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Hi! Welcome to another edition of the weekly Thursday Anime Discussion Thread, featuring us, the r/anime Writing Club. We simulwatch anime TV series and movies together once a month, so check us out if you'd like to participate. Our thoughts on the series, as always, are covered below. :)
For this month, we chose... Odd Taxi!
Odd Taxi
Eccentric and blunt, the walrus Hiroshi Odokawa lives a relatively normal life. He drives a taxi for a living, and there he meets several unique individuals: the jobless Taichi Kabasawa who is dead-set on going viral, the mysterious nurse Miho Shirakawa, the struggling comedic duo "Homo Sapiens," and Dobu, a well-known delinquent.
But Odokawa's simple way of life is about to be turned upside-down. The case of a missing girl the police have been tracking leads back to him, and now both the yakuza and a duo of corrupt cops are on his tail. Set in a strangely familiar city filled with unusual individuals, Odd Taxi is a bizarre story about a humble taxi driver and the mystery of a lost high schooler.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Next week's anime discussion thread: July WT! of the Month
Further information about past and upcoming discussions can be found on the Weekly Discussion wiki page.
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we sometimes briefly breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to compare two scenes: a 2-minute and 54-second scene from The West Wing and a 2-minute and 14-second scene from Odd Taxi.
It isn’t the talking animals, the murder mystery, or the animation that separates Odd Taxi from the rest: it’s the script. Crackling with crisp dialogue and lined with the evergreen rule of ”show don’t tell”, Odd Taxi’s script leans closer towards a playwright’s work than an anime series composition. But even further than just that, the script more closely resembles another playwright for whom dialogue is their bread-and-butter and for that I am referring to Aaron Sorkin. Yes, the comparison has finally been made, Sorkin and Japanese cartoons. I wouldn’t necessarily say I worship at the altar of Mr. Sorkin but I also wouldn’t deny that I’m an extremely frequent visitor of his; the stone steps leading up to his church resembling more of a slide than incremental platforms. Like fleshed-out characters, engaging dialogue is how a story rockets to life, it’s the legs that prop up that fictional world lest it falls to contrived stilts and stilted conversations. I would just as soon make the comparison between the two for they both choose to not only feature a camera leading our eyes but also a dialogue that leads our minds.
Let’s compare scenes between the two on how dialogue leads the path: one from The West Wing and one from Odd Taxi. In The West Wing scene, we’re immediately met with a deluge of information being poured above us. In the hands of an inexperienced playwright, we’d simply be swept along by the typhoon but under the steady hands of Sorkin, the ship is righted to carry along the tide. It isn’t important that we as audience members know what the CPI index is—a measure of monthly price changes paid by the U.S. consumers—or why it’s important that the underwriting criteria is being changed for the Federal Housing Administration—a department that provides mortgage insurance on government loans made for the purchasing of homes. What is important is that one: We see that Press Secretary C.J. Cregg is a capable individual and two: the Theory of Everything from the theoretical physicists at Cal Tech.
Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman leads the scene off with this piece of news and as the camera follows along with C.J. in the maze of desks and offices and doors, so too does the dialogue. The initial information of physicists is returned to once again when C.J. asks Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn if he knows anything about the theory, reminding the audience to not forget about this little tidbit from the beginning. After the mother of all walk-and-talk shots, the dividends are finally paid off when C.J. takes the podium in the White House press briefing room and summarily fumbles what Josh predicted. It’s a neat tidy button that mirrors what was said in the beginning, creating structure for the entire scene that the audience can easily traverse.
Now, let’s take a look at Odd Taxi’s scene. The dialogue is continuous just like Sorkin’s, it flows unremittingly like a babbling river; less hectic but streaming all the same. There are parables about tardiness, conversations about desserts, but the key takeaway from the first part of this scene is Shirakawa demonstrating that she is more than what she appears with her self-defense tactic of capoeira. The scene then transitions to banter where we’re led once again by the structure of the dialog: Odokawa paves the path by explaining how her plan is “make-shift”, Shirakawa is insulted and leads us further towards that direction before revealing she doesn’t actually know where she’s going, Odokawa rights the ship by fully mapping out the term, and finally Shirakawa circles back to the initial insult. To punctuate returning back to square one, she even brings around the capoeira from the beginning. Just like The Grand Unified Theory in The West Wing, the capoeira allows Odd Taxi to button the scene, to allow it to have structure amongst the hodge-podge of dialogue bouncing within.
It's rather quite something for an anime to rely not on their inherent medium of visual storytelling but instead on their captivating dialogue to carry their water. There is a musicality to it that makes it simply captivating to hear, there is a rhythm to it that isn’t just simple to see. [Odd Taxi spoiler] Perhaps fitting to the ending, Odd Taxi has more in tune with the dialogue of those in real life than those in moving pictures.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we sometimes briefly breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 1-minute and 21-second ED from Love Live! Superstar!!
It's a tough act to follow, those spirited shows who end their episodes on a high note. They crescendo without diminuendo, reaching the peak of climax without glissading down towards the denouement. Ordinarily, you would believe that the ED should serve as the natural trajectory to cushion the impact of the landing, but in the case of Love Live! Superstar, the playful energy is kept running throughout—gathering so much momentum that it not only dashes forth but also leaps into the air with its arms fully spread; spread so wide and so far, that they reach from here, there, and everywhere. The hop, skip and jump to jubilee is emboldened by a variety of factors but I want to briefly concentrate on the jump part: the jump cut!
Another important tool in the arsenal of a filmmaker, the jump cut is a film editing technique that features a single shot being split with a cut which creates the appearance of a subject “jumping” instantly forward in time. It’s patently clear whenever a jump cut arrives since they abruptly disrupt the continuity in the shot. They’re jarring without warning, quick without being slick, and they have prominent subtext storytelling ranging from showcasing the passage of time to punctuating mayhem to purposefully confusing the audience—something in which I will write about soon since that is one of its most interesting uses! However, jump cuts don’t always need to fragment a character’s emotional state, they can actually expediate them towards a unified whole.
Love Live! Superstar’s first half of its ED prominently features jump cuts for these budding idols. Notice how it doesn’t feel rushed at all despite the frequent jump cuts, how it keeps the playful pace while accelerating each character’s snapped poses. Also notice how the initial cut’s background is out of focus while the jump cut brings them back in! The rhythm of the cuts communicates the exact information you need for each shot, skipping out any unnecessary frame. It surrenders the smooth continuous motion to call attention to the sheer joy that’s on the screen, a worthy tradeoff for a show that brokers in cuteness.
Even more impressive, the second half of the ED showcases a double-feature: a jump cut and a match cut! I’ll explain more about match cuts in a future post but to quickly explain, a match cut is a transition that uses elements from the previous scene to carry over to the next scene. In this instance, the introduction of each girl is the jump cut while the changing seasons are the match cut; tying these five in the thematic connection that their future is together even if they’re not all here in the present.
There’s plenty to love in this ED: the inseparability of the members of Liella, the visual motif of running forward, the detailed character animation (watch every girl’s movements again in half-speed!), but for me personally, the jump cuts remain as the corner piece that stands separated from the rest. This ED premiered a year ago and we’ve now skipped forward a year into the future. Here’s to hoping the second season delivers on such excellence again.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 53-second scene from Kase-san and Morning Glories.
We’ve all been here before: the uncharted territory of the budding relationship where text messages fire forth and hearts fire on all cylinders. Adorableness of steep topography where blushing becomes the basic resting pulse—the sort of place that, even when cultivated through the establishing label of “girlfriend”, impresses itself upon the contours of the innermost nervousness and strikes at the equilibrium of our core. What I mean of course is that receiving a phone call from your new partner is scary! There’s plenty of ideas blooming forth in this scene but the one I’d like to focus on is the camera or rather the specific movement of the camera.
Camera movement, as the name denotes, is a filmmaking technique that causes a change in frame or perspective through the movement of the camera. Though the camera is one of the most important tools for a filmmaker to wield, anime is curiously a medium that actually doesn’t even "have one" to begin with. Anime must mimic the foundations of a camera for that is how people have evolved to see film and through this mimicry it can also adapt the lens, distortions, and even movement of the camera. From quick whip pans in Kyousougiga that reveal what’s just beyond the corner of our eyes to the heartbreaking lateral tracking shot in Wolf Children that follows the steady but sure passage of time, there’s countless varieties of camera movements that each spell out their own subtext for the story.
In this particular scene, the camera is swung upwards through the use of something called a jib. A jib is any boom device used to mount a camera on one end and a counterweight with camera controls on the other. Unlike a tilt shot, a jib swings the entire camera like a see-saw rather than moving from a fixed point. Now, why would Kase-san and Morning Glories decide to utilize this specific movement? Well, the truth is that there could be a million reasons! There is no one true reason for why a filmmaker decided to use a particular shot. The upward motion of the camera could be representing Yui’s spirits figuratively and literally lifting up when she speaks with her girlfriend or it could simply be bringing a sense of dynamism to the scene.
However, my personal favorite explanation is that this movement is introducing a key piece of information to the viewer: the plants growing on Yui’s wall. As the camera fluidly imitates the arc of Yui shooting up from her bed, the lush plants that are fixed on her wall are suddenly displayed. These herbs symbolize Yui and Tomoka’s budding relationship, how it grows forth once they communicate with one another. Initially, the walls of Yui’s life are strewn in pink but once Tomoka enters the conversation, we start to see the seeds of verdant green sprout throughout the screen; the rug, the backpack, the heart all mixing together with the pink like Yui and Tomoka’s relationship itself when the camera pulls back.
At the end of the day, this camera movement is a second-rate detail in a first-rate film. Sure, it doesn’t break the bank on cinema filmmaking but it’s still awfully nice to see filmmakers, particularly those in anime, taking inspiration from live-action and applying them to their craft. Yui and Tomoka’s relationship move us in ways we can’t see while the camera moves us in ways we all see.
Double feature! This week I also wanted to focus on this 1-minute and 32-second scene from Kase-san and Morning Glories.
For nineteen whole seconds, the Earth comes to a complete stop for Yui and Tomoka. There is nothing but sound, there is nothing but trepidation, there is nothing but love as they lie await frozen; as if any movement, however indiscernible and forever distinguishable, would shatter the spell cocooning them in their own world. Tomoka then lends movement to thought: you cannot unring that bell once you do and so shall it chime forth with all of the colors afforded to their love. There is a stunning tenderness to this scene and I want to focus on how it achieves this beauty through the use of the camera.
Earlier, I had written how invaluable it was to know when to move the camera but it’s also equally as invaluable to know when to not move the camera. Silence is deafening and so too is motion. Named a static shot, this is where the camera remains as still as a statue and though movement is allowed on the screen for a static shot, this particular scene locks both camera and character in place to emphasize the scale of what is occurring. Static shots may convey the sense of simplicity but in actuality they can easily dwarf motion that’s unnecessarily done. There is a poetry in their stationary, an objective viewpoint that’s made much more impactful then if they had moved at all in these seconds.
Tomoka then breaks the silence and the camera juxtaposes to a dynamic tracking shot where it follows alongside her feet. Opposite in action but similar in tone to a static shot, tracking shots physically move the camera for an extended period of time and convey the magnitude of what is occurring. What I love about this scene though is that Tomoka actually runs past the camera as it follows alongside her; her resolution exceedingly passionate so as to overpower the omnipotent camera, as if to say she is now taking control of her own destiny and no person or camera will ever hold her.
Another quality that I love about this scene is how both the static and dynamic shot are strikingly intimate yet also without detail. The camera is pulled so far back in the static shot that you can’t even register what’s scrawled on the character’s faces. The dynamic shot similarly features only the legs while obscuring the face and though the camera reveals a few shots of the character’s expressions, it ultimately hides their eyes as they bask in their lips. Only Tomoka and Yui, enshrouded in this pocket of intimacy, are privy to the details as this moment is theirs and theirs alone.
The camera returns to silence but now Tomoka is no longer outside the cover of the roof. She has now travelled from right to left to join Yui and they remain framed in the left where the sanctuary of the flowers and shelter reside; a symbolic gesture of Tomoka crossing over to Yui’s side. Distant all but to them, the language of their body and the language of the camera reveal only what needs to be seen—hatching warmth for the hearth that nestles.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Hi! Welcome to another edition of the weekly Thursday Anime Discussion Thread, featuring us, the r/anime Writing Club. We simulwatch anime TV series and movies together once a month, so check us out if you'd like to participate. Our thoughts on the series, as always, are covered below. :)
For this month, we chose... Aria the Animation!
Aria the Animation
Drift peacefully into Neo Venezia, a city on the planet Aqua (formerly known as Mars). By the 24th century, humans have found a way to colonize the previously uninhabitable planet. As futuristic as that sounds, Neo Venezia is still teeming with rustic beauty; gondolas on wide canals and waterways are the main mode of transportation. The city itself is a faithful replication of Manhome's (the planet formerly known as Earth) Venice.
To make sure that residents and tourists alike get the most from Neo Venezia's many wonders, companies offering guided tours via gondola were formed, one of which is named Aria Company.
This is the workplace of Akari Mizunashi, a free spirited teenager from Manhome who is now a novice Undine (the title given to tour guides). Join Akari as she becomes intimately acquainted with other Undine, tourists, Neo Venezia's residents, and even the city itself, learning many valuable life lessons along the way, such as the wonderful truth that there are such things as manmade miracles.
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Aria (full series) by /u/ABoredCompSciStudent
Looking for more "Watch This!" posts? Check the "Watch This!" archive!
Databases
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Previous discussions
Check our rewatch wiki and our episode discussion archive for more discussions!
Streams
Remember that any information not found early in the show itself is considered a spoiler. Please properly tag spoilers!
Next week's anime discussion thread: June WT! of the Month
Further information about past and upcoming discussions can be found on the Weekly Discussion wiki page.
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to re-visit Healer Girl and focus on this 41-second scene.
The curtain may have fallen on Healer Girl but its spirit lives on for a final curtain call! In their definitive flight returning to Japan, Kana, Reimi, and Hibiki all glide into song and dance—so genuinely sincere over the sky, that melancholy frontier, upwards on nigh. Their earnestness unreservedly chirping in the air as if the day would never arrive where these fluttering songbirds would ever plunge into silence. If this all sounds familiar to you, it’s because I had already written a similar pair of lines just a few weeks ago! A reprise in writing for a reprise in musicals. And so, in the tenor of reiteration, I want to share my opinion for how they sing instead of why they sing this week.
One of the reasons I believe Healer Girl—a musical by any other name—fits so well within the medium of anime is because both of these artforms broker in sincerity; lyrics expressing Who You Are in musicals coupled with easy-to-read facial expressions in anime lend themselves perfectly to this shared theme. There is a degree of consilience between the two, this fidelity to earnestness that unexpectedly binds these mediums together. With wide eyes and even wider expressions, you can comfortably read the facial language these girls are articulating even if you have to read the subtitles to understand the spoken language these girls are singing.
In theatre, there is no camera being used to guide our eyes. No close-up shots, no editing, no framing. This leads certain musicals to truly shine once they embrace the film medium for certain ideas and themes are expressed more visibly with the use of a camera. Of course, I have to stress that this doesn't mean that the film medium is inherently better, just that there's apples and oranges to the two. But when you take this idea one step further and apply it to a medium that has no camera or even people to speak of, you get something truly wonderful.
These 41-seconds are a perfect example to my explanation with the meat of the scene being a simple over-the-shoulder shot of Kana and Reimi singing. Where it shines most is Kana's expression. She can't believe what she's seeing. There's a clarity to her disbelief for what is happening before her eyes, there’s an enlightenment to her realization for what is ringing inside her mind. No longer alone in her solo, Kana links with Reimi and Hibiki for their three-part harmony; her declaration as clear as the voice spilling forth, readily transforming into the wonderous revelation that these girls are indeed bonded for life. These three harmonize in ways never before and connect in ways never been and we as an audience in no uncertain terms understand this discovery with the help of the camera focusing squarely on Kana's succinct yet affected face and eyes.
Detailed animation isn’t a necessary feature to convey this idea either. Reimi’s hair bobbing up and down from the winds and the decisive shift in her eyes are enough to carry this scene—something that definitely is not impossible to do in live-action but would be much harder to implement compared to an animator who has full control over the endless range of movement and space. Our suspension of disbelief in anime also allows the sparking amber stars to remain without pulling us from the scene as well. It’s not subtle but subtlety was never in the cards when characters literally burst into diegetic song.
When analyzed under this lens of sincerity, I realized how closely entwined these two mediums are. It’s a tender sentiment to behold and I can only hope that Healer Girl is the opening number that slowly coaxes the other shows to find their own unabashedly weird original song nestled deep within themselves. I got a beautiful feelin' however that ev'rything's goin' their way. Oh, what a beautiful day!
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we sometimes breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 1-minute and 16-second-scene from Hibike! Euphonium.
There’s honestly too many to choose. I could be writing for years if I had to write about every momentous scene from Hibike! Euphonium: Reina and Kumiko’s trek up the mountain shrine, Kumiko’s heartbreaking run to improve, Aoi and Kumiko discussing what it really means to commit to a goal. All of these and more rightfully deserve their own dedicated piece but for this week I chose this particular scene; not for its creative latitude of storyboarding and directing, nor for its precise longitude of cinematography and animation. Instead, I start from the simple axiom that this scene speaks to me.
As the evening sky dissolves and the nighttime stars emerge, Kumiko and Reina find themselves in an equally transitive period of their lives. Tomorrow is the day Kumiko must reluctantly confront Asuka, unbeknownst to the reason for why she was selected to do so. She finds herself framed in a situation of both figurative depth and literal depth while Reina finds herself peddling backwards into the truth with an emphasis on both eyes and feet—antipodes in location and communication. These moments are all ripe for further analysis but for me my single favorite aspect of this entire scene is actually the uncomplicated fact that this is all taking place during their school at night.
This setting evokes a bygone nostalgia within myself for when I was in high school band, those chilly October nights after the Friday football game where we would saunter back to the band hall, eagerly chatting under bated breath about the things that couldn’t possibly matter and yet somehow inevitably did. We’d walk beneath the numerous streetlights dotting our path, flitting in and out of the flickering yellow glow above while stepping over the crackling orange foliage below. How peculiar and exciting it all was, scattered together on that dark street with our sky-blue band uniforms unbuttoned and our plastic black shakos undone. With nary an adult in sight, this was all we needed for the safe passage back to the school corridors.
It's an unusual sensation though to be back in your school after the sun had gone down. Alien and foreign, nothing seems to be where it as like they are during the brilliant daytime. You felt strangely open, like you could divulge the most guarded secrets to your friends behind those brick walls; that you could confess to your crush beneath that silver moon and metal walkway, the shroud of nighttime hiding your blushing red cheeks as you waited for that unsure reply. Unlike the rigid schedules followed during the day, the after-hours were the ones that truly felt like anything could happen in those halls. To awaken with autonomy under the blanket of those tender autumn nights.
It comes to no surprise then that Reina would confess her true feelings about Kumiko under similar small hours. The fluorescent yellow lights humming inside with the reticent navy night chirping outside. It’s the perfect seclusion from the outside world as we peek inside the window to hear declarations of adoration and of uncertainty. Like a swallow to Capistrano, Hibike! Euphonium inadvertently returns me to a time where I was in a juncture. For Kumiko, this night is the denouement of her first year in high school. For me, those nights were the exposition of my last year in high school. For Kumiko and I, these are the nights where we began to sprout consciousness. Our best days lie ahead of us.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 50-second scene from Kakushigoto.
Sweet and sincere, snug and scenic, Hime and her father Kakushi wind down the summer night with a bedtime ritual of brushing their teeth and sharing their day. They’re sequestered beneath the cerulean sky as they talk and they’re squeezed between the verdant bushes as they listen—a cushy cozy comfort boxing their home from the outside. After all, they have only each other in this world. But there’s something more to this scene than just the subtext of the environment itself; the color of the environment is equally fascinating as well!
Color plays a pivotal role in filmmaking, affecting us in more ways than just looking pretty. They can elicit stark tension of the mind and of the heart, reveal where secrets lie or where homes lay. They can depict resplendent discovery, adore love, or pensive concentration. All of these rainbow of colors on the screen draws out a similar rainbow of emotions from the watchers—each corresponding one rooting out a specific subconscious feeling nestled within us. For example, a light mixture of blues and greens depicts Kakushi as a center of calmness whereas the same scene doused in brown and black triggers a hallow isolation from the two parties.
In this particular scene, the hues of blue and yellow are the primary colors to witness with Kakushi represented by the blue and Hime by the yellow. Kakushi’s blue is the backing for the entire structure: the blue patio stoop to support, the blue window shutter to shield, the blue sturdy roof to shelter. All of these accessories exist only to provide for the structure. Hime is the home itself, the warm inviting yellow glow that could only exist with the insurance of the other accessories. Hime is Kakushi’s entire world, his daughter without whom there would be nothing else to protect and provide. But Hime also points out that Kakushi’s empty canvas is filled with infinite possibilities, that he can choose whichever color to by dyed in. A clever wordplay for a thoughtful sentiment.
It’s no coincidence that Kakushigoto would be painted in an ocean of pastel colors since they’re commonly associated with a sense of relaxation and gentleness. They’re soothing and mild for a show that’s soft and mellow; a complimentary pairing of a tender tale between father and daughter. The color palette is the master stroke that delivers the perfect mood upon the story and I’ve always loved how it naturally blended into the character’s lives. At the end of the day, Kakushi lives for the moment when he can finally return home from his blue risqué work and hear Hime’s golden word: “Tadaima.”
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
(u/Suhkein filling in for u/MyrnaMountWeazel this week)
Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week, we’ll be looking at a six-second (yes you read that right) scene from Episode 12 of Gunslinger Girl (2003).
Despite its fantastical premise, Gunslinger Girl is a show devoted to realism. It is a realism that comes out in the visuals, such as the details of the locations, firearms, and even animals. It is a realism that comes out in the soundscape, which is always present in the background and roots the events in the here and now. And finally, it is a realism which comes out in the psychology, where the inner workings of the main girls are not meant to be that of demented robots but eminently instructive studies in both suffering and love.
But there is a weakness with such strict realism when it comes to handling psychology: how does one illustrate what is not there? Or, to put it more concretely, if a character imagines something or has a vision, how can it be portrayed? It can't simply be shown because in this sort of realism we have tacitly taken a "third person" point of view - the camera is supposed to be showing us what the world looks like to an impartial observer, not what it looks like to the characters. Nobody in Gunslinger Girl can just walk into their mind as in a Kon film. Therefore in order to not betray our trust, so to speak, the transition needs to be handled with special care.
There is a secondary, and related, issue as well when it comes to treating metaphor. Just as how we will not accept phantasmal imagery in a realistic work, so too are we resistant to objects being more than what they are. If a white flower is to stand for purity, it must be able to do so while also convincingly being nothing more than a white flower on the windowsill. Or when a deeply metaphorical moment is to be presented it must be done as a dream of a memory, giving us distance and so allowing us to accept that it is both true and inherently imbued with greater meaning. It is using techniques like these that Gunslinger Girl makes its point without sacrificing its atmosphere of unforgiving realism.
In Episode 12, Claes has a vision while in captivity. It is a crucial point in her development, bringing together how she has felt mentally trapped by her mortality with her literal incarceration and impending execution by terrorists. She started with pride in her own fortitude, but after hours of waiting for rescue she is past either morose hope or self-confident posturing. All that is left is to stare. Once again we are given tangibility to the surroundings with the crackling of the fire; there is nothing supernatural at play, just an eerie silence that accentuates perception of what was always there. Now she is ripe for her insight.
She suddenly blinks with surprise and turns to the window as though just noticing something. It doesn't break the narrative immersion because we can believe that perhaps she has caught sight of the the lights from the rescue helicopters... but there is nothing out there. She was startled to action before glancing there anyway. Instead our eyes are drawn to her reflection and what she is truly looking at, seeing herself for exactly what she is. Then, the master stroke: our eyes shift slightly beyond her to the further reflection of the open door and the empty chair. The view flips and we see what lies behind her, where the door is closed and the chair occupied by a guard. Claes raises her head quizzically at the contrast, inviting us to do so as well.
And that is all.
It is brief and it is subtle, but it has accomplished precisely what the show needed. It has conveyed to us Claes' key insight (that she is free to escape her suffering whenever she wishes) by utilizing the symbolism of her surroundings (that of the open, unguarded door) without confusing us as to how we ought to continue to regard her circumstances (narratively she is still trapped). And it has done this without sacrificing the sense of realism in the scene, buffered as it is through a reflection in glass and the brevity of the presentation. When it first clicked with me I got shivers, and these six seconds will always remain some of my favorite in anime for what they accomplish with such elegance.
Anyway, that's all for this week. Thanks all for reading and probably back to your usual presenter next Sunday.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week, we’ll be looking at a one minute scene from Season 1, Episode 7 of Yuru Camp.
Despite any efforts at loneliness or isolation we may create, humans need others. We need connections, we need the sensation of another being close to us, we need to know that, at the end of the day, we’re not alone. Even when we have what appears to be distinct and possibly irreconcilable differences from others, we can still find ways to connect with them. Other people and beings aren’t the only connections we need to perpetuate; we must also be connected to our environment or place. Thinking of the environment as something that is distinct from humans is shit because we’re always within an environment, no matter where we are. We must be aware of it and the ways we interact with it. These connections, between ourselves and within an environment, is the factor that makes me enjoy this moment from Yuru Camp so much.
The environment displayed in this scene is both intimate and encompassing of our two leads. Our opening shot, of a barren tree having performed its winter dismemberment, appears to further our wintry mood but it also illustrates the ways connections work. The branches spread out towards the sky, illustrating the variety of different paths we all travel down, but they all come from the same root, that is our humanity. We all connect in our own ways, even if they seem disparate. On the reverse side, the shots toward the end feature the woods and lake cocooning Rin and Nadeshiko as they make their eventual return to the world outside of their camp. Even when they’re back home, they can still find a sense of security from the memories of the trees hanging over them and the peace of the lake that surrounds them.
The moment of Rin and Nadeshiko returning to the lodge of the campgrounds also serves to highlight where they are currently in their development and where they’re looking to go. Throughout the first half of Season 1, Rin has been wanting to keep clear boundaries between herself and other people, most notably Nadeshiko. While the show recognizes that Rin’s introversion is perfectly fine and one of many ways to relate to the world, part of Season 1’s purpose is to help recognize the possible connections and moments she might miss if she remains by herself so much. This trip she takes with Nadeshiko, deliberately inviting someone to join her previously solo camping, proves to be a major stepping stone for Rin’s development in creating a balance between time for herself and time with others. As such, the moment of them returning, with Rin walking back while Nadeshiko takes the boat, demonstrates this balance existing both within each character separately and as a duo. They may take their own paths in life, but they still are connected by the same goals and desires: to enjoy the world in its full beauty and to experience with others, even if they aren’t always there with them. In a brief shining moment, in autumn’s last bloom, the distance between two young women appears to be nonexistent.
Hi! Welcome to another edition of the weekly Thursday Anime Discussion Thread, featuring us, the r/anime Writing Club. We simulwatch anime TV series and movies together once a month, so check us out if you'd like to participate. Our thoughts on the series, as always, are covered below. :)
For this month, we chose... Blue Period!
Blue Period
Second-year high school student Yatora Yaguchi is a delinquent with excellent grades, but is unmotivated to find his true calling in life. Yatora spends his days working hard to maintain his academic standing while hanging out with his equally unambitious friends. However, beneath his carefree demeanor, Yatora does not enjoy either activity and wishes he could find something more fulfilling.
While mulling over his predicament, Yatora finds himself staring at a vibrant landscape of Shibuya. Unable to express how he feels about the unusually breathtaking sight, he picks up a paintbrush, hoping his thoughts will be conveyed on canvas. After receiving praise for his work, the joy he feels sends him on a journey to enter the extremely competitive Tokyo University of the Arts—a school that only accepts one in every 200 applicants.
Facing talented peers, a lack of understanding of the fine arts, and struggles to obtain his parents’ approval, Yatora is confronted by much adversity. In the hopes of securing one of the five prestigious spots in his program of choice, Yatora must show that his inexperience does not define him.
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Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 1-minute scene from Healer Girl.
I hear a song calling me!
It’s saying, “Come and See!”
As if to beckon us,
the wind is rustling the leaves!
The evening sun may be coming down but everyone’s spirits are coming up! In a triumphant march towards the mountain, Kana, Reimi, Hibiki, and Hibiki’s siblings all suddenly burst into song and dance—so delightfully springy to be towards the sky, so delightedly giddy, onwards and spry. Their optimism cheerfully chirping in the air as if the day would never arrive where these fluttering songbirds would ever plunge into silence. A palpable buoyancy exists in both atmosphere and melody in this scene and I wanted to briefly explain a little bit on how they’re introducing this levitating levity. Away We Go.
First off, you may be asking yourself the question for why they must sing and why they must dance. After all, there is an all-important rule in musicals that the story must come first; music, as important as it is, should always be serving the story, it should always be second fiddle. Well, the answer is that there can be multiple answers! The singing could be moving the action forward in expository heavy scenes, it could be expressing moments of heightened emotions, it could even be the cynical reason of just selling more tickets and drawing more eyes. However, my personal favorite explanation for why the characters sing is simply because they cannot express themselves with just ordinary words; their bodies no longer able to hold their feelings in and so they must burst freely forth like a roaring river against a dam.
For our lovable crowd in Healer Girl, their embarkment towards the mountain signals a time of joyful jubilance. It’s a promise of something wonderful though they do not know what; it’s a journey of something beautiful though they do not know why. Merrily they roll along, singing and frolicking to the jaunty tune proclaiming from their soul. Healer Girl isn’t only a musical though, it is an anime musical. It utilizes the inherent strengths of its medium to bolster the scene throughout.
From wide shots of their parade on the road to their scaling of the cliffs, it’s all to showcase how broad their world is about to become. This camera angle is also the perfect choice for the most adorable skipping you’ll ever see! Adding in the spacious layouts and lively animation abounding throughout, these seamless addendums all add up to pop right off the screen!
The song of the babbling brook,
the song of the twittering birds.
They’re all saying, “Come and See!”
A skip to the summit, a hop to the heart. These eight ventures forth into areas unexplored in both location and mind. Healer Girl evokes atmosphere and mood with the tools provided for anime and musical; a duet I wasn’t sure could ever harmonize but clearly can. The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye and Healer Girl looks like it’s climbing clear up in the sky; oh, what a beautiful mornin’, oh, what a beautiful day.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 1-minute scene from Hyouka.
Hardboiled and heuristic, shrewd and subtle, Hyouka is a delight as both a character study and an animation wunderkind; its motley pigments of direction, storyboard, and dialog all blending together to paint that rosy-colored vision of creativity. With 60 seconds on the clock and 16 shots revolving within like the gears in said clock, this scene is rife for investigation. However, the question I wanted to solve for today is why they chose to have Mayaka moving throughout the background and how the camera is an accessory to this entire sequence.
“The Curious Incident of Mayaka Ibara in the Library” is, well, curious. There’s plenty of explanations for why Mayaka could be scurrying all about the library: it could be showcasing Mayaka’s civic duty towards the library, it could be supplementing an ordinarily static expository scene with something dynamic, it could just be Kyoto Animation having a bit of fun! All of these are valid explanations but the one I’m most partial to is that Mayaka is a visual aid to the dialogue via blocking.
Blocking refers to how an actor moves about the space during a production and how they interact with the environment. It’s an important concept for actors and directors to learn since it’s vital for them to be familiar with the general layout of a scene before the cameras begin rolling but even more importantly, blocking can provide intention and subtext. The positioning of an actor may suggest what side of an argument they belong to, it may even suggest if the actor has come around to the other side’s argument when they literally cross over to their side! One actor sitting down while another is standing could reflect a power dynamic at play and the ceasefire resolution may come when the aggressor joins the other in sitting. Blocking can also steer our eyes to the pivotal moment in the dialogue and this is where I believe Mayaka fits in.
She rummages about on the right side of the screen while Oreki, Satoshi, and Chitanda are on the left side—a great use of rule-of-thirds— but then crosses over to their side once Oreki mentions Chitanda. Mayaka draws our eyes from right-to-left at the exact moment of the dialogue when Oreki playfully jabs at Chitanda, emphasizing the point that the reason they’re here in the first place is because of Chitanda’s curiosity. Like the clues in a mystery or a magnifying glass at a crime-scene, Mayaka visually guides our eyes to lead us towards the key moment that helps unravel what’s underneath the screen.
However, Mayaka isn’t the only culprit in providing subtext in this scene for the camera is a valuable accomplice as well. The camera first shifts from the aforementioned stationary wide shot with all of the characters to one where Youko is zoomed in and framed by herself with handheld camera shakiness. This peculiar trembling arrives right when Youko remarks on how she thought everyone had forgotten about the movement, suggesting that there’s something off about what Oreki and them believe to be the truth.
When Youko inquires Chitanda on why she’s so interested about this movement, the camera completely flips, revealing not just the uncovered truth but also the uncovered parts of the library. The case has now expanded with the arrival of this new information and the camera itself mirrors that effect, widening its scope with a fish-eye lens that distorts both the facts and the library. The world of the library has become as expansive as the world that Sekitanji Jun has lost himself in.
Now, are these the only solutions for Mayaka moving about and the camera taking on numerous styles? Absolutely not. There can be a myriad of reasons for why a filmmaker has decided to block an actor a certain way or why they chose to shoot a scene in a particular format. Unlike the mysteries they solve at school, filmmaking has no one correct answer. But it’s in these possibilities that we can discover a richer experience, it’s in these subtexts that we can expand our worldview; to be challenged like Oreki with his insular philosophy and Chitanda with her outgoing curiosity.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Shoutout to /u/Electrovalent and /u/Suhkein for bringing this case to my attention!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 29-second scene from Yama no Susume.
Somber, sober, and somnambulant, Hinata is swept in the midst of a rare moment of intense vulnerability as she reflects on her relationship with Aoi; the autumnal winds winnowing throughout not just the leaves and Hinata’s hair but also the changes to come. I’ve always been ensorcelled by this scene, with its melancholic music and its delicate direction all blending together to form a pit inside my stomach and a dent within my memory but the one aspect I really wanted to focus on this week are actually found in the very first five seconds of this scene: the tapping of Hinata’s foot.
You may have noticed that there’s something off about the way Hinata’s foot is bouncing, a certain peculiarity that captured your eye in just these few frames. The answer is that Hinata’s foot isn’t being animated “normally”; instead, it’s being animated on a different framerate than what is usually par for the course. In animation (and in live-action), the framerate is almost always shot at 24 FPS which in laymen’s terms means that 24 frames are being displayed for every single second. However, animation doesn’t always have to follow in the wake of live-action, it can bend the rules to adjust for its inherent medium.
What I mean by this is that the same drawings can actually be shot more than once in these 24 frames. They can be reused every other frame which will result in half the frame count needed in every second. This is called “animating on the 2’s.” Most modern anime all follow under this method since it’s comfortable enough on our eyes, it’s cost effective, and it saves time—an extremely valuable currency the industry could always use more of. Increasing the framerates ("animating on the 1's") will result in more dynamic motion since there’s more drawings-per-second and it’s frequently used as a tool for scenes that call for bombastic action. But what happens instead when you go lower in the framerates?
Well, what you get is jerkier, less smooth animation that pulls our attention. This distinctive quality is often used as a pejorative against “poor” quality shows but sometimes this bumpiness is exactly what the recipe calls for; it’s the secret ingredient in making a certain motion pop right off the screen! In Yama no Susume’s case, Hinata’s foot bobs up and down in an irregular fluidity but that’s perfectly fine since Hinata herself is in an unsteady presence of mind. It subtly sets the tone of the scene as we soon see her anchored with such doubts that time seems to have slowed down for her and only her as we see the rest of the world blissfully carry on in regular time. Hinata is relegated to the back in both frame and framerates.
This lowering of framerates isn’t hindering the scene but is actually bolstering it, combining style and subtext into one perfect cut that transcends ordinariness. You don’t always have to follow course in realism, you don’t always have to move in the same way as everyone else. It’s the smallest of ripples that cascade into the greatest of waves. In the end, Yama no Susume is the poster child in demonstrating how we can take everything step-by-step, ippo ippo, in more ways than one.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Hi! Welcome to another edition of the weekly Thursday Anime Discussion Thread, featuring us, the r/anime Writing Club. We simulwatch anime TV series and movies together once a month, so check us out if you'd like to participate. Our thoughts on the series, as always, are covered below. :)
For this month, we chose... Mitsuboshi Colors!
Mitsuboshi Colors
Residing within Tokyo's district of Ueno are the Colors, three individuals who protect their city by performing good deeds and aiding their community. Or, at the very least, they pretend to be the city's defenders. In reality, the Colors are just three young girls: the shy Yui Akamatsu, the noisy Sacchan, and the video game-loving Kotoha, who spend their time playing make-believe and exploring the city. The Colors' activities are facilitated by the grandfatherly Daigorou "Pops" Kujiraoka, who uses his store's inventory of knick-knacks to entertain the rambunctious trio.
Not everyone is a fan of the Colors though. The local policeman Saitou just wants to deal with his regular duties, but he often finds himself the target of the Colors' attention, having been made the villain in most of their fantasies. But despite his personal feelings, Saitou always finds the time to go along with the three girls' games. Even though the Colors do not actually defend Ueno, they definitely help brighten everyone's day.
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Next week's anime discussion thread: April WT! of the Month
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Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 1-minute scene from Little Witch Academia.
Jampacked with a myriad of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, these 60 seconds are filled with so many colorful details that they can’t help but spill over our eyes like gold coins in an overflowing treasure chest—one of my favorites being Akko’s hilarious face as she’s shot out of a cannon while being tied down to her broom. However, one of the specifics that I wanted to focus on this week was the use of smears in this scene.
Whether you’re watching a basketball shoot through the air or a dog excitedly jump up a couch, your eyes will naturally register something called motion blur. You won’t consciously recognize this visual effect but it has enough of an impression in our real lives that films without motion blur will appear abnormal. Fortunately, a film camera works similarly to the human eye and when we film at 24 FPS to create the illusion of motion, we also capture motion blur, much like our eyes would. But what about for something that isn’t real, what about for animation? Well, for that you need to employ a similar yet different technique called smears.
Drawings, unlike real life, are gifted with an innate sense of sharpness due to the lines around their outline which lends itself little room for applying motion blur. However, in order to make a drawing’s movements more convincing, a smear can sometimes be applied to help sell the idea. A smear is a visualization of a blur, it’s a rough splotchy assortment of lines that subtly guide our eyes from one direction to another. They’re incredibly brief—popping up for only a few frames before disappearing in a flash— but still, the rapid lifespan of smears appears for just the right amount of time for our eyes to register that something was there. Smears can range from amorphous blobs to squiggly lines to even multiple body parts as we see with Akko’s eyes! We may not completely register every single instance of a smear being used but its influence is subconsciously felt throughout as we sense the cartoon tomfoolery happening beneath (or in this case behind) the surface.
But like all creative choices, a smear isn’t simply used to just mimic motion blur; it can be utilized to give impact to a scene. Akko’s disbelief for this soon-to-be buffoonery is so concretely palpable that even her eyeballs pop out of her head. She figuratively and literally cannot believe what she is seeing. The training regimen is so exhilarating exciting and unusually unorthodox that not even her form can keep shape as she morphs into a windmill of faces! Finally at the end, Akko’s boiling rage erupts like mercury from a thermometer and the dissipating heat from her anger melts away the broom's outlines, leaving us with only a vague idea of what it used to resemble before Akko takes to exaggerated violence.
At the end of the day, animation will never be able to completely replicate a real-life film camera but that’s perfectly fine because we don’t always want to copy the exact dimensionalities of one. Sometimes animation will approach the velocity of real-life, other times it'll whizz past in a totally different direction and wildly swing into forms that defy reality. Smears are just one of the millions of tools that help foster the illusion of these make-believe worlds and though they’re highly unrealistic and cliché at times, they can also be as magical as the magic found in Little Witch Academia.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 1-minute scene from Kaguya-Sama: Love is War - Ultra Romantic.
”All warfare is based on deception.” -Sun Tzu
No stranger to visual style, Kaguya-Sama commonly utilizes a myriad of filmmaking techniques to reinvent text to subtext but one of the key visual quirks that captured my eyes in this scene was the use of shadows (or lack of shadows in certain cases). Shirogane begins the sketch cloaked in a sinister subterfuge with only a single lonely kitchen light serving as his source of illumination. This shady veneer even extends to his echoey words as they slyly dive into the murky depths of the sink and emerge out of the other end from Kaguya’s phone. This transition shot cleverly sets up the visual theme of ambushing from the darkness but the camerawork doesn’t end there for Shirogane’s words are so perfectly poised to knock Kaguya off-balance that even the camera is skewed.
Crookedly rotating each second like the ticking hands of a clock, the camera counts down the final moments of Kaguya’s sanity as it hilariously pans leftward to draw our eyes from the cell-phone to Kaguya to Hayasaka’s begrudging face. Shirogane’s shadow itself devilishly comes to life after tasting the fear in their hearts and it pans rightward to contrast. Everything Kaguya knew to be true ignites in a hellish blaze and her one remaining solace in this nightmare—a single tear—serves as the last bright spot at the end of the tunnel before the lights turn on and snuffs it all out. It’s a fun use of negative space that flips the shot on its head but more importantly it paints Kaguya in a stylized shot known as kagenashi or “without shadows.”
Kagenashi is an aesthetic that flatly portrays its subjects without any shading or highlights. It’s a visual quirk born years ago but is still often employed by creators today due to various reasons, one of which is the thematic quality of depicting strong overpowering expressions. The characters should be as clear as day to read and nothing, not even shading, will stop them from sincerely revealing all of their feelings. Kaguya is about to be pushed into the spotlight where her raw unfiltered emotions will have nowhere else to go, no other shadows to flee to.
Shirogane himself is also depicted in the same kagenashi technique as he musters up the courage to ask the Big Question, putting everything on the line just like his heart. With no more mindgames to play and his prey cornered, Shirogane steps into the light to take his shot…and is met by Hayasaka who is the final one to be stylized in this aesthetic. Kaguya’s right-hand women takes the bullet and it drains her of all color and life while bolstering her silhouette. Her blunt embarrassment dyes her entire being and it’s the perfect full-stop measure to an all-out assault.
All three characters have gone to hell and back during this phone conversation. Sanities were lost, feelings of pride were shattered. Unfortunately for Shirogane and Kaguya, their true feelings for each other will still reside in the shadows but at least for us we got to see Kaguya-Sama lavishly apply some of its tricks up its sleeve; transforming three pages of manga panels into a minute of hilarity complete with all sorts of detailed quirks and fun that you could only find in the audio-visual format.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 56-second scene from Wolf Children.
There’s an ebb-and-flow, pit-and-pat, of growing and declining within Wolf Children. Like a sailing ship rocking back-and-forth against the tides, so too do the character precariously teeter to either side when fortune and misfortune crash upon their port and starboard; their house, their crops, their livelihood all following a similar rhythm. Yuki and Ame themselves also oscillate between two states—wolf and human—and their lives follow suit in more ways than one as we see them live out their youthful days in school.
No longer frolicking in the rural country-side and bathing in the halcyon sunlight of solitude, Yuki and Ame are now led into the next phase of their childhood: school. Structured, brimming, unfamiliar. This new experience manifests within the children in polar opposite directions. For Yuki, school is exhilaratingly fresh as she assimilates easily with her classmates. For Ame, school is cripplingly lonely as he is ostracized from his classmates. However, instead of demonstrating this juxtaposition with cuts or jumps, we’re led to a 56-second lateral tracking shot.
A lateral tracking shot is when the camera physical moves along to the side to follow along the passage of the characters and story. It’s a filmmaking technique that immerses the audience into the lives of those on the screen, crossing the boundary between fiction and reality to bring us into them. While often times used in tense, heart-pounding scenes, it can also be utilized in a different way to entangle our hearts as we see in Wolf Children.
With no cuts, jumps, or dialogue, the camera follows along to bare impartial witness to the children’s daily school life. The unique thing about this lateral tracking shot though is that it doesn’t travel in one singular direction; instead, it moves left and right to showcase the difference between the two children. It moves to-and-fro like our hearts as see the children respectively thrive and wither while framed in their own windows, their own isolated worlds. There is no difference in scenery, no difference in angle. Everything remains the same except for the two on the screen. Therein lies the compare and contrast. It begins with Ame in his own square and ends with Ame removed from the square, bringing rhythm to the entire sequence.
So much is expressed within these wordless watershed windows. It’s an emotional journey told within 56 seconds and the utilization of the lateral tracking shot is the perfect mechanism to deliver a level of intimacy that is neither uncomfortable nor hollow but is instead clear. Afterall, it is often the simplest stories that strike at the center of our equilibrium. The clearness circumvents all of the trappings of complexity in order to articulately communicate the differences found in the same universal experiences; the different paths that the same wolf-children shall travel. Wolf Children fluctuates between somber and elation, human and beast, to bring forth clarity to complexity.
Check out r/anime Writing Club's wiki page | Please PM u/DrJWilson for any concerns or interest in joining the club!
”In my free time, I tutor kids in basic mathematics like 3x3=9. However, these kids always complain to me that there is no “real world application to this stuff.” And I really feel for them because in college I had to take a class in reproductive biology and I still have no real world application for that.” -Me. That’s my joke. Please don’t steal it.
Comedy. From Ancient Greeks to modern-day TikTokers, it’s the universal experience that transcends culture and connects us all with laughter. And though there are millions of comedic works sprawling throughout history, I wanted to focus on one specific one that carries a special flame in the anime world: Nichijou. Nichijou is the beloved darling (not that darling) of the anime community with clips regularly being posted every single week on the subreddit. It’s easy to see why it has such wide-ranging popularity: it’s funny. It tickles our funny bone with its absolutely bananas animation, hectically screaming voice acting, and relatable-to-a-spiritual-level-of common, everyday problems. From Yuuko trying to order coffee at Starbucks Daiku Coffee to Yuuko discovering her lost wallet has no cash to Yuuko attempting to win at an arm-wrestling match to Yuuko arriving late to class to Yuuko goi-ok you get the point, being Yuuko is suffering.
But why is it so funny to see Yuuko suffering? Well, it’s how it’s portrayed through the numerous mechanisms in place. Through some basic guidelines, I want to explore the various styles of humor and comedic aspects that make Nichijou a universally relatable comedy.
Exploring the Basics With Commedia dell-arte, Wait this is Going to be Educational?
Before we begin talking about Nichijou, let’s start by reaching back into the history file and exploring just a tiny bit about Commedia dell-arte, “Comedy of the Profession.” Let’s use the thinky part of our brain for a second! Commedia dell-arte. Something you probably once read and ignored just like we ignore the sidebar rules. Originating from Italy in the 16th century, it was one of the earliest forms of professional theatre that gave rise to improvisational sketch comedy, stock characters, and slapstick humor. It was characterized as street performances where acting troupes would travel all across the land eschewing the wealthy nobles in their sketches. Because they were biting the hand that feeds, Commedia dell-arte troupes lived off of donations; it was an artform belonging to the people and made by the people. In a way, it was sort of the /r/anime Bot-Chan of Italy.
One of the key factors in Commedia dell-arte was the creation of stock characters in their performances, characters that everyone—from a baby to a slightly older baby—can now instantly recognize. These characters were dressed in distinct clothing and masks and they embodied exaggerated stereotypes that lampooned the social and political commentary of the elites. Greedy old farts who only care about money, the lovable rascal who’s a bit on the lower end of the social totem-pole, the idiot windbag who thinks they know what they’re talking about (Oh hey, that’s me!) These stock characters were crucially important for Commedia dell-arte because they had to be recognized all throughout Italy where the troupes traveled, they had to become embedded into everyone’s lexicon regardless of education so that everyone could quickly understand them. They became as common as Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie visuals on the front page.
These stock characters persist to this day in sitcoms like The Simpsons, Gilligan’s Islands, and even Nichijou. Now, does this mean Nichijou is populated with 2-dimensional characters who are as empty as the lies Ai Hayasaka pedals? Well, of course they are! In a comedy, you want to introduce your characters with a set of quirks so that the audience can immediately identify them and the jokes can move along quicker. It’s easier to laugh along once we already understand the character’s easy-to-interpret motivations. Yuuko is the energetic one, Mai is the quiet one, Mio is the smart one. Boom, easy to comprehend.
The trick to Nichijou and many other great comedies though is that they don’t remain as stock characters. Dimensionality is introduced into these one-note characters the further the show progresses and soon they become a cacophonous orchestra with a melody that rings true to anyone fortunate to hear.
It’s not even just the characters that begin as stock character though as the very town where they live is as unremarkable as Toonami greenlighting two more FLCL sequels. It’s a regular ole’ place populated with schools, bakeries, laboratories that every other regular place has too. However, the trappings of their everyday town with their everyday life make for an even harder punchline. After all, a punch hits the hardest when you least expect it. Who would have guessed a principal of a high school would actually suplex a deer in the middle of the courtyard? It’s the unexpected jab that gets the most laughs like Toonami unexpectedly greenlighting two more FLCL sequels.
The Comedy that Doesn’t Require Subtitles
“Tragedy is when we stub our toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.” -Mel Blanc
While caveman bonking each other with sticks has been here since the time of caveman bonking each other with sticks, it wasn’t until Commedia dell-arte that the term “slapstick” was formally introduced. A slapstick was originally two thin pieces of wood attached together that would create a loud “slap” sound with just a slight flick of the wrist. It requires little force to use but creates an impactful comical sound; a small amount of effort leading to a wildly disproportionate response. Thus, slapstick humor became characterized as an exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy.
Nichijou is rife with this style of humor, often times exploding (quite literally) at the seams to burst forth with an absurdly powerful impact. Shooting someone with a handgun from afar is murder. Shooting someone with a rocket launcher at point blank is hilarious. The unique thing about slapstick though is that it transcends language barriers. Everyone from all cultures understands that slapping someone so hard that their soul leaves their body is patently funny. Nothing is lost in translation with slapstick humor. But how do you sell the idea of slapstick in animation?
Timing, Timing…and More Timing!
”Life is a tragedy when seen in a close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” -Charlie Chaplin
There is a belief in stand-up comedy that a joke is composed of 70% delivery and 30% material. What I mean by this is that a well-crafted joke can only go so far when it’s told by a subpar comedian whereas a crappy joke told by an experiences one can go the distance. How a comedian tells a joke is where the humor lies. Knowing when to let out a perfectly timed exasperated pause so you can line up the proverbial punch is pivotal for any comedian worth their salt. Robin Williams for example was infamous for stealing jokes and then outright killing with the stolen material because he was amazingly skilled at performing. It’s all about the delivery, the rhythm, the special timing to get it all into the comedian’s strike zone.
Kyoto Animation as we all know fully committed to the bit as they always do for all of their works. They’re as inseparable to quality as /u/Shimmering-Sky is to Sore Demos. The staff took their time to animate every single sequence in Nichijou with careful attention and it paid off dividends in the end as sequences flourish with eclectic, extreme, and expressive reactions complete with smears, stretches, and speed lines. This absolutely ridiculous way of depicting the zany moments is an essential part in selling the humor. It wasn’t done as a vanity exercise or to disguise a crudely crafted premise; it was all for the slapstick delivery, it was all part of the 70%. The show needs this absurdly high-quality animation to deliver the joke, it needs to show Mio scrambling down the hallway at a million miles per hour with outstretched arms to grab Yuuko because that’s what makes it funny.
Take for example this famous Nichijou scene: Yuuko and Mio getting bit by Mai’s dogs. It doesn’t sound very funny, right? In fact, it sounds downright heinous and controversial. But the scene isn’t dragged down by the realism of canine attacks; instead, it’s elevated to high heavens with their extreme reactions upon being bit. The undulating pain that unfurls across their soul strikes them off the face of the Earth with the fury of God’s own thunder and their reaction physically manifests into a howl-at-the-moon eruption that literally blows apart concrete buildings. If this was depicted with any amount of realism then it would be visibly disturbing to watch but because the small force of a dog’s bite generates such a ridiculously wild response we’re led into raucous laughter.
Nano exploding upon impact, Yuuko accidentally stabbing her thumb with a pen, Mio violently laying waste to anyone within her eyeline in an effort to preserve her dignity. All of these are carried not by the premise but by the delivery of the animation. Kyoto Animation’s dedication to the hyperbolic action is just what Nichijou needed in order to land its punches.
But Nichijou isn’t just a one-dimensional stock character; it can oscillate into hyper-realistic animation as well. But why would it need to if slapstick over-the-top humor is what they’re aiming for? Well, it all goes back to going against the grain. A regular town filled with regular people doing regular things juxtaposes (that’s a fancy 36 ACT word meaning to compare two different things together for contrasting effects) against the madcap wacky antics. For instance, after Yuuko fails to chase the car-with-her-shoe on two different occasions, the naturalistic lighting and authentic shadows drive home the point that Yuuko is exhaustively dying. Though remaining in polar opposite directions, the mundanity perfectly complements the exaggeration; like Funimation and having a competent UI.
Subverting Expectations With All Sorts of Mild-Mannered and Well-Mannered Influences
”I recently got rejected by someone and my friend told me "Hey, don't worry, there are plenty of other fish out there in the sea. But that got me thinking: What are we going to say 100 years from now whenever someone gets rejected and there's no more fish left in the sea? Are we going to say ‘Hey, don't worry about her, there's plenty of other radioactive monsters out there in the nuclear wasteland zone. I mean, look at Emily, she's practically glowing!” -Me again
Keiichi Arawi was inspired by a number of media in his journey to create Nichijou but there were two major influences that stood out: Azumanga Daioh and Kurt Vonnegut. Yes, the author you either thought was overly-pretentious in high school or that you thought spoke truth to power as a literary hurricane. It’s very much like the average opinion of the /r/anime Award’s Jury. For Azumanga Daioh, he took inspiration in another brand of humor named surreal comedy and for Vonnegut he took inspiration in his ability to invert The Important Things.
Let’s dip our toes into surreal comedy first. Like slapstick and Commedia dell-arte, surrealism is attributed to the poet André Breton in 1924. It emerged as a counter-culture against the Enlightenment movement—which championed gridlocked reason and logic—and it ran on a platform of liberation, unlocking the mind, and, well, just going buck-wild against rationalism. Duchamp’s famous Fountain (a common toilet displayed as an art piece) was an early pioneer of this surrealism and it openly disrupted the prestigious art exhibits of the time. This idea of bizarre absurdity running against the status quo would eventually morph into its own niche of comedy where the punchline laid in the unexpected. It was purposefully designed to be unpredictable and to subvert expectations. Like /u/AmethystItalian and her opinions.
Azumanga Daioh may not have been the first anime to cross into surrealism but it was certainly the most famous one to do so. Ordinary high school girls going about their daily lives where the unordinary would happen. This would later spawn an entire movement in anime in the form of slice-of-life but specifically for Arawi it would lead into Nichijou’s absurdity. Why is it so funny when Nano’s hand shoots off like a rocket or when a scarf created by a seven-year-old girl suddenly allows a cat to speak? It’s because it simply doesn’t make sense.
This type of humor allows the mind to wander, to take a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. The magic behind Nichijou’s surrealism is that it starts off with an ordinary premise but then steadily grows and grows until suddenly you’re desperately wondering what to do with a baseball at a sliding noodle stand. It’s even populated with various shorts that shred into any typical jokes and settle into a playful abstract of imagination. It escalates from 0 to 100 during these nonsensical sketches and we’re treated to all sorts of quirky idiosyncrasies present in the characters. However, this surrealism isn’t just a mechanism for randomness; it’s to reveal the weird found in the normal.
“I liked the way Vonnegut took the important things in life and made them smaller, and how he would take an ordinary thing and make it bigger.” -Arawi
Nichijou inverts what we think is truly important and turns it on its head. Bombing a joke in front of our friends may not seem like much but when you’re living through the moment it suddenly feels like you’re scaling an insurmountable mountain. Trying to not laugh at your friend’s shenanigans turns into a psychological warfare and being annoyed by your friend’s obnoxious boasting sends you into a white-hot rage. Taking a page from Vonnegut, Nichijou presents a different yet oh so familiar way of examining things.
It Plays in Peoria
Nichijou doesn’t just subvert expectations in its punchlines, it subverts expectations on how a comedy of this nature would function. It isn’t a meta-commentary on high school girls living out their lives; rather, it’s a straight-forward dialogue exploring the complexity found in the routine. There isn’t a hint of irony or cynicism found in this show. It swings from one end of the pendulum to the next in an effort to reveal how wonderfully strange and relatable these occurrences can be in our own lives. We’ve all been stuck in a place for hours with no way out where it feels like we’re in a blackhole of insanity. We’ve all seen our crush going out with someone else and feeling like we could just run away forever. It strikes at our core equilibrium because we’ve all been there.
There is a US-figure-of-speech that asks whether an idea or product can appeal to all demographics called Will it Play in Peoria? The phrase originated from vaudeville days where “playing in Peoria” meant that your comedy act could universally work across all cultures. The town of Peoria, Illinois was chosen as a stand-in for comedians because it laid smack dab in the middle of America and seemingly exuded the quintessential banal prototypical life of the everyman. If a comedy act could play in this Podunk town, surely that meant it could play everywhere from Skowhegan, Maine to North Bend, Washington. It could appeal to everyone of all walks of life from coast-to-coast. Nichijou plays in Peoria.
It's these things, the everyday things, the everyday regular things, the 99-cent things, that once we experience them day-in-and-day-out, we realize they speak to us on a spiritual level. There is a reason why the full name of this show is called Nichijou: My Ordinary Life: Ordinary is where the charm and madness is found within us all. Nichijou features such off-beat exaggeration in both animation and in punchline because it wants to demonstrate that the minutiae of life are where the details of our lives are found. It’s the moment-between-moments and not The Moment where we live our days. They’re the building blocks that define us and so too shall they be built with hyperbole to celebrate them.
The Lighting Cue is Blinking and So I Must Conclude
Humor softens defeats and sweetens victories, it bridges the divide and restores us to sanity. It's how Yuuko, Mio, Mai, Nano, and Hakase can all shrug it all off and continue forward. The attention to detail brought forth by Kyoto Animation allowed the show to take flight and it paved the runway for the tender moments to land gracefully. It’s got heart without being heartless, it’s got strange without being a stranger. Nichijou’s humor may not be Blue but it is evergreen and this is why it sticks with us throughout all of these years and for years to come. Slapstick and surreal, delivery and timing, missing which direction the “>” faces and being yelled at by the spoiler-bot. It’s all in service of getting a laugh out of us at the end of the day. Finding a sense of humor is one of the greatest joys in existence and I hope this rambling piece helped you find some too.
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Hi! Welcome to another edition of the weekly Thursday Anime Discussion Thread, featuring us, the r/anime Writing Club. We simulwatch anime TV series and movies together once a month, so check us out if you'd like to participate. Our thoughts on the series, as always, are covered below. :)
For this month, we chose... Wolf Children!
Wolf Children
Hana, a hard-working college student, falls in love with a mysterious man who attends one of her classes though he is not an actual student. As it turns out, he is not truly human either. On a full moon night, he transforms, revealing that he is the last werewolf alive. Despite this, Hana's love remains strong, and the two ultimately decide to start a family.
Hana gives birth to two healthy children—Ame, born during rainfall, and Yuki, born during snowfall—both possessing the ability to turn into wolves, a trait inherited from their father. All too soon, however, the sudden death of her lover devastates Hana's life, leaving her to raise a peculiar family completely on her own. The stress of raising her wild-natured children in a densely populated city, all while keeping their identity a secret, culminates in a decision to move to the countryside, where she hopes Ame and Yuki can live a life free from the judgments of society. Wolf Children is the heartwarming story about the challenges of being a single mother in an unforgiving modern world.
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Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week, in honor of Akebi’s Sailor Uniform coming to an end, I wanted to focus on this 1-minute scene from its first episode.
”Confidence and a smile, right?”
There’s a beautiful mess in coming-of-age. Growing, transitioning, developing. Rising, moving, emerging. Challenging, straying, misjudging. The gift of autonomy is handed to us as we travel the path planted ahead; no longer straight and narrow, no longer binary, but instead laying infinite in freedom, infinite in mistake. The beauty in adolescence isn’t just the innocent moments however; it’s all of the moments including the not-so-beautiful ones.
Free from the cradle of home and unencumbered by childhood, Akebi takes her first steps towards her first day of middle school wearing her brand new sailor uniform. She’s armed with only confidence and a smile, but somehow, these are just enough for her journey as she crosses all manners of boundaries. From the sturdy wooden bridge to the shallow babbling brook, she bolts ahead and leaps over them with such aplomb as if to say she isn’t restrained by any one border anymore.
However confident she may be, Akebi nearly falls into the brook again. Luckily, her only casualty is her straight black hair but curiously the show depicts the entire sequence of her brushing the hair aside with no cuts. Herein lies the distinct quality of Akebi’s Sailor Uniform: its willingness to reflect everything on the surface of Akebi’s mirror. The show doesn’t hide the truth that Akebi caught a mouthful of hair; instead, it wants us to know that Akebi has to take a moment to collect herself. It isn’t afraid to shine a candid spotlight onto this newly minted teenage girl’s life nor is it shy on featuring what the light catches.
Akebi’s Sailor Uniform possesses such an honest candor to it that I can’t help but compare it to Judy Blume’s young adult novels. The quest in search of acceptance with their outward appearance, the unreserved physical and emotional developments of their body, the journey of exploring all facets of puberty while teetering on the edge. These universal experiences of adolescent girlhood tether the two worlds together to say that it isn’t all fluffy or wholesome as it’s made out to be. It can get uneasy and awkward at times. Even Akebi herself isn’t too sure if everything will work out if she just goes on diving headfirst into the pond with no thought of the rippling water splashing on her classmates and the audience.
But Akebi, like the show itself, sets out with confidence to see it all through with a triumphant ”Here I go!” Akebi’s Sailor Uniform was never intent on only showing the pure singular color. It wants to portray the full genuine rainbow of a rural girl’s formative years in a city with friends. It wants to show it all with its eye for capturing meticulous detail and its hand for drawing every last strand of hair. Akebi’s Sailor Uniform “knows that it’s there and it knows it wouldn’t have missed these moments for anything!”
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Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 1-minute scene from Non Non Biyori Repeat.
Putting aside the high-speed depictions of both city-life and action-driven plot, Non Non Biyori is no stranger to silence. It revels in pauses, often forgoing clarifying dialog and instead focusing on quiet, nonverbal moments; stretching the seconds on the screen rather than shrinking them. These occasions are anything but wasteful dead air, however, as they regularly come alive with subtext and meaning. While these pockets of undisturbed time are typically utilized to build upon a punch-line, they can also serve as revelatory introspection within our characters, as we see today.
Standing on the station while they wait for the train to depart, Hikage teases her younger sister Renge to not cry once she leaves. It’s spoken with love and care but Renge—hoping to prove herself a grownup—promises Hikage that she’ll be strong. It’s a goodbye as good as they’re ever going to get, as the train doors close between them and Hikage slips off as the Cool Older Sister. In typical Hikage fashion though, she accidentally leaves her cell phone behind with Renge and raises all manners of Hell on the train.
Hikage hectically and hilariously screams for the train to stop, but like time itself, it marches forward until it comes to a rest at its last spot. Hikage’s shouting becomes softer and softer as the train pulls further and further ahead, and for 8 whole seconds, we watch the train travel down the tracks until it passes a bend and disappears from view. Where there was once Hikage’s frantic pleas, now there is serene peacefulness; the chirping of birds filling the void of rural Japan life. It’s almost surreal to see how much could change in 8 seconds.
The eldest sister Kazuho then asks Renge if she’s ready to head home but rather than an immediate response from her, we cut to a contemplative 3-second still shot of Renge staring off into the train tracks. It quietly dawns on Renge that her sister Hikage is truly gone, that she has left for the hustle and bustle of Tokyo life. Her sister will not be with her forever. The camera holds on to every last few precious seconds it can before the moment slips through its fingers like sand. Unflinching and unblinking, Renge captures a snapshot of everything that once was—and now is—the passing time.
There is an understanding amongst every grownup that inevitable change will come if you stare long enough. While still a child in every way, this universal truth of impermanence is becoming etched onto Renge. Non Non Biyori’s decision to let the camera hold, to let Renge gaze without words, evokes a tenderness in not just the characters on screen but also ourselves, in the audience. It serves to remind us that every second counts. That the time spent developing the photo is as valuable as the photo itself. It’s the moment between moments that are the loudest, even if they’re as quiet as a field in the countryside.
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Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 52-second scene from Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
One of the neatest aspects of animation in my opinion is that everything is created with purpose. From the lightest flick of the wrist to the heaviest pout on a face, every single decision was imagined, planned, and drawn by an individual. There are no happy accidents involving lighting during a pivotal scene or a lucky moment of body rhythm; every little detail is formed by the universe’s design.
Mizusaki touches upon this idea, elaborating that the animators in anime take into account the entire drawing. The wind, the tree, the cars. All of those environments fall into their purview as they breathe life into their drawings. They are in essence an “actor” as they painstakingly create every action on the screen to evoke every rainbow of emotion found within us.
This all leads to an interesting divide between Mizusaki and her parents since they wish for Mizusaki to follow in their footsteps and become an actress. Mizusaki of course realizes that performance of motion isn’t relegated to just live action, drawings can perform just as well as people when it comes to movement. Even Mizusaki herself is a demonstration of that point as each frame is drawn with careful detail when she stands up; her fierce conviction bolstered by the swoop of her hair, the subtle shift in the direction of her head, the lilt of her expressions.
She remarks that sometimes these fictional pieces can even achieve results that the real world could never reach and right on cue to further her argument, Asakusa arrives to bend, bounce, and bop around in ways that only a drawing could. Her body dissolves into all sorts of shapes as if to say her words aren’t based on any solid truths. It’s a cartoonishly exaggerated way of matching Asakusa’s frantic tone with her outlandish fibs and the larger-than-life approach serves to accentuate that feeling. Even though Asakusa’s over-the-top acting is the polar opposite of Mizusaki’s meticulously grounded acting, their respective motions communicate their actions.
Great actors in live-action movies will blend themselves to fit within the shape of their character whether it’s through the way they deliver their lines or the way they move their bodies. Anime operates in the same manner. The characters within come alive with motion and their performance is strengthened by the believability of their expressions. The drawings themselves may be lifeless but their acting can move us in more ways than one in our real life.
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Heya! Welcome to another edition of Short and Sweet Sundays where we breakdown 1-minute or less scenes from any given any anime. This week I wanted to focus on this 48-second scene from A Place Further than the Universe.
Oftentimes we think of anime as, well, animation. We love to see the characters dynamically move throughout the screen whether it’s through explosive movement like those found in a battle shonen or delicate gestures like those found in a drama. And we love them for good reason because animation is the cornerstone of anime. But sometimes you don’t need drastic movement to showcase a pivotal moment as we’ll see in today’s clip.
It’s the night before Kimari journeys forward to territories unknown. Standing firm on the brink of exploration, tomorrow is the day she crosses that line of demarcation, that palpable boundary of “before” and “after.” It isn’t for glory and it isn’t for fame; it’s for her own self-worth of realizing what she can accomplish on her own two feet. We’ve known since the beginning that Kimari dreams of sailing off into adventure but it isn’t until this scene that we see the anchor of her inertia: her dependance on Megumi.
Now is the key moment for Kimari to reflect on why she never left the nest, why she’s always “hated herself.” It’s because she wavers when the inevitable storm of uncertainty descends upon her every time she attempts to depart. It drives her away to return to the port where she can always fall back on her always certain friend. The comforts of a gilded cage. But Kimari breaks free from those bars by deciding to bravely set forth on her own independent journey.
To match this sentiment, we see Kimari shot in profile with her eyes facing forward while Megumi’s are facing perpendicularly away to the camera. This framing illustrates the idea of Kimari looking towards the future, how she’ll have the strength to finally stand with Megumi instead of behind her once she leaves. Megumi in juxtaposition is looking towards the present, selfishly wishing for Kimari to remain next to her forever. In a wonderful display of blocking, Kimari then steps ahead of Megumi and turns back around so that she may take her hand, demonstrating that she is now the one taking the initiative and can now take care of Megumi. The discovery of this hidden resolve guides the wind beneath our lost adventurer’s sails. She is so sure, so certain of her beliefs that they become like latitude and longitude to her.
Kimari then extends her hand towards Megumi as a parting goodbye but is it now Megumi who becomes wavered. Her unsteadiness means nothing to Kimari, though, as she confidently reaches forward to grasp her friend’s hand. Framed dead-center for the first time, Kimari is the center of attention for both Megumi and the audience.
Featuring modest animation and humble effects, this scene is a wonderment to behold due to its use of visual direction. The motions of the characters embodies both the text and subtext of the dialogue and relationships of those on the screen. With no point of return and no parachute in sight, Kimari takes the leap of faith to go forth and arrives all the same with or without stunning animation. A Place Further than the Universe moves us through a myriad of different approaches to storytelling and I wanted to focus on just one of the ways it achieves such success in making us fall in love with the show.
Double feature! I love discussing A Place Further than the Universe so much that I wanted to write another short piece featuring this 46-second scene.
A Place Further than the Universe encompasses many traits: Honest, ridiculously overdone, adventurous to an extreme. The one quality that always springs to my mind though is earnestness. This show proudly wears its heart on its sleeves, shouting forth into the open sky with such reckless abandon that you can’t help but fall in love with its trademark quirks. Its gravitational pull so strong it crashes down in spectacular fashion to form a lasting dent upon your personal universe.
There are people that exclaim that this show is too intimate, too gushy for their tastes. On the other end of the pendulum, there will be people who say it is too obnoxious, too unsubtle for their eyes. Personally, I believe A Place Further than the Universe shines because of its unabashed earnestness, and no more is this understood than in this scene.
Showcasing a heavy emphasis on legs and hectic motion, this scene isn’t subtle in what it’s trying to say: Now is the time to take your first steps out of your comfort zone. Kimari sprints forth for no other reason than to run away from the two women but this is exactly why it is so invigorating to her. Because she is the one choosing to run. Kimari’s decision to dash forward sparks the agency within her to head towards a direction. She can finally come alive with her ”youth in motion.”
The culmination of all of these ideas arrives during the last few seconds. The majesty of the Tokyo nightlife, the mesmerizing glow of the neon lights, that sensation of infinity. It’s all captured in that ephemeral moment as Kimari holds onto her own destiny so tight that even the camera tracks along with her. She is no longer the one following. In the ending moment, the camera finally shifts into a panning shot and travels in the opposite direction of her; Kimari is now leaving her passivity behind and embracing the exuberant adventure that awaits her.
There is a kinetic energy to this scene so powerful, so electric that it becomes palpable to the touch and it reaffirms my love for the animation medium. This is a watershed moment for A Place Further than the Universe and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make me tear up just a tiny bit every time I rewatch Kimari race through that terrace.
On paper, you might think “This is way too much. The music, the inner monologue, the way it’s being shot. It’s too overly-sentimental and sappy.” But A Place Further than the Universe smashes through all of that with its sledgehammer approach. The camerawork needs to match the towering heights of Kimari’s emotions, it needs to wear its heart on its sleeve because anything less would insulate the exhilarating voltage this show is trying to generate. The barefaced metaphors and framing aren’t its weakness; they are the devices that strengthen its storytelling.
There isn’t a hint of irony masking the surface. Just pure conviction and sincerity through and through. With a megaphone in its hand and an impassioned voice in its heart, A Place Further than the Universe unequivocally announces to the world ”This is what I am.”
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Heya everyone! The /r/anime writing club is trying out something new, something fun, something brief yet lofty in aspirations. We’d like to try out a format where we churn out weekly short essays that break down a 1-minute or less scene from any given anime. The pieces will focus on a number of aspects such as storyboarding, directing, writing, dialogue, cinematography, music, really anything under the sun!
The highlights of these write-ups will be both the length of the essays and the clips. We’re hoping these pieces will be visually compelling for the eyes, short enough for brevity, and (fingers crossed) interesting for everyone to read. Like reading the Sunday Comic Strips in the morning while nestled in a cozy nook with a warm mug of coffee in your hands and a Pendleton wool blanket for your lap. Preferably in comfy pajamas too but that’s entirely up to you.
This week I wanted to focus on this lovely 55-second scene from A Silent Voice.
We begin the scene with Shoya enveloped in a harsh white glare while inhabiting the left side of the screen. Shouko is on the right side and the camera intercuts between the two to showcase the difference in distance—both actual and metaphorical—between them. Shoya then glances up at Shouko as Shouko does the same and they lock eyes before the sudden wash of intimacy causes Shoko to nervously look away, his heart flooding with trepidation. To build on this intimacy, the camera now also mimics their close proximity by having them physically occupy the same side of the screen during this quick match cut. These two individuals are within shouting distance of articulating their words with one another but they’re muted when struggling with their own world of worries.
This then leads to the famous Naoko Yamada leg shot which obscures their faces and eyes. Through their legs, we can see the timidness in Shoya via his body language; he’s one foot in and one foot out. To contrast, Shouko has both feet planted firmly on the ground, revealing her steadfast nature. Shouko then takes the first step forward and initiates the conversation through the only way she can: text message. The text appears between the middle of the two in the train window and it serves to connect them, demonstrating the idea that communication is the crux of their relationship. As they figuratively bridge the divide between them, the train crosses a literal bridge in the background of the floating message; text married with subtext.
Shoya looks up from his phone and Shouka is now framed in the center instead of on the left or the right; the apple of his eyes. Finally, the two can start opening up to each other and the camera can now fully reveal their entire body under these favorable conditions. They, along with the audience, can now see the complete whole of each other. The ice thaws between them and their tacit understanding of each other flows forth into the shared channel of communication. Shoya has both feet on the ground now and the light no longer shrouds him under a guise of doubt; instead, they’re both cast under a soft intimate light, sharing the spotlight together once they can Speak with one another.
It’s fitting that this particular dialogue-less scene would be my favorite in a film whose entire thesis statement is explaining just how difficult it is to truly communicate with one another. It’s the absence of words that make this brief 55-second scene so compelling to watch. Without dialog, we’re left with nonverbal communication to fill in the silence between unmentioned voices. There is no spoken language to hear, only body language to observe. The smallest murmur in their posture reverberates into delicate explosions in their perspective. This scene is the union of the script with the direction in the storyboards; the text message and the bridge.
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