At last year's Shanghai Film Festival, Masaaki Yuasa's fantasy youth love film "Song of Dew That Announces the Dawn" was lost to the best animated feature film, as Masaaki Yuasa's first original feature film, he continued the previous "Four Stacks and a Half Myths Series" and "Spring Is Short, Girls Go Forward!" The magical realism style of "" and the real and illusory film language make people immersed in it.
Stills from "The Song of Dew That Announces the Dawn", pictured as Mermaid Dew taking the protagonist Kai to the sea.
At this year's Shanghai Film Festival, the unwilling Masaaki Yuasa made a comeback with a "If I Could Ride the Waves with You", a more intense personal style, the same magical realism love story, this time he fulfilled his dream, taking away the trophy at the same time also told the world that such a highly stylized work is destined to leave a strong mark in the history of Japanese animation. The film is now being released in China.
Compared with Makoto Shinkai, who pursues delicate and realistic animation people, Masaaki Yuasa's works are more jumpy, filled with a large number of broken perspectives, extensive lines, various overhead, wide-angle shots, and even the processing and collage of photos and oil paintings. Stylistically at least, he and Makoto Shinkai, another representative of the current Japanese animation industry, have gone to two extremes.
Stills from "If I Could Ride the Waves with You".
However, the two directors on the story prefer the style of magic realism, which is different from the previous fantasy stories, which often have a stronger impact on the audience. Not only Masaaki Yuasa and Makoto Shinkai, Miyazaki Hayao in the early years, "The Melancholy of Haruhi Ryogu Palace", which was once a big hit, and "The Boy with the Pig's Head Who Doesn't Dream of a Girl with Dreams", etc., but more and more Japanese animations have begun to embark on the route of magic realism and tell a surreal story in reality.
Magic realism as a unique literary genre in Latin America, derived from the great fragmentation of Latin American society, on the one hand, Western European colonists brought modern technology and culture to Latin America, but the original primitive culture and totem beliefs in Latin America still exist widely, and to this day, Latin American Indians still prevail in the worship of gods, believe in myths and legends, and are accustomed to using mythological knowledge to understand and explain the objective world.
Such a social environment contradicts the relatively backward economy, making Latin American writers like to integrate the magical stories of myths and folklore into reality, and the illusions and reality are mixed to show the sense of separation of Latin American society, and this modern myth is magic realism.
"Spring is short, the girl is moving forward!" stills.
Although Japan also has a deep folklore and culture, in terms of literature, Japanese literature has not created works of magic realism. In fact, before Latin American magic realist literature had an impact on the world, the distinction between realist works and folklore literature in Japanese literature was very clear. However, for the creation of animation, especially the creation of animated feature films, it has always been deeply influenced by literary works, and many directors and screenwriters have either directly adapted literary works or obtained a lot of inspiration from literary works.
Japan, like Latin America, still retains a large number of oral or classical literature such as folklore, and its influence on the whole society is still very deep, such as the various yokai legends and strange talk series that everyone is familiar with. Many Japanese animators with profound literary skills will naturally not miss such a suitable expression. Take Hayao Miyazaki as an example, he liked to use this technique in some of his early works on the theme of World War II, before the war in Japan and Latin American society, although the country initially achieved industrialization and modernization, but the gap between rich and poor is huge, social contradictions are sharp, and because of the war of aggression and loyalty to the emperor, the whole society fell into a frenzied mood, this huge sense of separation and magic makes Miyazaki very fond of describing this special period in such a way that combines illusion and reality.
Stills from Makoto Shinkai's "Weather Child", released this year, are also in the style of magic realism.
Makoto Shinkai and Masaaki Yuasa, who grew up during the bursting of the bubble economy, are a different state of existence, unlike Miyazaki, who was born in World War II, experiencing rapid growth and sudden recession, and a sense of powerlessness and loss hanging over their heads, as well as confusion about the future. Although also heavily influenced by magic realist literature, the works of Makoto Shinkai and Masaaki Yuasa are more about finding solace through such modern myths. This is also why the two invariably chose to shoot the theme of youth love, similar to the "Ryogu Haruhi" and "Youth Pig Head Teenager" series, youth, campus, love and a little magic story will often achieve an unexpected effect. It's just that compared to the elderly people like Miyazaki who have experienced war, the pattern and vision are indeed weaker, but you can never say that they lack humanistic care, you can't say that they are not realist works, because in Japan, a low-desire aging society that has experienced economic recession and bubble bursting, such a hopeful, dare to love and hate youth love story is simply a burst of humanistic care.
In particular, the current Japanese animation industry is becoming more and more homogeneous in creation, like to get together to do the same theme, such as the recent "other world" theme, even the works have begun to spit that there are too many other world themes, aesthetic fatigue and poor quality, innovation has become a distant word. This is why many people regard Masaaki Yuasa and Makoto Shinkai as the leaders of future Japanese animation, because directors with a distinct style like this, who dare to combine the literary genre of magic realism with animation creation, have become increasingly rare, at least in Japan.
□ Yuan Lei (Anime Critic)
Beijing News Editor Wu Longzhen Proofreader Li Ming