With so many people in the world being housebound at the moment due to the covid-19 epidemic, I thought I would put together some playlists for people who love animation as much as I do.  

I am starting with the selection that I put together for Nippon Connection in 2018, as most of the films can be found on line. The theme that year was music, so I have included links to the artists whose music features in the animations, so you can also support these musicians by streaming / buying their music during this difficult time of cancelled live events.

The first work in the programme, Moving Colors, is a group project featuring the work of 12 animation creators (aka Taku Team) with each team member representing their favourite colour. The title design is by Taku Furukawa (the Taku of the Team name), experimental animation pioneer and mentor to the professional animators in the team. The team consists of: Takuma Hashitani (orange), Waboku (aka Wataru Nakajima, brown), Hakhyun Kim (purple) Yoshiyuki Kaneko (black), Shiho Morita (red), Moe Koyano (raspberry/turquoise), Yū Tamura (green), Yasuaki Honda (crimson), Yewon Kim (mint), Tomoyoshi Joko (blue) and Hiroco Ichinose (gold).

Moving Colors by TAKU TEAM, 2016

Nippon Connection 2018 Animated Shorts 4: Slowly Rising by Hideki Inaba 

Hideki Inaba (稲葉 秀樹, b. 1988)’s Slowly Rising came to my attention because the film was part of the Jury Selection at the Japanese Media Arts Festival 2017. Inaba is originally from Ibaraki Prefecture but is now based in Tokyo where he works as a freelance video artist. He has had a lot of success in the past couple of years, participating as part of the filmmaking team that did the animated special effects for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Getaway Tour and having his work featured at many international festivals and online media platforms.

Slowly Rising is a music video for the Dutch artist formerly known as BEATSOFREEN, now using the moniker Stan Forebee (Beatsofreen is an anagram of this name). Forebee is based in Melbourne, Australia. He describes himself as a beatmaker and multi-instrumentalist who grew up immersed in jazz and classical music in a musical family in the Netherlands. In March, he released his debut jazz album Jazz Sessions and he promises another album in the near future. 

On the Japanese Media Arts Festival Website, Inaba describes the music video thusly: “Under the sun that is the source of life, a single seed is born. Seeking light, the seed forms a group that gradually increases in numbers, then dies off. Another seed then grows in its place. The creator brings a cel animation touch to a story that overlays human relations in the corporate world with the rise and fall of living organisms.” (source). 

The film begins as simply as the music, with plant-like fronds waving against a starlit, other-worldly galaxy. As the music becomes more layered, the variety of imaginary organic creatures multiplies – some resemble plants, others pulsing sea creatures, and still others flying insects. They fill the screen like a colourful, ever-changing kaleidoscope. The result is a hypnotic video as entrancing as the music itself. 

Learn more about Inaba (username: kanahebi): 

http://hide.tokyo/ 

https://vimeo.com/kanahebi 

Daibutsu Animation Club: 

https://vimeo.com/channels/daibutsu 

Learn more about Stan Forebee: 

https://www.facebook.com/stanforebeemusic/ 

https://stanforebee.bandcamp.com/album/jazz-sessions 

2018 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Nippon Connection 2018 Animated Shorts 3: How Low Sympathy by Decovocal  

How Low Sympathy (ハロウシンパシー) is a music video for the three-piece Japanese band Scenarioart (シナリオアート). The band is from Kansai and features Kōsuke Hayashi (@kosukedao) on guitar and vocals, Kumiko Hattori (@drumkumiko) on drums and vocals and Yakahisa Yamashita (@yamapio) on bass and vocals. Their music demonstrates the influence of rock, electronica, and shoegaze pop. Their first single, Raincoat Man was released in 2013 and their single Sayonara Moon Town featured in the end credits of the popular anime series Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. The single How Low Sympathy can be found on their debut studio album Happy Umbrella.

How Low Sympathy is animated by the husband and wife team Decovocal (デコボーカル): Tomoyoshi Joko (上甲トモヨシ and Hiroco Ichinose (一瀬皓コ). I wrote about Ichinose and Decovocal in my last post about (read here), so for this post I will focus on the other half of the team. Like his wife, Joko also studied at Tokyo Polytechnic University where he was mentored by art animator Taku Furukawa (古川タク). I first wrote about him back in 2011, when my kids fell in love with his animation short Lizard Planet (read more). Joko has a remarkable ability create fantastic visual worlds using simple line drawing and computer colouring techniques. In addition to Lizard Planet, his film Buildings (2008) is clever and engaging. 

This combination of originality of design and colourful aesthetic has led to a successful carrier in commercial animation design. In addition to music videos, Decovocal make animation for television and advertising. 

Check out the work of Decovocal on their official channels: 

Hiroco Ichinose 

Tomoyoshi Joko 

Decovocal 

Learn more about Scenarioart: 

http://www.scenarioart.jp 

https://twitter.com/Scenarioart

2018 Cathy Munroe Hotes 

I first encountered the work of animator Hiroco Ichinose (一瀬皓コ) at my very first Nippon Connection in 2008. Her independent works at that time like Cow’s Day (ウシニチ／Ushi-Nichi, 2007) and Ha・P (ハピー, 2008) delighted me with their minimalist animation style and quirky sense of humour. She has continued to impress me with her original works like Two Tea Two (2010) and her collaborations with her husband, animator Tomoyoshi Joko (上甲トモヨシ). 

Both graduates of the animation programme at Tokyo Polytechnic University, Joko and Ichinose were mentored by art animation pioneer Taku Furukawa (古川タク). They founded their own animation studio called Decovocal (デコボーカル). In addition to their independent works, they have been commissioned to work on a number of commercial projects for both CM and TV. My favourite of these is the 26-episode children’s series Rita and Machin (リタとナントカ, 2016), adapted from the French children’s stories by Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignod with illustrations by Olivier Tallec. 

I chose Cosmic! (2009) for the Music of the Visual World: Japanese Indie Animated Shorts programme at Nippon Connection because I wanted to put the spotlight on two of the animators behind the Taku Team in the first selection, who I felt where following in their mentor’s footsteps. Ichinose and Joko make animation very much in the spirit of Taku Furukawa. Like the works of Furukawa, in Cosmic! Ichinose deploys a a simple line drawing animation style with vibrant colours to tell an amusing, offbeat tale of a romance between two angels who are separated from each other by a strange intergalactic bird who deposits them on separate planets. While apart, their story is told via split screen, accompanied by a minimalist acoustic guitar soundtrack by Junji Ichinose (一瀬純司). 

Check out the work of Ichinose and Joko on their official YouTube channels: 

Hiroco Ichinose 

Tomoyoshi Joko 

Decovocal 

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2018

The first work in the programme, Moving Colors, is a group project featuring the work of 12 animation creators (aka Taku Team). It is a tribute to the animator Taku Furukawa (古川タク, b. 1941) by young artists who were mentored by him at Tokyo Polytechnic University’s undergraduate animation programme. Each team member in this collaboration represents their favourite colour. The title design is by Furukawa himself. The team features: Takuma Hashitani (orange), Waboku (aka Wataru Nakajima, brown), Hakhyun Kim (purple) Yoshiyuki Kaneko (black), Shiho Morita (red), Moe Koyano (raspberry/turquoise), Yū Tamura (green), Yasuaki Honda (crimson), Yewon Kim (mint), Tomoyoshi Joko (blue) and Hiroco Ichinose (gold). The animations by the various creators were then edited together in a dynamic way by “Taku Team” with Tomoyoshi Joko of Decovocal as the creative director. The music is performed by Tomohiro Higashikinjō, Toyomi Kobayashi and Ryusaku Ikezawa.

I chose this piece for Nippon Connection 2018 because it is a celebration of music and motion – something central to the aesthetic of the artist it celebrates. Taku Furukawa is an independent animation pioneer in Japan. He was first mentored by the animation iconoclast Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, b.1928) in the early 1960s but then went on to international acclaim for his own independent shorts. I have reviewed many of his works over the years including: Phenakistiscope (驚き盤, 1975), Nice to See You (ナイス・トゥ・ス���・ユー, 1975), and Tyo Story (上京物語 / Jyōkyō Monogatari, 1999).

 He is also well known in Japan for his prolific contributions to the long running Minna no Uta (みんなのうた / Everyone’s Song, 1961-present) series on the public broadcaster NHK. Since the passing of puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto, he has been the president of the Japanese Animation Association (JAA). He is known for collaborating with other artists such as his projects with the collective G9+1 and his prolific series of short shorts (chōtanpen / 超短編) with the composer Jun Sakurai (桜井順, b.1934) called One Phrase Theatre / ヒトコト劇場 (You Tube Playlist).

 There is no story in this piece, rather the overarching theme of “colour” (the title uses the American spelling, which is taught in Japan. This blog is written in Canadian English). Each of the animators (they call themselves “creators” in their explanatory notes) made a short inspired by the music and their selected colour. If you are familiar with the work of these artists (I believe they have all had works screened at Nippon Connection over the years), you will be able to recognise their distinctive artistic styles immediately. As a visual guide, I have taken some screencaps from the credits to act as your guide:

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2018

Animation at Nippon Connection 2018 

Details, Screening Times, and Locations 

Nippon Connection has put together another wonderful programme of animation this year. One of the must-see feature films is Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall (夜明け告げるルーのうた, 2017), which won the coveted Cristal for Best Feature Film at Annecy last spring and went on to win the Noburō Ōfuji Award for innovation in animation at the Mainichi Film Awards earlier this year. 

Equally worth watching is Yuasa’s adaptation of Tomihiko Morimi’s novel The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl (夜は短し歩けよ乙女, 2017). Morimi’s works are usually set in his native Kyoto, and this particular story shares not only the Kyoto setting but also many of its the characters with The Tatami Galaxy, another Morimi novel that Yuasa famously adapted into an acclaimed TV anime series. The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl is a critically acclaimed feature film that won Animation of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and Best Animated Feature at OIAF 2017. 

Although we lost the wonderful Isao Takahata this year, the Studio Ghibli spirit lives on in Studio Ponoc, formed by former Ghibli producer Yoshiaki Nishimura in 2015. Its debut feature film, Mary and the Witch’s Flower (メアリと魔女の花) is directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who also made his name at Ghibli. The visually stunning film was one of the top grossing Japanese films at the Japanese box office for 2017. 

Mutafukaz (2017) is a French-Japanese co-production combining the forces of Ankama Animations (an offshoot of the publisher Ankama) with popular anime house Studio 4C. It is a wild, frenetic ride in the vein of Tekkon Kinkreet, which co-director Shōjirō Nishimi worked on as character designer. The film is the vision of the French co-director Guillaume “Run” Renard, who created the original graphic novel series. The film will be shown in French with German subtitles. 

Popular anime director Mamoru Hosoda’s 2015 film The Boy and the Beast (バケモノの子) will play at the annual Film Breakfast – this event always sells out so book your seat early. 

If your taste runs to more alternative fare, Ujicha is back at the festival with his cutout film Violence Voyager (2017). A graduate of Kyoto Saga Art University, Ujicha coined his primitive yet effective technique “gekimation” (劇メーション). He has made a number of shorts in this style and his debut feature film The Burning Buddha Man (2013) won an excellence award at the Japanese Media Arts Festival and was shown at Nippon Connection 2013. Watch the trailer for Violence Voyager to see if it’s up your alley. 

Tokyo University of the Arts is back with a selection of its recent graduate works – read my full article on it here – and I have once again curated a selection of independent animated shorts. Learn more about it here.  I am pleased to be able to announce that animation artist Yuki Hayashi will be able to attend the screening this year.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 

LU OVER THE WALL 

夜明け告げるルーのうた 

Yoake tsugeru ru no uta 

Director: Masaaki YUASA Japan 2017, DCP, 107 min., 

Japanese with English subtitles German premiere 

Thursday, May 31, 12:00 Mousonturm Saal 

Friday, June 1, 15:30 Mal Seh’n Kino 

MARY AND THE WITCH’S FLOWER 

メアリと魔女の花 

Meari to majo no hana 

Director: Hiromasa YONEBAYASHI Japan 2017, DCP, 102 min., Japanese with German subtitles

Thursday, May 31, 15:30 Mal Seh’n Kino (with German live voice over) 

Friday, June 1, 12:00 Mousonturm Saal 

MUSIC OF THE VISUAL WORLD: 

JAPANESE INDIE ANIMATED SHORTS 

In the presence of the curator Dr. Catherine Munroe Hotes and director Yuki Hayashi

Sunday, June 3, 18:15 Naxoshalle Kino 

MUTAFUKAZ 

Director: Shojiro NISHIMI, Guillaume Renard Japan / France 2017, DCP, 90 min, French with German subtitles 

Sunday, June 3, 12:00 Mousonturm Saal 

THE NIGHT IS SHORT, WALK ON GIRL 

夜は短し歩けよ乙女 

Yoru wa mijikashi arukeyo otome 

Saturday, June 2, 12:00 Mousonturm Saal 

Sunday, June 3, 22:30 Mal Seh’n Kino 

THE BOY AND THE BEAST 

バケモノの子 

Bakemono no ko 

Director: Mamoru HOSODA Japan 2015, 120 min, Blu-ray, Japanese with German subtitles

Thursday, May 31, 10:30 Naxos Atelier 

TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS: ANIMATION 

In presence of Yuichi MATSUMOTO 

Saturday, June 2, 17:30 Naxoshalle Kino 

VIOLENCE VOYAGER 

バイオレンス・ボイジャー 

Director: Ujicha Japan 2017, Blu-ray, 83 min, Japanese with English subtitles European premiere 

Thursday, May 31, 22:15 Naxoshalle Kino 

PAINT YOUR OWN MUSIC: 

COMPOSITION WORKSHOP FOR KIDS 

Thursday, May 31, 15:00 Naxos Atelier 

Workshop in Japanese with German translation 

"Even if you can’t read notes and don’t play any instrument, you can be a composer - just by painting pictures! Yuichi MATSUMOTO of the Tokyo University of the Arts has invented a fantastic instrument, which conveys images into music. He, a composer himself, will show you how you can use your own drawings to make a short 'music-film'."