The 1970s was a turning point in the maturity of Japanese animation, the Western industrial system and Japan's own geographical conditions have a contradiction, technology and increasingly cramped space opened the door of people's imagination, science fiction mechanical animation began to appear on the artistic stage.
The animation of this period is more typical of "Mobile Suit Gundam" directed by Yuki Tomino, "Macross of the Chrono Fortress" supervised by Masaharu Kawamori, "Space Battleship Yamato" adapted from the original work of Matsumoto Zero, and "Galactic Railway 999". Set in the universe and dominated by mechanical combat, these animations reveal a strong futuristic sci-fi style.
By the 1980s, in addition to the Miyazaki series of films that broke the SF pattern, a unique form of animated artistic expression emerged – cyberpunk (cyberpunk).
。 It is Katsuyo Otomo who applies this style to animation in large quantities. In 1973, Katsuhiro Otomo published the manga "The Sound of Reaming", which aroused strong repercussions with his bizarre conception and non-linear expression, and his works not only inherited the mechanical science fiction style since Osamu Tezuka, but also added a lot of thoughts about rebirth and destruction.
In the eyes of later generations, Katsuyo Otomo has played a role in the history of the development of the Japanese animation industry. Unlike his predecessors in the 1970s and before the 1970s, Katsuyo Otomo had a very contradictory view of the future and machines, on the one hand, he liked to use machines to express the impact of the picture, on the other hand, he was full of worries about the future of machines, in his original masterpiece "Akira", Otomo Katsuyo constructed a dystopian metaphorical world with chaotic anarchism and the end of the world of urban destruction. Another of his works, "Street of Cannons", uses the absurd daily life of a family of three during the war to express the innuendo and satire of war and the abuse of machines. This negative reflection on the future influenced the later generations of Oshii Mori, Hideaki Anno, and Imatoshi.
Back to the main topic, today's anecdote record to analyze the expression of Otomo Katsuyo animation and the influence of its works, we are divided into three aspects: representative work analysis, work influence and artistic connotation to summarize.
Let's start with "Akira", which is the beginning of the apocalyptic wind of Katsuyo Otomo.
Miyazaki once said of him: A supernatural teenager standing on the ruins of Tokyo, people know that this is Katsuyo Otomo.
Strange powers, youth and ruins, which happen to be the commonly used performance elements of Katsuyo Otomo, are also the core themes of the movie "Akira". The cowardly teenager Tie Xiong became inflated by the power of Akira, and the suppressed emotions of the past were vented through the impact of violence, this destructive force is unmatched by any real capital, it can easily change the future of a city, and fight against the entire army with its own strength, but the rapid growth of this weak person can only resort to violence according to his own will, and it is impossible to understand the essence of this society:
In order to express this dystopian theme, Katsuyo Otomo focuses on constructing the contrast between the cause and effect of the camera and the characters. Against the backdrop of the bustling night, there are explosions and locomotive roars everywhere, and the moment the camera turns to the locomotive, a stream of color halo crosses, followed by a rapid backward turn to the distant extension of the line.
The intricate streets, grey-red graffiti, brilliant lights of various colors and bright tones, contrast sharply with dilapidated buildings, cookie-cutter explosions and the simple lines of flying cars. The breath of absurdity comes to mind.
In terms of character level, there are two dark lines and one bright line. Two dark lines are manifested as the invectiveness of the Supreme Council and the colonel's determination to save the city sincerely, the goodwill of the three super-powered children and the distortion and arrogance of Tiexiong after gaining his ability, and one bright line is manifested as: Tiexiong's contradictions about friendship and confusion about power. Interspersed with ironic scenes, Aaron tries his best for the politician Nezu, but in the end is killed by Nezu, who also dies tragically in the sky of bills and scattered pills. Human beings are the subjects of social activity, but the highest-ranking managers are only trying to satisfy their own desires, and the common people are blindly following the crowd because of ignorance, trying to get salvation from imaginary idols.
In "Cannon Street", it is a different scene, the film's anti-war theme is carried out from beginning to end, compared to "Akira", the use of more different techniques. The same object switches back and forth between smoke, turrets, steam, posters, and buildings, and a lot of shots that use lifting, pushing, and panning make the spatial transition of the scene smooth. In the contrast of the picture, it is more concise and more prominent, the overall picture is gray, the characters and buildings are rough, only the No. 17 Fort and the Arsenal in the center are extremely bright red, and the impact is extremely strong.
"Cannon Street" describes the story of the day when the son wakes up in the morning to go to bed at night, and the narrative time of more than ten hours is compressed to the ten minutes that the work finally presents, which is reduced by time and extended by the perception of the camera space.
From "Akira" to "Cannon Street", it is a manifestation of the maturity of Katsuyo Otomo's lens use and spatial expression techniques.
In Old Man Z, Katsuhiro Otomo takes on the original and script, Hiroyuki Kitakubo participates in the supervision, and Imatoshi, who was still considered the supervisor of the Mesozoic Generation at the time, is set as an art set. "Old Man Z" still continues the previous mechanical and realistic style, and as a gray part of society, it uses the encounter of an old man to record the development of the plot. This work breaks two conventions of Katsuyo Otomo: the protagonist is changed from a teenager to an old man, no longer a serious tragedy but a comedy with black humor. From the laughter of starting daily life to the soul of the last old man's wife being annihilated at the same time with the cold machinery, this is a work that makes people laugh and cry.
As mentioned earlier, "Cannon Street" in the "Memories Trilogy", the other two short films are "The Stinkiest Weapon" and "Her Memories", in "The Stinkiesiest Weapon", the uninformed clerk inadvertently becomes the fuse that causes social disasters, the devious scene reveals the vigilance and reflection on the future development of science and technology, and behind the scientific and technological weapons, hidden is the distorted values in society and the evil of human nature that makes people think about it.
"Her Memories" is more innovative is the introduction of the concept of holographic projection, through the means of science and technology in space to build an illusory world, has a self-aware machine step by step to lure you to the depths of memory, watch him rise from the tall building, watch him collapse, this side is ruins and death, that side is the temple and love. The camera quickly switches from melodious piano keys to a dusty spaceship, to the sunny rose garden, to the passionate kiss between lovers, and finally to the regret that is deep into the soul.
The last masterpiece, "Steam Boy", lasted for 9 years and cost 2.4 billion yen, and is a real masterpiece. The style returns to steampunk again, and the theme is to extend the cognition and thinking of technology, and when science develops in a direction that humans cannot intervene, whether the human spiritual world will be distorted. However, What disappointed Mexico himself was that although the production was excellent and the storyboarding was extremely exciting, the story itself was relatively thin and showed signs of commercial films. But the groundbreaking point of Steam Boy is that it is the pinnacle of Katsuyo Otomo's modernist style, which finds a balance between illusion and reality, dystopia is not simply a negative critique, but to discover the brilliance and truth, goodness and beauty of human nature in a world full of destruction and survival.
Born in the 1980s, Akira's depiction of the apocalypse and technology influenced later Mesozoic producers such as Mori Oshii, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Hideaki Anno, Imatoshi and Makoto Shinkai, and was voted one of the twenty best science fiction works in film history by Wired, and was the only animated film among them. Oshii's "Shell Agents", "Mobile Police" and "Man-Wolf" all have homage shots for "Akira".
Hideaki Anno's pinnacle of "EVA" has a strong postmodernist color, and unlike Katsuyo Otomo, Hideaki Anno's work is more tragic and adds more religious elements. Not to mention, he is a talent discovered and personally cultivated by Katsuyo Otomo, and Imatoshi's solitary "Red Hot Chili Peppers", "Unma's House" and "Millennium Actress" all borrow from Katsuyo Otomo's guidance.
Katsuyo Otomo's work has also influenced live-action films, such as District 9 and Pacific Rim, and the evidence that they borrow from Otomo Katsuyo's work is that the director of Pacific Rim, Gilmour Del, is very fond of Japanese culture and modernist works, and he has always focused on fantasy and suspense, but suddenly made a steampunk film that thinks about the end of the world and technology, and the iconic personal heroism is also greatly weakened. On the theme of destruction and rebirth, Hollywood films are far less profound and powerful than Japanese animation at the end of the last century.
It is worth mentioning that the classic fighting game "King of Fighters" once launched a warrior character called k9999, but the image of k9999 and the image of Tiexiong in "Akira" are highly coincident, and the big moves are the same as the scene when Tetsuo was swallowed by Akira, which angered Katsuyo Otomo, who strongly protested against the production company snk, and finally the "King of Fighters" official had to remove this character who had a good reputation under pressure.
From the above, it can be seen that Katsuyo Otomo has a considerable influence in various fields and continues to exert his power in the creation of works of art.
The Otomo Katsuyo series of works has the shadow of Nietzsche's will to power, Nietzsche's theory of the will to power is a fusion of the positive aspects of Schopenhauer's perceptual ontology and the rational ontology of classical German philosophy, Nietzsche believes that:
The essence of life is the will, a creative force that arises spontaneously from instinct.
This is reflected in Katsuyo Otomo's "Memories Trilogy", the will is the meaning and proof of a person's existence, the social environment and social will will will affect the individual will, but the personal will can dialectically stimulate our subjective initiative, Sartre's existential theory believes:
Man's existence precedes the essence, and if he cannot make "free choices" in front of things, he is equivalent to losing his personality and self, and he no longer has the meaning of existence.
This irrational thinking of Sartre is an important foundation of postmodernist thought. In "Akira", the representative of the weak, Tetsuo, obeys his inner fears, loses himself, has no freedom of existence, and later he gets Akira's power and can resort to his dissatisfaction through violent means, but at this time he has lost his understanding and thinking about himself, and is driven by desire, in fact, Tie Xiong, who has gained strength, is no different from before, and has no original will.
What is most in line with the connotation of the theme of Otomo Kayo's technology is undoubtedly Van Burren's technological determinism, which believes that:
Technology contains certain consequences in its original sense, causing people and society to make specific adjustments, and this adjustment is imposed on us through social attributes.
Technology becomes a new cultural system, and eventually affects the attributes and value composition of society, which is vividly reflected in all of Otomo Katsuyo's works, science and technology have brought unparalleled productivity to society, adding to the transformation of social form, but human beings as social subjects cannot intervene in this transformation, and are eventually infiltrated and distorted by the logic of science and technology imposed on the social system. The reflection brought to us is that the spiritual core of human beings is far greater than the value transformation brought about by science and technology, and the brilliance of human nature is higher than the creativity of science and technology. Asimov proposed the "Three Laws of Robots", which stated that robots must not harm humans, nor can they watch the decline of human beings. It can be seen that both scientists and science fiction writers have reached such a consensus:
As early as 2008, Warner Bros. acquired the remake rights of "Akira", and warner Bros. announced the previous year that it would release a live-action version of "Akira" directed by Taika Waititi in 2021. A few days ago, I learned from the news that this year's Tokyo Animation Awards conference will open with a 4K remake of "Akira" as the opening animation, so I have a feeling in my heart, so I wrote this long article.
The four great masters of the Japanese animation industry: Katsuyo Otomo, Miyazaki is old, Oshii is trapped in his own subject matter, imatoshi also went to another world early, every time he thinks, he can't help but sigh, I would like to pay tribute to the legendary supervisor Katsuyo Otomo in this article.