A long time ago, while conjuring up some superbly detailed artwork, my friend intimated that God resided in the details.
Not being Christian per se, and without a religious
millimetre illuminating anywhere on my body, I didn’t have a clue what
this guy was on about, or which dippy deity he referred to. The only
thing similar I’d heard was that Old Nick (you know, the Devil) was in
those same details.
Which rendered me somewhat confused.
That is, I until around 16 years ago — when I first watched Mamoru Oshii’s enthralling anime feature Ghost in the Shell (1995).
While the original manga pages — titled Kōkaku Kidōtai in Japanese, written and illustrated by Shirow Masamune — pushed quirky as much as cerebral, light-hearted and a trifle perverted, this animated movie interpretation by Oshii, of Patlabor fame, was dark, a tad more intelligent, and the most innovative cyberpunk romp since Akira (1988).
It also led to an obvious Wachowski siblings’ homage with The Matrix in 1999.
Truth is, Ghost in the Shell knocked off my cotton socks to
hammer home the studio behind the film — Production I.G — as my
favourite Japanese anime company. It’s a lofty perch that I.G retains
nearly two decades later.
Here’s where I get to lob in some silly puns relating to the
introductory ‘theme’: God knows I.G deserves it, and by Heaven above
they go for the jugular of those little details, glean ‘em, tweak ‘em,
and quite often leave you gob-smacked, gasping for more with each
successive experiment in style, form and technology. Halle-bloody-lujah.
To start with, there’s so much damned depth to I.G productions.
Not just the background animation or those aforementioned little
details; it goes beyond the superlative character designs, the tight
direction and slick production values; the depth lingers somewhere
beyond this production company’s penchant for risk-taking along with
clever marketing panache.
They’ve got to be doing something right to have established
themselves at the forefront of the severely stiff competition that is
the Japanese animation industry, and further to have maintained that
position.
Likely this has to do with the talent involved at the studio.
Production I.G's first 3D-CGI feature film Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror has received a slew of recognition thus far as Animation of the Year at the Japan Academy Prizes, Jury Recommended Work in the Animation Division of the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival (2009), the Nippon Cinema Award at the Nippon Connection Film Festival (Germany), the Visual Technology Award for the animation section of the 9th annual Video Technology Awards, the Digital Content Grand Prix 2010 - DCAJ Chairman Prize, Feature Films Competition Special Jury Prize at SICAF 2010 (South Korea), the Jury Special Mention at Fantasia 2010 (Canada), Jury First Mention at Expotoons 2010 (Argentina), and Jury's Special Mention at the 18th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film 2011 (Germany).
Now add the Gold Kite for the Best Feature Animation Film for Young People and the Signis Argentina Jury Special Mention at the 10th annual International Film Festival "Nueva Mirada" for Children and Youth, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from September 1 to 7, 2011.
Otherwise known here in Japan as Hottarake no Shima - Haruka to Maho no Kagami (ホッタラケの島 〜遥と魔法の鏡〜), you can check out the official website here.
Great news for I.G, the people behind the Ghost in the Shell franchise.
The animation direction is by none other than Naoyoshi Shiotani (the director of the South Korean SICAF 2008 Grand Prize-winning Tokyo Marble Chocolate) and it's directed by Shinsuke Sato, the writer/director of Princess Blade (2001).
To fully appreciate the controlled, irreverent madness here you'll need to brush up on your basic knowledge of Inari shrines - plus a re-reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and re-screenings of Spirited Away, Toy Story, The Empire Strikes Back and the Rankin/Bass-produced 1964 stop motion version of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Right before it made its debut at the 20th Tokyo International Film Festival 3 years ago, Tokyo Marble Chocolatewhipped up a wee bit of a local cinematic feeding frenzy and sold out all seats to the show within one day. I know, 'cos I missed out on that screening.
It's no surprise, really, when you take into account the caliber of talent and the subtle ingenuity behind this two-part animated sensory banquet masquerading as a contemporary Japanese love story.
While that might sound kind'a sappy or dangerously teary, think again - you can tuck away the Kleenex. EMO territory this waffling blog ne'er will touch or at least never ever actually admit to.
Besides, the director is Naoyoshi Shiotani, who previously worked on Blood+ and did the key animation for The Prince of Tennis.
Even more impressive is that fact that the anime production studio behind the experiment is Production I.G, famously responsible for the animated sequences in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, and Mamoru Oshii's superlative Ghost in the Shell movies.
Scripted into an appropriately love-lorn recipe by Masaya Ozaki, Tokyo Marble Chocolate's pre-baked inspiration was cooked up by two resident BMG Japan musicians (Japanese rapper and hip hop artist SEAMO, a.k.a. Naoki Takada, and J-Pop duo Sukima Switch, lesser known as Takuya Ohashi and Shintaro Tokita), and the brew put together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of BMG – just after I.G had celebrated its own double-decade.
“It's a bittersweet love story,” Shiotani told me back when he'd just made the 2-part feature, prior to winning the award.
At that time I was involved in the English translation of the subtitles with Production I.G, but these do not grace the Japanese DVD release of Tokyo Marble Chocolate - unfortunately there're no English subs on same, and the depressing news is I'm one of the few with a DVD-R of the version that was screened - with the finished English subtitles - at SICAF.
The story, a deceptively simple one at that, revolves around two protagonists named Yudai and Chizuru who are involved in one very bizarre love triangle.
“It's one story told twice, meaning that you see the events from Yudai's perspective, and you can follow the very same story seen from Chizuru's eyes in the second chapter. Despite the fact that the two characters are standing in the same place at the same time, what they see and what they feel turns to be quite different. I wanted to show all that.”
This is set to be the couple's first Christmas together, yet the duo end up spending it stressfully apart - thanks in no small part to a hyperactive miniature donkey wearing a nappy (or diapers, as the Yanks call 'em).
“It's probably the most funny and absurd creature appearing in the movie," Shiotani admitted. And he's absolutely right – it's brilliant.
I like Shiotani. When I was doing a story on the Japanese all-consuming fad for hanami(cherry blossom viewing) parties a few years back, he was the most down to earth and amusing respondent.
In March or April, depending on when precisely the nation's cherry blossoms (sakura) decide to unfurl, millions of people unfurl their own blankets in crammed public spaces, ostensibly there to watch the delicate, snow-like shower of flowers. Yeah, right. Mostly they want to catch up with friends, impress the boss, drink vast quantities of sake, carouse, get drunk, sing, and be raucous in exceptionally un-Japanese ways.
These parties often stretch from daytime into the night (when the name is changed to yozakura), and lanterns hung up to drink by and warble prolific.
“We Japanese enjoy the different feelings and peculiarities of each and every season,” Shiotani deadpanned.
“In spring, we have fun under full-blossomed cherry trees, eating and drinking and romping around with our friends. And the sake you drink, surrounded by pink cherry petals dancing in the air, is somehow tastier than usual. In Japanese, we have even coined the word, hanamizake – which refers to the sake you sip under the cherry trees. Then, of course, you need to be careful not to quaff too much booze...”
That opening paragraph has left me a little breathless (my kingdom for a stray full stop), so here's where I pass on the baton.
"There’s nothing in animation that can be described as ‘easy’. Directing, drawing, design... These are very different roles that require different skills; therefore I could hardly establish which one is the most challenging," Shiotani told me in a recent interview we undertook, to be published in Impact mag over in the UK in a couple of months' time.
"However, I must admit that I’m probably still uncomfortable with character designing. Once Ishikawa-san [Production I.G’s president and CEO Mitsuhisa Ishikawa] told me that the human characters I design are too unique, and they’d fit only in an art movie."
Shiotani's exact involvement in Oblivion Island (ホッタラケの島 ～遥と魔法の鏡～) is not all that clear - he's been listed alternatively as unit director, animation director and character designer of the stuffed toy sheep character Cotton – so what other input exactly did he have in this movie?
"My role can be described as ‘animation director’," he suggests.
"Shinsuke Sato, the director of this movie, has come from live action film making, so my role was to adapt and expand his ideas into the animation medium. I joined the production when the script was almost completed, so the first step was to share with Sato-san our mutual vision.
"A movie director may not necessarily be present in the studio all the time, so I also had the role to supervise the animation team. Sato-san and I had long brainstorming sessions in order to be sure that I would proceed in the direction he envisioned, and that he agreed on what I had in mind; we exchanged ideas on everything – like how to make the story more gripping and compelling? How should the characters look? What should the island be like? And so on.
"I added most of the action scenes you see in the second half of the movie, but I won’t list them here, as I don’t want to spoil it for people who haven’t seen the film. I can only say that what Cotton does in the second half of the movie was not in the original script! Most of all I convinced Sato-san to add the scene when Haruka and Teo watch the memories inside the mirror, and when I saw the final result I was glad I’d been so persistent.
"I also made rough concept designs for the island, as I wanted it to fit with the story concept, and I designed Cotton – the younger Haruka’s toy stuffed animal. After all these modifications I drew the storyboard, a tool that can be described as the movie blueprint, and from there I had meetings with each section of the crew. We decided the lighting and camera angle for each scene, how the characters were supposed to move, the visual effects, the colours, and so on.
"But apart from being the supervisor, I also had a very important job to do: since the island’s conceptual design was fundamental to the project, I was determined to keep the same style and atmosphere in each scene. This, however, ended up with me drawing the background art boards – the reference drawings used by the background artists – for about 1000 scenes. When everybody in the studio left I was still at my desk drawing, sometimes till the next morning... So, you see, I did a wide variety of things for this movie."
Shiotani shrugs.
Cotton himself is a super-cute soft toy that cannot only do song-and-dance numbers, but can ride to the rescue of our heroine even after being torn in half. What's the inspiration behind his concept and character?
"Cotton’s the stuffed animal everybody had when he or she was a kid. I wanted everyone in the audience to relate with and overlap his/her personal childhood memories the very instant Cotton appears on screen. His role in the movie is the answer to the question: if a toy could be given the opportunity to move and talk, what would he say?
"He’s a neglected childhood treasure who has the chance to meet up again with his owner, the very person that left him lying around and eventually forgot him. Within the context of the movie’s main themes, Cotton is one of the most emblematic characters," the character designer suggests.
"I wanted him to be cute in his appearance and movements, so I went through a process of trial and error – and I concluded that he would look cuter if I did not change his facial expression. The risk was to have a very creepy doll, so I came up with the idea of using buttons for the eyes."
Going back for a moment to Tokyo Marble Chocolate (東京マーブルチョコレート), the movie was awarded the Grand Prize in the feature film category at the 12th annual Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (SICAF) in 2008.
I worked with Francesco Prandoni from Production I.G on the English subtitles for T.M.C., and two years later I'm still curious as to where Shiotani got the inspired idea of the manic mini donkey-in-a-nappy...
"I must confess that I’m particularly happy with the success of this little, devilish character because, to tell the truth, when I first presented ‘him’ to the other staff I got a mixed reception, both regarding his look and the way he moved," remembers the director.
"The idea for the mini donkey comes from a fashion magazine I had at the time; there was this picture of a model walking in the park of a big city... with a donkey. The donkey had this misty look in his eyes that somehow struck my imagination, so everything started from that photo. I re-sized the donkey to make him a pet that you could keep at home, and then added the diaper while thinking about those pet owners who force animals living in big cities to wear baby-like garments."
He laughed at that point.
"The diaper also helped me with giving him a stronger personality and more colour, as donkeys are just grey and I wanted a fairy-like creature. At a first look, you don’t know whether you should laugh at or be scared of this mischievous beast! But he’s a character you learn to understand and appreciate once you spend time with him."
The rest of this lengthy chat will feature in Impact magazine shortly.
