Nishikata Film Review: manga

Showing posts with label manga. Show all posts

09 February 2015

Osamu Tezuka: The Secret of Creation (NHK特集手塚治虫・創作の秘密, 1986)

To celebrate the 80^th anniversary of the birth of Osamu Tezuka in 2008, the NHK released two documentaries on DVD: Osamu Tezuka: The Secret of Creation (NHK特集手塚治虫・創作の秘密 / NHK Tokushu Tezuka Osamu: Sosaku no Himitsu, 1986) and Dream Sparkles in the Sky – Osamu Tezuka’s Summer Vacation (天空に夢輝き手塚治虫の夏休み, 1995). A year later, the publisher Ilex Press added Osamu Tezuka: The Secret of Creation as a bonus DVD to the publication of anime expert Helen McCarthy’s comprehensive account of Osamu Tezuka’s life and career: The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga.

Shot in 1985 and narrated by the familiar voice of NHK broadcaster Isamu Akashi, this documentary was the first to give people a behind-the-scenes look at how Tezuka worked. After a brief glimpse of the public face of Tezuka, being honoured by Mari Shimizu (the voice of Astro Boy), in celebration of his 40 years as a manga-ka, Tezuka leads the documentary team into his secret workspace: a non-descript mansion (in Japanese this is a type of apartment) somewhere in the concrete sprawl of Tokyo. Neither his manager, nor his magazine editors are allowed into his creative space further than the genkan (entranceway where you remove your shoes). The only person allowed any access at all is his wife. He spends a minimum of five days a week in this space with only one or two days spent at home.

The mansion apartment is sparsely furnished with threadbare curtains. The space around his desk is so narrow that the camera team has to install an angled mirror on the wall in order to get more than one camera angle of the great man at work. So as to disturb Tezuka as little as possible, the camera is controlled via a robots while the crew sits in the neighbouring room. Tezuka blasts classical music on a record player while he works, or has a small red television playing in the background. The cameras record him for a 24-hour period and we see that instead of going to bed, Tezuka falls asleep at his desk.

His wife, Etsuko Tezuka, allows the camera crew into the family home, where they estimate he only spends about 60 days a year, and on the third floor they discover a museum of character toys and other keepsakes from his life. The most fascinating is a childhood manga into which Tezuka’s mother drew a flip book on the corners of pages. In studying Japanese animators, I have seen many childhood school books with hand drawn corner flip books, but usually by the animators. It is certainly unique for it to have been done by Tezuka’s mother. Tezuka calls the flip book “anime’s point of origin”.

Tezuka is shown to be both a workaholic, putting off boarding a plan to France to the last minute so that he can finish drawings, and someone who misses deadlines. His editors apparently gave him the nickname was apparently “Tezuka Osomuchi” (Tezuka slowpoke) and “Disappearing Saizou”. The documentary presents this as the pressures of competition and the industry, but I had to wonder how much of this Tezuka brought on himself. Many animators who followed Tezuka, most famously Hayao Miyazaki, blamed him for setting the bar low when it came to production standards (read more).

The highlight of Osamu Tezuka: The Secret of Creation, for me is his trip to the first Hiroshima International Animation Festival. There is wonderful footage of Tezuka interacting with the legendary French animation pioneer Paul Grimault, who was the International Honorary President. Tezuka would go on to win the top prize at the festival (learn more). Last year, at the 30^th anniversary of the festival, his son Macoto Tezka honoured his memory by presenting his completion of Part 2 of Tezuka’s unfinished work Legend of the Forest (learn more).

NHK Tokushu Osamu Tezuka Sosaku no Himitsu

Order Documentary from Japan

As a fan of Tezuka, this documentary can at times be heartbreaking to watch knowing that the death of this endlessly creative man looms but four years into the future. During a moment of critical self-reflection about how he has changed as an artist over the years, Tezuka talks about the fact that he has so many creative ideas he has yet to put to paper than he could sell them at bargain prices. Such a tragedy that he did not have another 40 years to do just that.

Shortly before the end of the film, Tezuka is shown at work on one of his unfinished projects: an adaptation of the bible for broadcast on Italian television (RAI). He’s having trouble keeping the project on schedule and stares at the clock on the wall. The camera crew asks him if he is scared of the clock, and he says, “Not exactly scared, I just want more time.” Unfortunately, he ran out of time, but Osamu Dezaki eventually finished the series for Tezuka Productions. It aired first on TV in Italy in 1992 under the title In principio: Storie dalla Bibbia, and then five years later on Japanese TV under the title In the Beginning: The Bible Stories (手塚治虫の��聖書物語 / Tezuka Osamu no Kyūyaku Seisho Monogatari, 1997).

45 minutes

Documentary Crew <スタッフ>:

構成:小原誠

撮影:高野英二

照明:宮川正夫

技術:酒井弘文/堀口弘幸

編集:松本哲夫

効果:萩野勝男

制作:福島祥行/小河原正己

2015 Cathy Munroe Hotes

03 December 2014

Dot (点, 1971)

In his long and varied career in animation, Shin’ichi Suzuki has worked behind the scenes on many anime classics. He was a key animator on Osamu Tezuka’s unfinished masterpiece Legend of the Forest (森の伝説, 1987), Taku Sugiyama’s classic science fiction anime Phoenix 2772 (火の鳥2772 愛のコスモゾーン, 1980), and Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s ground-breaking Akira (1988). In addition to key animation and inbetweening, he has worked as a character designer and animation director.

Anime projects involve a lot of artists and it is not always easy for us as spectators to recognize the contributions of individuals to the process. Fortunately in the case of Suzuki, he made some independent works in the 1960s and 70s that give us some insight into his talent as an animator and a comic artist. His short film Dot (点, 1971) played at the 8th and last of the Animation Festivals held at Sōgetsu Hall alongside films by fellow innovators such as Goro Sugimoto and Keiichi Tanaami.

Dot (点/Ten, 1971), also known as Dots or Spots, opens and closes with self-reflexivity – a look behind-the-scenes at the methods behind the magic of animation. The overhead camera used to shoot the frame-by-frame hand drawn animation has been placed higher than usual in order to capture not only the page but the animation desk, the animator and all of his assistants. By increasing the playback speed, the action has been sped up to show the animation team at work. Upon closer inspection of the sheets of paper being put on the animation table to be filmed, one can make out the names of Suzuki and his crew in Japanese. Some of the names where difficult to make out because the print was too small, but the ones that I am sure of are: 鈴木伸一 (Suzuki), 坂東昭雄 (Akio Bandō, the cameraman), 矢沢祐二 (Yūji Yazawa), 佐藤茂夫 (Shigeo Satō), 西出栄子 (Eiko Nishide, editor), 藤田紘一 (Kōichi Fujita), 明田川進 (Susumu Aketagawa, sound), plus four others. The soundtrack squeals over the opening credits like an old recording playing back at an increased speed.

A larger white piece of paper is placed on the animation table and the camera zooms in to reveal a small black dot. This is followed by a montage of dots of varying sizes and colours, then a series of vignettes showing dots in various contexts. A boy in kimono has dots for eyes, one of which repeatedly tries to escape his face but the box keeps placing it back. A montage of the Chinese character for dot (点) in different sizes and colours. A man spills a container of dots and then tries to vacuum them up, but one of the dots resists. A dog barks at a dot, which transforms into a set of jaws that attacks the dog. A man tries to pummel a dot but is sucked into the earth. A man walking gets a dot stuck in his geta (Japanese clogs) and turns himself into a pretzel trying to free his geta. A team of men play with the dot as if it’s a ball. A man lights the dot as if it is a bomb, but he himself explodes. A bird tries to carry off the dot, but it turns into a pole. A man eats a dot and it goes through his body as if the stomach is a pachinko machine. The dot turns into the planet earth, and a rocket blasts out of it to an explosion of American flags. The dot turns into a noose onto which a man is hung to the sound of a toilet flushing.

The soundtrack is a mixture of funky music, pinging noises, sound effects to complement onscreen actions, and found recordings (such as the sound of a rocket launch). The film demonstrates Suzuki’s skill as an animator, his love of visual gags, and his sense of poetic irony. It’s a small gem of a film with bonus footage during the opening and closing credits that act as a documentary of how low budget animated films were made in the early 1970s.

Shin’ichi Suzuki (鈴木 伸一, b. 1933) http://sam.or.jp/

Born in Nagasaki, Suzuki began his career as a manga-ka when he was a high school student, submitting his works to magazines such as Manga Shōnen. In 1956, he joined Otogi Pro under the mentorship of anime pioneer Ryuichi Yokoyama where he worked on the series Instant History (later renamed Otogi Manga Calendar, 1961-64). Together with his fellow manga-ka Fujio Fujiko, Shōtarō Ishinomori, Jirō Tsunoda, Fujio Akatsuka, and others, he established the short-lived Studio Zero (スタジオ・ゼロ1963-1971). He has been involved in the production of a variety of animation from indie to mainstream. Suzuki is one of the founding members of the Suginami Animation Museum and since 2005 has been its director.

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976)

The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976) is an independent animated short by Shin’ichi Suzuki. Suzuki belongs to the first generation of post-war indie animators who pushed new boundaries in animation in the 1960s and 1970s. His short film Dot (点, 1971) played at the 8^th and last of the Animation Festivals held at Sōgetsu Hall alongside films by fellow innovators such as Goro Sugimoto and Keiichi Tanaami.

A “gourd bottle”, or hyōtan in Japanese, is a bottle made from the calabash fruit (lagenaria siceraria). It is also variously called “bottle gourd”, “opo squash” or “long melon”. It is an edible fruit when harvested young, but if left to mature it can be dried and made into a bottle. In some Asian countries it is also used for making utensils or pipes.

For The Gourd Bottle, Suzuki uses his pared-down caricature style that fans of his manga will be familiar with. It is a comic tale with a simple, but absurd conceit: a drunk salaryman with a bow-tie is at a bar. He notices that his glass is empty, but rather than ordering another one, he pulls out a gourd bottle from under the table. The man sitting next to him gets sucked into the bottle, like a reverse of the genie coming out of the lamp in Aladdin, and the drunk shakes the bottle and drinks its liquid. The barkeep spots the drunk with his own liquor bottle and orders him to leave. The barkeep also gets sucked into the bottle. The process repeats itself with others the drunk encounters along his way: a sexy lady, a cop, a dog peeing against the side of the bottle, until he accidentally leaves the bottle on the ground and finds the tables turned on him.

On the whole, it is a relatively simply executed animation, with its minimalist style allowing the audience to focus on the humour. There are two brief, but brilliant animation sequences: 1) the man pointing the cop’s gun at the “camera” and shooting the gun straight at the spectator and 2) the final sequence in which a car runs over the gourd. The best gag in the film is when the guy sucks the dog up into the gourd bottle, and when he drinks its liquid wets his own pants. It’s a comic classic its era in the vein of Marv Newland’s Bambi Meets Godzilla, (1969), Makoto Wada’s Murder (1964), and the films of Yoji Kuri and Taku Furukawa. Tongue-in-cheek sense of humour meets unadorned, expert animation.

Crew:

Kōichi Fujita / 藤田紘一

Katsumi Ōnishi / 大西克実

Masatoshi Mizumachi / 水町正俊 (Sound)

Akio Bando / 坂東昭雄 (Camera)

Eiko Nishide / 西出栄子 (Editor)

Shin’ichi Suzuki (鈴木 伸一, b. 1933) http://sam.or.jp/

Born in Nagasaki, Suzuki began his career as a manga-ka when he was a high school student, submitting his works to magazines such as Manga Shōnen. In 1956, he joined Otogi Pro under the mentorship of anime pioneer Ryuichi Yokoyama where he worked on the series Instant History (later renamed Otogi Manga Calendar, 1961-64). Together with his fellow manga-ka Fujio Fujiko, Shōtarō Ishinomori, Jirō Tsunoda, Fujio Akatsuka, and others, he established the short-lived Studio Zero (1963-1971). He has been involved in the production of a variety of animation from indie to mainstream. Some of the big name projects he worked on include Phoenix 2772 (Taku Sugiyama, 1980), Akira (Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988), and Legend of the Forest (Osamu Tezuka, 1987). Suzuki is one of the founding members of the Suginami Animation Museum and since 2005 has been its director.

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

01 December 2014

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 2: The Invention of the Animation Auteur

« L'animation japonaise d'auteur » presented by Ilan Nguyen

Continued from Part 1: The Beginnings of Auteurism

Screening One / Programme 1ère partie 22 Nov. 2014, La Nef, Wissembourg

The Invention of the Animation Auteur

L'invention de "l'animation d'auteur"

Clap Vocalism / Human Zoo /人間動物園 (Yōji Kuri, 1962)

Love / 愛 (Yōji Kuri, 1963)

Mermaid / 人魚 (Osamu Tezuka, 1964)

The Flower /花 (Yōji Kuri, 1967)

The idea of a Japanese animation auteur was arguably invented by experimental artist Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, 1928) in the 1960s. A member of the Animation Group of Three (アニメーション三人の会), who inaugurated a series of animation festivals at the Sōgetsu Art Center in Tokyo, Kuri was also the first indie animator to actively promote his work at international festivals. Kuri was a part of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and his avant-garde, racy animated shorts shocked and delighted festival audiences in equal measures. Nguyen screened Kuri’s 1962 film Clap Vocalism, which won the Special Jury Prize at the third Annecy (1963) and the bronze medal for animation at the 24^th Biennale in Venice (1963). Click here to read my full review of the film. The programme also included the Kuri classics Love (read review) and Flower (review forthcoming). Nguyen described Kuri’s style as anti-commercial and minimalist, with musique concrète. His style and themes need to be understood in the context of the 1960s era of counter-culture that were formative for him.

Whereas Kuri sought to shock and surprise with his art, his fellow animation auteur Osamu Tezuka (塚治虫, 1928-89) sought to impress. When the Animation Group of Three expanded into the 1^st Animation Festival, Tezuka was one of a handful of animators to present their cutting edge works. Nguyen showed Mermaid, one of two films that Tezuka presented at that festival. Inspired by Claude Debussy’s symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (arranged by Isao Tomita), Mermaid is an Orwellian tale of a young man’s unwavering desire for freedom in the overwhelming face of modernism. The character design in minimalist, with Shigeru Yamamoto doing the original art and Kiyomi Numamoto assisting with the animation.

Independent production of the 1970s

La production indépendante dans les années 1970

Made In Japan (Renzō Kinoshita, 1972)

Stone (Nobuhiro Aihara, 1975)

Karma / カルマ (Nobuhiro Aihara, 1977)

Coffee Break / コーヒー・ブレイク(Taku Furukawa, 1977)

Pica-Don / ピカドン (Renzō Kinoshita, 1978)

Bubble / バブル (Shin’ichi Suzuki, 1980)

Another artist acutely aware of the changing face of Japan was Renzō Kinoshita (木下蓮三, b. 1936-97) who founded the Hiroshima InternationalAnimation Festival in 1985 together with his wife and artistic collaborator Sayoko Kinoshita (木下小夜子, b. 1945) (learn more about him). Kinoshita’s films are concerned with social issues and Nguyen chose to open and close this section of his talk with key works by this innovative cutout animator. Made in Japan (1972) is Kinoshita’s critique of the rapid modernisation of Japanese culture. With tongue firmly in cheek, this film mocks the commercialism of 1970s Japan and explores controversial themes such as the Americanisation of Japanese culture, the destruction of traditional values in the pursuit of money.

Made in Japan was followed by two films by Nobuhiro Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011), an experimental animator who hit his stride in the 1970s. Although Aihara loved to travel overseas and meet fellow artists abroad, his works are rarely shown outside of Japan. The only works that are readily available are the collaborations he did with pop artist and colleague at Kyoto University of the Arts Keiichi Tanaami, which appear on DVDs released in Japan and France. Stone (1975) is an experimental animation shot using pixilation and other avant-garde techniques during a six-month stay in Sweden. Key images include Rorschach paintings on paper shot on natural stones and a time-lapse sequence of a brick house being painted shot with a fisheye lens. Karma (1977) has a more psychedelic feel to it, thanks in part to the soundtrack – “Aegean Sea” by Greek psychedelic / progressive rock band Aphrodite’s Child. The swirling, mandala-like imagery is a characteristic motif of Aihara’s work, appearing in many of his animations, paintings, and illustrations (see: Hiroshima 2010 poster). Learn more about Aihara in the obituary that I wrote in 2011.

Taku Furukawa (古川タク, b. 1941) is one of the best known independent animators in Japan. He began his career being mentored by Kuri, but then went on to found his own studios. His pared-down caricature style was heavily influenced by the style of the New Yorker cartoonist and illustrator Saul Steinberg. Furukawa won the Special Jury Prize at Annecy in 1975 for his innovative film Phenakistoscope and the Bungeishunjū Manga Award for his publication The Takun Humour in 1978. A few years ago he succeeded Kihachirō Kawamoto as the president of JAA (the Japanese Animation Association). Nguyen presented one of Furukawa’s classic work Coffee Break. Read my review of it here.

Shin’ichi Suzuki, who featured in the first part of Nguyen’s presentation for his work at Otogi Pro, went on to found his own production company Studio Zero in 1963. Nguyen was unable to get his animated short Bubble as originally planned, so he showed The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976) instead. It’s a very funny, caricature style short about a drunk with a magic gourd bottle (aka calabash – a squash-like fruit that can be dried and used as a bottle). Suzuki has been the director of the Suginami Animation Museum since 2005.

Nguyen chose to close the 1st of his 2 programmes with Kinoshita’s 1978 film Pica-don. I thought that this was a good idea because the experience of watching Pica-don, an animated depiction of the bombing of Hiroshima based upon witness testimonies and drawings, is very intense. One really needs some quiet time afterwards to process the horror that the film evokes. Read more in my full review of the film and accompanying picture book.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

JapaneseAuteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 3: Tadanari Okamoto

06 June 2014

Band of Ninja (忍者武芸帳, 1967)

Thanks to the Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy (JVTA), we were treated to a rare screening of the full length version of Nagisa Ōshima’s “motion comic” Band of Ninja (忍者武芸帳/ Ninja Bugei-chō, 1967) at Nippon Connection 2014 with new subtitles by JVTA. A shorter version on 35mm with an English narrator has played occasionally at Ōshima retrospectives, but as the film is only available on DVD in Japan (without subs) it was wonderful to see an HD transfer of the film with JVTA subs. The subtitles had a black outline to make them stand out against the white background.

Order the DVD: Ninja bugei cho (JP only)

Ōshima (大島渚, 1932-2013) is best known for his innovative, and often controversial, feature films that turn an unflinching eye onto social issues often ignored by mainstream cinema. From bigotry and xenophobia (The Catch, 1961) to state execution (Death By Hanging, 1968, read my review), and from exotic asphyxiation (In the Realm of the Senses, 1976) to torture and war crimes (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, 1983), no topic was out-of-bounds for this filmmaker whom Maureen Turim called a “Japanese Iconoclast” (The Films of Oshima Nagisa, 1998).

Band of Ninja stands out from Ōshima’s other work because it is neither live action, nor a documentary, but a filmed manga. Adapted from the popular epic manga series Band of Ninja aka Tales of Ninja (忍者武芸帳/ Ninja Bugei-chō, 1959-62) by Sanpei Shirato (白土三平, b. 1932), author of the legendary Garo series Kamui Den (カムイ伝, 1964-71), Ōshima’s film is often wrongly called an animated film. There are actually no animated sequences in Ōshima’s film. Instead he has brought the manga to life by actually filming the original illustrations.

Although this sounds potentially very dull, Ōshima and cinematographer Akira Takada (Violence at Noon, Sing a Song of Sex), know just how to sustain visual interest. They use varying camera distances including many close-ups for character reaction shots. A sense of movement is created by the camera itself moving across the page and frequent cutting. The story is quite a fast-paced one, packed with changing locales and a wide swathe of characters, so there is hardly a chance to catch one’s breath. A lot of the cinematic techniques used by Ōshima are commonplace in limited animation – particularly the way in which backgrounds are filmed. The only difference is that the characters themselves are not moving at all either.

The soundtrack makes up for the lack of animation with its use of professional actors and a narrator (Shōichi Ozawa), a lively soundtrack by Hikaru Hayashi (Onibaba, The Naked Island, Kuroneko, Postcard), and excellent special effects. The film does feel a bit on the long side at 118 minutes, but when one considers that the original manga runs to 17 volumes, it’s clear that they streamlined the story quite a bit. Long-time Ōshima collaborator Sasaki Momoru (佐々木守, 1936-2006) helped write the screenplay and would later to go on to work on a number of popular series such as Ultraman Taro (1973) and the Isao Takahata directed Heidi of the Alps (1974).

The story begins in 1560 (Eiroku 3) during a prolonged time of great upheaval in Japan known as the Sengoku Period (c.1467 - c.1573) or the “Warring States” period. The central characters are Kagemaru (Rokko Toura), a dashing but mysterious ninja who seems to have the ability to magically appear and save the day when a situation seems impossible; Jūtaro Yūki (Kei Yamamoto), who seeks to avenge the slaughter of his father and restore himself as master of Fushikage Castle; Akemi (Akiko Koyama), Jūtaro’s love interest and secret sister of Kagemaru; and the baddie, Oda Nobunaga (Fumio Watanabe), the evil daimyō and nemesis of Kagemaru, who seeks to unify Japan through violence and oppression.

Trailer: Band of Ninja von scottpurin

The cast of characters is quite vast and it is hard to keep track of exactly where one is, which battle is taking place, and what year it is because the pace moves so quickly. It is hard to imagine the manga being made as a live action film in the late 1960s because of the extreme violence and complicated special effects. The ninja employ Kagemusha (影武者), “Shadow Warriors” or “body doubles” which could be achieved with today’s CGI but would have been difficult in 1967. It occurred to me during the screening that Band of Ninja could easily be adapted as a kind of Japanese version of Game of Thrones. It may seem hard to believe but I believe I saw more gruesome deaths and heads on spikes per minute in Band of Ninja than in a typical episode of Game of Thrones.

If you are a fan of manga and have a chance to see this film, I highly recommend it. The two highlights for me where the rollicking opening Kagemaru theme song and the way the camera lovingly shows off the original artwork by Sanpei Shirato. A must-have for any fan of ninja manga. To learn more about the manga, I recommend: Keith J. Rainville’s vintageninja.net and Ba Zi (aka Nicholas Theisen)’s What is Manga?

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

CREW

Director: Nagisa Oshima

Original Story: Sanpei Shirato

Screenplay: Mamoru Sasaki, Nagisa Oshima

Cinematography: Akira Takada

Editor: Keiichi Uraoka

Music: Hikaru Hayashi

Sung by: Sumito Tachikawa

Hideo Nishizaki

Producers: Masayuki Nakajima, Takuji Yamaguchi, Nagisa Oshima

Production Company: Sōzōsha

Distributer: Art Theatre Guild

VOICE CAST

Shōichi Ozawa (Narrator)

Kei Yamamoto (Jūtarō Yūki)

Akiko Koyama (Akemi)

Kei Satō (Shuzen Sakagami)

Noriko Matsumoto (Hotarubi)

Yoshiyuki Fukuda (Mufū-Dōjin)

Hideo Kanze (Nobutsuna Kamiizumi)

Nobuo Tanaka (Munetoshi Yagyu)

Juro Hayano (Boss of the Ikazuchi Band)

Shigeru Tsuyuguchi (Mitsuhide Akechi)

Fumio Watanabe (Nobunaga Oda and Kennyo)

Hikaru Hayashi (Tōkichirō Kinoshita)

Rokko Toura (Kagemaru)

Hōsei Komatsu (Onikichi [Zōroku])

Mitsuhiko Shibata (Ramaru Mori)

Keisuke Nakai (Takezō)

Ikuko Yamazaki (Chiyo)

Hideaki Ezuki (Head of the Village)

Kōichi Itō (Kyōnyo)

Yūko Hisamatsu (Kokemaru)

Minoru Matsushima (Girl)

Aiko Konoshima (female beggar)

Ikuyo Morita (another female beggar)

Tsuneo Sanada (Saizō)

Tadayoshi Ueda (One-eyed man)

Hatsuo Yamatani (farmer)

Sumiko Shirakawa (vagrant boy)

07 November 2013

Asura (アシュラ, 2012)

From the Roman legend of Romulus and Remus to Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, tales of feral children – or what the Japanese call yaseiji (野生児) – have long captured the imagination of storytellers. These folktales, legends, and myths fascinate because they deal with the age-old question of what distinguishes human beings from other animals. Can an abandoned child who has had to survive on its own in the wild learn human traits such as empathy, social skills, language, and most importantly, love?

Order DVD: Asura

Of all the tales of feral children that I have read or seen on film, Keiichi Sato’s animated feature Asura (アシュラ/Ashura, 2012) is undoubtedly the most brutal. It is adapted from George Akiyama’s infamous manga of the same name, which was banned in many parts of Japan when it was first published in the Weekly Shōnen Magazine (1970-1) for its depiction of grotesque acts of human violence including cannibalism. However, Akiyama’s tale is no more depraved than the ancient Buddhist tales that inspired him. According to legend, the Asuras were lower gods who were unduly influenced by human passions such as wrath, pride, envy, falseness, boasting, and bellicosity (a predisposition to violence). The Asura represent the human soul at its most depraved and egotistical, overwhelmed by an urge to fight and argue with others.

The feral child in Asura acquires his name from a Buddhist monk (Kinya Kitaoji), who recognizes his similarity to the legendary Asuras. The child Asura (Masako Nozawa) is born to a desperate world of drought and famine. Set in 15^th century Kyoto at a time when the country is on the verge of a bloody civil war, Asura is abandoned by his mother and learns to survive in a dog-like manner. He knows only suffering and uses violence as his only means of survival.

Most of the people that Asura encounters treat him with fear, disgust, or loathing but two kindly people try to help him and save him from his destructive tendencies. The first is the Buddhist monk who teaches him how to speak a few words and tries to appeal to his humanity through Buddhist thought. The second is a young woman called Wakasa (Megumi Hayashibara), who takes pity on Asura and secretly looks after him and makes a concerted effort to tame him.

This is not an animation for the faint-hearted. The violence is graphic and shocking. Asura’s path to taming the beast within himself is filled with obstacles that he may not be able to overcome. Although I am not usually a fan of films that depict extreme violence, it was impossible not to be impressed with the visual design of Asura. A fascinating mixture of hand-drawn and CGI animation, the adaptation remains true to the spirit of the original manga while at the same time transporting us into the world of Asura in an emotional way that only animation can achieve.

Asura tied for the Audience Award for Best Animated Feature at the 16^th Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal. I saw the film at Nippon Connection 2013.

#nippon13 #nc2013

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

The film is available on DVD and Bluray in Japan (JP only). The soundtrack is also available for order.

Order: Asura [Blu-ray]

10 August 2012

Osaka Hamlet (大阪ハムレット, 2008)

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- Polonius, Hamlet I,iii, 78-9

Polonius` words of farewell to his son Laertes in the first act of Hamlet sum up the moral message of director Fujirō Mitsuishi’s live action adaptation of Hiromi Morishita’s award-winning manga Osaka Hamlet. The film intricately intertwines the coming of age stories of three brothers – Masashi, Yukio, and Hiroki Kubo beginning with the death of their deadbeat Dad. Embarrassingly, their mother (Keiko Matsuzaka) does not appear to be in mourning at all and even more worryingly, their long lost Uncle Takanori (Ittoku Kishibe) moves into the house and tries to make himself useful.

There could not be three more unalike brothers than the Kubo boys. The eldest, Masashi (Masahiro HIsano), is a quiet, bookish type who is inspired to boldly come out of his shell when falls head over heels for a beautiful, wayward older woman he meets by chance. In order to get to know Yu-chan (Natsuki Kato) better, he poses as a college student and even humours her cringe-worthy father fixation.

The middle brother, Yuki (Naoyuki Morita) is a thug who bullies others and seems to enjoy getting into violent scraps with other thugs. When he hears that the geek of the school has called him “Hamlet” he is at first offended because another kid at the school has a hamster named "Hamlet". Upon threatening the young man over the perceived insult, he learns about the play by Shakespeare and is actually interested enough to take his first book out from the library. At first, he cannot comprehend the language in the play, and has another outburst when he discovers Hamlet’s unusual relationship with his mother. The most interesting part of Yuki’s character development is how he comes to terms with Shakespeare’s text. Another Shakespearean element to Yuki is his capacity for extreme violence which recalls some of Shakespeare’s bloodier plays (ie. Mercutio vs. Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet).

The youngest brother, Hiroki (Tomoya Otsuka), is coming to terms with the fact that he would rather be a girl. His family is remarkably understanding – even the thug Yuki whom one could imagine harassing people for being different. “Koki” sports an androgynous haircut and wears a pink T-shirt. The one person he identifies with most is his Aunt Aki (Manami Honjo) who is in the hospital with cancer. Aki is also a bit different and enjoys role play and dressing up in costumes. Some of the more touching moments in the film come when Koki visits his aunt in the hospital.

Even Koki’s classmates are supportive of him being true to himself. When they decide to put on a class production of Cinderella, they collectively decide that Koki would be the best to play the lead role and cast a girl in the role of the prince. The climax of the film comes when the play is put on and poor Koki has to endure taunting from three bullies in the audience as well as bad behaviour from other parents. This was the most uncomfortable scene in the film as the acting was over-the-top and extremely unlikely. First of all, it is not unusual in Japanese culture for men to play female roles, and secondly, the dialogue was really unlikely. It turned an otherwise decent film into a TV sitcom for a few scenes.

The storylines of each of the family members have one thing in common: role play. Masahi is pretending to be older than he is and role playing the father Yu-chan never had, Yukio has carefully constructed a tough guy façade for himself, and young Hiro-kun is getting to live out his fantasy by playing Cinderella in his school play. Even their uncle is playing at being a house husband, even though he himself is not sure he is able to fulfil that role in their family.

The theme of role play and even the plot have much more in common with A Midsummer Night’s Dream than Hamlet. Like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Osaka Hamlet has three interlocking plots and is a kind of comedy of errors. It’s a decent little drama with much of the credit for originality of plot going to the excellent mangaka Hiromi Morishita.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

I saw a special screening of this film hosted by Nippon Connection in Frankfurt. It is also available on DVD:

Osaka Hamlet Deluxe Edition

02 June 2012

Akino Kondoh’s Kiya Kiya (きやきや, 2010-2011)

At Nippon Connection 2012, we had the rare opportunity to see the latest animated short by the artist Akino Kondoh. It took Kondoh more than a year to complete Kiya Kiya (2010-2011), which is remarkable considering that each frame of an Akino Kondoh animation is as highly detailed as her paintings and illustrations. Kiya Kiya film is about six-and-a-half minutes long with Kondoh creating 15 frames per second.

Eiko, the bob-haired girl with the beguiling smile, sits in a cabinet with a kamishibai (紙芝居) on her lap. Kamishibai, which translates as “paper drama,” is a traditional form of storytelling that dates back to 12^th century. It underwent a revival in Japan in the early part of the 20^th century when kamishibai storytellers (gaito kamishibaiya) would bicycle from village to village with their portable wooden display boxes. Today in Japan, kamishibai sets are often used in schools in lieu of storybooks as they are easier for storytelling to an audience. The pictures are on the front of the large cards and the text is on the back for the storyteller to read.

In Kiya Kiya, Eiko is the storyteller. As she changes the pictures in her kamishibai, her lips move and instead of hearing her words, cursive script begins to appear in columns as if written by a calligrapher’s hand in the traditional direction of top to bottom, right to left. At first it appears to be hiragana (the cursive Japanese syllabary which Japanese children today learn first), but is actually illegible. In an interview, Kondoh explains that she made the script by combining parts of hiragana with four letters from the Latin alphabet.

The illegibility of the text works on two levels in the film. The first is that it gives the impression of text without allowing words to distract from the animation itself – which is what Kondoh herself has stated as her intention in the aforementioned interview. The ambiguity of the text is heightened when it metamorphoses into shapes, and then into playful little tailed creatures in blue and red.

The indecipherable text also adds to the elusive character of Eiko herself. Eiko is a kind of trickster character. In one moment she charms with her smile, while in the next moment she shocks with a cruel or disturbing act. The stark blacks and whites of Kondoh’s colour palette also highlight the dual nature of Eiko. In Kiya Kiya, two more colours are added: red and blue. In the third section of the film Eiko splits into two and a red Eiko and a blue Eiko chase each other and embrace each other like two kittens at play. This sequence recalls Kondoh’s earlier animated film Ladybirds’ Requiem (てんとう虫のおとむらい, 2005-2006) which features a sequence in which a red ladybird (or “ladybug” in North American English) with black spots and a black ladybird with red spots embrace and spin around together.

Kiya Kiya is divided into three sections which are indicated by the insertion of title cards. There is also a short introductory sequence and an upside-down title card before the end credits begin. When I first heard the title of this film, I thought that “kiya kiya” might be an obscure onomatopoeia (sound word) for the sound made by one of the wonderful insects Akino Kondoh likes to use in her works. It turns out that the title comes from an archaic expression that Kondoh found in Shojo korekushon josetsu (1985), a collection of short stories about girls by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa – a writer, critic, and translator of French literature (including Jean Cocteau and de Sade) who was close friends with Yukio Mishima. In the glossary of the Shojo korekushon josetsu, Kondoh came across the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” (胸がきやきやする/a “kiya kiya” in one’s chest) which was translated as “a keen feeling experienced after an episode of déjà vu hat is unsettling and disturbing yet also familiar” (source).

The Japanese language is rich with onomatopoeia which not only mimic sounds (giseigo) but also can describe actions or feelings (gitaigo). For example, the giseigo “doki doki” is the onomatopoeia for the sound of a beating heart, but when it is turned into a verb “doki doki suru” it is used to describe the feelings one has when one’s heart is racing – such as nervousness or excitement. “Kiya kiya” may have also at some point have had a sound associated with it, but Kondoh seems to have been drawn to the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” because it expresses the feeling of unease mixed with nostalgia that she expresses in her work.

This feeling of unease is amplified in Kiya Kiya by the soundtrack which was composed by the American avant-garde artist John Zorn – for whom Kondoh designed the album cover of The Goddess: Music for the Ancient Days (2010). The soundtrack is predominantly high female voices and percussive instruments. Like the images, the music repeats motifs - sometimes so much so that it sounds like a skipping record. Repetitive images build throughout the film: Eiko lying as if dead in the overturned cabinet, Eiko being strangled by the branches of a tree, Eiko catching the tailed creatures in her hands like she did the ladybirds in Ladybirds’ Requiem. The images build and build until finally Eiko stretches out naked on her back on a branch over a precipice and she smiles up at us inviting us to both admire and fear her beauty.

Akino Kondoh art comes out of the traditions of alternative manga (Garo, Ax). In particular, she cites the controversial artist Toshio Saeki as an influence (source). However, unlike the more exploitative and voyeuristic view of women in Saeki’s work, Kondoh’s work is an exploration of the self. Eiko is the artist’s alter ego, developed out of Kondoh’s own, often disturbing, childhood memories. Eiko’s trickster nature means she is hard to pin down, sometimes appearing as a girl while at other times a young woman, sometimes she seems to be the victim, while at other times she is the perpetrator. Innocent and knowing, kind and cruel, drawing us in and pushing us away – Eiko both seduces and unnerves with her unusual charms.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Credits

Animation by Akino Kondoh

Music by John Zorn

Special Thanks to

Emi Nishiwaki

Marc Urselli

Masahiro Katayama

Tomoe Tsusumi

Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan

Mizuma Art Gallery

Pola Art Foundation

To learn more about Akino Kondoh and Kiya Kiya, check out:

Akino Kondoh’s official website

Her profile at Mizuma Art Gallery

My chat with Kondoh at Shinsedai 2010

A glimpse of the studio in Astoria (Queens, NYC) where Kondoh made Kiya Kiya

Kamijo, Keiko. “Manga x Culture Vol. 1 Akino Kondoh.” Cat’s Forehead. Trans. Luke Baker, 2011.

Huynh, Matt. “Q+A with Akino Kondoh.” Yellow Trace. 19 April 2011.

This film screened at:

http://nipponconnection.com/

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