Major Post 09 – Beastars

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Last month in October, an new anime series released in Japan called Beastars. I haven’t watched the newest episodes yet and I don’t want to spoil myself too much but basically the story is about a wolf in school life.

The settings of the story : Animals replaced humans. Animals walked on two legs and behave like humans. The beginning of the series is happened at school so the students are all kinds of animals from giraffes to mice, lions to foxes, wearing in uniforms. The world has a strict rule of no hunting. The world has developed new food for carnivores so they won’t starve. Even though there is a rule, in between predators and preys, bias still stands.

At the beginning of series, an accident happened, a herbivore got killed by a carnivore. Preys are all afraid and have arguments with the other predator students. The student who got killed was a member of drama club. They are going to perform live at school very soon. They continued to practice under this pressured atmosphere.

I do not want to spoil myself so this is where I stopped and what I knew so far. The series is still going on, it is a pretty interesting story plot.
Its opening is made with a very unique style that is not seen very much in other anime openings : stop-motion.
I am pretty sure this is stop-motion but there were parts of liquid flowing down, it looked very smooth. I wonder if it is made with resin or some sorts of transparent glue? Or was this not a stop-motion at all, or traditional stop-motion mixed with CGI.
( The video ended with a sharp twist, I think Professor Jake, you will like it xD. )

Major Blog Post 15 – Japanese animation “Naruto”

Posted on by Wendy Kong

As I mentioned before, Naruto is my favourite Japanese animation ever. I watched it when I was 14, it is the first time that I watched an anime. I fell in love with the story and characters of Naruto right away.

Naruto is a Japanese manga series illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto which published in 1997. It presents the story of Uzumaki Naruto, a teenage ninja dreaming to be the leader of his village, Hokage one day. He has a pretty sad childhood because he grew up without his parent and everyone in his village is avoid him there is a monster insider his body. It is also the reason why he want to be Hokage, he longs for friends and recognition from his people. No matter how many obstacles he had faced, he never gives up. At last, his hard work paid off. At the same time, Naruto’s best friend who is also his opponent, Uchiha Sasuke has a bad childhood memory as well because his beloved older brother killed every people in his family including their parents. He tried so hard to become stronger so he can have his revenge on his older brother. Naruto and Sasuke shared the same sadness, but they picked a different path. Even though Sasuke followed the villain because he is blinded by hatred, Naruto never give up on him.

The story of Naruto is exciting as there are lots of fighting scenes. It also reflects the Japanese culture of Ninja. It is positive because it shows how people work hard on their dreams and never give up. It is touching and heart-melted as it shows how people values their relationships or bonding with each others. It had a huge influence on me when I was a teenager. I think it helps me to be a better person because I learned so many valuable lessons from Naruto. To be honest, some of the story plots of Naruto are just so touching that I used to cry at nights when I was watching. I introduced it to my roommates whose bed was next to me. At night, we just watch Naruto separately (as we were in different episode) but we cried at the same time…I love every single characters in Naruto including the villains. In Naruto, most of the villains had been through their own pain and sorrow which I feel sad for them too.

I really recommend everyone to watch Naruto if you haven’t watch it. It is the No.1 anime in my heart for all time.❤️❤️(I watched the 700 episodes for 5 time plus the manga series🙈🙈)

naruto memes - Never Pause Wote Wat Naruto
ireland - I Don'T Always Die, But Wheni Do \ I Don'T qurkmeme.com

Wendy Kong

Major Post 15: Annie May

Posted on by Sammy Liu

Today’s highlight is Osamu Tezuka – “The God of Manga” who created Astroy Boy and Black Jack. Tezuka sees animation and manga as a form of art to convey messages, and without holding back he is open to explore serious and mature themes in his animation – a noticeable difference between Western and Asian Animation.
Following the timeline, 1960s Japanese animation was the rising of the television era. It was a large contributing factor for mass animation, and was distributed out towards different countries.
In 1970s, sports-orientated production became the new hype. After the sports-frenzy, cinematic elements became a prominent factor. They sought to convince audiences how relatable the main character actually is, creating some sort of emotional connection, which attracts many viewers.

In 1973, Tezuka Production was founded. Most of his animations reflected his values which includes; peace, love for nature and social participation.
He questions the function of story-telling in an animation, seen especially in Jumping (1984) which portrays a a rather uncanny theme, despite its fun and outgoing impression. We see everything in the unknown character’s point of view – with no sign or clue of who this character is, until at the very end, we hear a relieved sigh that slightly reveals a part of the character, (I feel like its the audience themselves as they echo their sigh).

Another big influencer was The Animator’s Club in the 1960s, founded by the first three generation of japanese independent animation artist: Yoji Kuri, Ryohei Yanagihara and Hiroshi Manabe. They explored styles and found inspiration in “Saul Bass” and Norman McClaren films.
Yoji Kuri was very experimental in surreal composition, and distracting audio in his works. He conveyed mature-themes through animation – for example “AI”(1965); exploring the relationship between men and women, and more specifically, women’s desire for men and subtly suggests the manipulation of women over men. This theme was repeated in his work “Human Zoo”, in which his funky characters (male and female in a cage) portrayed consistently how men was the animal – the female was the zoo tamer.

Moving back to a more linear storytelling format, we looked at Tadahito Mochinaga and Kihachiro Kawamoto, who were both Japanese pioneers of puppet-animation, . Michinaga had also large influence in Chinese Animation – he had good friendship with the Chinese animators, as he worked in Xinjing, China in 1945.
We also briefly looked at large influencers like Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira [1989]) and Hayao Miyazaki, and Satoshi Kon who continues to inspire many young future generations.

Osamu Tesuka: Jumping (1987)
Broken don film
Yoji Kuri: Ironic storytelling – AOS (1964), AI (1965)
TadahitoMochinaga
Kihachiro Kawamoto: coffee break
Katsuhiro Otomo: Akira, Memories (1995)
Hayao Miyazaki
Satoshi Kon
Koji Yama – Mt.Head

Major Blog Post 12- Japanese Animation and Hunter x Hunter

Posted on by Wendy Kong

Japanese anime dominates the animation in Asia. I grew up with Doraemon, Keroro, they gave me a lot of laughter after school every day. I remember I was sad when one of the cast pasts away, I felt like it is never going to be the same, I never watched it since then. When I got older, I started watching a few anime including Naruto, One piece, Dragon Ball and Hunter x Hunter..etc. My favourite anime is Naruto for sure but I would like to talk about Hunter x Hunter because it is a good show but less people may saw it.

Hunter x Hunter started as a manga series and produced in animation form in 2011. In fact, many Japanese animation is created based on a manga. It is very inspiring that it’s about a kid, Gon chases his father, who abandoned Gon to his friend’s household and pursued his own dream. While he was going after his father, he met some friends who have great impact to his life. At the same time, the anime talks about their friendships a lot, including conflicts, respect, the one I liked most is “friends always get your back”. I felt like all them can relate to myself in reality, they also let me know how to be a better friend. My favorite character is Killua, he is super cool but he was messed up because of his family. I liked the part that he tries to overcome the adversity for keeping the friendship with Gon. The part I like most was Killua rescued his brother, who is also messed up because of the family. This anime is highly recommended!

Image result for hunter x hunter
Image result for naruto good

Wendy Kong

Major Post 13: Tezuka Osamu

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

This class we continued to learn about the history of Japanese animation and the origins of some of the common tropes of the genre. One man I wanted to focus on is Tezuka Osamu, who is often referred to as the Father, God, and Emperor of both manga and anime. Outside of his groundbreaking works such as Tetsuwan ATOM (Astro Boy) Hi no Tori (Phoenix), and my personal favorite Black Jack. I will link the Black Jack movie below since it is a very interesting premise with very unique characters.

However, outside of the fact his work literally leads to the creation of the world of anime we know today he was a very fascinating man. He decided to purse a medical degree after almost losing both of his arms to an infection as a teenager. He was admitted to the medical school of Osaka University at the age of 17 due to the shortage of doctors in Japan at the time.  Despite being qualified to practice medicine and successfully defended his doctoral thesis in 1961, Tezuka was more inclined to the art work.

LeAnn Schmitt

 

 

Major Post 12: Seitaro Kitayama

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Today we began our two part lecture where we learn about about Japanese Animation Around 1914, American and European comic books got introduced to Japan. This brief introduction influenced the birth of the first professional Japanese animation film being made in 1917. The Japanese anime style originated with a simple and heavily stylized drawing.

There were many masters that influenced the creation of the type of anime we know today. One master I specifically want to focus on would be Seitaro Kitayama. He was one of the early Japanese animation masters. His work was ground breaking since it was the first technical examples of commercial production anime. His movie, Momotaro, was the first internationally acclaimed cartoon that was based after a folk tale.

Yoshiro Irie, a Japanese National Film Researcher hailed him as one of the fathers of anime. Several other movies he has been accredited with include, but are not limited to, Battle of a Monkey and A Crab and Urashima Taro. Since most of his, as well as many other original works from this time, are missing I will link the short clip of Urashima Taro.

LeAnn Schmitt