originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/670167...
Good evening friends! Apologies to UK people who wanted to watch some animations last night, but we are here at last.
Tonight I want to keep it simple, which means we are returning already to Osamu Tezuka, who I last wrote about on Animation Night 80…
Speaking of Tezuka, I recently had the pleasure of watching Bagi: The Monster of Mighty Nature (1984) with @iggnsthe, which is a fascinating early instance of the catgirl (ostensibly to criticise transgenics research). By this point in his career, MushiPro had folded and Tezuka had founded a new company in Tezuka Productions. Bagi stands as a fascinating bridge between the styles of the 70s (with a design style and plot that’s still very recognisably Tezuka) but also with many elements of the new 80s production regime. The scenes of Bagi herself stand out, in terms of character animation, for how meticulously they bring to mind her cat-like physicality and presence. It’s also extremely horny, I can’t believe anyone was surprised at Tezuka’s mouse drawings bc like…
…Bagi’s appearances in this film are like 50% ass shot. Very cool movie, at some point I hope I can make a deep dive into who animated it.
Anyway, throughout that long, long career, Tezuka directed a variety of shorter experimental films of various lengths. These include:
1962 Male
1962 Tales of a Street Corner
1964 Memory
1964 Mermaid
1965 Cigarettes and Ashes
1965 The Drop
1966 Pictures at an Exhibition
1968 Genesis
1984 Jumping
1985 Broken Down Film
1987 Legend of the Forest, Part I
1987 Muramasa
1987 Push
1988 Self-Portrait
1995 Mosquito and Party (both unfinished)
So the plan is tonight is to watch these! They span a huge variety of styles, even within one film (Legend of the Forest is almost a cross-section of the history of anime to that point); some like Jumping are extremely elaborate exercises in background animation perspective that call to mind John McCloskey, another works as a kind of 4th-wall breaking parody of old Fleischer cartoons, I’m sure there’s even weirder stuff in there.
I think I’ll be starting in about half an hour (midnight california time, 8am UK time), at the usual place, twitch.tv/canmom. If you can make it, that’s great, if not, see you next week when we’ll be at the usual time <3 Here are some random gifs to entice you~
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