Kick-Heart at AX2013

Today I went to Anime Expo 2013 here in LA. I got to meet my favourite director, Masaaki Yuasa, and see the North American premiere of his new short Kick-Heart. Yuasa was kind enough to do drawings for everyone who asked, and I asked him to draw Hiroshi from Crayon Shin-Chan (which he worked on early in his career).

Kick-Heart did not disappoint. I won't spoil anything, since it hasn't been sent out to the backers yet, but it was amazing. The opening credits alone were spectacularly funny and vivid, and from there it just got better and better. There was some very interesting sound design later in the short, and the animation was brilliant throughout. The audience was laughing out loud almost constantly. It flew by incredibly fast, feeling much shorter than its 12 minutes.

The producers stated at the Kick-Heart panel that they didn't currently have plans to release it other than to the Kickstarter backers and on the festival circuit, so if you didn't contribute then, I hope you know somebody who did. You need to see it!

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Masaaki Yuasa is Crowd-Funding

Masaaki Yuasa's trying to crowd-fund his newest project through Kickstarter. He is a wise man.

The world needs more of Yuasa's brilliant work! Give him some money! I did, and I'm really excited about the prizes, as well as the project itself obviously. If he doesn't reach his goal, I will cry a thousand tears.





UPDATE:
HE MADE IT!!!!!!

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Finished Watching Kemonozume

 It only took me four days to finish the series. Probably the closest I've come to actually marathoning any show. I planned to spread it out over a longer period of time and savour each episode a bit more, but I just couldn't help myself-- Almost every episode ends on such a riveting cliff-hanger. I'd read that some viewers weren't satisfied with the way things progressed in the final episodes, but I didn't mind the ending. The villain does get pretty over-the-top, but he was extremely entertaining while doing it so it didn't bother me. Breaking the fourth wall has been overused in comedy for a long time now, but using it just a little bit in a mostly serious work can still be effective, as he proved.

The middle of the series brought a couple of slight dips in the art and animation, but that was more than made up for in the final episodes, particularly the last two. I'm so glad I finally got around to watching this series. It somehow manages to balance drama, horror, comedy, romance, action and suspense. It's one of my favourite shows ever, animated or otherwise.

I really liked how each episode had a different mood and feeling. So many different artists with unique, but generally complementary, styles worked on the episodes, and the series really embraced that, in a way rarely seen in animation (Ren and Stimpy springs to mind as another example, in a drastically different style obviously).

I have a lot of favourite episodes. #1 and #2 felt the most purely Yuasa-driven to me. #6 was hilarious and gave us a proper introduction to my favourite character, Bon. #9 had a wonderfully light atmosphere and provided a nice breather from all the craziness in the surrounding episodes. #12 was entirely animated by Michio Mihara. I'd just seen his Okashina Hotel short, and was really excited at the chance to see so much more of his work in one place. It completely lived up to my expectations. #13 had just as much amazing animation, but in that case it was the work of several animators. It also had some classic Yuasa insane action.

I think overall I prefer this series to Kaiba. Somehow it felt both more substantial, and easier to comprehend. It's difficult-- and probably pointless-- to compare the series, since they were so different stylistically, but I did find Kaiba maintained its quality more evenly than Kemonozume. It didn't really have anything as mediocre as Episode 4 of Kemonozume, which was the one notable blemish on the series. But on the other hand I feel that Kemonozume reached greater heights and was more ambitious in its art style. And I definitely thought it had stronger characterization. One problem I had with Kaiba was that, for a show where the hero gets put into a different body in each episode, he didn't have much of a personality for the viewer to hold onto. He remained a cipher throughout the series, which made it less interesting to follow his body-switching. I do still love Kaiba though.

As I mentioned before, Bon was probably my favourite character. I was happy to see him reappear later in the series. Now I want to go through the series again at a slower pace, particularly so I can study some of the animation and direction more closely.

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Spreading the Gospel of Yuasa

Considering what a huge fan I am of Masaaki Yuasa, I don't know how it's taken me so long to see his 2006 series Kemonozume. I just watched the first episode and it did not disappoint. It actually exceeded my expectations. That's the crazy thing about Yuasa-- no matter what order you see his stuff in, you can never be prepared for how amazing it will be. I'm currently watching Shin-Chan and seeing some of his earliest animation work, and I love it too. Yuasa's work is consistent, but it's also incredibly varied and he seems to make a point of constantly defying his audience's expectations.

Anyway, I just had to share some images from this first episode.

 And there's plenty more where that came from. If the rest of the show is anywhere near as good as this, I will be a very happy boy by the time I get to the end.

Don't worry, I won't be posting about the whole thing obsessively the way I did with Lupin Part III. I only did that because I knew the show as a whole wouldn't be worth watching for most people, but I still wanted to share the good parts. The difference is, this series is actually good, and it's only 13 episodes!

So if you haven't gotten around to seeing Kemonozume yet, slap yourself across the face a few times and then go watch it. You won't regret it!

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Catsuka page on Masaaki Yuasa

Taking a break from the Fester Fish countdown to post something I found really cool, and infinitely inspiring.

I'm sure most animation fans are already aware of Catsuka, but until recently all I looked at on the site were the model sheet pages. Recently I stumbled across the "Focus On" pages, which are fantastic galleries and collections of videos related to specific animators. And there's one for Masaaki Yuasa! The site's mostly in french, but it's still pretty easy to navigate through. There are MADs of his animation, and a whole whack of concept art that I'd never seen before. There are even some awkward early drawings he did as a teenager. I found the page really inspiring and thought I should share it.

I also recommend the Hiroyuki Imaishi page and the Tatsuyuki Tanaka page. The Tanaka MAD is gold. I wish Tanaka would return to that looser, more high-energy style he used in stuff like Green Legend Ran and Download, before he entered that more subdued but equally impressive Toujin Kit/ Canabis Works era. Don't get me wrong, I love all of his work, but as any reader of this blog will know, I'm a big fan of wild, cartoony animation.

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Working Hard and Watching Kaiba

Hi everybody, I have no major news but just some updates on my life-- I taught a two-week summer workshop on Flash at Max the Mutt Animation School. I've also just finished my first big freelance job (still not sure if I'm allowed to talk about it... I'll wait until the company posts it online themselves). I've also started work on "Bakerman and the Bunnymen," an independent short written and directed by Scout Raskin, for which I'm doing the character designs, animation and backgrounds. On top of all this, I'm in the home stretch of production on my third Fester Fish short, "Fester Makes Friends" and I'm working on designs and concepts for another personal project. At some point I still need to finish off the audio for my third-year school short and post it online, although it's not terribly exciting.

The main thing I wanted to say in this post is that I've finally started watching Kaiba, the 12-episode anime series from 2008 created by Masaaki Yuasa (director of Mind Game, my favourite anime film). Oh my goodness, this series is amazing. It reminds me a bit of Galaxy Express 999, which I also love, only Kaiba is much cartoonier and less melodramatic (most of the time). It's not meant to be a comedy though, so at times the cartoony designs feel a bit misleading.

It's jam-packed with glorious full animation of beautifully simple but crazy designs, done by some of the best artists in the industry. The backgrounds are magnificently stylized and imaginative. The story is full of interesting ideas and it's the first time in years that I've seen something that feels so new and fresh. Even more so than Mind Game, because this takes place in a universe of pure fantasy. I think I still prefer Mind Game more though, just for its comedy and unbelievable energy, but this is definitely another winner from Yuasa (has he ever been involved in anything that wasn't utterly brilliant?)

The stellar direction and pacing make you feel like you're watching a long, particularly good indie short rather than an episode of an ongoing series. Not because it's inconsistent or meandering-- it's just constantly changing, and never really settles into a formula. Every episode I'm surprised at where they take the story.

 

The semi-abstract environments are reminiscent of Dr. Suess, or Yuasa's own earlier Nanchatte Vampiyan pilot which I posted about a while ago. I love the look of this show. It feels so complete and singular in its vision.

As I watched the first episode, I was blown away by the scope and imagination of the show's universe. I'm almost finished the series now, and the sense of wonder still hasn't really worn off. Go check out Kaiba, now. NOW YOU FOOL. SCHNELL, SCHNELL!!

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Some Anime I've Been Watching

I keep meaning to post about various anime shows I've watched over the past few months but I haven't had time until now. So here's a big Frankenstein monster of a post, stitched together from half-written ones from months ago.

I watched Mind Game director Masaaki Yuasa's pilot episode for the series Vampire Kids, or "Nanchatte Vampiyan." His pilot film is much darker than the series itself eventually turned out, both literally and in terms of mood. I love these backgrounds from it. They have a great sense of atmosphere. It would be fun to work on something in this style, with limited pastel colours and distorted perspective.








Yuasa injected some of his usual idiosyncratic style into the film, although it was so early in his career that not all of his recognizable directorial traits were fully in place yet, and most of his input was abandoned when it became a full series. Some of the more extreme character animation, camera movement and non-sequitur gags give his presence away though.

I've also been watching some of Mamoru Hosoda's work. I really like the way he dispenses with shading on the characters. Most modern anime emphasizes heavily shaded, detailed drawings with very little movement, but he does the opposite. It creates a striking, somewhat flat look, contrasted by his extreme (for animation, at least) use of depth in his compositions. And of course it allows the animators to focus more on the action.







Like just about everybody else, I was introduced to Hosoda's work in the 90s, watching Digimon. The single episode of the series that he directed, somewhere around episode 20 I think, had a completely different feel than the rest of the show-- much more low-key and contemplative. And of course, being set in the real world for once, it was much more based in reality.
Watching that episode when it came out (and even more so the two theatrical Digimon films he directed), I was fascinated by seeing these familiar fantasy characters engaged in relatable real-life situations rather than fighting some giant monster-of-the-week, which was starting to bore me even at that age. I particularly liked Hosoda's attention to mundane details, like kids running around their home in their socks rather than shoes. It sounds obvious, but most cartoons don't pay attention to that kind of stuff and I found this very refreshing as a kid.

More recently, I got to see Hosoda's films The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars. Both of them retained what I liked about his earlier work.

I think my favourite work of his is still those two theatrical Digimon films though, maybe just for nostalgic reasons. They were some of the first anime I saw with decent animation, after being used to cheap stuff like Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Dragon Ball (although that one did at least have fun designs early on, before it started to take itself seriously).

Obviously I also like Hayao Miyazaki (because who doesn't?), but I think he's a little over-rated. I could name lots of other anime directors I like just as much as him. I think the main reason for his fame is simply that he's done so many family-friendly films and created an instantly identifiable Studio Ghibli brand. Generally, anime directors only get to do a handful of original films if they're lucky, most of the time being stuck working on existing franchises. Miyazaki did spend a lot of his early career on Lupin III, but because he was there right at the beginning, he was able to put a lot of his own ideas into it. Even today, the Lupin III anime is heavily based on what Miyazaki did with it early on.

Mamoru Oshii is one of those directors who was stuck slaving away on a series for a long time, and it happens to be another one that I like -- Urusei Yatsura. Based on Rumiko Takahashi's first manga series, the anime version was helped immensely by Oshii's presence; he often gave the show a surreal dream-like feel, and brought a sense of depth to the repetitive throwaway plotlines and gags of Takahashi's original comic.



If the show's humor feels a little bit cliched, it's because this is the series that invited most of those anime cliches. It's hard to imagine a time when 'face faults' were unexpected and fresh, but that is literally how influential this series was. Just about every aspect of it was copied in some way. For instance, the female lead Lum's shtick of giving people electric shocks when she's mad was ripped off by the Pokemon anime.

The series never had a chance to become really popular in North America-- it was already pretty old by the time anime started to become popular here, so a lot of people ignored it. Furthermore, a lot of the verbal humour doesn't translate well, because it's full of Japanese wordplay. Probably because of this, there's never been a successful English dub of the series. It would be almost impossible to reproduce the energy of the original vocal performances anyway. Some of the screaming on this show is hilarious-- sometimes louder really is funnier.

...Anyway, Mamoru Oshii's contributions to the show were summed up perfectly by his final work on it, Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer. He provided the original story for the film, and was thus finally able to delve completely into what he found compelling in the series. The result was an unusually quiet, atmospheric film in which the characters find themselves caught repeating the same day... nine years before Groundhog Day!



As a longtime fan of the series, it was interesting to see the characters thrown into a more somber, lyrical story. Later on, Oshii became better-known as the director of Ghost in the Shell, which is a pretty amazing movie, but I prefer his lighter, earlier work.

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