#Masaaki Yuasa movies

[nevrevrshppn]

Favorite Japanese anime movie directors/animators currently:

Masaaki Yuasa

Makoto Shinkai

Mamoru Hosoda

Naoko Yamada

Tomohisa Taguchi

[petitemelusine]

Inu-oh

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You totally should watch the Masaki Yuasa movies!

A couple of months ago, I did this thing where I watched a couple of anime movies, that had gone under my radar. Because let's face it: Outside of franchise related anime movies, we will mostly be aware of Studio Ghibli, Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda. Other anime movies will often not be talked about in western anime spaces.

So, I consulted AniChart and just went through all sorts of anime movies, that were barely talked about.

The first of those was Ride Your Wave. And as @udaberriwrites, who got my life reaction, can tell you: This movie went places. It was one of the rare examples where there was a straight romance in an anime movie that I totally could get behind. A romance I found romantic. (Maybe not that much of a surprise, given the screenplay was bei Reiko Yoshida, who... just was a big influence on me. I loved so much of her stuff as a kid.) And then I looked at the timestamp of the movie. 25 minutes out of 96. And I went like: "One of them is gonna die, right?" And yes, I was right. So, I thought it was going to be a movie about moving on after loosing a loved person. Maybe about finding new love. But... Let me tell you, that was not were this movie went. Instead it just went on to be off the walls bonkers.

I am not going to spoil the movie for you. Just believe me: It is bonkers. And it is amazing. Really, really amazing.

Now, the next movie on my watchlist was Inu-Oh. A movie in a really weird animation style that originally turned me off. But that had such compelling characters and in the end really alive animation, that it kinda just captured me.

Again, I do not want to spoil the movie to you. But it was certainly something.

Well, and then I realized that those two movies, that I just happened to watch one after the other had been made by the same director: Masaaki Yuasa.

Now I was intrigued and just put in the other movies by him over the next few days. One of them I had seen before: The Night is Short, Walk On Girl.

And watching all those movies back, I could make out several things that tied them together. Mostly in terms of animation.

The characters are often very simplified, but the animation is very alive - actually following those old methods of animation, that would allow for characters to be off-model to show action. There is little in terms of shadows.

The characters are so lively. And it is just... nice to watch.

So, really. Watch the man's movies and anime. He also had done Devilman Crybaby, by the way. It is most certainly something else. Especially his movies.

The movies are:

The Night is Short, Walk on Girl Lu Over the Wall Ride your Wave Japan Sinks: 2020 Inu-Oh

Have fun!

[cinematicmasterpiece]

night is short, walk on girl (2017)

[yessicord]

Lu Over the Wall

[rawafmovies]

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[neovallense]

Inu-Oh (id., 2021)

[rookie-critic]

Rookie-Critic's Top 25 Films of 2022: #21: Inu-Oh (dir. Masaaki Yuasa)

Japanese anime director Masaaki Yuasa is the mind behind some of the most highly regarded anime films & shows of the last decade, with TV credits like Ping Pong: The Animation, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, and Netflix's Devilman: Crybaby, and film credits including Lu Over the Wall, Ride Your Wave, and The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl. He has a style that is unmistakably his own and his stories are as engaging as they are visually arresting. Yuasa said that Inu-Oh would possibly be his last project for awhile, so how does he send the golden era of his career off? Why, with a rock opera set in Feudal Japan, of course! The story of two friends fighting back against the authority that seeks to keep them from doing what they love, Inu-Oh takes its time with its forward momentum, and doesn't mind halting everything every now and then for a series of musical numbers that mix more traditional Japanese instruments (the biwa, mainly) with more modern songwriting styles to create some truly unique and inspiring sequences, not to mention the animation is truly beautiful. That alone is enough to give Inu-Oh all the points it needed to make the list, the rest is just a wonderful bonus. (Also, just an aside, I do generally watch the English dub of anime, but for this one in particular I would HIGHLY recommend watching it in the original Japanese. The performances are stellar and fit much better with the songs.) Currently streaming on Hulu. Read my full review of Inu-Oh here

[nihil-novum]

Ping Pong the Animation, dir, Masaaki Yuasa (2014)

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Genius Party

directed by Atsuko Fukushima, Shōji Kawamori, Shinji Kimura, Yōji Fukuyama, Hideki Futamura, Masaaki Yuasa, and Shinichirō Watanabe, 2007

[birden26]

“Tatami galaxy” by Masaaki Yuasa

[sirfowlman]

"That girl can crab walk!"

"Walk on, girl!"

"I pronounce it to be the most whimsical walk of this short night!"

Night is Short, Walk on Girl | 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 (2017) dir. Masaaki Yuasa

[manulm34art]

Xa ilumina e resplandece, é especial.

[swampjawn]

What happens when you let a film nerd make an anime?

Fuuga Yamashiro (山代風我) joined Science Saru in 2017 as an Assistant Production Manager during production of "Night Is Short, Walk on Girl." He was essentially Studio Co-founder Masaaki Yuasa's secretary, but he worked his way up to assistant director on "Keep Your Hands off Eizouken" and finally got to direct his own first full Anime series, Dandadan.

Having worked so closely with one of the greatest living auteur directors, you might think he would share that overpowering individual creative influence, but as he has pointed out in interviews himself, it's much the opposite.

Instead of relying on his own creative voice, which he doesn't seem confident about in interviews, he literally collects techniques from his favorite movies, breaking them down into storyboards and adding them to his arsenal to re-contextualize later. And as you may be able to tell from watching Dandadan, his biggest influences aren't anime and manga, but live action film -- something he seems to have studied obsessively.

And when you compare the anime to the original manga (which itself is already filled with references to old movies and TV) subtle adaptation choices make the deft application of techniques borrowed from other storytellers very clear. Every choice is made for a reason and furthers the story being told in some way; nothing is there for no reason. like the simple, controlled camera pans and tilts that make the serpoian spaceship feel cold and sterile, or the crazywackysilly, un-predictable wide-angle camera movements that intrude on that cold sterile world when turbo granny shows up.

In one interview during the production of "Keep Your Hands off Eizouken" Yamashiro pulls out his notebook where he had collected all these techniques and gives an example:

"There's a technique called 'Dolly Zoom', which is a technique that changes the perspective of the background while keeping the size of the subject." […] "In 'Cult of Chucky,' which I saw recently, there is a scene in which a long passageway is filmed in telephoto, while a wheelchair moves forward. The character is 'getting closer, but the viewer feels farther away'. This is the kind of thing I collect." […] "I'd like to combine these things in various ways and do it in animation." (I took some liberties with this, the translation was pretty rough)

And sure enough, that exact same type of dolly zoom rears its head in Dandadan as Okarun sprints away from Turbo Granny and the mouth of the tunnel stretches impossibly into the distance.

It may seem counterintuitive to ascribe too much importance to the creative vision of one person who specifically talks about his own lack of strong creative vision, (and to be clear, he's far from the only person playing a major role) but I think it's precisely that encyclopedic knowledge of film techniques and that pragmatic, meticulous attitude that may have acted as a stabilizing force for Yuasa, and that also provides some needed structure to a ball of pure energy like Dandadan, while still preserving its essence and the eclectic influences that it wears on its sleeve.

Also, mad respect for using the seventh installment of the Child's Play franchise as your example of a dolly zoom instead of, like, Vertigo, Jaws, or Goodfellas.

This is just a sliver of what I talk about in this full video! A minuscule piece of the pie! Some tiny little crumbs for the peasants! So if you consider yourself worthy, go watch the whole video. I think it's good.

Uhh also reblog! I spent way too long on that intro animation, so I need it. Bad.

[rawafmovies]

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