The Morality of Blind Pursuit in Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below

The representations of characters along the lines of gender and age is for the most part unsurprising in Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below. Yet, the way in which these tendencies are presented redefines strength through the course of the film, shifting from drive and physical strength, to the acceptance and embracing of life. While the film portrays itself as an adventure, it more aptly emphasizes that morality should be chose over blind perseverance, with the least driven character becoming the strongest.

Shinkai’s Portrayal of Strength in Loneliness in Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below

Shinkai Makoto’s newest film, Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below (星を追う子ども), was screened on at last month’s New York Comic Con. The newest of Shinkai’s works, it shows heavy influences from Miyazaki, with multiple scenes and characters strongly reminiscent of those in Miyazaki’s films. At the same time, the film is markedly different from Miyazaki’s works, bringing with it the breathtaking scenery and poignant portrayals of moments from our everyday lives that we have come to expect from Shinkai. Perhaps the most interesting point of connect and point of difference between Miyazaki’s work and Children are the young female leads.

Water in Miyazaki’s Mizugumo Monmon

Water is perhaps one of the most challenging substances to portray through animation. So challenging in fact, that multiple movies and series either feature live action cuts of water, such as in Samurai X, or computer renderings of it. While such an omnipresent substance would seem to call for an easily simplified representation, it is perhaps because of its omnipresence that the simple circles of blue that sufficed in our childhood drawings no longer seem adequate in the animation we watch. Water is extremely, undeniably important to not only us as humans, but to the entire world in which we live, and to cut it out or overly simplify it is to undervalue it.

Although the act of slicing into otherwise beautiful animation with scenes of actual water or complex computer renderings of it shows a sort of respect for the complexities of water, it also feels disappointing. We look to animation for representations, for the artist’s perspective on the world, whatever that world may be, and for a chance to revisit reality through the artist’s reinvention of it. Fortunately, there are some directors who, rather than ignore the intricacies of water, revel in it, thereby giving us the opportunity to explore the nature of water and its significance in our lives. Foremost among these is Hayao Miyazaki.

Water plays such a major role in Miyazaki’s works that to attempt to document even only the most touching and powerful scenes played out through the use of water would easily comprise an entire book. I will attempt to make do with a brief analysis of one of Miyazaki’s lesser know works, Mizugumo Monmon [Mon Mon the Water Spider].

Light, Lines and Raindrops: Will Eisner’s Vision of The City

New York City’s MoCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) is currently exhibiting Will Eisner’s New York: From The Spirit to the Modern Graphic Novel. The exhibit showcases original pieces from throughout Will Eisner’s career, focusing on his portrayal of the city. It begins with original art from The Spirit, with a focus on splash pages where the comic’s title is embedded into the art. The exhibit goes on to examine Eisner’s portrayal of the city through various different lenses: the crowd that stifles talent rather than appreciates it in the tale of the boy who can fly, the tense yet deep relationships between tenants, and the simple city routine of nighttime trash collection. The exhibit also features Eisner’s portrayal of the progression of a section of the Bronx from when the first settler’s arrived, through its heyday, to its destruction, and on to its eventual rebirth. The final portion of the exhibit is dedicated to pieces influenced by Eisner.

Returning to Silence: Telling a Story Without Dialogue in The Illusionist

In trying to find a family-friendly movie a couple of weeks ago, I was faced with what appeared to be a slew of movies that were either too geared towards adults (True Grit and The King’s Speech) or too geared towards children (Justin Beber’s Never Say Never and Gnomeo & Juliet). Luckily there was one local theater that was showing The Illusionist, the newest film by the French group that created The Triplets of Belville. At first there were concerns about subtitles, until someone who had seen the film mentioned that the film had no real dialogue to speak of. While people occasionally spoke, it was all in unintelligible sounds.

Seeing the movie, there were in fact portions of the speech that were intelligible, though they mostly consisted of “hello”s. Rather than indicate specific words, speech was used to indicate to the viewer that dialogue was taking place, a bit of the tone of the conversation, and perhaps what language the speaker was using. Anything the viewer understands about the dialogue is through the visual context. The effect is similar to the sensation of watching a movie in an unfamiliar foreign language. Though the viewer maybe not understand what is being said, this is not to say that the viewer has no idea what’s going on. Yet, while in most movies the viewer would be left confused and lost without dialogue, The Illusionist uses this lack of dialogue to shift the viewer’s interaction with the film.

Revisiting Dance in Woodward’s “Thought of You”

A couple of weeks ago I found a link to Ryan Woodward’s “Thought of You.” Woodward is apparently a storyboarder for Hollywood movies. This piece, though, is the opposite of what one would expect from Hollywood. An exploration of form and the potential for expression of movement in animation, it looks to maximize upon minimization. Using actual dancers directed by a modern dance choreographer as a guide, Woodward hand drew his own interpretation of the dance. The focus is not on the dancers, though, perhaps most clearly exemplified by their using two pairs of dancers as the basis for the animation. Instead, the focus is on the dancers’ movements ,and the emotions those movements embody.

Pikachu: The Pardoned Turkey and Willing Captivity

Friday was Columbia University’s second Pokemon Nostalgia Night with Pokemon: The Movie 2000 and Pokemon Stadium. Seeing Pokemon: The Movie 2000 for the first time in the 10 years since it came out in was fun, fascinating, and a little bit painful. By far the most enjoyable part was the characters realizing that the villain is collecting Pokemon, an idea which horrifies them. The entire audience was in an uproar. My friend later remarked at how she hadn’t realized until rewatching Pokemon: The First Movie how ridiculous it was that Ash was so upset that the Pokemon are fighting one another. Hearing her say that made me realize that until that moment, I hadn’t thought anything of it either.

Those two lines from the first two Pokemon movies released in the US really capture what’s so complex and convoluted about Pokemon. There are a bunch of cute (or not so cute) animals that you find in the wild, beat to the point of death, capture, then force to fight one another until one or the other passes out. And for what? For money, badges, reputation, and because you “Gotta catch ‘em all.” A friend referred to the entire process as similar to cock fighting, but perhaps dog fighting is a more apt analogy. Like dog fighting, these are not animals that naturally want to fight each other, but animals that you train to be angry and vicious. Looking back now, it is astounding that as a child I saw very little problematic in the show.