Keiichi Hara's new film Colorful hit the theaters earlier this month. The film seems to be far more controversial than his previous in terms of the subject matter, and opinions are mostly divided into love it or hate it. This is in a way only natural. The title seems darkly ironic and provocative, as it is apparently a slow, static, bleak and humorless film about suicide. Some people appear to have been tricked by the title and were expecting a colorful and fun film. Instead they left the theater depressed. I have some worries that the film might be a little too message-y, using the characters merely as vessels to push a particular theme, rather than letting a theme develop out of natural human drama, but I suppose he had to do his best with the material he was given. And dealing with the theme of suicide is always dangerous. If not handled with sensitivity and understanding you can come across as arrogant and preachy without truly understanding the causes that lead people to such action. One displeased reviewer called it a bad imitation of It's a Wonderful Life.

I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until I see it. When I first saw the trailer a while back, I didn't really like the look and feared he'd made a kiddy film. At least it turned out to be the opposite and it's apparently a film with very serious subject matter. As to whether that's handled in a non-preachy way remains to be seen. Although there is still something of a fantasy element, essentially the film is set in the real world the way Coo was, so even if the film isn't perfect, I'm looking forward to more of Hara's unique brand of slow, low-key drama.

One of the things that nagged me about Coo, which I otherwise quite liked, was the fact that Hara seems very interested in doing low-key realistic drama, but he seems blind to the fact that there is insufficient realistic detail in the animation. Much of the time it almost feels kind of cheap, when it feels like he should be aiming for something more detailed in the vein of Melos or Only Yesterday in terms of the detail of the animation in order to make the scenes feel real. It's not in Hara's character to be meticulous the way these two films were, and in a way that's actually a trait I value. He's not beholden to any conventions on what should or shouldn't be done in animated filmmaking, and that's what's made his films so refreshing. He follows his instinct and this allows him to create films that have a natural and unplanned feeling to the development. I don't mind his casual approach to filmmaking in other aspects, but in the animation I find something is lacking. I get the feeling this still applies to his latest this film. He's one of the people carrying on the legacy of realistic animated filmmaking, and I'd like to see him get as wide an audience as possible, but I think the look of his films (animation and designs) in a way limits his reach. Considering how well-crafted other realistic animated films are, it's not surprising that people would brush off his films as having inferior quality. I think it would only benefit him to learn to use the animation more effectively to give his drama impact.

I'm a bit curious about Light of the River (2009), a TV special produced for NHK by studio Gallop and directed by Tetsuo Hirakawa. I saw a clip of the film, and it doesn't look that great, though - it looks like it's intended for preschoolers - so I don't have any grand expectations.

I used to read Hirakawa's blog when he first started out as an animator. He began working for Madhouse and then went freelance. I recall that he was an avid student of directing, but it's puzzling that he hasn't really been directing or storyboarding, which is usually the path to becoming a director. Instead here he's been working as a key animator for a few years, and he gets asked to direct this TV special. An unusual sequence.

Keiichi Hara is actually the assistant director of the film, so he must have provided Hirakawa with guidance. Early Telecom regular Tannai Tsukasa is character designer and sakkan, and Nizo Yamamoto is art director (with Kazuo Oga drawing backgrounds).

Another name in the credits is Toshio Yamauchi, who is listed as an animator. Tetsuo Hirakawa announced through his twitter that Toshio Yamauchi died on the 24th, the same day as Satoshi Kon. He was one of the central animators behind most of the Nippon Animation and Telecom-era Miyazaki and Takahata productions, including Future Boy Conan, Cagliostro's Castle, Jarinko Chie and Gauche the Cellist. He had been a Gallop employee since around 1983. He originally started out as an animator at Oh Pro, and then transferred to Telecom, and then to Gallop.

As an animator he contributed to every episode of Future Boy Conan starting with episode 8. He animated numerous scenes in Cagliostro's Castle including the sequence starting from where Inspector Zenigata's cops are eating cup ramen, the sequence starting from where the count's minions surround Claris and Lupin, and the sequence starting from where Inspector Zenigata puts on a show for the camera wearing an ape costume. He animated the opening sequence with the mechanical pterodactyl in the Blue Carbuncle episode of Sherlock Hound. He worked on episodes 63, 92, 98 and the final episode by Miyazaki of the New Lupin TV series. For Ghibli he worked on Grave of the Fireflies and Spirited Away. He animated the five shots of Chihiro parting from Haku at the end. Since 1983 he was very active as an animator on Gallop productions like Hime-chan no Ribon, Hoshi no Kirby and Kiteretsu Daihyakka. His last work would have been on their show Mainichi Kaasan, which began airing last year.

A curious movie called Hashire Melos came out in 1992. It never gained much recognition among western fans, probably due to its subject matter, and even in Japan it has yet to be released on DVD. Yet it features work by many renowned animators, not least Hiroyuki Okiura, director of Jin Roh, who supervised the animation.

I finally got to see this two nights ago after many years of searching, and I was quite pleased with the film. I recommend checking it out if you like this period of anime history as much as I do, especially the style of animation during this period.

The production studio was a short-lived studio called Visual 80 whose claim to fame was the last Japanese cel animation Moomin series from 1990. They had previously produced two other literary anime: Belle and Sebastian and The Yearling. The director of Run Melos was the erstwhile puppet theater director turned occasional anime director Masaaki Osumi, best remembered for the early Lupin III episodes and the first Moomin series from 1969 by TMS.

It's a strange movie because it doesn't fit in. It seems out of nowhere. Suddenly, amidst all the love comedies and supernatural psychic aliens and space operas, we get a quiet realistic drama set in ancient Greece. Adaptations of foreign and domestic literature are admittedly not that rare in anime, but more often than not they are sub-par productions far from the lavish treatment given this film.

Run Melos reflects the emerging interest in realism around this time that produced films like Only Yesterday (1991), Patlabor 2 (1993), Junkers Come Here (1994), Anne's Diary (1995) and eventually Jin Roh (1999) and Satoshi Kon's films in the 2000s, not to mention various other significant non-feature items. Aside from Hiroyuki Okiura himself, a number of the more prominent realistic animators participated in the film. According to an interview with Okiura, many of the staff who worked on Rojin Z transferred over to work on this film, which would go some ways to accounting for the impressive staff roll.

This film has fairly splendid production quality thanks not only to Hiroyuki Okiura's work as animation director, but also thanks to this group of awesome animators. These days when I look at staff rolls I don't recognize anybody. When I look at this one, I recognize everyone except for two or three people. Many of them went on to become famous directors or animators.

This film is the biggest stepping stone leading to Hiroyuki Okiura's later film Jin Roh, and he cites these two films as the films closest to his heart among the films he's worked on. Many of us are hoping he will direct another film. In the meantime, discover this early film that in many ways laid his foundation as a director.

It's a shame that this thing has been completely overlooked because it was one of the major anime films of the day. It's not a great film, but it's far from terrible. The directing is quite interesting and unlike any other anime film. The low-key story is very appealing. It has solid animation quality overall, and contains a number of scenes with excellent animation.

The story is a retelling of one of the most famous novels of the Showa period by Osamu Dazai, the tempestuous author who famously made no less than five attempts to commit suicide between the age of 20 and 38, the last one finally proving successful.

The story in outline (minus key details) goes thus:

It's 360 BC on the island of Sicily, which at the time consisted largely of Greek colonies. A farmer named Melos from a small town in the southeast travels to the nearby town of Syracuse to purchase a ceremonial sword for his sister's wedding. Under the iron thumb of the local dictator, the town is roiled with unrest. Melos finds himself caught in the middle of court machinations, and is forced to undertake a grueling run back to his home town to see through his sister's wedding.

(Note that the story is not a retelling of the famous though spurious anecdote about the Greek messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens to report the Greek victory at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, but is rather clearly inspired by it.)

Although a time-travelling Sicilian would probably have a thing or two to say about the authenticity of the trappings, they did put considerable effort into fleshing out the details of life in that day. The layouts are assiduously realistic in terms of perspective, cinematic in framing, and the backgrounds meticulously detailed. In a sad and touching coincidence, it seems that Satoshi Kon was to thank for many of the film's careful, detailed layouts. I watched this film the day he died.

(Aside about Kon's involvement: This would have been his second major job in anime after Rojin Z, which he participated in through his connection with Katsuhiro Otomo. He supposedly drew about 1/10 of the layouts in Rojin Z. He began by drawing concept art and seamlessly switched over to doing layouts and even character roughs, and he presumably did more of the same thing in Run Melos. He had been working mainly as a manga artist, and he appreciated the task for the opportunity it afforded to draw intricately detailed backgrounds. This obsessive detail would later be translated to his storyboards, whose maniacal detail make them double as layouts. It was while working on Rojin Z that Satoshi Kon met Hiroyuki Okiura, and Okiura invited Kon to work on Run Melos. Kon himself probably had no idea where the casual decision to work for a little longer in animation would eventually lead him.)

I would have preferred a more authentic foreign design, but in fact Okiura wasn't originally asked to do the designs. He was originally asked just to be the sakkan. But after extensive talks with Masaaki Osumi, he came to the conclusion that the designs that had been submitted did not meet Osumi's requirements, and it would be more troublesome for him to have to fight against inappropriate designs throughout the film than merely redesign them accordingly himself. And that is what happened. He wasn't a designer by trade, and it shows. I honestly don't care much for the designs. They betray minimal understanding of the nuances of facial feature, and fail to express individuality or national features. Instead of drawing real people, a bulbous nose is slapped onto a textbook design and this is passed off as a generic 'foreigner'. It's kind of insulting.

Apparently Osumi himself instructed Okiura in how Japanese features differ from foreign features, but Okiura chose not to implement this information. He felt that because film was intended for a Japanese audience, an accurately foreign design might have impeded audiences from relating to the characters. I find the logic convoluted and spurious, but I can't blame him too much. Although the two protagonists and womenfolk are quite bland in their design, the despot and the older characters are much more interesting, with craggy features and oddly elongated silhouettes reminiscent of Takashi Nakamura's designs.

But aside from the designs themselves, I'm very impressed by the way they move. The character acting is bereft of the cliches that plagued anime as much back then as they do today. Cleansing the air of ingrained habit and taking a new approach to character psychology more closely based on determining how each character would act in his or her position was Masaaki Osumi's great contribution to this film. Hiroyuki Okiura says he learned much from Masaaki Osumi and the experience was a major turning point in his career. In hindsight, the approach to acting in this film does seem to presage the approach of Jin Roh, with its restrained, methodical acting. It's hardly hard-core realism by any means, but there is a considerable degree of detail in the expression of the subtleties of body movement in many shots, although it's not as uniform as in Jin Roh (and although there are also many less fortunate shots that clearly went uncorrected).

The personalities of the characters are also interesting. The despot ruler in particular is an interesting study in contradictions. Normally anime would go over the top in depicting this kind of character as a crazed, bloodthirsty lunatic. But in Melos that's not the case at all. The first rumors we hear about him at the start of the film paint him up as such, but when he finally shows up, he proves far more sanguine and reasonable than the rumors suggested. No lunatic could manage the complex political maneuvering needed to hold onto the reins of power the way he has. His personality is a balance of humanity and necessary cruelty.

One scene in particular memorably illustrates that he has many facets, like any human being. After having just personally executed a rebel and devised a Machiavellian scheme to cruelly toy with Melos in an attempt to bolster his popularity with the citizens of Syracuse, the next morning we see him kneeling besides his pregnant wife, his ear against her belly, exclaiming proudly, "I felt him move!". The scene seems deliberately provocative in its moving tenderness and serenity coming after such scenes of cold calculation. A multi-layered individual like everyone else who happens to have acceded to power by the whims of fate is more convincing than a cartoon villain. The opaque motivation of the tyrant, who seems to sincerely believe in what he is doing, helps to prevent the film from becoming a black and white study of evil versus good.

The story presents an openly interpretable morality tale about the need to trust other human beings, and the crisis of one man's faith in humanity. The script is many-layered, with the main theme being played out on different planes - personal, political and philosophical. An uneducated farmer caught up in political struggles beyond his knowing desperately seeks the trust of strangers to save his life, a cosmopolitan stone carver betrayed by his own father seeks to regain his faith in humanity by placing his life in the hands of a stranger, and the citizens betrayed by their ruler seek democracy. The film poses fundamental philosophical questions in the style of the old Greek philosophers. There are moments when it felt like I was witnessing a performance of one of Plato's dialogues. And I mean that as a compliment. Some of the most interesting philosophical exchanges occur with the despot, who comes across as understanding and insightful, just misguided.

Though I don't really know much about director Masaaki Osumi other than that he started out in puppet theater, and that I loved his 1969 Moomin series, I think it's this very different way of conceptualizing characters that makes this film unique, and it's Masaaki Osumi who's to thank for it. Like Isao Takahata, Osumi cannot draw and relies on his associates to create the storyboards. According to Okiura, the way this worked was that Osumi would convey to Okiura what he wanted at the animator meetings, and Okiura would either draw the storyboard from scratch or correct the storyboards drawn by other people. Okiura asserts that he still clearly remembers what Osumi told him at this time, and that it laid the foundation for his mindset as a director.

Osumi seems to be the kind of director who, rather than getting caught up in the story, steps back and takes more objective perspective. He thinks things through logically and doesn't lose sight of the big picture. He doesn't have a particular style of drawing that dominates what he might want to express. Oftentimes I find it's the outside directors, the ones who aren't used to industry conventions, who create the most refreshing animation.

The details of the production apart from the character animation are also nice. Little things like the way the water arcs through the air off the back wheels of a cart driving through the rain are well observed details that I appreciate seeing. The art of Hiroshi Ohno is magnificent, especially the paintings of carvings. The carvings play a central role in the story as metaphors for the artist's loss of faith, and crappy art would have ruined their impact, but Ohno's art fully captures the elegance and refined sensibility of ancient Greek sculptures.

Among the animation aficionados, the films is best known for the action scene in the forest animated by Mitsuo Iso, which certainly features the most impressive body movement in the film and is one of his best pieces. It reminds me of his animation for the Eva movie. Satoru Utsunomiya did the part right afterwards. Toshiyuki Inoue also delivers a great sequence with the cockfight scene. He's got an amazing ability to draw every character three dimensionally from any angle or body position. The movement is fun yet realistic. He also supposedly animated a lot of the horses. Hiroyuki Morita handles one of the most poignant scenes in the film, the scene where Melos parts from his sister in the rain. The scene feels raw and real, the sister getting up naked from her marriage bed to go to the window and wave goodbye, and the husband pulling her back to bed, leaving Melos alone to face his fate. Michio Mihara handled the scene with the beggar boys attacking Melos at the beginning. I suspect Yasunori Miyazawa did the wedding dance scene, though I'm not positive. It's not as characteristic as his other work around this period.

Even apart from this there are many other great names in the credits; too many to point out. There's also a number of people who went on to become directors: Tensai Okamura, Shin Matsuo, Toshiyuki Tsuru and Hiroyuki Kanbe.

There aren't many films like this one. It doesn't cater to fan tastes, and it's about as far removed as you can get from everything cool, hip or sexy. I personally love low-key films like this. It's low-key realism and solid human drama that I think makes Summer with Coo the Kappa a great film. It's more films with this spirit of independence that we need. I'm a great fan of what anime has achieved in terms of realism in animation, and this is one of the earliest tentative examples of realism in the post-Akira period. It's one of the stepping stones that leads to the great realistic films that followed, so it's required viewing if you want to have a sense of the evolution of realistic anime.

Script & Director: Masaaki Osumi
Character Design and Animation Director: Hiroyuki Okiura
Art Director: Hiroshi Ohno
Storyboard: Katsumi Terahigashi, Mizuho Nishikukbo, Hiroyuki Okiura, Masaaki Osumi
Animation:
Toshiyuki Inoue, Satoshi Kon

Hiroyuki Morita, Michiyo Suzuki
Kumiko Kawana, Michio Mihara
Katsumi Matsuda, Yasunori Miyazawa
Sumio Watanabe, Masayuki Kobayashi
Tensai Okamura, Mitsuo Iso
Saitani Umetaro, Akihiro Yuuki
Tsutomu Yabuki, Kenichi Oonuki
Kazuya Takeda, Harumi Izawa
Takahiro Komori, Satoru Utsunomiya
Eiji Suganuma, Ken Aratani, Reiko Eda
Koji Ito, Yoshinobu Michihata, Kazuyoshi Takeuchi
Hiroyuki Aoyama, Shigetaka Kiyoyama, Yoshishige Kosako
Hideki Hamasu, Michio Fukuda, Shin Matsuo, Takuya Saito
Toshiyuki Tsuru, Toshinari Yamashita, Takao Yoshino
Shinji Hashimoto, Riwako Matsui, Hiroyuki Kanbe
Tetsuro Karai, Yumi Chiba, Fumiko Kishi
Kenji Yoshida, Kazuto Nakazawa, Shinya Takahashi
Soichiro Matsuda

It's hard to believe the news, but it seems that Satoshi Kon has passed away at age 47. My first reaction was disbelief because he was just way too young.

We've been deprived of many great movies from a brilliant mind. Satoshi Kon was perhaps the only person in Japan today consistently releasing sophisticated films for adults that anyone in the world could watch and be blown away by. His films transcended anime. There is nobody else doing the sort of work he was doing. He truly was one of a kind and irreplaceable in the world, not just in anime.

Every time he put out a new film, it felt unprecedented - something that had never been done before in anime. And each film had the same maniacal level of craftsmanship and attention to detail. They are each a unique and perfectly realized vision. Each of his films takes a completely different tack but is precisely crafted in every way, from the structure to the development of the characters to the animation.

Despite the huge number of films produced in the industry every year, most of these are throwaway work intended for a small domestic audience. Satoshi Kon showed by his example that it was possible to create anime films that stood up to the scrutiny of audiences the world over. I don't see him as an auteur. I don't even see him as a director of anime films. I see him as a master filmmaker who was creating great films; his chosen medium just happened to be animation.

He tackled complex themes and narrative structures that animation was uniquely suited to tackling, but that had never been tackled due to conservatism and the still ingrained notion of animation as being exclusively for children. Right from his first film, his vision was uncompromising in its willingness to tackle subject matter implicitly taboo in animation.

And yet, despite the adult themes and the postmodernist glee with which he toyed with the concept of narrative, at the core of his films there were always human beings who behaved like real human beings. They felt emotions and made us feel their emotions. They made you forget they were drawings. Like no other film before, his films were a contradiction and a tightrope act - they conveyed believable human drama, not in a realistic way, but in a way that emphasized the medium. Thus he achieved the impossible contradiction of doing things animation is supposedly not good at doing, while at the same time doing the things animation is supposedly good at doing.

He seemed to just have the instincts of a director. He knew how to structure a film, how to pace the shots, and how to use animation effectively to create something that worked as a film in a way that very few anime features do. They had a narrative heft, richness of character development and thematic complexity that was fully the equal of the greatest live-action films. And as if that weren't enough, on the animation front, the exceptional quality of character acting in his films, Tokyo Godfathers in particular, was something of a new achievement for anime. He was a great director of animated films because in animation it's not just about you - he knew how to corral the talent and individualism of a huge army of people, including some very idiosyncratic but talented animators, in a way that melded into a perfect unified whole. His films were among the few animated films ever to not only be interesting as animated films, but to also be interesting as films.

The editing of the shots in his films has always been the thing that most impressed me about his films, from the bewildering shifts of perspective in Perfect Blue to the fast-paced cutting between different time-periods and sequences in Millennium Actress. In his mind he clearly understood how every piece of the complex puzzles that were his films fit in. And despite the way he destroyed concepts of linear narrative, his films never felt muddled, but were the essence of clarity.

His films were, in a way, an extension of his genius for meticulous illustrations, illustration being the ancestor of filmmaking. His storyboards are marvels of the art that beyond being beautifully detailed are revealing of the amazing precision with which he conceived every element of his films down to the smallest detail. His writings on his experiences making each of his films, posted many years ago on his web site, are among the most insightful I've ever read on the subject of animated filmmaking in Japan. He was even a mentor of young artists, appearing on NHK's Digital Stadium occasionally to critique short student films.

This is a devastating blow to anime because there's nobody who can replace Satoshi Kon or carry on his legacy. It's not just that he had a unique vision; he had the analytical mind and the awesome technical skill to back it up. He was arguably the most consistent filmmaker working in anime today, with an exacting and methodical approach to directing shared by seemingly nobody of his generation. He leaves us right when we were expecting to see him embark on a long career of new heights.

Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Shintaro Asanuma.

He's been giving an unforgettable performance throughout the show so far as the fast-talking narrator, but he pulled off literally a one-man voice actor episode in this one, so hats off. (not to mention talking even faster than before, if that's possible) I've heard of solo animator and solo background episodes, but this is the first time I've heard of a solo voice actor episode.

Not to sound repetitive, but this episode was again brilliant. I'm not just saying this as a Masaaki Yuasa fan. I came back to the show with this episode tonight after a two week absence not too excited, but the work won me over entirely on the merits of the directing.

I appreciated how aggressively the live-action was integrated into this episode, far more than in any previous episode (or even in Kemonozume for that matter) and how flawlessly it was pulled off. It's the latest and in many ways most extreme expression of the unique approach to blending animation and live-action that Yuasa first busted out in Mind Game. And on top of that the animation here had some of the most fun and loose work I've seen in the whole show, which made for a great contrast. Color work was amazing as usual. Animation, directing, coloring etc. all worked together to keep the viewer riveted throughout an episode that was otherwise intentionally pared down in so many ways - single voice, single setting. This material could have been monotonous and boring if not properly directed, but instead it was filled at every moment with interesting new ideas that were very inventive and kept the momentum going.

Thank Choi Eunyoung for the awesome directing of this episode. She showed exceptional talent as an animator and animation director in her very first job on Kemonozume, and proved she could direct just as well her first time directing on Kaiba. I suspect her special gift to be the product of inner talent multiplied by multicultural perspective and experience, something most Japanese animators lack. She clearly put a lot of effort into ensuring that the live action-animation dynamic here was properly handled. (Masahiko Kubo is credited as having helped with the live action) She recently directed another item associated with Yuasa, so she seems poised to take off on a directing career of her own.

Story-wise, we finally learn the basic premise. The English title Tatami Galaxy now makes some sense. I'll leave it in hands far more capable than mine to write a lengthy exegesis parsing the intricacies of the significance of the various plot devices, namely the blogger at the blog anime/otaku, who rather than assessing the technical merits of the episodes like me, tackles the admittedly more challenging task of parsing the show's tangled narrative and figuring out what it all means. It's beyond the capability of my feeble brain to pick apart the intricacies of this show the way this blogger has. At the same time, I don't think it's necessary to catch every little thing to appreciate the show. But considering the jumble of info being thrown at you and mixed up into different configurations, it is impressive to realize just how meaningful and painstakingly put together it all is. Far more than Yuasa's previous shows, Tatami Galaxy seems tailor made to get people talking about it and analyzing it.

Yuasa's third series really isn't so much about style as it as about the content. The show is full of great work in every facet, including the animation, but the technical aspects of the production seem more subservient to the story this time around. Tatami Galaxy could arguably be considered Yuasa's most tonally controlled and structurally solid TV series to date. But on the other hand, the effect would probably have been the same plus or minus x number of episodes, since it's not like every episode was essential to pushing the plot forward. There may be some ways in which this show is more honed and intricate and carefully constructed than Yuasa's previous work, but I actually like the looseness of his previous work. Tatami Galaxy is an awesome achievement as a complex, postmodern narrative, but as a matter of preference, I find myself more attracted to the graphic unpredictability and rawness and humanity of Kemonozume and the visually sumptuous and imaginative world-creation and drama of Kaiba, imperfect in terms of structure and visual consistency though they might be in comparison.

Storyboard and director: Choi Eunyoung
Animation directors: Nobutake Ito, Masashi Ishihama
Assistant animation director: Shouko Nishigaki

Key animators:
Hiromi Hata, Takashi Muratani
Takayuki Hamada, Sawako Miyamoto
Yumi Oka, Tomoya Nakayama
Sayaka Toda, Choi Eunyoung
Second key animators:
Natsuko Shimizu, Kenichi Fujisawa

It's funny how silly it can seem in retrospect to talk about animation history without having seen certain important landmarks. I'm just in the process of watching Yellow Submarine for the first time (gasp), and it's like a whole obvious level of significance just passed over my head as I was assessing a number of the landmark anime films. As soon as I sit down to watch it I realize that without it, two of my favorite anime films would never have been: Belladonna, which five years later was clearly indebted to Yellow Submarine with its exuberant psychedelic images and drug-laced musical sequences; and Little Jumbo, which 9 years later was clearly indebted to George Dunning's mad vision with it dayglo colors and musical format, not to mention having a flying hand that's a straight crib of the Blue Meanies' flying glove in Yellow Submarine.

This inspiration is clearly one of the things that sets these films apart and made them such timeless creations never to be repeated. They weren't improved versions of the kind the Japanese are so good at in industry, but inspired reflections by the talented artists of the day who wanted to create something liberated and free in the same mold and undoubtedly saw in the film a handy tool for doing so. This is what we need more of today. We have artists working in anime who could equal if not top the mad exuberance and nonstop genius imagination of Yellow Submarine. Set Masaaki Yuasa free of the reins of the industry and let him create something in this vein, where every moment breaks the rules of animated logic and revels in the joy of visual creativity. Pair him with Yasunori Miyazawa, whose clear genius for creative new visual schemes is IMO also being repressed by the shackles of the industry's requirements to create commodities cut from the template of past successes. Japan has the talent, but it's being completely wasted on garbage.

I also like the idea of a script rooted in the language - one that can't be translated without losing the significance, like the many puns that litter this film that would be impossible to translate. It's rare to find a script that defies translation by being so masterfully constructed out of the idiosyncrasies of a language.

If you haven't seen Yellow Submarine, thinking it nothing but a gimmick, like I did, do yourself the favor of checking it out, if you value creativity in animation. Laugh at the 60s imagery if you must, but its every minute is amazingly full of creative ideas of a kind we don't see in animated feature-length films anymore, so it makes you wonder if we've made progress or gone backwards.

I saw the delightful film Mr. Nobody a few weeks ago, and was struck how much it reminded me of Millennium Actress and even Mind Game. Am I the only one? Some of the things seemed too similar to be coincidence. Not that I'm accusing the film of plagiarism; it'd be great to see live-action films paying Kon's and Yuasa's genius the overdue honor of being inspired by them. I quite enjoyed the film, though it kind of slogged in the middle.

I've hit 500 posts over at my Animated Music Videos blog, so to commemorate the occasion, I posted a brief retrospective of the animated films I feel paved the way for musical animation.

Chinese indie animation powerhouse Lei Lei (AKA Ray) has been busy the last few years since he made The Face, as witness the various videos he's uploaded on his Vimeo account.

One of those is a brief TED talk he gave in Shanghai a few months back. An inspiring statement of firm sense of purpose from one of China's most prominent and creative indie animators at the moment. Looking forward to seeing more strong voices like his emerging from the country, something with a perspective neither western nor anime-influenced, but personal and informed of the history of a different culture with a different baggage of history and outlook.

The animator as a one-man studio, animation as a form of personal expression to sort out ideas that float around in your head, not as a product, inspired by travels around the world and meeting people, sharing the experience of living life, and the vitality to modestly limit oneself to "at most 3 films a year". Brief statements of purpose worth sharing.

One of the things people have been bringing up in my last post on what you want to see in anime is the idea of cross-pollination of animation cultures - the idea of exposing the talented animators in Japan to the style of working of, say, Disney, or France, or wherever there is a strong method of doing things that is completely different but that could help to expand the palette of the Japanese style of doing things. The Japanese approach can produce magnificent results that can't be produced elsewhere, but methods anywhere are at risk of stultification without constant renewal. While there are artists doing a kind of work in the Japanese industry that could never be done in any other industry, I also get the feeling of a lack of progress being made in the last few years, especially in comparison with the leaps and bounds in expression that I see coming from other countries lately, most notably France.

This is why I'm completely in agreement with the idea of exposing animators trained in one tradition to another tradition that was brought up in the comments of the last post. And it cuts both ways; it doesn't just apply to Japanese animators. We live in a unique time when it's easier than ever to create new hybrids and discover new approaches to animation through collaboration, and it would be a waste not to take advantage of those opportunities. Animators from whichever western tradition could certainly stand to expand their range by studying the very different but equally valid approach used in Japan.

A project recently completed by Ankama Japan, the Japanese offshoot of French studio Ankama, seems salient to this discussion. It's a one-off episode to their hit series Wakfu that looks completely different from the rest of the series. The series was done by the home French team in Flash, with blatantly anime-influenced character designs, situations and atmosphere. The extra episode is animated traditionally, and is actually produced by a Japanese team, but looks nothing like the stereotypical image of what anime supposedly looks and feels like. (kind of ironic)

This episode is very much of a must-see. It's a beautiful episode viewed as a stand-alone, and it represents an ambitious new style of co-production, featuring as it does the main staff behind Kemonozume and Kaiba working at a French studio with French staff, creating a never-before-seen kind of hybrid. Here's the main credits:

Noximilien the Clockmaker

Storyboard and director: Eunyoung Choi
Character design: Masaaki Yuasa
Animation director: Michio Mihara
Color design: Kunio Tsujita

Animators:
Michio Mihara, Christophe Ferreira
Masahiko Kubo, Miki Wasada
Hiromi Hata, Eriko Kubokawa
Antoine Antin, Yoshiya Fujisaki
Alex Ulmann, Yann Legall

I've seen the film, and visually it feels very much like an extension of Kemonozume and Kaiba in terms of the directing, animation and layout sensibility. The designs of the kid characters feel very Kaiba-ish. The fact that it's a hybrid production comes through I'd say mostly in the animation and the story, which was written by the French side. (And the voice acting, which was a little overdone at times for my taste.) Overall it feels like it's got a more character-animation-centric feeling to the presentation, and much of the animation has a particular kind of nuanced acting that you don't find in anime. Unlike most co-productions I've seen, this one really feels like it works as a film, and that's obviously because it had an awesomely talented team heading it, and they were given full creative control.

Some of the animation feels distinctly French and some feels distinctly Japanese. I would have liked to feel that the animation was more of a blend of the two overall, rather than distinct sections by different groups - more active learning from one another, striving to incorporate something from the other's approach. For example, the sections animated by Michio Mihara and Masahiko Kubo are very obvious, as each is done in their unmistakable style (Kubo in the wobbly style he used in the Minotaur scene at the end of Tekkonkinkreet), while for example the far more supple, weighty and nuanced character animation during the first sequence seems clearly to have been the work of one of the French animators.

But I don't want to overstate that gripe. This episode does a great job of blending two cultures' very different concept of good hand-drawn animation in a harmonic way in the same film, creating a film that shows how beautiful 'classical' or 'hand-drawn' animation (whatever you want to call it) can be, in its various guises, which was Choi Eunyoung's stated goal with this film. It shows that the twain can meet and produce beautiful offspring. This film feels fresh and warm and has a richness of animation that's unusual even for a Yuasa production, and in that sense it shows a new approach to creating an animated film, though of course Yuasa has expanded the range of character acting in anime in many of his TV episodes.

One gripe I have in general is with the idea of an 'anime style'. I don't think there's any such thing as an anime style; there are only conventions rehashed by people without the talent to come up with something of their own. This applies to any animation industry. You can find plenty of people working in anime who do not espouse an obviously anime style - you wouldn't call Yuasa's or Choi's or Mihara's style typical anime style. They have come up with their own approach.

I like this Nox project because it shows an understanding that what makes anime great is not the lowest common denominator, but the talented artists. Co-productions like this are only fruitful when they are genuine, heartfelt collaborations between talented artists from different traditions attempting to learn from one another for their mutual growth. It's not just about randomly combining Japanese and French or other production methods, or using a Japanese studio to animate something because it's the cool thing to do. It should be about a meeting of great minds. I admire this project because the producers of Ankama clearly have a creator-centric approach to their projects - obviously, if they were willing to greenlight this episode that clashes aesthetically with the rest of the series.

I think this was a laudable project for many reasons, most notably because the spirit of this project was mutual exchange of animation knowhow - not just farming out the animation to Japan and letting them do their thing. The people heading the project at Ankama were genuinely interested in learning from their counterparts while also communicating something about their own approach in the process. It's more projects like this we need to see, though I doubt there are many studios with not just the money but the willingness to go to such lengths to create a site for the meeting of two animation cultures that would also be used to produce some commercially viable films. This extra episode is a great first step in that direction, because it does work as a film, and it has a particular visual style that in some senses neither side could have been able to create by themselves.

There's a good documentary on the making here that I recommend checking out to learn about how this project came about, though it's in French with no subs. (If you don't understand French, you can always skip to the 14-minute mark, where Choi herself speaks in English.)

The way this mysterious project came about is that Anthony Roux, Ankama's founder, was in Japan when he met Choi Eunyoung, and invited her to come visit Ankama France. She herself then invited Masaaki Yuasa and Michio Mihara to come along, and all of them went there for a visit in January 2009. After that, 25 French animators went to Ankama Japan, where they were charged with directing two episodes in 3 months using Japanese methods. I think it's after this that Choi was appointed to direct the extra episode. She presumably asked Yuasa to provide the designs. Choi Eunyoung says that she had worked with Eddie Mehong, the studio's artistic director, on projects before, which is perhaps how she got appointed to direct the extra episode. Choi is a preternaturally talented lady, as shown by the great work she did right from her first job animating on Kemonozume and her first job directing on Kaiba, but I think her multi-cultural experience and training helped a lot. Exposure to different cultures and modes of thought is something that everyone should be blessed with, whether they're working in animation or otherwise. Even if a project like this doesn't produce that interesting results, it can still be a very valuable experience to the people involved and eventually maybe bear fruit.

There was apparently some exchange of technique between them and Michio Mahara on one of the Flash episodes of Wakfu (#22?), with Mihara drawing genga and his genga being scanned and transferred to Flash to be animated. Eddie Mehong comments how it was hard finding Japanese animators willing to work in Flash. You can see Miki Wasada interviewed about her experiences working in Flash, saying how it's faster and easier to stay on model but it loses the looseness and freedom of hand-drawn. She also makes an interesting observation about the difference in directing styles - she was surprised how she was assigned to do a section from 'here to here', and was pretty much on her own from there on out for everything within that section, because the Japanese method would entail a lot more back-and-forth with the director and other staff about what do do and how. It was clearly a learning experience for everyone involved, which can only be a good thing.

Quick note about the animators, since the Japanese names are all familiar names who have been working with Yuasa for years now, but the French animators might be less familiar: Christophe aka lebuta we of course know as the Frenchman who worked at Telecom on Soul Eater among other things. Several of the others have also worked on productions in Japan - Yann Legall worked in Japan at Satelight in 2008 (his blog) and Alexandre Ulmann worked on Casshern Sins (one of his student films). Antoine Antin co-directed Papillon (2002), a nice little Japan-inspired short.

There was a lot of wonderful work throughout this film, but I really loved the opening scene in particular for its combination of richly nuanced animation in the French style with the Japanese style designs, staging and directing. Otherwise there was some gorgeous art, especially of the bizarrely morphing mad studio at the end.

I'm going to try to finish blogging Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei soon, but in the meantime this question popped into my head a few days ago, and got me thinking. I'm pretty much dissatisfied with most anime that's made, and I'll occasionally see something (animated or otherwise) and think, "THIS is what I'd like to see in anime."

One thing I'd like to see is more stuff like Cat Soup - lavishly produced shorts spearheaded a unique artist, filled head to toe with inventive animation and designs, adopting narrative structures that have never been explored in anime, exploring interesting themes without relying on industry tropes and cliches.

In a longer format, I'd like to see more believable down-to-earth drama like Haibane Renmei exploring a serious subject of relevance to us human beings, but with more realistic designs. I'd like to see something without an audience-pandering gimmick - be it anime-style designs or sci-fi trappings - something completely real life.

I'd like to see international collaborations where the Japanese side directs and does everything else, but foreign animators do the animation - not outsourced, but working in Japan. I'd like to see more Japanese animators spend a year in some foreign country learning a non-Japanese approach to expand their palette.

And so on. I pretty much know the reason WHY stuff like this isn't made more often - that's not the question. I just want to plumb the depths and figure out what it is I REALLY want to see, not what I compromise and watch because it was produced and is decent. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. We all have a director in our heads who has ideas about what would be interesting, what it is that truly interests YOU but that you've never seen addressed in anime. I want to hear some dreams of alternate realities. For once, don't compromise.

So, open question to all the people out there who, like me, AREN'T satisfied with what they see in anime:

What is it you really want to see in anime?

I've always considered fighting anime the low road to success as a studio, and Pierrot the king of that road, but at the same time can't deny that these long-running hit shounen shows have been a good training ground for directors and animators. Action and FX animation is one of the few indisputable strengths of anime, and every once in a while on these shows an episode with genuinely interesting animation crops up (it'd be way beyond the means available to do such quality anything but sporadically over such a long-running show).

The most recent episode in Pierrot's Naruto franchise has one of the mainstays of the shounen fighting anime, Atsushi Wakabayashi, who cut his chops on Pierrot's first hit show in the genre, Yu Yu Hakusho (1992-1995), returning to prime form with another action-packed episode that moves something crazy from almost start to finish.

It's nice to have Wakabayashi back in the director's seat on the show. It's been 5 years since his last episode. Love him or hate him, he's one of the most unique and unmistakable voices in the genre. I never expected to see him back. There has been the occasional action extravaganza episode, in which after a span of a few dozen episodes we finally get some animation, but none of them have had the impact of the legendary Naruto episode #133 by Atsushi Wakabayashi. This one is every bit the equal of Wakabayashi's previous episodes. However, due to the different staff involved, it doesn't feel quite as polished. What it lacks in polish it makes for in an exciting, densely packed onslaught of kinetic action animation.

It wouldn't be an Atsushi Wakabayashi episode without Norio Matsumoto, and indeed he again leads the animators. For once, though, Norio Matsumoto is not the only talented action animator involved. He is joined by Shingo Yamashita and Kenichi Kutsuna, two young ex-gif animators who have been associated with Norio Matsumoto and Satoru Utsunomiya since they started working. Yamashita in particular has been doing some very impressive action lately. They in turn are joined by an army of seconds, which complicates making a straight breakdown of scenes, although I felt pretty sure about Norio Matsumoto's sections. In a strange coincidence, many of the seconds here were involved in the Shingo Natsume episode of Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei that just aired.

The shots with the explosions were quite beautiful, and there was a lot of action choreography on water that felt similar to #133, which I suspect to have been the work of Norio Matsumoto. Overall I'd say this episode hasn't overtaken #133 in my heart, because #133 felt better balanced overall, and had a larger proportion of Matsumoto animation. Though I was impressed by most of the animation in the episode when I watched it for the first time, on rewatching this episode, I find myself less and less convinced by much of the animation, with the notable exception of the sections obviously by Norio Matsumoto.

For a while now one of my favorite shots by Shingo Yamashita - or what I've assumed to be so - has been the one of Naruto transforming into a beast in the previous Naruto Shippuuden opening, so it's interesting to see him here animating that very material. Maybe they were already working on this episode at the time that opening was done, and they did that as kind of an easter egg. Although I don't have a total grasp of Yamashita's style, he seems to manage a decent level of draftsmanship, unlike some of the ex gif animators I've seen. One problem I have with these ex-gif animators is that they overuse wobbly body movement, as if making the character wobble around were sufficient to make a movement look realistic. I find it surprising that they haven't learned from Matsumoto how to use drawings more efficiently.

There were a number of shots that stood out in a bad way, unfortunately. I think it's great that there is a generation of younger animators who got into the industry because they want to make things move, but I've been of mixed feelings about the sort of work they've been doing over the last few years, notably on certain episodes of Birdy. Rather than developing into a certain style, the way Norio Matsumoto did, I feel that they're striving to mimic a certain feeling in the movement that they've seen in the work of the great mover animators like Norio Matsumoto, without having the patience to do what's necessary to acquire the knowhow underpinning that talent over many years of hard work. It feels like they're putting the cart before the horse.

Thus we have scenes of action that are actually quite ambitious in their choreography, but are rendered nearly unwatchable due to their poor draftsmanship. Simply put, I think this generation is missing training in fundamentals. That, and I find there to be a slight unproffesionalism in their work. It's like they're just playing around making gif loops as usual, without the cognizance that they are in a group effort situation that demands at least some level of adaptation to the circumstance. I feel very torn to say this, because up until these guys appeared, unhinged exuberance of this kind is something I always used to welcome unconditionally in anime episodes, even if it didn't really work, and even if it worked against the episode that contained it. With these guys, for once, for some reason, I feel it crosses a line. It's simply not good or interesting enough to pull it off.

Wakabayashi's episodes have have been criticized for having poor drawings in the past. Mostly the criticisms have been laughably ignorant of the nature of animation - picking a split-second inbetween from a very fast motion that the eye doesn't even register discretely unless you pause it. Matsumoto's drawings in 133 were deformed a certain way to achieve an effect in motion, and the effect when viewed as intended is flawless. Take any of those drawings out and the animation would lose its intended impact.

This case is different. Some of the shots in here attempt to convey the feeling of a character doing an intense action by using excessively deformed drawings, but the animator doesn't have the skill to pull it off, and it just looks sloppy. That sketchy shot in particular was very hard to watch. And the shot of the guy getting punched in the face seemed like a pale attempt to imitate the very well executed and memorable face-punch in episode 71 of the original Naruto series. It's unfortunate that this time I can't deny that some of those drawings are misfires that probably shouldn't have made it into the final product, and not all of the movements are flawless Norio Matsumoto creations. There were a lot of seconds, so I wonder how the work is broken down.

One thing that I find amusing and does not bother me in the slightest is how little effort was apparently put into some of the still shots that are interspersed between the action scenes - it looks like Wakabayashi spent exactly three seconds on them (three seconds that he would have preferred devoting to the action scenes). Those drawings are about the only moments this episode resembled the usual Naruto. Sure, Wakabayashi has an odd drawing style, but I find it's not Wakabayashi's drawings that are criticized in his episodes so much as the drawings taken out of context in a movement. If it weren't for the legitimately bad drawings in this episode in particular, I'd say it wasn't the drawings so much as the fact that there is a lot more animation than usual that strikes the regular viewers as being incongruous in Wakabayashi's episodes. Though of course he does change the material a bit and isn't as concerned with mimicking the style of the manga. Production studio Pierrot is obviously proud of the work Wakabayashi does for their show if they keep inviting him to do episodes again.

I'd like to see an episode like this from Wakabayashi not in Naruto for once - something with an interesting universe, creative designs and a self-contained story. Here the action just sort of trails off due to the necessity to process the material he's been provided from his alloted section of the manga. And I don't really feel that Wakabayashi's very idiosyncratic drawings are best suited to mimicing someone else's drawings. I'd like to see his exaggerated style of drawing allowed to come through more. In Naruto he has to suppress the unique flavor of his drawings way too much, which is a complete waste.

Here's a list of some of the more notable Naruto action episodes over the years:

Naruto #30 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2003)
Naruto #48 (dir. Toshiyuki Tsuru, 2003)
Naruto #71 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2004)
Naruto #133 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2005)
Naruto Shippuuden #85 (dir. Toshiyuki Tsuru, 2008)
Naruto Shippuuden #123 (dir. Toshiyuki Tsuru, 2009)
Naruto Shippuuden #131 (dir. Akitoshi Yokoyama, 2009)
Naruto Shippuuden #143 (dir. Atsushi Nigorikawa, 2010)
Naruto Shippuuden #167 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2010)

Staff for Naruto Shippuuden #167

Storyboard, Director and Animation Director: Atsushi Wakabayashi

Key animators:
Norio Matsumoto, Shingo Yamashita, Kenichi Kutsuna, Atsushi Wakabayashi

Second key animators:
Tomoyuki Niho, Kenichi Fujisawa, Shintaro Douge, Yasuyuki Kai
Takeo Oda, Shingo Natsume, Miyako Matsumoto, Atsuko Yamazaki
Kasumi Wada
Go Hands

This episode blew me away. It was possibly the most impressive episode in the series so far. Stunning on every level. I can't think of enough superlatives to describe this episode. Weird how it's episode 9 that has gotten me really excited, rather than the first episode. I got a glimpse of genius in this episode, and it rekindled that old flame I haven't felt in a long time for the medium of animation. Yes, folks. This is what's possible in anime. The pure brilliance of this episode wipes away any feelings of ambivalence I might have had about the concept up until this point.

This episode brings everything to a head and puts things in perspective, without really revealing anything, which is kind of interesting. It feels like we're reaching a sort of saturation point where the jumble of alternate narratives is reaching critical mass. It crystallizes what I was feeling from all the previous episodes. It's like each new episode has reinterpreted the whole basic situation of the protagonist's association with all of these characters during his first few years at university through the lens of what happened in the previous episodes. Hence things get progressively more jumbled and crazy as time goes on. The amazing feat of this episode is that it manages to convey a tangle of ideas, mixing and remixing what came before, picking a bit from from one situation and then throwing in a bit from another, in a way that for some reason doesn't feel jumbled, even though he's deliberately creating narrative contradictions. You get exactly the point it's trying to make, but it's so complex it's difficult to pin down to one statement.

For the first time in this series, the heart feels an emotional tug. The climax is a beautiful, emotional ride combining tour-de-force directing with superb animation of the kind that reminds of Yokoyama's work in Kaiba. A lot of hints about what might be happening are dropped here and there, but nothing concrete. Something human begins to emerge behind the impenetrable facade of intellectual play that dominated the proceedings up until now, with nary an emotion peeking through. I'm reminded of the montage at the end of Mind Game, with its beautiful display of all the possible futures of each character, representing a sort of acceptance of all the world has to offer, good or ill, and the privilege we each have of being able to create our own narrative in this world.

Such is the genius of Akitoshi Yokoyama. Once again, he's outdone himself. I don't mean to pat myself on the back, but I managed to guess while watching that he was the director and that it was probably Ryotaro Makihara helming the animation. Such is the force of their respective visions that there is no mistaking them for anyone else. With Makihara it isn't even a particular way of drawing things. There are some stylistic hallmarks, but it's more simply the fact that the animation suddenly moves a lot more, and more convincingly. The characters act out actions, rather than simply sitting there. With Yokoyama, it's the absolute hairpin precision with which every shot and every sound is manipulated to create an inexorable forward momentum. It's the torrent of interesting visual ideas. It's the stellar use of animation to create excitement and bolster the emotional impact of the story, notably in the climax, with all its beautiful flowing abstract animation. This is really the pinnacle of animated filmmaking - every shot perfectly honed, a theme develops towards the climax under the surface of the various goings on, and every drawing and movement delectable and exciting.

Thematically there's so much happening in the episode. In essence, you could say it's a would-be love story - if the protagonist would only do the right thing for once. It's like the cumulative detritus of needless imaginings of possible outcomes has gradually shunted aside the one thing that was obvious from the outset - the little Mochigumon doll - and its significance has grown gradually dimmer to the protagonist until in this episode it's no longer him who even found the doll. That leads to the emotional breakthrough.

It's a shame that people who did not have the patience to put up with the first eight episodes leading to this will be able to appreciate what Yokoyama achieved with this episode, because he does finally bring some emotional catharsis to what felt in many ways like an intellectual exercise up until now. In a way, with this episode I start to feel like it was all worth it. Never have I seen such a complexly recursive and densely packed so-called narrative in anime.

That emotional resonance is one of the hallmarks of Masaaki Yuasa's work. It's not just about the wildly imaginative technical wizardry of a master animator. It's the way he combines that with stories that aren't mere fictions and character tropes removed from any reality we can relate to, but that involve basic truths and emotions and behavior that apply to everybody in the world - even those who don't watch anime. It's about groping your way through life and figuring out how to face both the beauty and the ugliness in life. That's what I liked about Mind Game, and there's a lot of that deep, simple mulling over the stuff of our lives in his other work. Finally, I'm starting to get that feeling from Tatami Galaxy.

On the animator side of things, lots of regulars this time around, with the additional presence of one new face, Kanako Maru, whom I remember did a very nice solo episode of Casshern Sins, which I wrote about briefly before, though I haven't really followed her since then. Nice to see her turn up here.

Storyboard / Director: Akitoshi Yokoyama
Animation director: Ryotaro Makihara
Assistant animation directors: Tsutsumi Mai, Shouko Nishigaki

Animators:
Ryotaro Makihara, Tsutsumi Mai
Natsuko Shimizu, Satomi Higuchi
Shouko Nishigaki, Hiroshi Shimizu
Kanako Maru, Kenichi Shima
Tetsuo Moronuki, Takeo Oda
Kana Harufuji, Akitoshi Yokoyama

Seconds:
Takayuki Hamada, Sawako Miyamoto
Sayaka Toda, Kenichi Fujisawa
Wombat