"I wish people wouldn't say things like, 'It's elaborate and high in quality' when discussing animation."
I was startled by this remark from animation director Mamoru Hosoda during an August talk event for the exhibition "Takahata Isao: A legend in Japanese Animation" at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, which runs until Oct. 6.
Hosoda, famed for "Mirai no Mirai" (Mirai) and other works, is known as a big fan of Takahata. Both directors used to work for Toei Animation Co.
Hosoda said the exhibit that attracted his attention most was the background artwork for "Serohiki no Goshu" (Gauche the Cellist), which was directed by Takahata and released in 1982.
"Gauche the Cellist" is an independent film, hence not recognized widely enough. The project to produce the work started around 1975. It is an important work for a number of reasons. For one thing, Takahata worked on a story set in Japan for the first time with this film. Takamura Mukuo, a master of background art for animated films, took on the challenge to create background pictures in an ink brush painting style.
The milestone work eventually led to Takahata's "Kaguyahime no Monogatari" (The Tale of The Princess Kaguya) in 2013.
"That background art was great because it had a message that animation is about pictures," Hosoda said. "Since Mr. Takahata was a director who didn't draw or paint himself, he was all the more aware what pictures meant for animation."
Hosoda's words render a new perspective to the exhibition, which displays each work with related material in chronological order. This makes the exhibition easy to understand, yet there is also a drawback -- it is difficult to see who Isao Takahata was because most of the visual material on display were drawn or painted by animators and other various staff members of the productions directed by Takahata.
Takahata was known for making impossible demands on his staff, to the point of being derided as a "restaurant with many orders" -- a pun from the Kenji Miyazawa novel "Chumon no Oi Ryoriten" (The Restaurant of Many Orders).
When he was making the 1968 animated film "Taiyo no Oji Horusu no Daiboken" (Little Norse Prince Valiant), he reportedly went to a lot of trouble with animators to depict the heroine, Hilda, whose face wore "an indescribable expression with a mixture of sadness, laughter, suffering, self-deprecation and frustration," in Hosono's words.
Ever since Takahata made his directorial debut, he pursued things that were difficult for pictures to represent and things that can be shown only by pictures. The vast amount of designs, key art, background art material and other exhibits are a result of strenuous efforts by artists who pushed their limits to respond to Takahata's demands.
There lies a fundamental question: Why not live action? Why use animation?
The opening words by Hosoda could be interpreted as a warning to recent animated films produced in Japan, which, aided by progress in computer-generated imagery, look excessively realistic, like photographs.
The beauty of animation and the realistic approach to depict humans cannot be measured by elaborate drawings alone. Takahata's works are urging us to remember that once again.
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