In today’s installment of “Animation WTF?”, I hereby submit this trailer for After School Midnighters (Hôkago middonaitâzu) by artist/animator Hitoshi Takekiyo. The official synopsis reads…

“The main character ‘Kynst Lijk’ is a human body model that stands in a science room of an elementary school. Kynst Lijk also reigns over the school after midnight. One day, when a naughty kindergarden trio accidentally meets him, his ordinary life changes. The scariest and craziest after midnight adventure begins…”

Around the same time we’ll be watching Brave, Ice Age: Continental Drift and ParaNorman, this film will be opening in Tokyo theaters:

Dark Hall Mansion, who produces those cool Peanuts Specials limited edition posters by Tom Whelan, are at it again. This time they’ve commissioned Belgium artist Laurent Durieux to create a set of retro posters for 60s anime robot super star Gigantor. Only 75 copies of Gigantor: The Lab and Gigantor: Tokyo Night (below) were produced. If interested, you better check the site before they sell out. Tetsujin 28-go never looked so good!

It’s not your grandfather’s Disney studio: this anime TV spot for their Tokyo Resort theme park shows up online the day after Glen Keane resigns. Sorta sums it all up, doesn’t it?

(Thanks, Chris Sobieniak)

Beautiful stuff from Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet, The Animatrix, etc.). This is for a new web promotional series called PES: Peace Eco Smile for Toyota Motor Corporation. It’s a romantic-comedy in animation about an alien called PES and a human named Kurumi. Do for Love, directed by Yuichiro Hayashi, has just gone online. It’s in Japanese and looks more like a trailer… but it’s delicious anime eye candy:

(via Anime News Network)

Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty opens today and Disney is quite excited about it. It’s the biggest US release of a Ghibli film (1200 screens), and the feature will be shown in selected theatres in Japanese with subtitles, as well as the more common English dub. The press reviews are looking good – The LA Times says the film is “imeccable and pure”; The Village Voice calls it “pure magic”.

As longtime fan, follower and one-time distributor of Ghibli films allow me to add my two-cents and say that Arrietty is one my personal favorites from the Ghibli factory. It’s a gentle film, a beautiful film and, yes, it may have the most accessible story for Western audiences to grasp. It should be, as it is a relatively faifthful adaptation of Mary Norton’s 1952 book, The Borrowers. Who knew this would fit so perfect into the Miyazaki canon?

The comments on this post are open only to those who have seen the film and wish to share their opinion of it. If you haven’t seen it yet, I urge you to go see it this weekend – and tell us what you think.

Heads up fans of NBC’s Community. Tonight’s episode has a Retro Anime sequence created by our friends at Titmouse. The sequence has characters from Community animated in the style of 80’s anime (Robotech/Voltron/Bubblegum Crisis style designs). Enjoy these exclusive advance images below (UPDATE: full sequence is embeded above). The animation is directed by Grif Kimmins, animated by Parker Simmons, and Produced by Ben Kalina. Additional credits include: BG Layout & Paint: Lauren Airress & Khang Li, Composite by Mike Newton. Community airs at 8pm on NBC.

This has been on You Tube for several years – and it’s what most people who don’t watch anime think anime is. Not Safe For Work (or perhaps anyone under 16), it’s a compilation of the most violent scenes in Japanese animation set to the song Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat? by Herman’s Hermits. This is pretty sick, and I’m not sure why I’m posting it myself – except that I really like Herman’s Hermits.

Hayao Miyazaki, who has been known to often take a negative tone about the animation industry and society in general, recently tweeted that he gets the feeling that the Japanese animation industry is “done for,” and as evidence, cited the emergence of women animators. Here’s what he said in Japanese:

They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for. In our last hurrah we borrow from outside staff (i.e. outsource), but soon we won’t be able to do that forever.

The tweet would seem to indicate that he somehow correlates the end of Japanese animation with women employees, but that may not be the case. Blogger Anne Ishii asked him to clarify and he responded with a five-part tweet, that perhaps made things a little better but also confused the issue further with some tangent about women bus drivers. The ambiguity may partly be due to translation issues and partly because Twitter is an awful forum for having meaningful discussions of any kind.

Considering that Miyazaki is arguably the most successful feature animation director of all time, his comments are worthy of discussion, and I, for one, am curious to hear him explain further what he meant when he said, “I think it would be great to see a female animation director, but as far as Ghibli’s concerned, I can’t think of a single one for us.” To read Miyazaki’s entire commentary, go to the Hooded Utilitarian blog. If you’re familiar with Japanese society and have a different understanding of what he’s saying, please share your thoughts.

In an odd new twist for the Studio Ghibli film library, Daily Variety is reporting that U.S. distributor GKids (The Secret of Kells) has acquired the U.S. theatrical and non-theatrical rights to thirteen Ghibli films – including Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away. Disney will retain the home video rights. Gkids is planning to distribute a series of Miyazaki film festivals to theatres nationwide.

Disney must have felt they no longer needed the theatrical rights. It’ll interesting to see how GKids will fare with these films – that company is certainly emerging as a leader in distributing worthy international animated features.

Meanwhile, I just caught up with these incredible Lego sculptures by Iain Heath. Heath’s tribute to the master animator Hayao Miyazaki was unveiled last year at Seattle’s BrickCon where it received the “Big in Japan – Best Overall” award. Check out his entire Miyazakitopia on Flickr. These two (below) are my favorites:

Momo E No Tegami (A Letter To Momo) from director Hiroyuki Okiura (Jin-Roh) will open in Japan during next spring’s Golden Week holidays. Okiura spent seven years planning, writing, storyboarding, and directing the film. Masashi Ando (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) is overseeing the animation process. Among the animators on the team are Toshiyuki Inoue (Akira), Ei Inoue (The Cat Returns), Takeshi Honda (Evangelion 2:0), Tetsuya Nishio (Ghost In the Shell 2), and Hiroyuki Aoyama (Summer Wars). Hiroshi Ohno (Kiki’s Delivery Service) is serving as art director.

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Here’s a second, longer trailer from Studio Ghibli’s From Up On Poppy Hill, which opened in Japan on July 16th. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro (Tales from Earthsea).

(Thanks, Ben Price)

Here’s a strangely abrupt teaser trailer for Studio Ghibli’s newest film, From Up on Poppy Hill (Kokurikozaka kara). It’s based on the 1980 two-volume manga of the same name written by Tetsurō Sayama and drawn by Chizuru Takahashi. The film is a collaboration between Gorō Miyazaki (Tales from Earthsea), who directed it and his father, Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote the screenplay.

(Thanks, Ben Price)

While we in the U.S. await word of a domestic release of Studio Ghibli’s latest film, an international trailer of an English dub has made its way to the internet. This UK release has Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones, Atonement) in the lead. Disney’s later English dub will feature Carol Burnett, Amy Poehler, Will Arnett and Bridget Mendler (Lemonade Mouth) as Arrietty.