|
||
|
August 27, 2008
 Much of anime production goes on in the suburbs of Tokyo, in Mitaka-shi and the surrounding region. (Former visitors to the Ghibli Museum will remember this particular train station, but studios like Pierrot, 4C, and Production I.G. all have their offices in parts beyond. Most maps of Tokyo don’t include details on this region, perhaps because they assume that no one in their right mind would be interested.) Similarly, Comikket occurs at the Tokyo Big Sight – and like most convention centres, it’s at the edge of town. In both cases, finding in-the-flesh otaku culture can seem like it requires a bit of hiking. Then you hit Mandarake. Shibuya is likely the most-filmed location in Tokyo. When visitors say that Tokyo looks like Blade Runner, they’re likely referring to Shibuya. It’s a series of upscale shopping malls, karaoke towers, music shops, used clothing stores, and dessert stands all wedged together like crooked, glittering teeth. Tower Records shares its playlist with a whole city block. Stories-high monitors broadcast commercials for manga-to-film adaptations. Everything is disposable and transient. It’s all very William Gibson. But it’s also the location of a COSPA store (where you can purchase, of all things, a p  air of Evangelion-themed jeans) and the gem I stumbled upon: Mandarake.We almost missed it. We were exhausted, our feet were sore, and it was beginning to rain – though the humidity made it seem as though the skyscrapers were simply condensing. I paused to take a picture of what appeared to be a manga-style mural advertising a club. But the grubby television screen above the door showed us closed-circuit surveillance footage of the interior: stacks of manga. After a long, spooky climb down a mirrored staircase lit entirely by red stage lights and blinking strobes, I emerged into what is perhaps one of the finest comics shops in all Tokyo.
Every city has a good comics shop. (Toronto, where I live, has several, and residents feel about their favourite store the way the English do about their local pubs.) But few can boast a good shop for fans. It’s a subtle-but-important distinction: good comics shops will have plenty of merchandise, helpful and knowledgeable staff, and enough room to move around. However, they might be missing out-of-print or rare items. They might not have a good buy-back policy. And if you live outside Japan, it’s almost guaranteed that you can’t buy doujinshi there. Mandarake is a comics shop. It’s also a doujinshi shop, video store, cosplay vendor, antiques dealer, and all-around hobby house. It’s the place to go if you want first-edition capsule toys, models (both official merchandise and fan-crafted sculptures), out-of-print comics, manga and doujinshi (both Japanese and otherwise), cosplay items, rare promotional materials like posters, t-shirts, and toys, soundtracks, drama CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, cassettes…if it exists, it’s either at Mandarake or in someone else’s private collection. “Ah,” you’re saying, “but with such a selection, and in such a tourist trap as Shibuya, it must be mainstream.” Well, that depends – on what you call mainstream. The rumours about Japan are true, in some respects: your local kombini will have both pornography and hentai manga (and manga of every other variety) next to the newspaper and Japan’s seemingly-endless supply of craft magazines. And yes, some of those will be shounen-/shoujo-ai. All of this is great, of course – bookstores in Japan are epic enterprises (the one local to our hotel has 9 floors), and it’s nice to find so much reading material on the way to the train station. So, is Mandarake mainstream? Yes – for Tokyo. Meaning that the kids we saw dragging their reluctant parents behind them were in fact leading them into a den not only of comics, but pornography, and not only pornography, but gay pornography. I love this city. This isn’t to say that Mandarake is strictly a porn vendor. There are plenty of “normal” funnybooks on offer – we picked up a hilarious Evangelion doujinshi omnibus apparently sanctioned by GAINAX, which features a skyscraper-tall Misato defeating an Angel that looks suspiciously like the Flying Spaghetti Monster – and many of them feature straight people in heterosexual relationships. It’s just that there’s a whole room for yaoi/yuri comics (the room is marked “comics for women”), and a whole hentai area, too, all of it surrounded by glass cases full of antique AstroBoy and Godzilla toys. I cannot tell you where Mandarake is. Tokyo has the most bizarre and frustrating systems of address on the planet (echolocation would be more efficient), and many of the streets have no number or name. I can’t even show you photographs of the interior, because photography is forbidden. The store is like Avalon – wander long enough to get lost, and you’ll find it. Turn your head for two minutes and it’ll vanish behind a veil of soft rain and neon light. If you’re lucky enough to stumble across it, make sure you stay a while. August 25, 2008
 While much of the flavour of the Japan Media Arts Festival is Japanese (duh), they actively look for contributions from around the world, and indeed foreign entries have won top awards in the past. The Japan Media Arts Festival is very open in what they look for; when they say media, they include animation, manga art, Web works, photographs, installations, still photos, commercial work, independent work, amateur work, etc. (What I cover for Frames Per Second is just a fraction what they display every year.) This is what makes their categories so rich and interesting, in my opinion. Like last year, the Festival is again seeking recommendations from people about works they may have missed. Complete details for people who want to enter or make recommendations can be found on the Japan Media Arts Plaza. Better hurry, though: while submitters have until September 26 to get their works in, aficionados only have until August 29 to submit their recommendations. Labels: anime, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival August 19, 2008
 Honestly, what's surprising is that it's taken this long. A couple of companies have started catering to the anime fan/cosplay market by releasing extra-wide contact lenses that will give your eyes the wide-eyed anime look. Priced at $30-$50, they'll even match them up to your particular prescription.  So far it looks like they're only available from Korean companies Geo and Dueba. But hey, if Michael Jackson could go all werewolfy on us in the early 1980s, I'm sure Rick Baker can spend a few minutes to develop something for otaku to channel their inner C-ko.
August 17, 2008
Every year there's something in the Japan Media Arts Festival's Entertainment Division which also happens to be animated, and worth a mention. (The categories are porous like that.) This year that honour goes to the music video for Ryukyudisko's "Nice Day." The entire video is a progression of still photographs starting somewhere in the 1970s, with a couple getting busy under the covers and producing a young boy. We watch him get older, get a job, and then he hits the clubs and meets a girl–and the whole starts going into reverse, as we go back into the girl's history. However, we find ourselves going back even farther than her parents, for reasons that eventually become apparent—and the eventual trip forward again carries its own surprises. There's a lot of whimsy in this video, and the pity of the Flash-based video above is that you lose some of the detail in the historical photos, as well as the deliberate colour choices to replicate older film (up to a point—director Junji Kojima skimps a little when he starts getting into the 1930s and earlier). By the way, if you think the tune is catchy you can drop a couple of sawbucks for an import of the single at Amazon. Labels: anime, Beat Crusaders, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Junji Kojima, music videos, Ryukyudisko, shorts  Veterans of animation festivals know that the term "short film" is pretty elastic, from Malcolm Bennett's 30-second Rocky to Yuri Norstein's 29-minute Tale of Tales. They also know that the longer films are usually programmed at the tail end of a given screening, and that prior to the end of the Cold War many of those films were from Eastern Bloc countries—often gorgeous, sometimes inscrutable, sometimes dark. What's surprising about the 2007 Japan Media Arts Festival's award-winning works is that there are four films that pass the twenty-minute mark. The longest, Love Rollercoaster, is the most straightforward. The remaining three are reminiscent of those old Eastern Bloc films. I'll start off with the 21-minute Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor because (a) director Koji Yamamura pretty much roped me in with his Mt. Head and The Old Crocodile a few years back; (b) it's actually based on the work of the Jewish-Czech Kafka, which gives it that weirdness that can be supplied only by Eastern European creators in general, and Kafka in particular; and (c) I can't help re-watching it whenever I can. Like any Kafka story, A Country Doctor starts with a seemingly normal premise combined (a country doctor is summoned at night to take care of a young patient) with some bizarre aspect ("unearthly horses" transport him there instantly). As in Kafka's better-known The Metamorphosis, the introduction of the preternatural element marks the moment the protagonist can never go back to the way things were. As in Yamamura's Mt. Head, the pace, sketchy images, and hand-drawn transformations complement the story nicely. At the rate A Country Doctor has been racking up awards, I think Yamamura's going to have to put serious thought into new shelving.  Ryu Kato's The Clockwork City also mines the surreal with traditional tools. The film is pretty much wordless, and you should expect to have to work at sorting some aspects of it out. A young visitor comes to a new city, and it's quickly apparent she doesn't quite fit in—every person, every bird, and even a few buildings have these wind-up mechanisms stuck in them, and she doesn't. After exploring the city for a little while she meets with the town's honcho (who wears a wind-up crown) and exchanges fruits and other goods. Soon after the city goes to war with an unknown enemy, its soldiers identically featureless and wearing blue ties and white shirts. In the aftermath, our protagonist confronts the top man and his flunkies over the discovery of a giant wind-up key; what mysteries does it hold? This is definitely on my "must rewatch" list. Yusuke Sakamoto's The Dandelion Sister takes us into the realm of stop-motion animation, where a young girl has to contend with her older, sick sister—who happens to be a giant dandelion. There's a lot going on here: There's the younger sister missing out on social activities because of her responsibilities; her resentment of how much attention is heaped on her sick sister; her inability to draw, and express her feelings; and her fear of her sister's death. Like The Clockwork City, The Dandelion Sister is wordless, but as its concerns are more grounded in reality it's open to a number of interpretations about adolescence, caring for sick relatives, and acceptance.Labels: anime, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Koji Yamamura, Ryu Kato, shorts, Yusuke Sakamoto  Akihabara, or "Electric Town," is one of those places that otaku have to visit. It's just required. (Not least because your fellow otaku have a shopping list a mile long that includes all the things they can't buy this side of the Pacific, and have sent you on a quest to tick off all the boxes.) Akiba is a major tourist destination for foreigners and Tokyoites alike. Sundays are the busiest days, and not even the steadily-increasing, surprisingly-chilly August rainstorm could keep out today's visitors. Hugging our arms, we discovered that the rumours are true: you will find maid cafes, you will see goth lolis, you can buy things there that you can't in North America. Akiba is a very loud place. Seizure-inducing displays are everywhere, and the pachinko parlours never stop. Greeters use megaphones. Anime (most of it moe this season) blares from sidewalk televisions. After some time shopping, we wound our way through the noise to the Tokyo Anime Centre, which the website touts as some kind of museum. What we discovered instead was little more than a glorified gift shop. (In fact, that's a good description of Akiba in general. Imagine an anime-themed casino, then picture the attached gift shop. Now stretch it over several city blocks. That's Akihabara.) Although there is a glassed-in soundbooth for voice actors, and although we saw four women doing their thing inside it, that's about where the education ends.  However, the TAC is useful for one thing: finding out about other museums. In our case, we got lucky and found a brochure for the Suginami Animation Museum . The SAM is way out on the Maranouchi/Chuo Line, but it's open on weekends and features far better content. Among the highlights are the anime reference library, which holds rare films and manga for public use (I watched other people watching Grave of the Fireflies, Crayon Shin-chan, and Russian animation), an anime theatre with regular showings, and workstations where you can learn how to do your own key animation. The museum is geared toward a hands-on approach to showing viewers how anime gets made, and it does the job -- watching short films of animators doing work on both Jin-Roh and One Piece proves how loving and careful these people have to be, even with high technology at their disposal. The SAM is a tiny museum, but that's because it's concise and not too self-congratulatory (which cannot be said of many special-interest museums). It hosts special exhibitions, and it's accessible for viewers of all ages. It's out in the suburbs, away from the noise, and it's worth the trip. Do as we did: visit Akiba (and K-books) for some fresh manga or artbooks, hit the Akiba Ichi food court (you can't miss it; it's in the same building as the TAC), then get on the train. You'll be glad you did.
August 16, 2008
 Another odd little parallel shared by some of the award-winning animation shorts in the Japan Media Arts Festival: three of them had to do with birthdays—after a fashion. My least favourite of the trio was also the longest: Hiromasa Horie's Love Rollercoaster unfortunately has nothing to do with the Ohio Players song, but is instead about a cutesy young bear cub named John trying to solve the mystery of a mysterious birthday present left behind my his late mother. Involved in the search are his friends, and they soon drag in the creepy Lovegun, an eyeless, sharp-toothed green-skinned critter who lives half in and half out of a rocketship. I like the idea behind some of the characters (especially the pair of mischievous panda siblings), and the overall story idea is a solid one—the ending is particularly sweet. But the whole thing is killed by the execution. As a clay animation fan it shouldn't bother me that a CGI film tries to emulate a plasticine look for its characters. And I've never had a problem with Japan's cult of kawaii. But whenever the characters talk or scrunch their eyes, their skin wrinkles and folds in an a way that quickly renders them uncute. I'm sure John's initial concept drawings were very cute, but his textured skin, along with the bags under his eyes and all that wrinkliness just made me ill. Throw in excessive camera movement, the same kind of needless bobbing and weaving that bothered me in Skyland, and a half-hour–plus running time, and, well... let's just say that sometimes I watch these things so you don't have to. (As an aside, I should mention that Love Rollercoaster is one of several projects generated from a Japanese talent incubator called Anime Innovation Tokyo. I'd rather have seen just about anything else their creators have put together.)  The much shorter, lo-fi Ushi-nichi (or, as the English titles say, Happy Birthday) is pretty much Love Rollercoaster's exact opposite. Created with pencil and paper (complete with smudges) by Hiroko Ichinose, the nine-minute short features a motley crew of characters each going through their own machinations. A man stands in the desert waiting to hitch a ride, but turns down almost everyone who stops for him; a man wakes up every morning transformed in some way (extra-long arms, a huge 'fro) and cheerily skips to the employment office to find new work based on his condition; a woman starts eating pieces of her pet giraffe, mindless of the transformations it causes to her own body. Everything comes together in a whimsical denouement. Deep meaning? Who cares? The jittery, rough and utterly charming style makes the whole film a pleasure. Meanwhile, Toshiaki Hanzaki's Birthday puts another spin on the word, relating the evolution of life on Earth from one-celled organisms to man and, it seems, beyond. Working mostly with silhouetted forms, it's slicker than Ushi-nichi, but it is, if anything, more whimsical, with its portrayal of a giant fanged asteroid killing the dinosaurs and aliens accelerating our evolution. (It's also in the opposite direction of Hanzaki's earlier Birds, my favourite of the Digital Content Association of Japan's 2005 Digital Creators Competition's award-winning works.) Finally, at about a minute and a half, it's more compact. It gets where it needs to go, and then ends. Brevity really is the soul of wit.Labels: anime, CGI, festivals, Hiroko Ichinose, Hiromasa Horie, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, shorts, Toshiaki Hanzaki  When you die, if you've been a bad person, your soul get banished to a place where you stand in an endless line full of damp, sweaty people under a 100F sun, and you can't speak the language, and there's no guarantee of relief. But if you've been good, you get to pick up some great manga at the end of it. It's hard to describe Comikket in words. I went there looking for doujinshi and found some great stuff, despite having arrived late and getting slim pickings. You can't have your mochi and eat it, too, at Comikket: if you arrive early, you stand in line for hours under a merciless August sun with 80% humidity, but if you arrive late, you deal with hordes of people streaming out and you're little better than a tiny minnow swimming against a mighty current, with only the hope of nearly-empty tables to keep you going. In the end, you have to decide which is more important: waiting until the end and grabbing what looks interesting, or making list (checking it twice!) and letting the crowd shuffle you along at its own pace. There are merits to waiting until the end of the day, however. The doujin-ka are ready to talk, generous with their time, and they really want to move some units. There's also room to move around, which is at a premium in the Tokyo Big Sight. But we also missed out on some of that special fervor that only crowded cons in full swing can generate. Things to Remember When You Go:
...and everyone clapped. All around us, tired-but-happy applause rose through the air. Doujin-ka, hard-working men and women of all ages, genres, and artistic abilities, lauded each other for their endurance and dedication. Some punched the air. Others cheered. "How did they know to do this?" my husband asked. "I don't know," I said, "but they sure as hell deserve it."
 One of the pleasures of film festivals, whether you're watching them or organizing them, is in discovering unintended themes in the films. Sometimes it's inevitable, such as when social or political issues are on everyone's mind, but these are so unsurprising as to almost be banal. It's the small, quirky and sometimes trivial themes that are the most interesting to discover, and this year's award-winning short animation offerings from the Japan Media Arts Festival has a few worth mentioning. One thing I look forward to in any compilation is when people take a backward step, especially when it comes to CGI. There's such a tendency to lard on the detail, be it photorealistic or natural-media or whatever, that few make the deliberate choice to step back and pare things down. This year three films made a point of dialing down the detail, each in different ways. Youhei Murakoshi's Blockman goes the furthest. The viewer peers through a telescope to a strange world where everything is made up of identically sized cubes. Some are black, most are white, some make larger blocks, and some of the larger blocks have faces, courtesy of dots or lines on individual blocks. The curious lifeforms walk, fly, float, combine and come apart in a variety of ways, with the telescope lazily floating from one vista to another. The effect is similar to that of the even more minimalist Dice—an earlier Japan Media Arts Festival honoree—but perhaps more mesmerizing.  Sejiro Kubo, Ichiro Tanida and Katsunori Aoki collaborated on Copet, a series of shorts starring a cast of animals that are all straight lines and simple curves, plugged together like deranged Lego. At first glance it's appallingly cute, but little touches like camera shake and nifty bits of business (like a gorilla who repeatedly shivers himself out of a stupor) are at odds with the simplistic motion, and the tension works. But what really kept my attention were the bits that didn't follow the simple-is-better formula, like an erupting volcano, a meteor streaking toward Earth and water that looks, well, watery. The characters' occcasional forays into the live-action world, along with incomprehensible but still amusing storylines were also bonuses. If you can read Japanese you can check out the Copet website, which goes into the shorts' world in considerable depth and pimps Copet merch, including a DVD. Hiroshi Chida's Boneheads was produced by Polygon Pictures, which I mention because it shares a certain aesthetic sensibility with Polygon's Polygon Family shorts, in which the characters' blockiness is celebrated, rather than smoothed and textured to death. But Polygon Family is mostly monochrome, whereas Boneheads' colour pops with Day-Glo intensity. The latter's characters are also ever so slightly asymmetrical, which just makes them kookier.Moreover, where Polygon Family's animated used the anime and fighting videogame idioms, Boneheads is pure, non-stop Tex Avery-style mania (it's running time of seven minutes makes it even more reminiscent of a Golden Age cartoon). Roccos and Bone are two primitive creatures fighting over bananas—between themselves, and between other critters who get wind of the tasty fruit (or them). The whole thing is really just an escalating chase scene, but as every Blues Brothers fan knows, that's not really a bad thing. Radar Cartoons reps Polygon in the U.S., and Boneheads was produced for Viacom, so here's hoping that it pops up on our screens soon. Labels: anime, CGI, festivals, Hiroshi Chida, Ichiro Tanida, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Katsunori Aoki, Polygon Pictures, Sejiro Kubo, shorts, Youhei Murakoshi August 14, 2008
 This all began with Dai Sato. He's been on the writing teams behind Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Samurai Champloo, and Eureka Seven. He's listed as working for FrogNation, a company that specializes in cross-continental anime and videogame projects. Delighted to find a map to FrogNation HQ, I (and my trusty partner) headed out. We were armed with gifts of chocolate and maple cookies, plus my Master's thesis questionnaire on anime and the creative process. We had a map. We had Suica cards. We were prepared.Or so we thought. The thing about ambushing creators is that they might not be there in the first place. This is a big holiday season in Japan -- the whole city feels like it's on summer vacation -- and maybe that was the case here. But for all appearances, FrogNation HQ appears abandoned. First, it's in a converted residential space, the first floor of which has become storage for a second-hand shop which appears to no longer exist. No one answers the door, the mailbox is full, and the buildings behind it are all being bought up for condos. Despite the website being live, no one has answered emails. Are you out there, Sato-san? It's me, Madeline.  Of course, the news isn't all bad. Despite the fruitless attempt to find FrogNation, we did discover the Yoyogi Animation Gakuin, an "anime school" nearby. Once again, however, they were closed. But I'm a fan of any school which allows this guy to stand guard. He's a six-foot high model of some kind, and he's got wicked claws and a pretty scary face. This photo doesn't really do him justice. I'm not sure which project he's from. (If anyone does, let us know.) But I'm sure saying hello to him is a great way to start off your school day. In addition, we discovered the generosity and patience of the people we encountered. Construction workers, police officers, and everyday salarymen and -women were eager to help us. One man in particular brought us to the building in question, and even called FrogNation for us from a payphone on his own dime. (The phone number didn't work.) I ended up giving this man some of Sato-san's chocolate, because he certainly earned it. Wherever you are, 'tou-san, I hope you enjoy your sweets. Stay tuned for more posts as I sojourn through Mitaka in an attempt to give my favourite animators their due...in chocolate form.
Film festival venues can be overwhelming and conference venues can be overwhelming, but when you combine them... well, the experience hovers somewhat above the horizon. That said, here are some tidbits:
1. Much discussion, several panels, and two full days of screenings of stereoscopic (3D) films, commercials, sports events, games and scientific visualizations on the first day of the conference. 3D is the agenda for 21st-century digital releases. I took in the two-hour screening of 3D clips and then heard fine artist and installation/performance artist Catherine Owens speak about collaborating with Bono on the 3D film of U2's concert in Buenos Aires. She spoke convincingly about "experimental" exploration and commitment to "idea" in relationship to her personal art, as well as in relationship to her directorial debut of the film U2 3D. 2. The Computer Animation Festival is programmed into seven two-hour screenings that most often repeat the commercials, trailers, and synopses of film titles submitted. For example, Rhythm and Hues showcased effects scenes of the polar bears in "The Golden Compass" and that is screened alongside the commercial from Bridgestone Tires many have seen of the squirrel running onto the highway to retrieve a nut as a car swerves to miss killing him. The festival is screening two impressive studio shorts worth mentioning here: Pixar Studios' Presto and Disney Studios' Glago's Guest. If you've seen WALL-E you've seen Presto before the feature screens. 3) A wonderful Tribute To Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas happened today with Tom Sito moderating a panel that included Frank Thomas' son, Theodore Thomas, documentary filmmaker, as well as a group of celebrity animators who had worked with the two of them in a mentor relationship. All of them delightfully shared their experiences with Frank and Ollie and were very well received. More on this later. A closing note in case you don't want to wait: you may go online to read about all the sessions at SIGGRAPH 08 and can listen to them on DVD. All panels and discussions have been recorded are available for purchase. I have constantly forgotten the number one rule for attending film festivals and conferences: find a place to sit, eat well and if you do this, thinking might follow! That said, I will return to report more soon, in spite of the L.A. smog my allergies are swimming in... Labels: 3D, CGI, Disney, events, festivals, Los Angeles, Pixar, SIGGRAPH August 13, 2008
 Gallery Nucleus in Los Angeles will be hosting The Great Great Grand Show, beginning August 16th and continuing until September 1st. Saturday's opening reception runs from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., and you're encouraged to show up in historical garb if you have it (ninjas and pirates welcome). Two of the artists exhibiting are Scott Campbell and Graham Annable, both Hickee comics anthology contributors. Scott C has also contributed work to I Am 8-Bit and Totoro Forest Project, and Graham's known for his comic foray, Grickle, whose misadventures continue in animated form. He is also a story artist on Coraline, Laika's much anticipated feature. Here's The Last Duet On Earth, a little future history until you get to see Graham's latest, From Whence Before Times, which debuts at the show. The show is rounded out by Flight regular Israel Sanchez, and Jon Klaasen, who animated the super-sweet Eye for Annai. Several of us fps-side are huge fans of this short. So if you're in LA on Saturday, you know where you need to be. Labels: comics, events, exhibitions, Los Angeles, shorts |
|
