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ANYTIME YOU SEE THAT youāre getting a new festival entry from Masaaki Yuasa, you feel a tinge of excitement, but when you scroll down the list and see two feature films submitted by the very same man, well, thatās just orgasmic.
Already a cult figure in the animation scene, Yuasa added to that reputation in 2017 by releasing two stunning, contrasting and widely acclaimed animated features: Lu Over the Wallāabout a displaced young boy who befriendsāto the disenchantment of local villagersāa local mermaid; Night is Short, Walk on Girl is set during a seemingly endless evening of insane alcohol consumption in Kyoto. A young university student, Senpai (who some might recognize from the 2010 Yuasa-directed TV series, Tatami Express), decides to confess love for Otome. During the strange evening, littered with eccentric characters, Senpai decides to create some āchanceā encounters to win over the woman.
Both films were immediate successes with Lu Over the Wall grabbing the Cristal for Best Feature Film at the 2017 Annecy International Animation Festival. Night is Short, Walk on Girl then took home the Grand Prize for Animated Feature at the 2017 Ottawa International Animation Festival.
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Like a fusion of Tex Avery, Dali and evenāseriouslyāDanish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, Yuasaās work (which includes short films, TV series along with the cult favourite feature, Mindgame) bursts with visual energy, rapid fire colour patterns, sudden shifts in character design, elastic character movements. Youāre never sure where you are in this kaleidoscopic dance dreamscapes. Yuasaās work for film and TV, no matter the genre is consistently imaginative, magical and original. He seems to get animation. There are no rules in animation. You are not bound by laws of physics. Yet, so many animation artists canāt seem to grasp that, perhaps fearful of the freedom. Yuasa shows no such fear as he gives us worlds and people that are stylized, exaggerated, distorted and impossible. Yet his works tell us more truths about individuals, relationships and society than so many of the mainstream animation frauds hell bent on regurgitating the same endless tropes and types no matter how tired, tedious and predictable. These counterfeits think theyāre telling us great stories about ourselves when really their breaths are as stale and staid as the corporate spaces that exhaled them.
Yuasaās work lets the audience breath. There are mysteries unexplained, left for us to ponder, to make sense of, or to walk away from. Every episode, say, of the extraordinary series, Tatami Express, is a standalone work of art that rivals any indie animation short. In it, he takes a fairly common theme of feckless post-secondary youth on campus and turns it into an utterly surreal, time shifting portrait of youth, identity, community and society. In fact, throughout all of Yuasaās work (whether itās the bizarre Romeo and Juliet meets flesh eating monsters series, Kemonozume, 2006 or Ping Pong, 2014), we encounter anxious, feckless people sifting through life in search of a worthy purpose or at the very least a meaningful connection. It wouldnāt be stretching it to say that the many characters who populate Yuasaās universe wouldnāt be out of place in the philosophical books of Kierkegaard, who, in a different medium and manner, wrote in shifting tones, voices, names and styles (much like Yuasaās work makes frequent shifts in design and style) as he attempted to sort out the question of how does one live.
āI love both Tex Avery and Dali,ā admits Yuasa.
Iāve been influenced by a lot of artists I get inspired with a lot of things I see, hear, smell, and touch in everyday life. I believe whole things inspiring me could be tuned into anime. Actually, the structure of tunes can be a model of storyboards when working on them. I often derive inspiration even from really modest visuals; a commercial, a cut from a movie, a movement from an anime as well as nameless flowers and grasses blooming on the road, clouds, stars, and moons in the sky. Iām also inspired with what Iām currently interested in and feeling. My humble wish for creating anime is to have common images, conversations, and scenes sublimed into art works.
In terms of his stylistic choices, mixed-techniques and wide palate of colours, Yuasa had to be careful
not to get inclined to dark colours too much as both the movies are full of shaded and night scenes. I turned to high-contrasted colours while using neutral colours as well so that you sense freshness and vividness on the whole. I believe that things should be pleasant in principle and that is why shots get fresh and vivid in terms of colour design when characters have a sense of pleasure in the story.
Now, getting one animation feature out and about is an accomplishment in itself, but to release two outstandingāand refreshingāfeatures takes some kind of special talent. Of course, Yuasa had no idea heād be undertaking two features at once. āIt was when I was making Lu Over the Wall,ā he says,
that I got the green light to start the Night is Short project. I had to hurry and went into the pre-production phase while still making Lu because we hired freelance animators when we began with the production and we had to shift them to Night is Short before they would say goodbye to us.
While I wondered how difficult it must be to shuttle back and forth between two very different projects, Yuasa says that their differences actually made it easier. āThey were quite different in visual style,ā he adds. āAnd that saved me from confusing their different movement styles of animation.ā
Although widely different in terms of tone, style and intended audience, both films are ultimately about love, kindness and acceptanceāthemes that we all need to be reminded of in this somewhat erratic time of intolerance. āLu Over the Wall is a story about a mermaid who just wishes to make good friends with human beings,ā adds Yuasa.
Itās about overcoming an irrational sense of discrimination and prejudice, about understanding and accepting alien creatures. Similarly, Night is Short is a fable about how youāll only be happy when you wish for someoneās happiness and youāll be unhappy when you just wish for your own happiness. Both movies depict how coming out of your shell could make things better. I love stories about opening up your heart.
Despite having only one moderately successfulāMind Game was a critical success but it was a box office failure. So much so that very few producers would even touch Yuasa after thatāfeature film experience Yuasa says that he rarely stresses out when heās creating. In fact, his biggest stress is finding support:
I always enjoy making films but I must confess that Iād like to find more supporters and sympathizers and to make a commercial success. I really want to catch up with what people really want, but it is rather tough for me to try to achieve that.
Lu Over the Wall has all the potential to find a massive audience internationally. Itās a gentle, soulful film that has many hallmarks of a successful family feature, but that is much more inventive in terms of animation, story, character and technique. Unfortunately, itās unlikely the film will make a big dent in the North American market. āOrthodox narratives attract more moviegoers,ā says Yuasa. āInnovative ones might not necessarily appeal to them. But I always dream of something that is both innovative and appealing to people.ā
Having worked in some many mediums, I wondered if Yuasa has a preference or if each offers different elements to an artist:
I like to make features because you can see vividly how the audience sees your efforts, but Iām also enjoying making TV shows because they allow you to develop stories longer and in more detail. Also it is pretty enjoyable to make a short piece once in a while because you can make elaborately crafted ones.
More recently, Yuasa completed the series Devilman Crybaby (2018). āThereās lots of sex and violence. I believe the story will make audiences cry, and is highly unsuitable for children because it is unexpectedly shocking.ā
Iād expect no less from this master of delicious and sorely needed unpredictability.
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If youāre going to try, go all the way. otherwise, donāt even start.
āCharles Bukowski, āRoll The Diceā
So ā¦ early in the OIAF 18 pre-selection process Iām skimming through the submission database and see an endless list of films (26 to be precise) by the same guy. Now, in my ā¦ letās see ā¦ itās 27 years since I started at the OIAF, thatās a sure sign, as harsh as it sounds, of easy rejections. Anytime you get more than maybe 2ā3 films from one person, you can often assume theyāre probably not so good.
Fortunately, curatorial decisions are not based on assumptions.
It turns out that there wasnāt a dud among this gaggle of submissions that came courtesy of American animator, John Morena (who is self-taught and has worked in New York since 2000 doing an assortment of commissioned work including music videos, network promos, commercials and visual effects). Oh and it turns out that these 26 submissions were a mere pittance, as he actually made 52 films (yes, one for every week) in 2017.
Whatās even more impressive about Morenaās parade of films is the diversity of tone, technique and subject matter of the films. Some films (e.g. Untitled, Mini-Jazz, String of Sound and the marvellous Dreams I Donāt Remember) serve up abstract, impressionistic and stream of conscious imagery, while others touch upon prevalent social issues (e.g. Dicks, a hilarious fusion of an old educational film about the function of the penis replaced with images of guns, Slurred, a listing of theāsadly, seemingly endless slur words used against women, and Flea Circus, which attempts to put our oh-so-serious daily problems into a universal context).
The list of techniques is even more impressive as Morena makes use of flashlights, scanner, string, sound collage, cut out, ink, pencil, photocopies, polaroids, pixilation ā¦ just to name a few.
Intrigued and mystified, I sought Morena out and asked him what just what motivated this madness. āFear. Frustration,ā replied Morena.
I originally got into animation so I could make my own films. That was back in 2000. By mid-2016, I had a come-to-Jesus moment that I was getting old and had no films of my own under my belt. I had tried several times to make a film the traditional way but nothing ever truly got off the ground. I had a big time itch to make something.
Years earlier, Morena, who was getting fed up with the financially necessary but often mindless work of commercial animation, came up with the idea to do a weekly challenge that he called Area 52. āOriginally,ā he says, āit was to be 52 experimental testsāone per week for a yearāthat I could use as a testing ground to discover new techniques that would then inform my regular client work.ā
Although Morena had no set rules in place when he began the experiments, because he was releasing them on Instagram he was forced to keep them under one minute. āItās one of the main reasons why I chose Instagram as the platform,ā adds Morena.
It made it so that I could actually get films done. A maximum of 60 seconds a week seemed more than doable if I was willing to sacrifice. Plus, platforms like Vimeo and YouTube are the filmmaking equivalent to the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Everyone is crowded in the same place shouting for attention.
If there is a one commonality, aside from length, itās the minimal use of dialogue. āOne of my self-imposed limitations,ā adds Morena, āwas to make films that dissolve language boundaries. I used language and words sparingly, if at all.ā
Given the renegade spirit of Area 52, itās no surprise that Morena eschewed any exterior funding and paid for everything out of his own pocket. āI made sure to be really Resourceful,ā he says. āThe most expensive film I made cost me $110. I donāt see a need to spend thousands of dollars on a film that might just end up on Vimeo, be cool for a week, then fade into oblivion.ā
Incredibly, especially given Annecyās proclivity towards classical narrative films, the festival took 7 of Morenaās submissions. He later learned that Anima Mundi (Brazil) took 10 and that the Hiroshima festival took a few (Ottawa has yet to announced their selection). āI was surprised that any festival wanted t...
