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Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Release date: April 7, 2017
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
Japan knows several distinguished animation directors, from Hayao Miyazaki to Mamoru Hosoda, but perhaps no feature director* is so original as Masaaki Yuasa. He created quite a stir with ‘Mind Game’ (2004) and kept on pouring out original work since then.
What’s striking about Yuasa’s films is that they don’t follow the general anime aesthetic, at all, on the contrary. ‘Night Is Short, Walk on’ is an excellent example in that respect. This mind-blowing feature film boasts human designs that are very different from your typical anime, highly original color schemes, more offbeat background art, interludes in a line-less style with vibrant digital coloring, wild, even grotesque animation (for example, watch people swallow in the first scene), and a highly original, almost stream-of-consciousness-like way of storytelling, using unpredictable editing techniques, and an occasional split screen, surprising camera angles, extreme perspectives, and moving background art, when necessary (there’s a very impressive example when Senpai runs up an exterior staircase).
Apart from Yuasa’s way of storytelling the plot of ‘Night Is Short, Walk on’ is highly original in its own right. The two main protagonists don’t even have names but are referred to as Otome (maiden) and Senpa (senior). We follow the two for one night, a night in which apparently anything can happen. Otome, a young woman, is ready to discover the adult world, while Senpa, who’s madly in love with her, has decided to finally express his feelings to her. Meanwhile, during this one night, both people meet a plethora of strange people, bizarre situations, and odd gatherings in a free-flowing narrative that nevertheless can be cut into four parts, which naturally flow into each other. Nevertheless, it’s best not to know anything about the plot, and just let it come to you. You’ll be in for quite a ride. What’s more, despite all its weirdness, ‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ is essentially a film about love, and unexpectedly gentle despite all the mayhem surrounding the main story.
Surprisingly for such a visually stunning film, ‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ is based on a novel, by Tomihiko Morimi. His novel was divided into four seasons, which explains the high number of events in the film version. Morimi was also responsible for the novel on which Yuasa’s earlier series ‘The Tatami Galaxy’ (2010) was based, and the series and ‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ are very similar in visual style and general atmosphere.
In all ‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ is hardly like anything you’ve seen before, and a great testimony of what can be done in animation. In my opinion this is one of the most important animation films of the decade. Highly recommended.
* There are also several highly original independent Japanese directors of shorts, e.g. Kōji Yamamura, Atsushi Wara & Mirai Mizue. Check them out!
Watch the trailer for ‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Directors: Alain Gagnol & Jean-Loup Felicioli
Release Date: December 20, 2015
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Un plan d’enfer’ is a comic short from the makers of ‘Une vie de chat’ (2010) and ‘Phantom Boy’ (2015).
The cartoon is set on a hot night in town. Two burglars plan to steal gold from an old lady. In order to be able to make a lot of noise and keep unheard, they release a multitude of cats on to the streets. These attract numerous dogs (including the vicious mongrel from ‘Phantom Boy‘), creating a lot of noise, indeed. The plan all goes well, until the two spill some katnip on their own car…
‘Un plan d’enfer’ is an unassuming, unpretentious short, told with charming drawings in the great Franco-Belgian comic strip tradition, and with the typical crooked style of Gagnol and Felicioli. There’s nothing mind-blowing or life-changing about this short, but it provides five and half minutes of genuine fun.
Watch the trailer for ‘Un plan d’enfer’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Un plan d’enfer’ is available on the Blu-Ray and DVD of ‘Phantom Boy’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: April 29, 1938
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
In ‘Hold It’ a bunch of cats sing a song with many stops in it, a rather lame variation on the 1937 hit song ‘Posin”.
At the stops everybody freezes, including the singing cat himself, who’s able to hang still in mid-air. Later, the cats’ song manages to stop apples from falling and water from flowing.
These rather original and silly gags save the cartoon, which otherwise is anything but interesting, The cats’ song is too trite to become a real classic, and apart from the threat of a dog, nothing really happens in the cartoon. And yet, ‘Hold It’ marks a welcome diversion from the childish morality tales that most Color Classics are. As is often the case with the Color Classics, the opening scene is the most memorable, with its beautiful 3D shots of a village going to sleep. This scene takes a full minute off the cartoon, while the song only enters after the third minute.
Watch ‘Hold It’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Hold It’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Somewhere in Dreamland – Max Fleischer’s Color Classics: The Definitive Collection’
Director: Wilfred Jackson
Release Date: July 28, 1931
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
A cat is put out. When he tries to catch a bird, he falls down and gets knocked unconscious by a wind-flower.
Enter a nightmarish sequence, in which the cat imagines his lives are fleeing him, and that he’s being attacked by giant birds, hooting owls, bats, giant spiders and hollow trees. Luckily, in the morning it all appears to have been a dream.
‘The Cat’s Out’ is not devoid of dance routines (there are two dance scenes featuring scarecrows and a bat), but it has a surprisingly clear story, unmatched by earlier Silly Symphonies. It is arguably the first Silly Symphony with such a clear story, anticipating the straightforward storytelling of ‘The Ugly Duckling‘ of the end of the same year. This makes the short one of the most interesting Silly Symphonies of 1931.
Watch ‘The Cat’s Out’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Silly Symphony No. 20
To the previous Silly Symphony: The Busy Beavers
To the next Silly Symphony: Egyptian Melodies
‘The Cat’s Out’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies’
Director: Wilfred Jackson
Release Date: July 28, 1930
Rating: ★★
Review:
1930 saw a string of Silly Symphonies featuring animals performing endless dance routines. In ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’, however, the dancing is being done by toys and dolls. Not that it makes a difference…
‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ introduces the small spider, who would also be the hero of ‘Egyptian Melodies‘. To escape the freezing cold the spider enters a toy shop. First he’s afraid of everything, but when he’s playing the piano, the dolls and toys come to life, dancing to his tunes. This results in a very, very long dance routine, rendering ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ a rather dull short. However, in the first scene the spider leads the viewer into the scenery, and we as an audience, explore the toy shop with him. This story idea would be perfected in the intro of ‘Pinocchio‘ (1940), of which the intro of ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ is an embryonic version.
‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ contains a strange mixture of primitive and more advanced designs and animation. It starts with some stunning effect animation of snow, and ends when a candle lights some fireworks, making the spider flee the shop.
Watch ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Silly Symphony No. 12
To the previous Silly Symphony: Arctic Antics
To the next Silly Symphony: Monkey Melodies
‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies’
Director: Walt Disney
Release Date: April 18, 1930
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Night’ is a typical ‘mood piece’ Silly Symphony, comparable with the season mini-series (Springtime, Summer, Autumn, and Winter). This time it’s night and we watch owls, moths, fireflies, mosquitoes and frogs moving to music.
As usual in the early Silly Symphonies, there’s practically no plot, but only a dance routine, and a rather dull one, too. Nevertheless, the short manages to evoke more ‘mood’ than the other early entries.
Especially the opening scene looks beautiful with its rippling reflection of the moon in the water, predating similar scenes in ‘Water Babies‘ (1935) and ‘The Old Mill‘ (1937). Indeed, ‘Night’ can be seen as an early forerunner of the latter cartoon, and it is interesting to compare them, and awe at the tremendous strides the Disney studio had made in the mere seven years between the two shorts.
According to David Gerstein in ‘Animation Art’ the dancing frog is the embryonic form of Flip the Frog, Ub Iwerks’s own star after he had left Disney January 1930. Apparently, Iwerks wanted to make a new star out of this frog, but this idea was turned down by Walt Disney. Indeed, this frog gets quite some screen time (the last three minutes of the cartoon), and has a girlfriend, who is a clear forerunner of Flip’s sweetheart in Flip’s second cartoon, ‘Puddle Pranks‘.
Watch ‘Night’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Silly Symphony No. 9
To the previous Silly Symphony: Cannibal Capers
To the next Silly Symphony: Frolicking Fish
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 