David Gerstein and Cole Johnson found this delightfully primitive 1934 Japanese cartoon about a war in 1936(?). Clearly inspired by Hollywood cartoons of the era, one can read plenty into the fact that the brave Japanese warriors are doing battle with a “mickey mouse” army. Says Gerstein:

Maybe it’s a “Nutcracker Suite”-inspired thing? Dunno if the “Nutcracker” was known in Japan in the 1930s, and this uses pre-”Nutcracker” classical themes, but it does have a mouse kingdom trying to take over a toyland-like world. What’s great, though, is that the mice are obvious Mickey clones, and at about 1:45 a cat lead briefly mutates into Felix. The music over the main and end titles sounds like it belongs with a 1930 Terrytoon or Van Beuren, doesn’t it?

If anyone can translate the title or tell us more about the film’s plot, we are eager to learn.

Heads up, East-coasters! Several worthwhile anime screenings are scheduled for later this month.

The Japan Society, in New York, presents Dawn of Japanese Animation from February 13th through the 16th. Digital Meme will coordinate the screening of 38 animated films culled from Japanese Anime Classic Collection, a DVD anthology released last year. It will be the first time ever such a large number of prewar Japanese animated films is shown in the US. Each screening will be accompanying with a live benshi narration by Ms. Midori Sawato. More details here.

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The Japan Information and Culture Center in association with the DC Anime Club will be presenting the screening of two anime specials from Production IG: xxxholic (pictured above) and Tsubasa Chronicle on Thursday Febuary 28, 2008 at 6:30 pm. The screening will take place at the Japanese Embassy, at 1155 21st Street, NW, in Washington, DC.

Both Movies are based upon manga by Clamp, and both movies will be shown in Japanese with English Subtitles. This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and granted on a first come, first served basis. Reservations are required. RSVP to jiccrsvpwinter08-at-embjapan.org
For more information visit the Japanese Information and Culture Center website.

If you are anywhere—and I mean anywhere—in the DC area on February 15 and 16, then mark your calendars for the American premiere of Genius Party and the world premiere of Genius Party Beyond. These two new Japanese features are from Studio 4°C, the same production studio that has given us Mind Game and Tekkon Kinkreet. Each 90-minute film is a compilation of seven shorts, some from well-established directors, some from the young and up-and-coming.

The Washington DC screening, which is a part of the Japan! Culture + Hyper-Culture festival, will also include in-person appearances by three of the fourteen Genius Party directors: Shinichiro Watanabe, Koji Morimoto, and Mahiro Maeda.

To truly grasp the uniqueness of this undertaking, listen to Studio 4°C CEO Eiko Tanaka describe the idea for these features in this FPS magazine interview:

“Studio 4°C was born from the desires of the creators who longed to create what they really wanted to make. Creators and people generally cannot keep living without expressing themselves. [Genius Party] has to have this kind of energy with strong longing for self-expression. This was the only requirement and also the theme. It was of course clear to us that it is much easier to sell the product if all the short films have the same tone from a given particular theme. But we chose not to make the same theme or set particular conditions to the films. Instead, we decided to have the diversity of these films be the sales point.”

Which major feature production studio in the US would take the risk of producing not one, but two 90-minute compilations of anything-goes animated shorts? Which studio would be inspired enough to hand the reins to fourteen different directors and allow each to bring to the screen the stories they really want to tell, and then find a workable business model to distribute these films to the general public?

There are many promising shorts in the Genius Party packages including new works by Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game) and Koji Morimoto. This trailer for the first Genius Party offers a taste of what’s in store.

In the FPS interview noted above, Tanaka lays out one of the primary reasons why her studio, which she cofounded in 1986 with Koji Morimoto and Yoshiharu Sato, is such a consistent producer of excellent and challenging works of animated art:

“Another reason for Studio 4°C being successful might be that we are not a profit-seeking company. We have not tried to grow bigger, or to pursue profit, or to float the company on the stock market. We keep the number of our management and controller staff to a minimum to save the budget for the production of the film. Our policy has been that the film is made by the creators, but not by the capital. In spite of our intention, the studio has expanded, had more employees, and the number of film productions has increased. Naturally there are issues with managing larger production budgets. But we are confident in cost controlling and the artists are also fully aware of the deadlines and the limitations of the budget. I believe that we have reached where we are now because we have been producing the best possible pieces within a budget.”

One of the Genius Party shorts that I’m most looking forward to is Wanwa, the Puppy directed by Shinya Ohira. MangaAnimation.net recently offered scans of a magazine article featuring artwork from the short. The images in this article are a tantalizing mix of stylistic experimentation and individualistic character animation; its free-spiritedness reminds of the very best of the works by John and Faith Hubley, a comparison that can’t be made often nowadays. As anime critic Ben Ettinger writes, “it’s truly stunning stuff that has little to do with anime and everything to do with great animated art.” Ettinger’s blog AniPages Daily offers some explanation of the short’s technique and his thoughts about the short’s potential:

“Ohira is creating the backgrounds himself in addition to doing all the animation. He’s not only drawing but also gluing origami paper and string and other assorted materials directly onto the paper to create a very rich and beautiful texture. Sections of animation are even being animated using crayons. The crayoned keys will be inbetweened in a conventional manner, however, and not with crayons. The film will be made using many of the same materials that might be littered around the house of some pint-sized Picasso, in other words, extending the thematic underpinning to the materials used to make the film. I can only say that each of the individual images he has created are of stunning beauty and seem like they would function just as well framed on a wall as photographed in sequence.

A few images from Wanwa the Puppy:

LINKS
Genius Party [official website]
Studio 4°C [official website]
Info/ticket page for DC screening on Feb. 15-16
Stills from the Genius Party shorts on Catsuka.com

Last August Jerry wrote about one of the newest animation fads sweeping through Japan: a crude, borderline inept, series of animated pieces about the Bottom-Biting Bug. This article in Pingmag reveals that the creators are the husband-and-wife team UrumaDelvi. They are also responsible for the animated short A Long Day of Mr. Calpaccio, an entertaining little film that made the festival rounds a couple years back. In the Pingmag piece, the husband half of the team, Uruma, discusses the genesis of the Bottom-Biting Bug and speculates about why it has caught on with the Japanese public. A short clip of the animation is below, but if you really want to torture yourself, try watching this ten-minute spectacle.

Isn’t it ironic that the big New York Anime Festival, occurring next weekend at the Javitz Center, begins on Pearl Harbor Day (12/7)?

It’s a huge show, but the highlight for old fogeys like me is the appearence of the original U.S. dub voices for Speed Racer, Trixie, Spritle and Chim Chim - Peter Fernandez and Corrine Orr. This is the inaugural festival and it’s shaping up to be the biggest anime event in North America. For more information, go to the festival website.

(Thanks, Derek Tague)

My friend Ben Applegate is working for Digital Manga, a Japanese comics publisher that owns a tour outfit called Pop Japan Travel. They do tours of Japan for fans of anime, manga and other weird and obscure subcultures. It all sounds pretty cool to me - I wish I had the time to go on one of these tours myself. The least I can do is give him a plug (and maybe they’ll give me a press discount - hint, hint).

Ben writes:

“We’re doing a tour in January and February of Tokyo and the Sapporo Snow Festival and we’ve added some extremely cool stuff to it: a sponsorship by Japanese anime mag publisher Gakken, a visit to Studio Pierrot (which animates Naruto, Bleach, pretty much every third action anime ever seen on Toonami), and a meeting with Hideyuki Kikuchi, a great Japanese horror writer whose best-known works are Wicked City and Vampire Hunter D.”

Tickets for this tour, known as the Cold Steel Tour, are on sale only until Dec. 15. The group departs Monday, January 28 and returns Wednesday, February 6. Other activities on the itinerary include a trip to the Ghibli Museum, a ride on a water ferry designed by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato), and tours of traditional Japanese sights and modern Tokyo. The tour costs $2,500 plus a $200 fuel surcharge, and it includes round-trip airfare from Los Angeles to Tokyo, full hotel accommodations, bilingual guides every step of the way, all transportation and entry fees, and a customized guide book with maps, culture notes and a language primer designed for anime fans.

For complete itineraries and reservations, see www.popjapantravel.com!

From Thursday’s Wall Street Journal:

Score one for the nerds! Shares of Japanese companies involved in the production of animated films and comic books soared in Tokyo Wednesday amid speculation that Taro Aso, secretary-general of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party — and a well-known comic-book fan — may be the nation’s next prime minister. Following Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s surprise resignation, shares linked to hobbies associated with “otaku,” or nerds, jumped.

In May, while serving as Japan’s foreign minister, Mr. Aso unveiled plans to establish the International Manga Award to recognize foreign cartoonists. When the winners were announced in July, Mr. Aso told Kyodo News, “It is my hope that manga, through these works, will act as a bridge to the world.” Mr. Aso’s official Web site contains an ode to “manga” published in August that praises the genre for lifting Japan’s standing on the international stage and urges his countrymen to be proud of this success.

You can’t make stuff like this up. The Japanese Butt Biting Bug is the latest fad from that wacky island in the Pacific.

(Thanks Eric Graf)