ, 1970), and Belladonna (哀しみのベラドンナ, 1973).  Although these adult themed films may have been conceived and co-directed by Tezuka, Yamamoto is generally credited as the main creative force behind these unique films.  Yamamoto was also the supervising director of Leiji Matsumoto’s influential anime series Space Battleship Yamato (1974-5).

The 20 films that Yamamoto selected for the 2003 Laputa survey reflect his love of both popular and avant-garde forms of animation. .  .  not to mention a taste for the eclectic and unusual.  Yamamoto’s generation were hugely influenced by the extraordinary cell animation produced by Walt Disney in the 1930s and 1940s.  Although they emulated Disney to a certain extent, with the Animerama films Mushi Productions also sought to move animation in a completely new and different direction than Disney.  The avant-garde spirit of these films was influenced by Yōji Kuri and the Animation Sannin no Kai, which is doubtless why Two Grilled Fish made Yamamoto’s list.

On the surface it may seem egoistic for two of Yamamoto’s own works to appear on this list, but it is not uncommon among the Laputa lists.  Puppet animation pioneer Katsuo Takahashi mentions his own work Nobara (野ばら, 1967) and Tsutomu Shibayama lists 18 Doraemon movies in his Top 20 List.  I enlisted my husband to help me translate Yamamoto’s comments about his selection which I have included below.  They reveal his quirky sense of humour. Although the list is numbered, Yamamoto claims the order is random. I am fascinated by the inclusion of The City of Lost Children which is not animation at all, but he suggests the aesthetics have an “anime taste” to them. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

1.

Fantasia

(ファンタジア, 9 Disney directors, 1940)

The film that inspired Yamamoto to become an animator.

2.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

(白雪姫, David Hand et al., Disney, USA, 1937)

“The dark beauty in Snow White reminds me of kabuki” - EY

3.

Two Grilled Fish

(二匹のサンマ, Yōji Kuri, 1960)

“Scary, terrible and disturbing to envision the progress of humanity in this way.” - EY

4.

One Thousand and One Nights

(千夜一夜物語, Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan, 1969)

Yamamoto claims that it was the first animation to be have an “Eirin cut”

(Eirin is the Japanese film classification – some would say “censorship” board)

5.

Belladonna

(哀しみのベラドンナ, Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan, 1973)

“Because I made it!” - EY

6.

Night on the Galactic Railroad

(銀河鉄道の夜  Gisaburo Sugii, 1985)

“Because a friend of mine made it!” - EY

7.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky 

(天空の城ラピュタ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1986)

“It has such a great chase scene!” - EY

8.

My Neighbor Totoro

(となりのトトロ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

“It succeeded wonderfully in turning Japanese folklore into entertainment.” - EY

9.

Renown “Ye-Ye” Girls Commericals

(レナウンのイエイエ娘CM, 1960s)

http://www31.ocn.ne.jp/~goodold60net/yeye.htm

“Oh those were fun, weren’t they!” - EY

10.

Ugo Ugo Lhuga series

(ウゴウゴルーガ, Toshio Iwai, 1992-1994)

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2005/08/ugo-ugo-lhuga-j.php

“This series was great because it turned poo into a character.  

Iwai took animation to a new level.  I watched it every day when it was on TV.” - EY

11.

Minna no Uta series

(みんなのうた, various, NHK, 1961-present)

“I congratulate the NHK on this series.  Please continue it forever!” - EY

12.

Hedgehog in the Fog

(霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, 1975)

“Well, I listed it because everybody says it’s great.”  - EY

13.

The Mighty River / Le fleuve aux grandes eaux

(大いなる河の流れ, Frédéric Back, 1993)

“I like it better than The Man Who Planted Trees” - EY

14.

American Pop

(アメリカン・ポップ, Ralph Bakshi, 1981)

Yamamoto enjoyed the combination of rotoscoping with human drama.

15.

Heavy Metal

(ヘヴィメタル, Gerald Potterton, 1981)

“Hmmmm… this one is ugly and beautiful at the same time (醜悪美).” - EY

16.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

(ナイトメアー・ビフォア・クリスマス, Henry Selick, 1993)

“A grotesque doll with an exceedingly beautiful heart.” - EY

17.

Beavis and Butt-head Do America

(ビーバス・アンド・バットヘッドDo America, Mike Judge/ Yvette Kaplan, 1996)

“Very queer characters, very strange story, knee-slappingly hilarious.

On the one hand there’s Disney, and on the other hand there’s this odd, queer stuff.

America produces such diverse [animation].” - EY

18.

Death Becomes Her

(水遠に美しく, Robert Zemeckis, 1992)

puppets and special effects Guy Himber, Alec Gillis, Don Elliot, et al.

“Fantastic animation techniques used with ‘humans’” - EY

19.

Run Lola Run / Lola rennt animation sequences

(ラン・ローラ・ラン, Tom Tykwer, 1998)

Animation designed by Gil Alkabetz

“The animation is good, as is the beauty of the camera work.  

The construction is also great.  

Lola with the tattoo on her belly is really kawaii” - EY

20.

The City of Lost Children / La Cité des enfants perdus

(ロスト・チルドレン, Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Marc Caro, 1995)

“There’s no “anime” in it at all, but it has an anime flavour to it. 

(he uses the katakana term アニメテイスト literally “anime taste”)  

Their debut film Delicatessen was also good.” - EY


Source: Laputa Top 150 World and Japanese Animation

Yoji Kuri’s Love (愛, 1963)

I think that it is safe to say that Freud would have had a field day with the animated shorts of the grandfather / bad boy of Japanese alternative animation Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, b. 1928). His black, and often bawdy, sense of humour pervades the mood of most of his films.  In his 1963 film Love (愛, 1963), a big woman with prominent breasts breathily gasps the word “Ai” (Love) repeatedly as she chases a man who is much smaller than her. The woman is depicted as being so desperate for love that she even embraces trees in frustration. In contrast, the man seems repulsed by her attention and races to keep himself out of her clutches. 

Examples of the woman dominating the man in Love

In one moment, the woman clutches the man as if he were an infant or a ragdoll and he transforms into a giant drop of water in order to slip from her grasp and escape. The man also chants the word “Ai” but in a less passionate, more matter-of-fact manner. The couple play a kind of hide-and-go-seek amongst a row of trees. The woman chases the man with a net as if he were a butterfly. Once captured, she consumes him whole, only to have him come out the other end and escape again.

She chases him through a gallery lined with portraits of the man and through an empty café with identical tables. Their chants of “Ai” are sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted at top volume, increasing in tempo and desperation. The woman’s arms stretch out to an impossible length in order to grab the man again. In another scene, he stands on all fours like a doll on a leash and eats his food on the floor.

Order the Collected Works of Yoji Kuri

The chase grows increasingly desperate with the woman beating the man into submission with a baseball bat, reducing him to a stuttering idiot in their shared bed, and putting a leash on him and taking him on a walk. The ends with the soundtrack fading out as the man leads the woman into the horizon like a dog on a leash.

This animated short is based on a poem by Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川 俊太郎, b. 1931) with music composed by Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹, 1930-96). Takemitsu is perhaps best remembered today for his composition of soundtracks for the films of great directors like Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Dosdesukaden), Hiroshi Teshigahara (Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes), and Masaki Kobayashi (Harakiri, Kaidan, Samurai Rebellion) and for his significant contributions to aesthetics and music theory. I am a fan of Takemitsu’s early experimental period, and his anti-academic Jikken Kōbō (experimental workshop) had a profound impact on the animator Yōji Kuri, who has used experimental composers like Takemitsu extensively in his films.

Examples of Kuri's use of Japanese cloth/paper in Love

The soundtrack of Love does not fall into the category of “music” in the classical sense, but in the postmodern sense of creating music using unconventional techniques and instruments. The recorded voices (H. Mizushima and Kyōko Kishida) have been distorted using a synthesizer. Sometimes the voices draw out, like a record playing at the wrong speed, or at other times they playback at pitches impossible for the human voice to attain. The tempo and volume is varied in order to create tension.

Love demonstrates the misogyny that is a prevalent theme in Kuri’s work. He frequently depicts women as either obese or having exaggerated or grotesque features. The portrayal of a large woman dominating a small, seemingly helpless man is a common motif in his work. The film unambiguously suggests a fear of female sexuality and a man’s fear of being controlled or dominated by a female partner.  Kuri emphasizes the feeling of entrapment through his use of perspective with the long labyrinthine art gallery, row of trees, and long arcade.  Kuri's depiction of "love" is claustrophobic and abusive.

Love is a fine example of Kuri’s characteristic minimalistic animation and illustration style. The characters are drawn in a clean, minimalistic style reminiscent of the work of New Yorker illustrator Saul Steinberg. Kuri’s illustration style is antithetical to the popular manga and anime styles of the day. The film is, however, given a Japanese aesthetic through Kuri’s choices of cloth and paper cut-outs: the pattern behind the title card and the pattern used on the tables in the café and on rooftops are all very typical of traditional Japanese paper and cloth patterns.

Kuri’s films Love, Clap Vocalism, The Chair, and AOS were joint winners of the Noburō Ōfuji Award in 1965 along with Tadanari Okamoto’s film A Wonderful Medicine. In fact, this review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  2011 Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011