Forum - View topicNEWS: Ghibli Unveils 1st Visuals From Its 1st CG Feature, Earwig and the Witch
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
whiskeyii
 Posts: 2250 |
|
||
|
I’m (morbidly?) curious to see how this turns out? Ghibli has a very exaggerated style of animation at times, and most 3D rigs aren’t equipped to handle that level of deformity without careful planning in place. But I’m always jazzed to see more types of 3D animation out there; much as I love my Disney and Pixar stuff, the world is wide enough to accommodate a variety of 3D animation styles!
|
|||
|
|||
|
Lapin noir
Posts: 127 Location: United Kingdom |
|
||
|
The Japanese title is アーヤと魔女, so the Hepburn romanization is Āya to Majo. It is not the Japanese female name “Aya” (in which the a is short) but – and here I am guessing a bit but it seems pretty obvious if you say it out loud – a transliteration into Japanese of the “Ear-” part of “Earwig”. But the English Internet has decided against all the information to the contrary that the title is Aya and the Witch and that’s that, and I feel like King Canute trying to curtail it. It’s the dreaded “Noh-Face” coincidence all over again.
When I read words to the effect of “Ghibli-produced CG TV movie” I presumed that equaled “the same cel-shaded style as Ronja”, so it’s nice to see that it’s a least something different. It looks like some really good figurines have come to life on your shelf (which is also what the SNACK WORLD anime went for), and reminiscent of a largely ignored in English early example of feature-length CG anime, Yona Yona Penguin. I’ll leave judging the animation until I’ve seen the animation; as this is a TV movie I expect the characters will move more or less like jointed figurines as well, but I’ve less idea what frame rate and level of jerkiness or smoothness we’re going to see. That it will be on TV instead of cinemas is a clear sign that the studio consider it an experiment, like Ocean Waves before it, and not a replacement for drawn animated movies, and I’m sure people like us commenting here understand that it’s not meant to be judged in comparison to Hayao Miyazaki and Takahata’s theatrical Ghibli features (which most movies would rate pretty lowly against, if that was your standard), or even their theatrical releases from other directors. But I’m already squirming at the thought of the mainstream UK and US press who don’t know any anime other than Ghibli not getting that, claiming Earwig to have “destroyed Ghibli’s legacy” and complaining that Japan isn’t producing family-friendly drawn animation any more. 
I may moan about anime fans’ lack of familiarity with non-Japanese animation beyond the few major Western studios, but that’s as nothing to the frustration over non–anime fans’ ignorance of there being artistically interesting, family-friendly anime produced by studios other than Ghibli. My one real problem which I feel I can already critique the movie for on the evidence of stills alone is that if it is set in roughly contemporary Britain, not relocated to Japan (which the protagonist’s name still being in English and the hair colours suggests) is, as a Brit, how much whiter than the real Britain this is looking so far. I’m not pointing this out because of recent events; it’s something that years ago I could laugh off and attribute to the distance between our countries but has increasingly frustrated me about Japanese media with Western settings, as connectivity has made it increasingly easier to get a realistic idea of life on the other side of the planet, and a shift from Western historical fantasy to contemporary Japan as the setting for major animated features has made the stereotyping of the few with Western settings starkly quaint in comparison to the realism of the Japan-set ones. LEVEL-5 did a great job in this respect with LAYTON BROTHERS and LAYTON’S MYSTERY JOURNEY in comparison to the original Layton saga; it’s still a foreigner’s fantasy of the UK but one that’s richer, and still stereotyped but in ways more inclined to make one smile than squirm. But in anime, DARKER THAN BLACK has the only instance of a BAME British character I can think of. In contrast with those, Mary and The Witch’s Flower felt disappointingly uninformed. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group