=============
Short Peace
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: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.
