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demifiendrsa · 1 year
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Berserk: The Golden Age Arc - Memorial Edition Christmas illustration
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mechawolfie · 3 months
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PRINCESS ARETE OFFICIAL ENG SUB BACK ON YOUTUBE JAN 5 - FEB 5 LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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4bsurdcreature · 1 year
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Oh hey dude
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fyblackwomenart · 9 months
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peterkothe · 7 months
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Inktober 2023 Day 13-MAGNETIC ROSE 🌹🧑‍🚀💀
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A crew of deep-space salvagers stumble upon a junk asteroid only to find inside it to be an abandoned, luxurious abode, once belonging to a beloved opera diva, who disappeared decades prior. However, as they search deeper into her sanctuary, they find themselves unraveling the chilling mystery of her disappearance, encounter many strange phenomena, and are haunted by the figurative and literal ghosts of her memories…and their own!!
Created by Katsuhiro Otomo, Koji Morimoto, Satoshi Kon and Studio 4C, for Otomo’s Memories anthology film , Magnetic Rose is a masterpiece of a short anime, and a classic gothic Poe-esq haunted house tale-IN SPACE!!
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canmom · 5 months
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Animation Night 178: Alberto Vázquez
Hiii everyone! Animation night is back. And I've a treat for you tonight...
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So. One of the best things about running Animation Night is that doing this (almost) every week gives me a motivation to go roving out looking for stuff I'd probably never watch otherwise. And sometimes the stuff you discover ends up being just insanely good.
This was the case way back on Animation Night 25, the very first Halloween Animation Night. On that night, we took a chance on a film by Spanish director Alberto Vasquez called Psiconautas, los niños olvidados - known in English as Birdboy: The Forgotten Children. I'll tell you a little about that movie in a minute, but it completely blew us all away: emotionally overwhelming, deft in its handling of the heavy shit, and gorgeously animated. (4C were involved).
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So. Psiconautas is set on an island inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. It is a land in a state of general decline - its industry collapsed, the land choked with gigantic rubbish dumps, and the people in spirals of futility. Birdboy is a kind of spirit of the land; his father, Birdman, was shot down by police on suspicion of drug trafficking and he now struggles to keep a monster contained inside him and protect the one tiny shred of nature and life. His friends, who steal the pills he needs to keep it in check, are dealing variously with intrusive violent thoughts, uncaring fundamentalist parents, and a parent's addiction manifesting physically in the form of a huge spider. They want out of this hellish island - and they have a plan: with a bit of money, they might be able to buy passage to the city.
But it isn't that easy. Their money goes only so far as a tiny inflatable raft. And in the vast rubbish dump they encounter the Forgotten Children, abandoned by this society and left feral. Birdboy is forced to let his rage manifest. I won't spoil how it ends but - it's not an easy one.
Born 1980, Vázquez got his start in book and magazine illustration, with a style of distorted proportions and watercolours, or murky black, textured shapes as in these illustrations of Lovecraft. He turned to comics in the mid 2000s - which is where Psiconautas was born, along with other works like El evangelio de Judas (Judas the Catholic Squirrel) (2007) and Alter Ego (2008). In comics his style is very heavy, with big blocks of dark hatching. Within a few years he got the animation bug, working together with Pedro Rivero.
At the time, my knowledge of Vázquez's style was limited to short films such as Decorado, which should give you a pretty strong sense of his style.
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At first it seems like a series of brief joke vignettes - but soon of course the threads start weaving together, characters from one skit come back in another, the threads of causality start to break down as the main character goes to pieces. It's clever and striking, but of course the deliberate artificiality which is the point means it is all wrapped in a layer of irony, which blunts the impact a bit.
The short films were made with a tiny team, with Vázquez hmself filling in just about every role from writing through layout to cleanup, with only a few other people on board. His later works became much larger projects, pulling in artists from as far afield as the great Studio 4°C in Japan, though I believe the bulk of the animation is still done in Spain.
The result is something great. Psiconautas has its share of black humour, but it's more willing to go for real drama, taking the vibe from 'unsettling' to full on 'fooooof'. I'm so excited to see it again.
But the main reason to return to Vázquez tonight is... he's gone and made another movie!
Just as with Birdboy, Unicorn Wars takes a short film and expands it. This is actually one of Vázquez's earliest animated works, Unicorn Blood (2013) - a work with a rougher cutout animation style, depicting teddy bears who hunt unicorns to try to fuel their cuteness. In the short we see a condescending teddy bear Moffy lecturing and fatshaming his brother Gregorio, as they hunt a unicorn, with abruptly segues into montages of violent religious imagery as a voice sermonises on the necessity of slaughtering the unicorns. They encounter a unicorn, but Gregorio can't shoot before the unicorn throws itself off a cliff - and as Moffy rounds on him, he gets motivation to, well, do a murder. It's a highly stylish work as with anything Vázquez touches, with gorgeous music textures and great use of watercolour.
Unicorn Wars returns to these themes about a decade later. Now the teddy bears are fully in a Vietnam-style war against the unicorns. A troop of teddy bairs are recruited to the war, and we are introduced to the conflicts between brothers Gordi and Azulín and top recruit Coco. Naturally the deployment goes south fast, and these three bears are the only ones left alive. Things get very violent and occult very quickly. There's more than a little cannibalism.
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I've been excited to watch this movie for like three years now. It dropped last year, and became available on BD this year, so I've finally been able to get my hands on a copy. Together with that, we'll revisit some of Vázquez's older works. I'm really excited, I've been wanting to run this one for aaaaaages. Now's our chance!
Now, I need to get some food before the shops shut, so the plan is to start in about an hour, at 10pm UK time - in the usual place, https://twitch.tv/canmom. Hope to see you there!
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barrewithme · 3 months
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barre with me🩰✨💕
January 17, 2024
I can still remember the day I walked into my first ballet class. 
I remember being the first one there. I remember walking into the studio and feeling awestruck. It was just like the ones on TV, all mirrors and wooden floors, and ballet barres wrapped around the whole room.
I remember running over to the barre and staring at myself in the mirror. Black leotard, pink tights, pink skirt, pink shoes, 4C hair pulled into a puffy bun because Mommy refused to use gel. 
I remember Mommy and Professora talking in the corner. Professora was shocked at how early we were and Mommy explained that I didn’t like to be late. I don’t remember what they talked about after that, I was busy at the barre, holding my balance in what I would soon come to know as relevé but at the time was just my tippy-toes. 
I remember them calling me over. Mommy and I followed Professora into a tiny storage room. Its walls were lined with shelves, the upper ones filled with boxes upon boxes of ballet shoes. The lower ones were for students to leave their bags. 
I remember there being a swing set, playhouse, and a picnic bench outside. I remember sharing snacks and playing outside with the other girls. 
The building is there, although it’s not a ballet studio anymore. 
The playhouse is still there too. 
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goodgatsu · 1 year
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The new Bonfire of Dreams scene in the Memorial Edition has a new Susumu Hirasawa song and I’m hoping to find a release of it somewhere so I can listen to it in full.
Very happy that Hirasawa is still making Berserk music. I hope he and Studio 4c continues the anime, they’re doing a great job with the Memorial Edition.
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enki2 · 2 years
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I saw your response about anime style history and was absolutely fascinated. Do you have any reading/watching recommendations about the histories of different genres?
The WaveMotionCannon blog is a great resource for detailed analyses and primary sources about trends in the anime industry (including genre trends), but they go really deep and get into the weeds so I'd recommend some overviews first. I'm not really sure why, but general-audience books on the subject tend to be both broad and full of errors.
Luckily, Youtube has a lot of channels that specialize in a mix of overviews and deep dives:
Pause and Select comes out of the academic world (specifically, the anime-centric part of cultural studies) and does a lot of broad surveys of trends in genre, situated with cultural, political, and technical context. They used to do periodic book clubs, too, which was a great way to get exposed to academic sources (important because industry, academic, and fan histories of anime kind of sit in their own bubbles and rarely interact, in part because of language barriers; each can illuminate the others in interesting ways).
Mercury Falcon does both genre overviews and deep dives into particular franchises, with a focus on the 70s and 80s. This channel has an absolute wealth of information about early anime industry drama (particularly in the mecha space in the 70s) and early localization efforts. Kenny Lauderdale does some of the same stuff, but with a lighter tone -- he's more interested specifically in rarities and oddities, but when he dives into history, he will sometimes dig up information nobody else has, and he's got some insights into media preservation that are worth hearing.
KaizerBeamz's series "Kyoto Video" shines a spotlight on older, forgotten shows and as a result often provides an insight into the outer edges & branches of current genres (and a reminder of now-dead genres). He sometimes provides a lot of historical context, as well.
The Canipa Effect focuses on the contemporary scene, but dives into the histories of particular studios; where he really shines is explorations of the dynamics of the industry (something that doesn't get talked about very much even in Japan, and where translations of first-person accounts are rare). Canipa was important in spreading awareness of the working conditions of animators among the western anime fandom. Worth checking out alongside Archipel, a Japanese-language channel (with high-quality translations) that documents individuals working in the anime industry with little documentary featurettes about their life and work. Also check out the Japanese public television series Manben, in which manga artists (including veteran revolutionaries like Rumiko Takahashi) are filmed drawing their current projects and then discuss the footage with the host, veteran artist Urusawa Naoki. These deep dives sometimes provide critical insight into whole genres, because anime genres (much like genres in italian film) tend to develop out of imitators of single seminal properties, and so single creators or small groups of creators can wield huge amounts of influence.
STEVIEM's mini-documentaries on Studio 4C and Hideaki Anno are great, though most of his output is general anituber territory. I would also recommend Ygg Studios' Anime Alphabet series, and ErynCerise's Mahou Profile (a series of videos on the evolution of the magical girl genre).
In terms of books, I've found them pretty hit or miss. Some that I can recommend wholeheartedly are:
The Moe Manifesto, a collection of essays about the history of the concept of "moe" -- this is where I got a lot of information about the genesis of the bishojo style
Otaku: Japan's Database Animals, a work of cultural analysis by Azuma that dives into the intersection of anime fandom, the VN space, and online communication technologies and tries to produce a general model of the evolution of how people relate to media (with, IMO, mixed results)
The Notenki Memoirs is a history of the period at Gainax when Evangelion was being developed (and can be combined with Otaku no Video, Gainax's semi-fictionalized OVA retelling a mythic version of their origin; there is also a live action series called Blue Blazes about the early days of Gainax, which I haven't seen, and a documentary about the production of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 that gives interesting insight into Anno himself.)
Some that I recommend with caveats:
Anime Impact, a collection of anime reviews by english speakers (mostly people who were semi-famous online personalities about 10-15 years ago, and only some of whom actually know much about anime), is largely interesting because it's organized chronologically by the date of the show's release, so the early chapters dive into the history of forgotten shows
Robot Ghosts And Wired Dreams, a collection of essays (mostly about science fiction anime) by academics in cultural studies, contains a lot of interesting and compelling material (for instance, the first essay situates Japanese science fiction in the context of the irregular detective genre and connects it with complicated currents in nationalism, and a later essay talks about the semiotics of loan words in the context of Macross Plus and Patlabor) and a couple real duds (for instance, an essay trying to compare Evangelion with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within wherein the author only watches two episodes of Evangelion and gets their plot confused, then tries and fails to fit it into a framework of second-wave-feminist critiques of transhumanism through a freudian lens)
The History of Hentai Manga is well-researched and detailed, but the author tries to cram in a lot of jokes that don't land, and it seems like there might have been an editorial mandate to put in as many images as possible (because this academic study of hentai manga is being published by a company that mostly publishes actual hentai); the translation is also pretty clunky. In his attempt to come off as breezy, the author uses particular phrases and constructions that are part of japanese fan-culture argot, and the translator does not localize these phrases and constructions (preferring to translate them literally) and also does not provide context for them, so they can be quite confusing to people who haven't come across them before (i.e., people who haven't seen a lot of fansubs of obscure otaku-focused shows from 20 years ago).
If I think of anything else, I'll post it later.
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grad604-kannonhen · 8 months
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mid sem objects 3
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The two art books:
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Tekkonkinkreet art book Shiro:
Tekkonkinkreet is an animation film by Studio 4C, original manga by Taiyo Matsumoto. I was gifted this book for my 18th birthday by my mother and younger sister. The Shiro (meaning white in Japanese, also being the name of one of the main characters) version showcases the background art used in the final movie. Background art of animation movies, particularly hand-drawn ones, has always been one of my core artistic inspirations starting from Studio Ghibli. It has always been a dream of mine to collect art books and this is the first ever one I owned which already makes it incredibly special for me. Tekkonkinkreet has won many awards, one of which is the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year; it incorporates hand-drawn illustrations combined with 3D technology which creates immersive camera movements while keeping the tactile quality of hand-drawn background. The artwork of Tekkonkinkreet stunned me and has affected my creative eye. The old nostalgic broken down cityscape and the density of the place are inspired by actual location in Japan and is depicted in the fictional reality, realistic fiction. It reminds me of the Tokyo Chaotic style named by Perimetron.
Tekkonkinkreet art book Kuro:
I was gifted the Kuro(meaning black in Japanese, the name of the other main character) version this year for my 20th birthday. The Kuro version showcases more of the behind-the-scenes works like the storyboarding process and initial sketches done by the art director of the film, Shinji Kimura. After having looked through the Shiro version first, looking at the sketches that came before all that deepens the world-building and makes it even more immersive. As a viewer we rarely ever get a chance to see the storyboarding process or initial sketches so it was a special experience for me.
Drawing tablets:
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Wacom drawing tablet:
Wacom is a Japanese company famous for creating drawing tablets, founded in 1983 having its head office in Saitama prefecture Japan. This is the first ever drawing tablet I bought for myself. It's the smallest size sold from Wacom and honestly, it isn't the easiest thing to use, but it still is special for me because it is what enabled me to start digital drawing. Digital drawing as a medium was a complete change from the traditional paintings and analogue drawings that I did throughout my life up until then, and it has influenced my interest in Japanese internet culture. It led to me looking through many artists online with the same practice and learning from their beautiful works. It was also a tool that was essential for creating some university projects like the concertina or the awareness campaign. It is a beginning and an end to certain chapters of my creative journey and as crucial key object for the development of my illustration practice.
XP-Pen display drawing tablet:
The display drawing tablet was an upgrade from the small tablet. I only got this last year and it was a major turning point in my illustration process and workflow as well as my mindset as a creative. I used to not take illustration very seriously and was only little doodles on the side of school work I didn't want to do, thus why I spent a minimum amount of money for the smallest tablet available. However, as I drew more and more, like any other creative person, I started seeing my limits and lack of technique or skill. I abandoned drawing all the time, and I still do, but purchasing this large tablet marks a change in my efforts and the significance of illustration within myself that it's a good equipment that I own so I must use it up to its potential.
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demifiendrsa · 2 years
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Key visuals for Berserk: The Golden Age Arc - Memorial Edition. 
 The TV broadcast cut of the Berserk: The Golden Age Arc film trilogy will premiere in October 2022.
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Berserk: The Golden Age Arc - Memorial Edition will include a new "Bonfire of dreams" scene under the supervision of chief animation director Naoyuki Onda. In addition, hundreds of existing cuts will be modified and remastered for the TV broadcast cut.
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Berserk: The Golden Age Arc - Memorial Edition will also feature new music from composers Susumu Hirasawa and Shiro Sagisu. In addition, Mika Nakashima wrote a new ending song "Wish" for the TV broadcast cut of the film trilogy.
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fablecore · 2 years
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nooo how many am i allowed to ask!! ;-; fairytale inbox game: 6, 8, 15?
thank u lem!! 🥀🥀🥀 <- a bouquet of withered roses for you
6. What stayed with you most from the fairytales you enjoyed as a child? Can be a quote, a detail, a character, a moral or a whole story ark.
i thought long and hard about this, and i kept coming back to princess arete which isn't a traditional fairytale. it's a studio 4C film about a young girl who dreams of traveling the world, but because she's a princess she must be married off. her suitor is a wicked old wizard who enchants her to look more 'princessy', and all the men of her court approve. but in actuality the wizard's real goal is to imprison arete forever in his castle because he heard a prophecy that she will one day take away his powers and immortal life. it's a slow and contemplative movie without much action, but it made a strong impression on me when i was young. arete belongs in the pantheon of "despite everything it's still you" anime heroines (chihiro, kiki, sailor moon, etc)
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8. What poem would a kind-hearted mortal have to recite to entice you into revealing yourself to them?
i'm a huge fan of gabrielle calvocoressi these days. they wrote i was popular in certain circles after being rejected for a guggenheim fellowship. it's a truly angry poem. it reads very bitter to me, and somehow incredibly humorous (and endearing, and cathartic)
What pals I was with all the scavengers! And the dead things too. What pals. As for the living, the fox would not be outdone. We’d sit on the cliff’s edge and watch the river like a movie and I’d say, “I think last night…” and the fox would put his paw on top of mine and say, “Forget it. It’s done.” I mean, we had fun. You haven’t lived until a fox has whispered something the ferns told him in your one good ear. I mean truly. You have not lived.
recite this to me with all the pent-up frustration of your mortal coil and i'll be the fox who whispers something good in your ear 🫶
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beauty-by-tyy · 1 year
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It’s Almost Christmas Again (ft. DDSNNT Store of Amazon Wig) Unboxing & Review
Can you believe it? It’s almost Christmas again! In this video I will be unboxing and reviewing a unit that was sent to me from the DDSNNT of Amazon.
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If you are looking for a new do and want to check out, what I’m putting down, watch this video.
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Contact email: [email protected]
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PLEASE CLICK HERE IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THESE VIDEOS: 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾
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It’s Almost Christmas Again (ft. DDSNNT Store of Amazon Wig) Unboxing & Review: https://youtu.be/ZfYt8sLkJA4
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Gorgeous Ginger 4C Afro (ft. Maforsoon of Amazon Natural Wig) Unboxing & Review: https://youtu.be/s_9LHh1c5RA
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This Wig is “Game On!” 22” Straight Human Hair Lace Front Wig - (ft. DDSNNT of Amazon): https://youtu.be/nu_8xbdxtBs
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Brand: DDSNNT Store of Amazon
Material: Highlight Ombré Human Hair
Density: 180%
Length: 24”
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Hair Color: 4/27
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thedreammweaver · 1 year
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Tagged by @belissmatopolina
Thanks for tagging me!
Share your wallpaper: a normal wallpaper of my normal parents
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The Last Song You Listened To: Jenny by Studio Killers
Currently Reading: Misery by Stephen King
Last Movie: It was one I don’t like and regret watching, the one before that was The Ruling Class.
Craving: I’m craving vegan marshmallows like 24/7
How Tall Are You: no comment
Piercings: Used to have my ears pierced, mad I have hole scars in them now.
Tattoos: none but I want them.
Glasses? Contacts: No.
Last Drink: Water with Gatorade Glacier Cherry powder mixed in and a bit of 4C Energy Rush citrus flavoured powder also mixed in.
Last Show: The Last of Us
Last Thing You Ate: Pretzels
Favourite Colour: Orange
Current Obsession: My Gotham New Orleans AU
Unrelated Obsession: Alfred Molina’s filmography
Any Pets: Yes
Do You Have A Crush On Anyone: I don’t feel anything that I would call a crush, I do have public figures I enjoy watching. Right now my favourite is Brennan Lee Mulligan.
Favourite Fictional Character: Milton Mamet from The Walking Dead
The Last Place You Traveled To: Walmart
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doobashmurp · 1 year
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just watched noiseman sound insect had a time of it now i am talking about it to meself weehooha
BACKGROUND INFO the original broadcast released in 1997, its a ova from studio 4c, masaaki yuasa was on it doing something and thats how i found it lol lmao
the name? oh my god its incredible…. noiseman … sound insect…. rotating in my head in big sparkly text for the next section of my life methinks
noise man..... sound .... insect ...... dawg i do not know what a sound insect is but by jove do i want to find out.......
aaalso the characterization in the setting of the world - at least what i could glean from the backgrounds - is incredibly suited to go right to the part of my brain that loves items and things to have and hold. these guys did tekkon kinkreet also and this very much feels like a practice run for the environment they cultivated there, HUGE fan
the actual story, and execution thereof, seemed very jostled and clunky to me, though. this thing its 15 minutes and i think that was FAR to short of a timeframe to do the little story justice - things were happening all the time in a way that hindered my experience with it rather than adding a sense of charm. like, it was fast paced, because it HAD to be, and not because it WANTED to be... i wonder what happened for this ova to be granted a runtime shorter than a typical tv anime episode! strange, and i will not look into it, because i dont feel like it, cheers, i get the sense that the production team was doing the best with what they had available to em and looking at it through that lense paints the project in a much warmer light to me in retrospect, but i dont think i will think about this very much in the future, and i dont think id want to come back to rewatch it at all really
thats all
have a good night
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canmom · 11 months
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Animation Night 158: The Carnival Is Back In Town
Hi everyone, it’s Animation Night! Still happening!!
Tonight I am evidently running quite late. The reasonable reason for this is that I just arrived at my friends’ house in Glasgow and it’s taken a minute to get everything set up. The less reasonable reason is that I spent a lot of time today playing Beat Saber. But anyway!
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Today is going to be a combination of old stuff and new stuff! Back in the day, one of the first things I showed on Animation Night were short film collections such as Meikyū Monogatari (1987) [lit. Labyrinth Tales, but known in English as Neo Tokyo and Manie-Manie] and Robot Carnival (also 1987).
The unifying factor in both of these is Katsuhiro Otomo, but let’s not make it all about him! Both are collections of short films by a huge variety of directors. For Otomo himself, it was a ridiculously busy time - as well as directing films in both collections he was hard at work on Akira. For Robot Carnival he created the intro and outro, telling the story of the Robot Carnival itself, a massive crawling machine whose displays have turned into deadly weapons to the apocalypse survivors it runs over below.
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And alongside him are a number of familiar names. Kōji Morimoto, future cofounder of Studio 4C, made the ridiculously involved short film Franken’s Gears almost singlehandedly (his family helped with the inbetweening!). Animator Manabu Ōhashi, who tragically passed away last year, made a beautiful abstract short film called Cloud. And Yasuomi Umetsu, whose uniquely chunky hyperrealist design style I’ve written about now and again, directed a troubling short called Presence about a man who creates and destroys a gynoid, probably the most technically spectacular film he’s done. Takashi Nakamura (who I must cover soon, director of e.g. A Tree of Palme) brings a riotous midnight dance of machines in The Tale of Chicken Man and Red Neck. Hiroyuki Kitakubo, future director of Golden Boy and Blood: the Last Vampire, brings a satirical 19th-century fight in Strange Tales of Meiji Culture: Westerner’s Invasion.
All in all it’s one of my favourite short film collections - this is probably like the fourth or fifth time I’ve shown it to people? It’s a great and very varied ride.
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And Meikyū Monogatari, this is the work of Madhouse, and as such it has films by Rintarō and Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Rintarō who introduces us by leading a girl into a strange surreal circus to set the stage for the other shorts. Kawajiri directs cyberpunk racing short The Running Man, which is pure imagery and carrying 1000 synthwave music videos on its back - but the original is surprisingly dreamily paced. The biggest highlight is Otomo’s Construction Cancellation Order, in which a salaryman attempts to shut down a massive out-of-control autonomous construction project, butting up against a robot foreman who will do anything to continue the work. If you watched Akira and felt like “damn I think this needs more machinery porn”, Otomo’s got you covered! It’s a great short, unfolding with a sense of wonderful comic inevitability.
Tonight the plan is to revisit both of these short films! But also to check out some recent short films that I thought were neat. For example, we have How And Why Don Jose Dissipated by ‘Animoshe’, a psychedelic short about a bee and a tourist with a truly unique style...
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And Record Highs by Beryl Allee about an athletic competition among frogs amidst... striking circumstances.
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It’s also coming into CalArts season, so if we feel hungry for more, I’ll check out the latest student films. Plus, if you’ve seen anything neat you’d like to watch together, tell me and I’m sure we can find room!!
Sound fun? We’ll be going live shortly over at twitch.tv/canmom and start the films at 10pm UK time! Would love to see you there ^^
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