Kyousougiga with Yumiko Igarashi eyes

Yase from the TV anime KYOUSOUGIGA. Sparklyyy!!!

While watching the new TV-anime KYOUSOUGIGA last year and after seeing the character Yase, I couldn’t stop thinking about where I have seen these kind of eyes before. They seemed to be a reference to typical shojo manga eyes from the 70s and 80s mainly, for sure. But these eyes embody a very specific style of shojo manga that I couldn’t quite grasp white exactly it was.

Now I know it has a name: Yumiko Igarashi. Her manga a truely the embodiment of what we would call truely purely shojo manga. Some of her most famous titles ar GEORGIE and CANDY CANDY.

Yumiko Igarashi CANDY CANDY

And the huge eyes of the characters with the iris covering almost all of the eyeball and almost more sparkles and reflections then you see of the eyes pupil certainly gave me a chill when I was small, somewhere between amazingly sweet and totally creepy.

I’m not sure if other people feel the same about these eyes but Yase from KYOUSOUGIGA seems to perfectly embody these ambivalent feelings, sometimes truely lady like and vers sweet and the next moment turning into a uncontroled monster smashing everything to small pieces around her.

Sparklyygggrowl! Yase from KYOUSOUGIGA

Hokusai animated and extinct animators

On one of my strolls through Youtubia (while I was supposed to be doing something more productive) I landed on Tony White’s channel.

I want to pick out two of the videos I found there because they really deserve being mentioned.

One is on the life and work of Hokusai, most famous for his woodblock prints. The narration is accompanied by beautifully animated prints and drawings of Hokusai. I myself have once started animating a drawing of Hokusai taken out of the book HOKUSAI MANGA and I was trying to recreate the characteristics of the line created by the print.

The other one is called ENDANGERED SPECIES and tells you about the advent and golden age of animation in an analogy. It might glorify Walt Disney a bit too much and the view on modern technology and modern animation resulting out of that technology might be a bit too pessimistic. But at least the video manages to acknowledge some hope for the fure of animation in thelast of the last bit. The video is nice to watch though, also because the animation is just simply well crafted.

Tony White has published several books which might interst the one or the other of professional animators or interested reader. A link to one of his books on another new website I found by focal press with a wide choice of books on animation, games etc…

Japan Animtor Expo weekly short animes

Visual Art from ME!ME!ME!

I’ve posted earlier about several Anime Mirai projects. I always find it interesting to find these kind of small projects and to see what the creators decide to do with the freedom they have while being limited by time and the small size of the project. How far can the ambition of a creative soul grow beyond the restraints of the circumstances? These short films truly are a chance to see into the creative mind of some brilliant artists.

Ongoing at the moment is a project called Japan Animator Expo. Studio Khara (founded by Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno) together with Dwango (the company behind the Japanese youtube-equivalent Nico Nico Douga) release a short work every week.

So far 3 shorts are out and another one is coming up. They’re listed here with the link to the official page where you can watch them in full length. They actually have a English version of the homepage and have added English subtitles to the films, which is a rather rare but very welcome service on a Japanese official website.

01: The Dragon Dentist

02: Hill Climb Girl

03: ME!ME!ME!

04: Carnage (coming soon)

I was specially blown away by the prowess of ME!ME!ME! I suppose the presentation of the female body can be heavily discussed here, but as a explosive expression of the protagonist’s psyche it really left me with this certain tingle in my stomach and sparkle in my eyes that make me want to believe again in the magic of animation! Surely some scenes heavily reuse animation, but others you just stand there and your mind goes blank as you watch the tour de force of animation! Specially in the second half there certainly is some amazing filmic and animated imagery.

Here’s a link the the article on this project on AnimeNewsNetwork.