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+=============
+ Short Peace
+=============
+:CreationDate: 2015-12-11 12:38:33
+:Id: anime/review/short-peace
+:tags: - anime
+       - review
+:rating: 4
+:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/short-peace
+
+
+The `Japan Foundation <http://www.jpf.org.uk/>`_ has been, for years,
+organising many events to promote Japanese culture, including `touring
+film showings <http://www.jpf-film.org.uk/>`_. Sometimes they
+show anime in London at the `Institute of Contemporary Arts
+<https://www.ica.org.uk/>`_; last year I watched "Colorful" there,
+this year, as part of the "It Only Happens in the Movies?" series, I
+watched the 2013 anthology "Short Peace", a project of OOTOMO
+Katsuhiro (大友 克洋).
+
+Ootomo should really need no introduction: he wrote and directed Akira
+(1988), and that's enough to guarantee him a place in the general
+anime knowledge of English-speaking people. Of course, he's done a bit
+more than just Akira: he's written Roujin Z (1991), written and
+directed Steamboy (2004), designed Freedom (2006). What is more
+topical for this review, though, is his work on anthologies.  In 1987
+he worked an two episodes of `Robot Carnival
+<http://anidb.net/a1163>`_, a set of 9 shorts on the theme of robots,
+ranging from the surreal, to the whimsical, to the tragic.  In 1989 he
+directed one of the three shorts of `Neo Tokyo
+<http://anidb.net/a713>`_ (Manie-Manie 迷宮物語), all based on stories
+written by MAYUMURA Taku (眉村 卓).  In 1995 he wrote and coordinated
+`Memories <http://anidb.net/a262>`_, probably the most well-known of
+his anthologies in the West.
+
+Short Peace is a multimedia project: in addition to the four animated
+shorts, it includes a videogame, Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day (ショー
+トピース 月極蘭子のいちばん長い日), and the five parts are sold
+together. Interestingly, I have seen reviews of the game that
+mentioned the four shorts as "additional material", instead of
+recognising the work as a whole. On the other hand, I'm here reviewing
+only the shorts, since I have not played or even seen the game. We can
+all be partial in our own way :)
+
+The anthology begins with a girl playing hide and seek in a temple,
+who gets surprised by a… dimension hopping white rabbit? Something
+like that. This title sequence is about two minutes of trippy changes
+of scenery, with very little relation to the rest of the work.
+
+The first actual piece of the anthology is Possessions (Tsukumo, 九十
+九), in which a travelling repairman gets lost during a storm, and
+seeks refuge in a small hut. Inside, the spirits of old, worn objects
+lock him in and play tricks on him, but he takes it all stride and
+fixes them, or prays thanking them for their services. The following
+morning, as he is leaving, he finds that the spirits have left him
+some of the renewed objects, as thanks for his help. This story builds
+on the very Japanese concept of `tsukumogami (付喪神)
+<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukumogami>`_, the spirits of old (or,
+sometimes, neglected) objects. The animation is done in rather good 3D
+CG, even if it has the usual weirdness of movements. The director,
+MORITA Shuuhei (森田 修平) also directed Freedom and Tokyo Ghoul.
+
+The second piece is Combustible (Hi no Yōjin, 火要鎮), directed by
+Ootomo himself. It tells the story of Wakana, daughter of a rich Edo
+family, and Matsukishi, son of the also-rich neighbours, who wants to
+become a firefighter. Given that all houses were built with wood and
+paper, fires were frequent and extremely damaging, and firefighters
+were very important, in Edo. After Matsukishi gets kicked out of his
+house and gets into the fire brigade, Wakana is forced into an
+arranged marriage. Saddened at the loss of her childhood friend and
+probably first love, and at the prospect of marrying a stranger,
+Wakana semi-accidentally sets fire to the neighbourhood. In the end,
+despite all attempts from Matsukishi and the other firefighters,
+Wakana dies in the flames. Before the fire, the animation is
+reminiscent of traditional Japanese scrollworks, with flat colours and
+simple perspective. After the fire starts, the style shifts rapidly
+into a fully dynamic animation, which underscores the change of pace
+from slow day-to-day events, to life-threatening terror.
+
+The third piece is Gambo, directed by Andou Hiroaki (安藤 裕章), who
+had worked on Steamboy. A young samurai is defeated in battle, but
+left alive, by a giant white bear. Some time later, he's asked to help
+rid a village of a terrible red demon who's taking all the women. He's
+reluctant to help, obsessed with finding the white bear, but the last
+girl in the village goes into the woods and finds both the demon and
+the bear. Turns out, the bear is not evil, and the demon has been
+using the women to breed more of his kind. In a long and violent
+battle, the white bear fights the demon and defeats it, helped only in
+small measure by the samurai and some other warriors with
+firearms. This piece is drawn with rough brushwork against clean and
+detailed backgrounds, producing a strong contrast between the
+environment and the characters.
+
+The fourth piece is officially titled "A Farewell to Weapons" (Buki yo
+Saraba, 武器よさらば), but it should probably be called "A Farewell to
+Arms", since the Japanese title is identical to the translation of
+Hemingway's famous novel. I don't think there are many parallels
+between the two works, apart from the war theme. In this short,
+directed by KATOKI Hajime (mecha designer on many Gundam series) from
+a manga by Ootomo, a crew of trained soldiers / technicians drives on
+a desolated post-apocalyptic landscape scavenging and disabling all
+sorts of weapons from the last war. They get ambushed by an autonomous
+tank, and despite all their efforts, all of them but one are
+killed. The only reason the last person survives is that, having got
+out of his armoured powersuit, he's considered a civilian: he tank
+ever gives him a leaflet about the war and how rational it was. In the
+end, he's left, naked, raging against the tank, reduced to throwing
+rocks. In the background, Fuji prepares to erupt.
+
+The ICA screening of Short Peace was accompanied by an introduction
+and a Q&A with Helen McCarthy (`Wikipedia page
+<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_McCarthy>`_, `personal website
+<https://helenmccarthy.wordpress.com/`_, `Twitter account
+<https://twitter.com/tweetheart4711>`_), an internationally renowned
+expert on Japanese anime. I first heard about her back in 1998, on the
+`Nausicaa mailing list
+<http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mailing-list/>`_ for fans of Studio
+Ghibli, but I had never met her before. She's very knowledgeable,
+although I may disagree with some of her opinions.
+
+She remarked how all the parts of Short Peace take place around the
+Fuji, and how they revolve around quintessentially Japanese themes:
+spirits in everyday objects; the contrast between family obligations
+and personal wishes; the struggle between nature, people and the
+supernatural; the consequences of war. I'm not completely convinced
+that the area around Fuji is representative of all of Japan: I'd like
+to know the point of view of people from Hokkaido or Okinawa; after
+all, London is not representative of the whole United Kingdom!
+
+McCarthy also said the each short showed a different era of Japanese
+history, but from my profound ignorance, I could only distinguish
+"sometimes in the past" from "sometimes in the future". The
+present time is apparently represented by the videogame, so I can't
+comment on that.
+
+All in all, Short Peace is a very good anthology, in which different
+themes and styles complement each other and produce an artistic whole
+that any anime fan should see, together with the other anthologies
+already mentioned. In the Q&A, McCarthy also recommended watching
+`Genius Party <http://anidb.net/a2972>`_ (2007) and `Genius Party
+Beyond <http://anidb.net/a6037>`_ (2008), both from Studio 4°C.
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