Cel­e­brat­ing the cen­te­nary of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion at LEAFF

Hid­den inside the Lon­don East Asian Film Fes­ti­val​’s pro­gramme was a rare treat: three ani­mat­ed fea­tures cel­e­brat­ing the cen­te­nary of the birth of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, an art form that has since grown to become one of the country’s most impor­tant, val­ued cul­tur­al exports. Ani­mé has always had a cer­tain eccen­tric­i­ty about it (think of some of the stranger sequences in touch­stone titles like Aki­ra or Ghost in the Shell, or any­thing at the edges of the out­put of sup­pos­ed­ly child-ori­en­tat­ed Stu­dio Ghi­b­li), but the films which LEAFF select­ed to hon­our the medium’s mile­stone take this eclec­tic, imag­i­na­tive approach to sto­ry­telling to new lev­els, loos­en­ing the lim­its of the log­ic of real­i­ty, and trav­el­ling through the very fab­ric of space and time.

Their first selec­tion was the most well known, Mil­len­ni­um Actress, a 2001 film from recent­ly depart­ed, much missed direc­tor Satoshi Kon (Papri­ka, Per­fect Blue), one of the form’s true vision­ar­ies and inspi­ra­tion for a great many film­mak­ers in the ani­ma­tion world and wider. A film about film, Mil­len­ni­um Actress begins sim­ply – two doc­u­men­tar­i­ans inter­view a reclu­sive for­mer actress about her career, prob­ing open up a chasm of mem­o­ries that she had buried – before unfold­ing into some­thing more com­plex, a meta-cin­e­mat­ic, hyper-ref­er­en­tial puz­zle about the entan­gle­ment of life and art, a fever dream of cycling sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and blurred boundaries.

Kon makes incred­i­ble use of the free­dom and muta­bil­i­ty of his ani­mat­ed can­vas. The film’s colour palette mutates from mono­chrome to increas­ing­ly sat­u­rat­ed colour as time advances, scenes morph one into anoth­er in a mix of colours, shapes and mat­ter, and every­thing pass­es with a remark­able, often breath­tak­ing flu­id­i­ty, cross­ing between styles and eras seam­less­ly, and con­struct­ing a pandora’s box style, mul­ti-strand nar­ra­tive that all fits togeth­er with sur­pris­ing clar­i­ty. A pro­found­ly ambi­tious film that entire­ly meets the demands it sets of itself, like the best films in the for­mat, Mil­len­ni­um Actress is a mas­ter­work that could only exist as animation.

Sim­i­lar in con­ceit but far more sur­re­al in exe­cu­tion, Masaa­ki Yuasa’s 2004 film Mind Game also begins with a straight­for­ward sce­nario before spi­ralling wild­ly out­wards from it. In the film’s open­ing scene, a man brash­ly enters a bar brawl only to find that his oppo­nent is pack­ing heat. The foe opens fire, and things get weird. The debut fea­ture from one of Japan­ese animation’s most icon­o­clas­tic and excit­ing voic­es, Mind Game is pre­cise­ly what its title sug­gests, an expres­sion­is­tic, freeform and fre­quent­ly bizarre head­trip of a film.

Fac­ing death, the film’s pro­tag­o­nist is giv­en a sec­ond chance, killing his aggres­sor and ini­ti­at­ing a chase sequence that ends with him and his com­pan­ions enter­ing the bel­ly of a whale, home to a mys­te­ri­ous man who has lived there for an eter­ni­ty. Lit­tle that occurs after makes any objec­tive sense, and an over­all mean­ing – oth­er than the oblique direc­tive pre­sent­ed by the film’s tagline, ​‘your life is the result of your own deci­sions’ – is hard to deduce. Unlike the jour­ney pre­sent­ed by Kon’s film, where engaged view­er­ship and active inter­pre­ta­tion proves reward­ing, this trip is best enjoyed abstract­ly, let­ting Yuasa’s psy­che­del­ic visu­als, bright, painter­ly colours, and boun­cy, ener­getic sound­track wash over.

The last film was anoth­er time-warp, though this time not so much sur­re­al as entire­ly unhinged. Co-direct­ed by Osamu Tezu­ka (Astro Boy, Metrop­o­lis) and Eiichi Yamamo­to, mak­er of the recent­ly redis­cov­ered and reap­praised erot­ic ani­ma­tion Bel­ladon­na of Sad­ness, Cleopa­tra was nev­er released in the UK. A gen­uine odd­i­ty – part sur­re­al­ist retelling of the sto­ry of its title char­ac­ter, part brash porno­graph­ic com­e­dy – the film, though not entire­ly with­out mer­it, is unlike­ly to be reclaimed as a lost mas­ter­piece of the medium.

In the weird­est act of tele­por­ta­tion in all of the three ani­ma­tions at LEAFF, Cleopa­tra begins with a crew of future space trav­ellers being sent back through time and space to ancient Egypt to inhab­it the bod­ies of var­i­ous char­ac­ters periph­er­al to the ​“Queen of Sex”, to wit­ness her attempt to seduce and assas­si­nate Julius Cae­sar. Cleopa­tra fea­tures a strange mix of the odd­ly art­ful, such as the abstract, min­i­mal­ist linework in the impres­sion­is­tic sex scenes; and the entire­ly puerile, with plen­ty of ran­domised car­toon­ish nudi­ty and course, broad humour. Fans of ani­mat­ed eso­ter­i­ca will find some­thing in it, but most view­ers will leave confused.

It seems slight­ly short sight­ed that a cel­e­bra­tion of 100 years of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion con­tains two films released in the 21^st cen­tu­ry and noth­ing made before 1970. How­ev­er, these three films tra­verse more ground than might be first thought. Between them they trav­el far fur­ther than even the cin­e­mat­ic cen­tu­ry could, explor­ing a his­to­ry stretch­ing way back before the medium’s ori­gin, div­ing into sub­con­scious ter­ri­to­ries, and fling­ing for­ward into future and imag­ined worlds. Why try to sur­mise his­to­ry when you can invent it?

The 2017 Lon­don East Asian Film Fes­ti­val ran 19 – 29 Octo­ber. Cleopa­tra screens again on 2 Decem­ber as part of the Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Ani­ma­tion Fes­ti­val. Oth­er works cel­e­brat­ing the cen­te­nary of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion can be viewed online on the web­site of Japan’s Nation­al Film Centre.