Nana 2

Last year’s hotly anticipated sequel, Nana 2 (Kentaro Otani, 2006) fell flat at the box office and was widely panned by critics and fans alike. These reasons explain why I kept putting off seeing it until very recently. To my relief, watching the film wasn’t a total waste of time. In fact, the film wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated.Let me start off by pointing out the flaws so that I can end...

Coconoe Jyot (ここのえジィョオト, 2001)

Here's a colourful animation, shot originally on 16mm, that I came across on Youtube. The animators, Kazunobu Akifusa (秋房和伸) and Asuka Hamano translate the title as '9 Jyot', but I am not sure what 'Jyot' means. Nevertheless, it makes for interesting viewing. Akifusa also does art installation and is a musici...

A Memory (オモヒデ, 2001)

A Memory (オモヒデ, 2001) is my favourite short film on Tomoyasu Murata's DVD of his early work entitled My Road (俺の路). It is much more polished than his first attempts at stop motion animation TUG TUG (1998) and An Introduction of Human Zoology (1998). These two early films have a film school feel about them with their inconsistent lighting and experimental use of editing between stop motion and cel...

The Old Crocodile (年をとった鰐, 2005)

Koji Yamamura's The Old Crocodile (年をとった鰐/Toshi wo totta Wani, 2005) has long been a troublesome film for me. I love the minimalistic pen and ink animation on yellowed paper aesthetic but it is my least favourite of Yamamura’s films from the perspective of story and narration.It is an adaptation of a rather antiquated fable by French author and illustrator Leopold Chauveau (1870-1940) called “Histoire...