茄子 スーツケースの渡り鳥 / Nasu: Suutsukeesu no Watari-dori/ Eggplant: Migratory Bird with Suitcase

As predicted in my impressions of the first Nasu film, this one is despite being along the same lines as its predecessor rather more conventional and less ‘artsy’. Those impressions were dominated by my long list of director Kousaka Kitarou’s previous work, as I was impressed by just how many of anime’s big names he had worked with – not many can boast having worked on Akira, Spirited Away, Metropolis and Grave of the Fireflies. This time, he brought in another interesting name from Ghibli – Yoshida Ken’ichi, key animator for many Ghibli films, including Mononoke-Hime and Mimi-o Sumaseba, but also working (very briefly) in that capacity for several favourite series of mine, including Evangelion, Scrapped Princess, Wolf’sRain and Dennou Coil, and providing the strong character designs for Eureka Seven and its successor Xam’d.

These two remarkable men, however, followed up a remarkable OVA with something rather bland. Suitcase is a direct follow-up to Summer in Andalusia, but without its intensity, demonstrable depth of knowledge or exotic setting – for a Japanese anime, at least. Again, it covers a bicycle race, but this time focusing on the team aspect of such races and with the Belgian team (which is seemingly full of Spaniards) taking part in the Japan Cup.

This means that Pepe and co get a cute Japanese assistant as well as the support of a funny little Japanese kid. Interestingly enough, given that with Yoshida on board you might expect them to look like something out of Eureka Seven, these two look about as much like Ghibli designs as it’s possible to get. The race is a difficult one – a torrential downpour starts, a formidable old vet has decided to race and a key member of the PaoPao team is under psychological stress because of the death of someone close to him. Various factors come into play, and apart from what happens with seemingly the slightly unhinged veteran, mostly the film is predictable but satisfying. The trouble is, the first film made me expect rather more.

Though the animation is smoother and more ambitious, Madhouse having come a long way between 2003 and 2007, it is also much less inventive. It’s remarkably effective how well the animations for cycling have been done here, the motions after all not being very typical ones for animators to encounter, but I really missed the stylish, exaggerated, desperate movements we see in the first film. There’s obvious exhaustion here, but it’s not an unfamiliar page in the lexicon of anime expressions. There’s also a somewhat clumsy use of cel-shaded CG, particularly for cyclists going around bends – it’s just not quite integrated well enough and looks awkward. Finally, the humour is strained – the last fart joke could possibly be passed off as just trying to be realistic, but the first, during the race, is just unneeded, and the little parts about Pepe’s clothes being damaged so that his bottom is visible and the Japanese girl getting all flustered definitely come over as childish.

There is much of merit here – the animation is superb, the voice acting is strong, the setting is still refreshingly different. But it just comes nowhere close to how impressive, different and clever the first film was. Perhaps it’s almost wholly down to the difference between adapting an ambitious manga and anime-makers devising their own story.

On the other hand, I vaguely appreciated the way an attempt was made to have ‘Nasu’ as the title make a degree of sense. Though the part about the suitcase…less so. 

茄子 アンダルシアの夏 / Nasu: Andarushia no Natsu / Aubergine: Summer in Andalusia

With this artsy short film, Kousaka Kitarou managed the rather bizarre feat of becoming the new figure to watch – after already having had a remarkable career that meant he had a significant role in many of anime’s most important films. He started out in Oh! Production while Takahata was still working for the studio, and though he had no credited part in Takahata’s Gauche the Cellist, nor in the animation the studio produced for Miyazaki’s Cagliostro, by 1984 he had worked with both future Ghibli helmsmen through key animation in 1981’s Jarinko Chie (by Takahata for TMS) and 1984’s Nausicaa (for Topcraft), the latter as one of a long list: the role of a key animator is often integral to the story of the rise of a significant Japanese animator – especially when it comes to Miyazaki and his contributions to Horusu and Gulliver’s Space Travels. After that he strengthened ties with Miyazaki as animation director on Sherlock Hound, worked with Ghibli for Laputa and provided key animation for what most of the Ghibli associates had walked away from – the lengthy project that became the disappointing Little Nemo.

It was during this period that he left Oh! and branched out in remarkable ways. After Laputa, he was there to provide key animation in a number of landmark titles, all released within two years – Gainax’s first film Wings of Honneamise, the weird but interesting Mamoru Oshii half of Twilight Q (with Studio Deen), Takahata’s most well-known piece Grave of the Fireflies and Outomo’s seminal Akira. As if that were not already a remarkable enough resume, he followed it up by associating himself with episodes of Yawara!, which as well as being made by Madhouse as they moved into becoming a powerhouse studio able to make features was the first manga by Urasawa Naoki to become an anime (Kousaka also had a hand in Master Keaton and the superb Monster). He then worked for Rintaro on the early X2 anime, one of the first time Clamp’s work had been adapted for anime, a year after its predecessor Tokyo Babylon. He tried his hand as a director with the OVA A-Girl before returning to Ghibli for some of their best films, rising up through the ranks to become an animation director for Whisper of the Heart and then a supervising animation director for Princess Mononoke – my two favourite Ghibli works. His second work as a director saw him return to Clamp to adapt Clover, and then in 2001, he was not only a Ghibli supervisor again for Spirited Away, but also provided more key animation for Rintaro with his remarkable Tezuka adaptation Metropolis.

So yes, he was in a good position when it came to make this short film in 2003. I’m sure that’s the most I’ve ever written about a director’s history, but I just find it remarkable. Usually, it amuses me to find that someone in anime has a link or two to another significant figure, but Kousaka seems to have worked for almost every highly prominent figure in anime short of Kon Satoshi and Hosoda Mamoru, who probably nodded to him as their Madhouse sempai.

The story Kousaka decided to adapt was from the manga Nasu (‘aubergine’). One of the stories there was about a cycle race, and the story is that since they were both cycling fans, Miyazaki suggested Kousaka animate it. Kousaka asked Miyazaki if he wanted to collaborate, but it was during the period Miyazaki was saying he had burned out and was retiring, so Kousaka went off to Madhouse. Set, as the title suggests, in Andalusia, the film follows professional cyclist Pepe Benengeli as he takes on a difficult stage of the Vuelta a España. Not stylised and comical like the Tour de France in Les Triplettes de Belleville, this is a fond but realist take on the event, emphasising the strategies cyclists use on a field where so many are so equal, the politics of being sponsored and the difference it makes being supported by a home crowd. Pepe is an interesting main character for such a brief piece, rather prickly and unwilling to show his emotions even to loved ones, but they support him wholeheartedly anyway, because they know what he really feels underneath. The real human link here is his family watching him on television and later in person – especially his brother, who is newly married. There are lovely vignettes of local culture, especially the food (mmm, giant paella), but what’s most remarkable is how much is said in such a short time, with such sparse dialogue.

The art remains mostly realistic, and the influence of Ghibli on the character design is noticeable, especially when it comes to the wife, to the point that I’m sure if it were more well-known this would get mistaken for a Ghibli work as much as KumoKaze. At the end, though, in the final sprint, the sheer speed and exertion is expressed in looser art, scratchy lines and distorted faces – but it is done with such superb timing and taste that it manages everything that the race segment of The Animatrix fails to pull off.

It may not sound like there is much to this film, nor that it is a very interesting subject, but it is trying something different with animation and managing it extremely well, and will appeal to arthouse fans – indeed, it was the first anime ever to be shown at Cannes. A sequel exists, also much-lauded, though it sounds like its flavour may be somewhat less unique. On the strength of this, I will certainly be watching out for it – and everything else Kousaka does. Perhaps with a feature film or two he can fill the voids that Kon Satoshi and Yoshifumi Kondou so tragically left.