For the film club I do with friends, I'm picking a series of works by Japanese animator Naoko Yamada, whose new film The Colors Within released in the US recently. I've previously done a series on Mobile Suit Gundam, and because my friends are not well versed in the cultural context around Japanese animation, I preceded each selection with a short essay introducing the work and explaining some relevant cultural context. I'm doing that again with Yamada's works, and like with the Gundam series, I figured I could adapt these for my blog as well.

Week 0 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

For our (much-delayed) final stop on the Yamada train, we'll be watching The Colors Within (2024), her latest film which released in American theaters earlier this year. Unlike most of Yamada's films, which adapt or extend existing works, this is an original story by Yamada and her perennial collaborator, screenwriter Reiko Yoshida.

The Japanese title, Kimi no Iro. is usually translated as "Your Color", which tracks with my extremely rudimentary Japanese. Iro is color, no is possessive, and kimi is a casual intimate form of the pronoun "you". But there's also a character in the film named Kimi, so I think there's some wordplay, and the title also means "Kimi's Color". Not gonna lie: I'm extremely proud of myself for noticing this double meaning all on my own, in a language I don't really speak.

And With Your Spirit

The Colors Within is set in a Catholic school in Nagasaki, the kind of setting rarely explored in Japanese media. I'm intrigued to see how the film will portray Christianity, given that less than 1% of Japan's population is Christian. Most are not religious at all, and among those who are, Christianity is a distant third to Buddhism and Shinto. In an interview with Deadline, Yamada explained that she picked the Catholic school as a setting because she wanted the protagonist Totsuko to have "a strong sense of belief". Christianity seems an apt choice for that, compared to Buddhism and Shinto, which often focus more on ritual practice than professions of faith. Speaking to AnimeNewsNetwork, Yamada commented that she hoped the film's treatment of Catholicism might make it more culturally accessible to western nations where Christian teachings and traditions were more familiar.

As usual, the film features teen musicians. We've seen in previous projects that Yamada likes to explore music as a pastime, a professional adaptation, and a means of forging individual connection. But in The Heike Story, Biwa's music was used a little differently, evoking a connection to the cultural history of the literary epic. I'll be curious to see if music is tied to culture here as well, to explore themes related to faith and belonging. I was raised Catholic in a church with a pretty good choir, so the connection between music and spiritual community seems like fertile ground to me.

Paint With All The Colors Of The Mind

In Animation Magazine, Yamada described the characters of The Colors Within as "children who can’t express their worries and secrets." Yamada remains preoccupied as ever with the limits of verbal communication. In interviews, Yamada has often remarked that she struggles to articulate her thoughts verbally, and a post about her on Sakuga Blog reports that colleagues have described her as a woman of few words: "never overbearing with precise commands despite having an extremely calculated vision." (Shout out to Sakuga Blog, whose translations and essays have been an invaluable resource in writing these introductions).

Yamada has often used sonic and visual metaphor to explore themes of isolation and connection. Recall Mizore from Liz and the Blue Bird, whose painfully bottled emotions find expression only through her oboe solo. Or Shōya, from A Silent Voice, who saw an X drawn over the faces of those he couldn't look in the eye. In The Colors Within, Totsuko sees colorful auras associated with particular music, people, and feelings.

In an Anime Corner interview, Yamada clarified that she doesn't see this as representing a diagnosable condition like synesthesia, but as a metaphor for the uniqueness of Totsuko's perspective:

It’s not like she has any brain differences or anything of the sort. I just want people to think, to see it as is, to accept her as is. [...] Maybe the audience might think they also have some specific way that they see others.

This approach might reflect Japanese cultural sensitivities about neurodivergence, mental illness, and disability. As Columnist John Oppliger has noted, traits like sensory processing differences, repetitive behaviors, and unconventional communication styles often appear in anime as lighthearted characterization, but specific acknowledgement of neurodivergence is rarer, out of a desire not to offend or stigmatize. When rendered in a lighthearted way, these personality "quirks" are often used to endear the (presumed male otaku) audience to a female character. In other words, to evoke the moe response.

Mountains Out Of Moe Hills

And so, for my closing statement on Yamada's work, it all comes back to moe. As so many things do.

I recently read an interview with Yamada and screenwriter Reiko Yoshida, about K-On!. Yamada explains that that project was the first time she ever really felt connected to the moe response. However, Yoshida added that "K-On! mostly only has female characters appear in it. And yet, [Yamada's] thoughts were not about making it focused on moe but instead making its theme about adolescence [...]  For me, I wanted them to appear more than just being cute; I wanted them to feel alive".

In the K-On! episode we watched, "Another Training Camp!", the characters Asuza and Ui gossip about Yui, who is Asuza's bandmate and Ui's older sister. Asuza doesn't share Ui's affection for Yui: she finds her lazy and weird, prone to strange sensory aversions (for instance, a dislike of air conditioning) and odd social interactions. Over the course of the episode, Asuza gains more of an appreciation for Yui: she's impressed by Yui's perfect pitch and is surprised to find that Yui, who she thought of as a slacker, practices with unpredictable bursts of dedication at odd hours.

It's not surprising that some autistic fans of K-On! see themselves represented in Yui. I've also read neurodivergent readings of Mizore from Liz and the Blue Bird and Shōya from A Silent Voice. Viewers point out a variety of traits to justify these readings: hyperfixation on special interests, repetitive speech and behavior, unusual styles of socializing and communication, sensory processing difficulties.

When these are reduced to moe tropes, these are objectifying. They serve as product differentiators, prompting otaku to select their preferred waifu or Best Girl from lists of stock anime love interest character types. Yamada doesn't steer clear of this, she dives right in and then delves deeper. She at once embraces and transcends these light, charming quirks, recasting them as features of a deeply personal inner experience. Each of us has our own internal world, and our perceptions and perspectives may not be similar to those of others, but Yamada invites us to understand them on their own terms.

This Week

We're watching The Colors Within, which is, as of this posting, available from fine etailers everywhere.

Yikes! I took much longer to post this final installment of the Yamada series than I'd expected to. We watched the film back when it hit theaters in the US, and by now it's available on demand from various services. I recommend it highly, I think it ended up being my favorite of Yamada's film works, an opinion shared by several members of my film club. One of the members of our film club, Kayti Burt, interviewed Yamada for Rolling Stone, and it's highly worth a read!

Thanks to anyone who read these posts, I hope I intrigued you to check out some cool anime from Yamada!

For the film club I do with friends, I'm picking a series of works by Japanese animator Naoko Yamada, whose new film The Colors Within released in the US recently. I've previously done a series on Mobile Suit Gundam, and because my friends are not well versed in the cultural context around Japanese animation, I preceded each selection with a short essay introducing the work and explaining some relevant cultural context. I'm doing that again with Yamada's works, and like with the Gundam series, I figured I could adapt these for my blog as well.

Week 0 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

For our penultimate selection, we'll watch a couple episodes of The Heike Story (2021), an ONA ("Original Net Animation", or what English speakers might call a "streaming" "series"). We'll also watch Garden of Remembrance (2022), a short film Yamada directed with Science SARU.

A Monkey Business

Science SARU was founded in 2013 by Japanese animator Masaaki Yuasa and South Korean animator Eunyoung Choi, who had collaborated on projects like Kemonozume (2006), The Tatami Galaxy (2010), and Kick-Heart (2013). These works were lauded for their eccentric, surreal, experimental styles, as well as their use of innovative methods to blend hand-drawn and digital animation. That ethos set the agenda for Science SARU, with similar quirks of style and process becoming central to its identity as a studio.

The studio's name is intended to reflect those priorities. "Saru", the Japanese word for monkey, evokes an instinctive playfulness, juxtaposed with the intelligence and innovation suggested by "science". The cross-linguistic name also underscores their global ambitions, also reflected in their collaborations with western franchises. For the studio's first project, Choi and Yuasa co-directed "Food Chain", a 2014 episode of the American animated series Adventure Time. In 2021 the studio produced two shorts for Disney's Star Wars: Visions series, one directed by Choi and one directed by Spanish animator Abel Góngora. In 2023 Góngora worked in close collaboration with Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley, directing the Netflix series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a hybrid adaptation/sequel to O'Malley's comic. Meanwhile, Science SARU has continued producing works geared toward Japanese television audiences, including the TV series Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! (2020) and the recent hit show Dandadan (2024).

The Blue Bird Flies Away

The Heike Story marks Yamada's first major work outside of Kyoto Animation. The shift from KyoAni's approach (meticulous, polished, traditional) to Science SARU's (fast-moving, experimental, cutting-edge) may seem a sharp contrast, but it also feels like a natural progression for Yamada. While her works at KyoAni were undoubtedly in that studio's spirit, each one seemed more interested than the last in pushing the boundaries of anime convention. Science SARU seems a great place to push them even further.

Still, I get wistful about Yamada's departure from the renowned close-knit supportive environment at KyoAni. I wonder whether Science SARU is a "home" for her in quite the same way. In contrast to KyoAni, whose animators and directors are all full-timers, Science SARU works extensively with freelancers, and I believe she falls in that camp. But I'm not just fretting about her employment status, It's also a bit of a bummer that Science SARU, while progressive compared to many Japanese animation studios, doesn't quite share KyoAni's reputation for manageable workloads, work/life balance, and supportive professional development.

For more insight into the contrasting studio cultures and labor dynamics, check out the analysis in this excellent piece from SakugaBlog, posted the same week Yamada's departure from KyoAni became public knowledge (via Science SARU's announcement that she was leading The Heike Story). For additional perspective, check out AnimeNewsNetwork's interview with animator Joan Chung discussing industry-wide problems as well as specific "horror stories" from her time at Science SARU. Chung's stories correspond with the period when she was doing key animation for the first episode of The Heike Story, a fact unmentioned in the article because it was published before that project was publicly announced.

Sound! Biwa Lute

The Heike Story (or Heike Monogatari as it's known in Japanese), adapts the 14th-century literary epic of the same name. Actually the title of that work is usually translated in English as "The Tale of the Heike", in case you were not satisfied with two titles and needed a third.

To be more specific, Yamada's work adapts a 2016 "translation" of the classic work into modern Japanese by acclaimed novelist Hideo Furukawa, although I could find virtually no information about Furukawa's work in English aside from passing references in discussions about Yamada's work.

The Heike Story chronicles the downfall of the Heike, also known as the Taira, a warrior clan that dominated Japanese politics in the late twelfth century. Although Japan was nominally ruled by an emperor, real power was hotly contested during this era, with rival families and even retired emperors vying to assert influence in the imperial court. As the series begins around 1170, the Heike have risen to prominence and filled many key government positions. The early episodes chronicle their consolidation of power, which culminates in 1180 when the clan's leader secures the throne for his two-year-old grandson, Emperor Antoku.

Power shifts in the latter part of the series, as the retired emperor seeks to reassert power and root out Heike influence. To that end they ally with the Heike's old rivals, the Genji warrior clan, sparking the Genpei War (1180-1185), which proved disastrous for the Heike. In the latter days of the war, the Genji installed a rival child emperor, Go-Toba, forcing the beleaguered Heike to take Emperor Antoku on the run. According to legend, during the war's climactic naval battle, Antoku drowned when he and his grandmother leapt into the sea with the imperial relics to prevent their transfer to Go-Toba. If this truly happened, then it was probably not Antoku's idea, because he was seven.

With the Heike defeated, the imperial family did not regain influence as it had hoped. Within a few years the Genji leader pressured Emperor Go-Toba into naming him shogun, Japan's first military dictator. Historians mark this as the end of Japan's classical Heian period and the beginning of the Kamakura period, an age of feudal governance and samurai rule.

The classic work is a Monogatari, is a Japanese literary genre of long form prose analogous to epic poetry Norse sagas. Like those works, Heike Monogatari is a mix of historical account, fictional entertainment, nationalist propaganda, and religious instruction. In this last regard, Heike Monogatari casts the decline of the Heike as a lesson in the Buddhist theme of impermanence and transience, exemplified by the work's opening lines: "The sound of the Gion Monastery bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind."

Like many works of epic literature, Heike Monogatari is thought not to have a sole author. Early written accounts were expanded over time by traveling "lute priests" who memorized the written accounts and added their own embellishments, which appeared in subsequent written versions. Yamada puts these lute priests at the center of her adaptation. The protagonist is an original character, Biwa, the young daughter of a lute priest and later a lute priest herself. Biwa is named after the biwa lute, the type of lute she carries and plays. An anime about a kid musician! Who'd have thunk it?

The Mysterious Garden

I know nothing about Yamada's short film Garden of Remembrance (2022), apart from the fact that it exists. But let's give it a shot.

This Week

The Heike Story (2021) is dubbed or subbed on Crunchyroll (or at the link below). Each episode is 22 minutes. Let's watch at least the first two episodes. I personally might try and fit in a third if I have time.

Garden of Remembrance (2022) is 18 minutes. Sadly it's not streaming anywhere.

Garden of Remembrance resonated more strongly with movie club than The Heike Story did. It's a really interesting silent short. The story seemed kind of ambiguous and difficult to piece together, but this only made more fodder for discussion. The general impression of The Heike Story was that it was stylistically interesting but a little difficult to follow with its fast pace and huge cast of characters. After we watched the first three episodes, over the following weeks I finished the show and by the end of it I'd become a huge fan, I think it might actually be my favorite of Yamada's works. But I'm not sure how widely I'd recommend it. It's difficult to follow the story unless you're familiar with the history, or willing to pause frequently and remind yourself who is who and how they're all related to one another. The research I did for this write up gave me enough background familiarity to get a handhold, and I think the juice was worth the squeeze for me, but it feels like a recommendation that comes with a lot of homework. Still, it might be worth watching just for the vibes and the great animation.

Next: [Week 5] The Colors Within

For the film club I do with friends, I'm picking a series of works by Japanese animator Naoko Yamada, whose new film The Colors Within released in the US recently. I've previously done a series on Mobile Suit Gundam, and because my friends are not well versed in the cultural context around Japanese animation, I preceded each selection with a short essay introducing the work and explaining some relevant cultural context. I'm doing that again with Yamada's works, and like with the Gundam series, I figured I could adapt these for my blog as well.

Week 0 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

This week, we return to the world of the high school wind ensemble with Liz and the Blue Bird (2018). This film spins off of Sound! Euphonium (2015), shifting it's focus from the show's ensemble cast to the relationship between Nozomi and Mizore, a pair of graduating seniors who did not feature in the episodes we watched a few weeks ago.

Sound! Again!

Sound! Euphonium initially ran for two seasons, adapting the first three novels in Ayano Takeda's series. Both seasons were co-directed by Yamada and her mentor Tatsuya Ishihara. When planning the adaptation of the fourth novel, following Kumiko and pals into their second year in the Kitauji High School wind ensemble, the studio decided that, rather than another season of the show, they would produce a film continuation: Sound! Euphonium: The Movie – Our Promise: A Brand New Day (2019).

However, because of the film's shorter running time, they would need to gloss over an extended subplot about Mizore and Nozomi, two supporting characters introduced in the second novel. Because of Yamada's fondness for these two, she was determined to depict their story. So KyoAni decided to spin it off into its own project, splitting the adaptation in two. Like Dune/Wicked but with fewer sandworms/flying monkeys. Yamada would direct Liz and the Blue Bird, depicting Mizore and Nozomi's evolving relationship as they struggle to perfect a duet. Meanwhile, Ishihara would direct Our Promise, following the band's quest for the coveted gold rank at Nationals and Kumiko's challenges mentoring a new first year euphoniumist.

While Ishihara's film is very much a continuation of the series, both in story and in style, Liz and the Blue Bird establishes itself as a standalone work with a different aesthetic "vibe": a more muted color palette, introspective tone, and understated score. This is in part because a number of staff members who had worked on Sound! Euphonium returned for Ishihara's film, but did not work on this one. Broadly speaking, Yamada staffed her film with her collaborators from A Silent Voice instead. For example, the Sound! Euphonium screenwriter, Jukki Hanada, returned to work on Ishihara's film, but Yamada instead worked with her frequent collaborator Reiko Yoshida. Sound! Euphonium composer Akito Matsuda scored Ishihara's film, and his music is still heard dietetically in Liz and the Blue Bird's performances and in the film's parallel "storybook" sequences, but the bulk of the score was written by A Silent Voice's Kensuke Ushio. Likewise, the character designer of A Silent Voice, Futoshi Nishiya, substantially reworked the designs Shoko Ikeda had created for the show: in contrast to the more cutesy, moe-forward designs by Ikeda, Nishiya's designs are softer and more understated. Compare Ikeda's designs for Mizore and Nozomi with Nishiya's redesigns of the same characters.

Although Liz and the Blue Bird centers on Mizore and Nozomi's duet, we don't actually get to see the concert performance of that duet. Instead, it plays out in Ishihara's Our Promise. I recommend you follow up this film by watching and listening to that scene here:

The Arson Attack and its aftermath

Liz and the Blue Bird premiered in April 2018, with Our Promise following one year later in April 2019. Just two months after that, a man named Shinji Aoba walked through the unlocked doors of Kyoto Animation's Studio 1 building with 11 gallons of gasoline and a lighter. After dousing the floor and several employees, Aoba attempted to light them on fire, but unintentionally ignited gasoline fumes in the air and caused a massive explosion, burning himself badly in the process. Aoba fled from the building and survived, but killed 36 employees of Kyoto Animation and injured 34 others.

Aoba, who was 41 years old at the time, had a history of violent criminal behavior for which he had previously been incarcerated. He had become particularly enamored with the studio after the 2006 airing of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, their breakthrough moe hit. His obsession had turned sour after he baselessly concluded that KyoAni had plagiarized two of his submissions to their annual writing contest. In the year leading up to the attack, Aoba sent dozens or perhaps hundreds of death threats to the studio, which were reported to the Kyoto police. In the days immediately before the incident, Aoba was seen scouting out locations in Kyoto that had been featured in episodes of Sound! Euphonium. Following the attack, Aoba spent months in recovery for his burns before being taken into police custody. He showed little remorse and, after a trial in 2023, was sentenced to death.

The victims who died in the incident included some of the studio's most respected veteran animators, as well some of its most junior members. The youngest, Megumi Ohno (21), was a recent graduate of KyoAni's renowned animation school. The oldest, Yoshiji Kigami (61), was a teacher in that program, best known for his key animation work on Akira and Grave of the Fireflies. He also directed "Festival Time", one of the Sound! Euphonium episodes we watched a couple weeks ago. Yasuhiro Takemoto (47) had co-directed the acclaimed Haruhi Suzumiya, as well as the first season of the beloved fantasy comedy Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. He was working on pre-production of the second season at the time. It eventually aired in 2021, with Ishihara at the reins and Takemoto posthumously credited as co-director.

Several staff members who worked on Liz and the Blue Bird were among the victims. Among these were both of the aforementioned character designers, Shoko Ikeda (44) and Futoshi Nishiya (37); key animator Ami Kuriki (30); color designer Naomi Ishida (49); and mechanical designer Hiroyuki Takahashi (48), who led the animation of the musical instruments for the TV series and for this film.

The incident drew support from around the world. Fans and businesses raised over $32 million in donations to support the studio and the victims, and a special measure was passed by the Japanese legislature to allow for these donations to be considered tax-exempt. The attack has also reportedly made police in Japan more attentive to death threats received by anime studios, manga publishers, and video game developers, which is probably a good thing given that this isn't the first highly publicized incident of violence related to otaku culture (refer back to my Gundam write-ups for more on that).

Despite the setbacks from this attack, and then from the COVID-19 pandemic, KyoAni was able to finish their current project at the time, Violet Evergarden: The Movie (2020), less than a year behind schedule. Yamada is credited with a supporting role on that project, but Liz and the Blue Bird marks her final major work with Kyoto Animation. Although Yamada has never commented about the attack or about her reasons for leaving the studio, it's difficult not to speculate about the impact of those events on her decision.

Incidentally, the final season of Sound! Euphonium aired in 2024, directed by Ishihara without Yamada's involvement. It's very good, but lacks the Yamada touch.

This Week

Liz and the Blue Bird (2018) runs 90 minutes. It's included in Amazon Prime and is otherwise widely available to stream or rent online. There's an English dub, which I think I'll give a try.

As I mentioned before, you may also want to watch this 9 minute scene from the companion movie, Sound! Euphonium: The Movie – Our Promise: A Brand New Day, which features Nozomi and Mizore's duet in context.

Movie club's response was generally favorable. Despite the film's attempt to tell a standalone story, those of us who hadn't seen the second season of the TV show (i.e., everyone but me), felt a little confused by the vague references to unseen events. We were all generally impressed with Kensuke Ushio's score, particularly the opening and closing sequences which matched character motion to the music. I read somewhere that Ushio and Yamada toured the real Kyoto high school on which Sound! Euphonium's school was based, and made ambient field recordings which were incorporated into the soundtrack, which I found very neat!

Next: [Week 4] The Heike Story and Garden of Remembrance

For the film club I do with friends, I'm picking a series of works by Japanese animator Naoko Yamada, whose new film The Colors Within released in the US recently. I've previously done a series on Mobile Suit Gundam, and because my friends are not well versed in the cultural context around Japanese animation, I preceded each selection with a short essay introducing the work and explaining some relevant cultural context. I'm doing that again with Yamada's works, and like with the Gundam series, I figured I could adapt these for my blog as well.

Week 0 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

This week we'll watch A Silent Voice (2016). In Japan, the film is known as Koe no Katachi, which translates to "The Shape of Voice".

Yamada had previously directed K-On! the Movie (2011) and Tamako Love Story (2014), making this her third feature film. However, both of those films, and all other previous films by Kyoto Animation, were extensions of existing animated series. So, A Silent Voice was Yamada's and KyoAni's first film "from scratch", unconnected to a previous television work. The film tells the story of Shōya, a former school bully attempting to atone for his treatment of a deaf classmate Shōko.

This one is actually new to me, but here's some background based on my reading.

Talkin' Bout my Adaptation

A Silent Voice was adapted from the award-winning 2013 manga series of the same name by Yoshitoki Ōima, inspired in part by Ōima's mother, a sign language interpreter. Because the manga spans seven volumes, Yamada and her frequent collaborator, screenwriter Reiko Yoshida, had to condense the story somewhat. They decided to focus on the character of Shōya and jettison parts of the story that were focused on its ensemble of secondary characters.

This was challenging for a number of reasons, including the fact that Yamada was more accustomed to portraying female protagonists. Reflecting on this in an interview, she said:

Up until now I’ve thought “I love girls, so I want to depict girls from here onwards.” Depicting boys is difficult. For example, I thought a lot about what to do if boys who saw the film thought “a guy wouldn’t do something like that.” [...] However, now that I’ve made this film, I feel that the differences between genders are incredibly trivial. If you make something by thinking “what kind of person are they” when looking at their root or the core of who they are, then the problems of “they’re a guy so…” or “they’re a girl so…” become immensely trivial.

I've read a bunch of interviews related to this film and one thing is constantly emphasized: a lot of effort was poured into bringing Shōya to life as a nuanced character with whom the audience could connect and empathize. For instance, this interview with Futoshi Nishiya, the Character designer and Chief Animation Director on this film, gives insight into the process of adapting Shōya's look from the manga for use in the film. Nishiya described early sketches as having a "sharpness", and his striving to convey more "gentleness" with subsequent iterations. Incidentally, Nishiya reunited with Yamada on her next film, Liz and the Blue Bird (2018), but sadly he passed away not long after in the 2019 arson attack on KyoAni.

The Sound of Silence

Last week while discussing the music teacher in Sound! Euphonium, we drew comparisons with the teacher from another film we watched recently, Coda (2021). Given that Coda and A Silent Voice both deal with deafness and sign language, I'll be interested in how these two films compare in that regard. Yamada is known for her interest in nonverbal communication style, specifically with regard to gesture and body language. In a roundtable interview with the animation team, Yamada noted how her aesthetic instincts about how best to draw hands didn't always mesh with the advice of the sign language supervisor.

I'm also interested in this film's treatment of deafness as a way into thinking about the relationship between moe tropes and portrayals of disability. Some half-formed thoughts about this started to coagulate in my mind as I was thinking through how best to explain the moe concept in last week's essay. I started to think about how the infantilization inherent to moe might be related to the paternalistic ways in which our culture has tended to think about disability and especially about neurodivergence. I'm not sure how much that plays into this film but there might be more to say about it in future weeks.

Although this film isn't about musicians, Yamada nevertheless continues her exploration of the sensory and emotional dimensions of sound. In an interview at Glasgow Film Festival, Yamada explained that animation is a great medium for exploring sound, because "it allows us to describe what is actually not there; if there’s no sound, I can express the lack of it through color, vibration, the drawings themselves… So I felt I was really lucky to be able to do this."

As for music, this film marks the first collaboration between Yamada and composer Kensuke Ushio, who would go on to provide music for all of her subsequent projects to date. Yamada has commented that she was so impressed with Ushio's music for A Silent Voice that it spurred her to improve the visuals so as not to "lose to" him, like a sort of competitive rivalry. As a side note, to draw another comparison with a film we watched recently, of Ushio's tracks for the soundtrack, "slt", sounds like it may have been inspired by Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" from the 1983 film of the same name.

This Week

A Silent Voice (2016) is 2 hours, 10 minutes, so plan accordingly. It should be available to rent from the typical places.

This was my first time watching A Silent Voice, and I enjoyed it a lot. The group seemed to like it too. Personally I found the bullying in the elementary school flashbacks to be much harsher and difficult to watch, but I was impressed by the humanity and realism of it. After reading interviews with folks who worked on the film and hearing about how concerned they were with making Shōya seem like a real and relatable person despite his atrocious behavior, I think they really nailed this aspect of the film. Ushio's soundtrack was also great, and it's clear why he and Yamada have become such frequent collaborators.

Next: [Week 3] Liz and the Blue Bird

For the film club I do with friends, I'm picking a series of works by Japanese animator Naoko Yamada, whose new film The Colors Within releases in the US today. I've previously done a series on Mobile Suit Gundam, and because my friends are not well versed in the cultural context around Japanese animation, I preceded each selection with a short essay introducing the work and explaining some relevant cultural context. I'm doing that again with Yamada's works, and like with the Gundam series, I figured I could adapt these for my blog as well.

Week 0 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

This week we'll watch some of Naoko Yamada's TV work, starting with K-On! (2009), a show that epitomizes the '00s moe trend.

Then we'll shift to Sound! Euphonium (2015), known in Japan as Hibike! Euphonium, which explores similar moe tropes but with a pretty different tone.

This, for better or worse, means I have to explain what moe is.

Sprout and Burn

Moe (pronounced "mo-eh") is a Japanese slang term originating in the online otaku communities of the 1990s. As you may recall from the Gundam series, otaku refers to the subculture of obsessive anime and manga fandom that emerged in Japan in the 1980s.

Moe describes a feeling of strong affection evoked by something adorable--usually, but not always, a cutely drawn anime girl. The term originated in online otaku forums devoted to discussions about bishoujo (beautiful girl) characters. In contrast to the overt sexualization of bishoujo, moe described a kind of heartwarming endearment bordering on protectiveness. The term likely derives from two Japanese homophones, both pronounced moeru, meaning "to sprout" and "to burn". Some fans also think its origin relates to the surname of Hotaru Tomoe, a Sailor Moon character who embodies the sweetness and vulnerability of moe.

Although the word moe describes an emotional response, it's also used as an adjective to describe a particular kind of character (again, usually a girl) who has a charm, innocence and vulnerability that sparks the moe feeling. Columnist John Oppliger once likened the moe character to "the anime equivalent of the literary ingénue." Recall Suletta Mercury, the protagonist from Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury: wide-eyed, awkward, earnest, and altogether too precious for this terrible world; not necessarily "sexy" but still intentionally designed to evoke affection from the male gaze. "Adorkable" isn't quite synonymous but might be a good analog.

While moe emphasizes heartwarming innocence, it sometimes overlaps with bishoujo sexualization, which can lead to uncomfortable territory. It's not necessarily a problem for Young Adult slice-of-life fiction to engage with themes of adolescent romance and sexuality, but moe content tends to pander to an adult male audience, which can make their take on sexual topics pretty uncomfortable. Along these lines, moe can sometimes overlap with lolicon--a term for content depicting fictional minors in sexual contexts (In Japan, this is legal, so long as no actual children are involved in the production). Even when it doesn't, it can be hard to shake the mental association off. That's not where we're going with this series, and I have high hopes that Yamada's perspective as a female animator will offer a more positive take, but it's something to bear in mind.

Doing Cute Things

As moe became a fandom buzzword in the 2000s, studios like Kyoto Animation began creating shows that centered on moe as their core appeal. Two of their biggest hits, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006) and Lucky Star (2007), captured legions of otaku fans with their moe-fied female casts and self-aware humor sending up anime tropes and trends. These shows spawned dozens of imitators, but also drew legions of KyoAni haters, who felt that cutesy otaku-pandering slice of life comedies were thriving at the expense of the sci-fi, fantasy, and action genres that they preferred. These critics were of course incorrect, as those genres would continue to thrive, but many works in those genres would also come to embrace moe elements: once again, recall Suletta Mercury.

As for Naoko Yamada, she worked as a key animator and episode director on many of KyoAni's early moe hits. In 2009, at age 25, Yamada directed her first full series: K-On!, a show about girls in a high school music club. If an animated show in the US were made with a premise like that, it would be fair to presume its target audience was young girls, but it's worth reiterating that this isn't necessarily true of moe anime. K-On! was a crossover hit, but it was based on a comic strip that originally ran in a seinen manga magazine--a comic magazine targeting men in their late teens and older.

K-On! became a moe touchstone, and popularized a subgenre centered on groups of "moe girls" pursuing highly specific hobbies, activities, or clubs, known (sometimes derisively) as the "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" (CGDCT) genre.

There's some apparent tension between the objectification inherent to moe, and Yamada's talent at creating nuanced characters with rich inner lives. I wonder if her mentor Ishihara's early impression of Yamada as a "weird subculture girl" might be worth considering as we unpack her perspective on quirky ingénues pursuing creative hobbies.

The Set List:

Let's watch one episode of K-On! (2009). I picked a "beach episode", a time honored tradition in slice of life anime:

• K-On! Season 1, Episode 10: Another Training Camp! (available on HiDive)

Next, we'll check out two or three episodes of: Sound! Euphonium (2015), a co-directing project of Yamada and Ishihara that's a particular favorite of mine.

• Sound! Euphonium Season 1, Episode 4: "Singing Solfège" (available on Crunchyroll)
• Sound! Euphonium Season 1, Episode 5: "Festival Time" (available on Crunchyroll)
• OPTIONAL, BUT SECRETLY MY FAVORITE: Sound! Euphonium Season 1, Episode 8: "Festival Triangle" (available on Crunchyroll)

Sound! Euphonium is only available in Japanese with subtitles, but there's an English dub of K-On!. Even if you watch the optional episode, this all clocks in under two hours.

If you'd like more insight, particularly of a technical nature, I recommend this two-part interview with Yamada and Ishihara (1, 2) about Sound! Euphonium.

Generally, our group ended up being more interested in Sound! Euphonium than in K-On!. But I think in both cases, picking episodes from the middle of the series may have thrown us for a bit of a loop, in terms of keeping track of all the different characters and who they were. Ah well! Sound Euphonium is one of my favorite anime series, maybe my single favorite, so I was happy to issue clarifications and explanations about it. Personally I haven't seen more than a few episode of K-On! and I'm not sure how inspired I am to watch more of it, but it strikes me as a good comfort binge next time I'm sick for a week.

Next: [Week 2] A Silent Voice

For the film club I do with friends, I'm picking a series of works by Japanese animator Naoko Yamada, whose new film The Colors Within releases in the US this week. I've previously done a series on Mobile Suit Gundam, and because my friends are not well versed in the cultural context around Japanese animation, I preceded each selection with a short essay introducing the work and explaining some relevant cultural context. I'm doing that again with Yamada's works, and like with the Gundam series, I figured I could adapt these for my blog as well.

Week 0 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

Hi friends! Let's do a five week series on Naoko Yamada.

Yamada is a Japanese animator and director, best known for her work on young adult slice-of-life comedies and dramas. She's acclaimed for using subtle details in body language and camera framing to create a rich sense of interiority for her characters. She's one of the best known anime directors working today, and arguably the single best-known female director in the male-dominated Japanese animation industry. She's also notable for how young she was when she became a major player in the anime world, having directed a massive hit show at 25.

We have something of a secondary theme here too: Kyoto Animation. That's the studio where Yamada worked from 2004 to about 2020.

And there's sort of a tertiary theme in play here too: teenage musicians, a recurring subject in Yamada's work. GKIDS, the distributor of her latest film, just posted a great video where they took Yamada record shopping, which I think provides some interesting context for the role music plays in her work:

As with the Gundam series, I'll write some introductions to help contextualize the work (or go off on dubiously related tangents, we'll see). To start things off here is some general background.

Kyoto Animation

Kyoto Animation ("KyoAni") was founded in the 1980s by Yoko and Hideaki Hatta, a married couple who still run the studio now. KyoAni began as an informal group of Kyoto housewives that Yoko trained in animation cel painting. This allowed Yoko to continue her animation career, even after leaving Tokyo to live with Hideaki.

Until the early 2000s, KyoAni was primarily a subcontractor providing animation support services for projects led by larger studios. In that capacity they’ve worked on a few films we watched for this movie club a while ago, like Akira and Porco Rosso, as well as some Gundam projects (although not the ones we watched as far as I know). In 2003, KyoAni led its first in-house production, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, a romantic comedy spin-off from the action mecha anime Full Metal Panic!

KyoAni's corporate culture is unusual among Japanese animation studios, which famously run their workers ragged. Stories of grueling work quotas, industry burnout, and hospitalization from overwork are extremely common. KyoAni avoids some of these problems by limiting its slate of projects to just a few per year, employing its staff full time rather than on a freelance basis, and focusing on quality over quotas. It also operates a highly regarded animation school, with programs offered to the public as well as internally, making it an important incubator for industry talent. True to its origin as an informal housewife collective, KyoAni still has a majority female staff, and it received the Women In Animation Diversity Award in 2020 for its commitment to hiring, training, and promoting female artists.

Even if you're not an anime fan, you may remember hearing news about Kyoto Animation in 2019, when a tragic arson attack at one of its studios killed 36 people and injured 34 more, one of the deadliest massacres in the history of postwar Japan. We'll touch on this later in the series.

A Weird Subculture Girl

Yamada joined KyoAni in 2004 at age 20, as an in-between animator on one of KyoAni's subcontracted projects: Inuyasha, a popular fantasy adventure series from Sunrise (the studio behind Gundam). Soon after, she worked on some of KyoAni's early in-house productions: Air (2005), Kanon (2006), and Clannad (2007), three adaptations of romantic drama video games. The director of these productions, Tatsuya Ishihara, would go on to become Yamada's mentor and close collaborator. When asked to reflect on his impression of Yamada during their early collaborations, Ishihara once said "I thought she was a weird subculture girl who went to an arts university."

After honing her skills on the aforementioned shows and several others, Yamada was the series director for K-On! (2009), adapting a slice of life comic strip about teen girls who join their high school music club to keep it from being disbanded. K-On! was a massive success, the first of several hits Yamada would helm while working at KyoAni.

In 2020, Yamada left Kyoto Animation, and has since worked on projects with Science SARU, a Tokyo-based studio known for stylistic experimentation and global collaboration. We'll circle back to Science SARU later in the series.

Our Itinerary

For this series, we'll start by watching a selection of Yamada's TV work. Details to follow.

For weeks two and three, we'll watch two of her major films with KyoAni.

For weeks four and five, we'll check in on what she's up to with Science SARU, including her latest film, The Colors Within.

Next: [Week 1] K-On! and Sound! Euphonium

On this episode of The Moment, I'm joined by Kyle Anderson, to discuss a moment from Inferno, the finale of the seventh season of Doctor Who back in 1970, featuring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor. Among other topics, we discuss the sounds of horror, the Doctor's desperation, and the despair of living in the darkest timeline.

You can follow Kyle on Instagram at @functional_nerd

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To kick off this fourth season of The Moment, I'm joined by Nicole Hill, to discuss a moment from The Church on Ruby Road, the 2023 Doctor Who Christmas Special, featuring the first encounter between Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday as Ruby Sunday. Among other tpics, we discuss Gatwa's star power, Ruby's vibe shift, and Harry Styles in a dress.

You can find Niq's website and social links at niqfury.com.

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Howdy!

It has been some time, hasn't it? 364 days to be exact.

As you know, yesterday was a major holiday: the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who's first airing in 1963. And as it happens, I have a number of Doctor Who related things I've been up to, which I'd like to tell you about. So it occurred to me: what if I sent out a Doctor Who edition of this newsletter to coincide with Doctor Who day?

Cool idea, right? It's the kind of idea you might want to have at some time before 7:15 PM on the day in question. But that's when I had it, so here it is now, a day late. Sound good? I hope so because here we go.

(Does this mean that you, dear reader, should skip this one if you do not care at all about Doctor Who? Yes, it does mean that. I promise another update soon. Before the end of the year, hopefully. And I promise that in that update I will not mention Doctor Who at all. Not one single time.)

Doctor Who: The Moment, Season 4

Let's start with the elephant in my personal room: Doctor Who: The Moment. Did you know that I make a podcast about Doctor Who? I wouldn't blame you if you forgot that, because it's been over two years since I released a new episode.

I was all geared up to start posting new episodes in summer 2023, but then SAG-AFTRA went on strike. During their strike, they required of their members that they not put out podcasts promoting struck work, and said they would appreciate if non members like myself could do the same in solidarity. For that and other reasons, I decided to hold my horses with the release of season 4 of The Moment. You can hear a little more about that decision in an announcement I posted to The Moment's podcast feed.

That strike is over now, but there's another thing holding me up. My podcast reflects on previous episodes of the show, and doesn't directly cover new material. So I don't generally prefer to run the podcast while the show is running. And Doctor Who is back for four specials, starting tomorrow and running through Christmas, starring the new (old) Doctor, David Tennant, and the new (new) Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa. So I'll be holding off a little longer.

You can expect to hear news about the show's return soon. Stay tuned to the show's podcast feed or social presences, which you can find here.

Reality Bomb: The Essentials

Because I am vain, if you ask me what my favorite Doctor Who podcast is, I will tell you it's Doctor Who: The Moment. But Reality Bomb is probably second. It's a really thoughtful and well produced show in a sort of public radio magazine style, featuring a mix of panel discussions, editorials, recurring segments, comedy sketches, documentaries, and even the occasional original song.

For this Doctor Who day, Reality Bomb released the first part of "The Essentials", a two-part talking head documentary about Doctor Who, asking the question: "What is an essential element of Doctor Who?"

It's certainly a valid question, given how much the show has made change and adaptation a part of its DNA. So when Graeme Burk invited me to add my voice to the choir, I wasn't quite sure what part to sing. (So to speak. I don't actually sing. It's a metaphor.) I actually had a couple different ideas I kicked around with Graeme and I'm glad with where we landed: I discussed the essential relationship between Doctor Who and Cliffhangers. As for why, you'll have to listen to the episode to find out! I've enjoyed hearing the variety of perspectives and I'm looking forward to the second part.

Outside In Regenerates

If you've ever perused the dealer's room at a Doctor Who fan convention, you're probably familiar with ATB Publishing, who puts out a whole slew of very smart and fun nonfiction books about popular culture. Their flagship range is "Outside In", a series of books featuring creative essays with fresh and original takes and perspectives on various media franchises. They've done Buffy, Star Trek, Twin Peaks, and of course, Doctor Who. The range kicked off a decade ago with a book reviewing all 160 stories from the classic series of Doctor Who's series, and now they've commemorated 60 years of Doctor Who, and 10 years of Outside In, with Outside In Regenerates, a new book featuring all new reviews of the classic series, including one by yours truly.

I was honored when Stacey Smith?, the range editor of Outside In (who, by the way, recorded an episode for the upcoming season of The Moment which I cannot wait for you to hear), reached out to me and invited me to contribute. My Doctor Who fandom has always tilted more toward the new series than the classic, and so it wasn't immediately obvious to me what story I'd want to say something about. But when I noticed that no other contributor had called dibs on the 1966 partially-missing serial The Celestial Toymaker, my wheels started turning.

See, some fans regard The Celestial Toymaker, in which the Doctor and friends are kidnapped by the titular deity and forced to play weird games in his magical toyroom, as a beloved classic with a legendary one-off villain. Personally, I loathe it. Usually if I hate a story, I haven't got all that much to say about it, but in this case, I find The Celestial Toymaker fascinating to talk about. (Not to watch. It's dull as ditchwater to sit through.) And I thought it might be fun to approach a review of the story through the lens of a games critic who was reviewing the games that the characters are forced to play in the story. And I was right! It was very fun to write, and I'm really proud of it.

Also, I had no idea at the time I wrote the review, but the Toymaker is returning to Doctor Who in the upcoming specials, played by Neil Patrick Harris. Wild. I'm skeptical that I can be won over as a fan of the character but I have to admit I'm thrilled by the cosmic coincidence of my essay seeing publication around the time of the Toymaker's return.

The book came out yesterday in print and you can get it straight from the publisher's website here. There are a lot of very good short reviews in it, so ever since I got my contributor copy, whenever I have a few spare minutes I've enjoyed picking one out at random and being delighted by a fun little jaunt into a fresh perspective on a Doctor Who story.

The Ten Year Pilgrimage

Doctor Who fans have a concept called "The Pilgrimage", which is the viewing of every episode of Doctor Who from 1963 to the present, in order. Many Doctor Who fans cherry pick from the classic series, which is probably the best and most sane way to approach it, but certain devoted fanatics such as myself like to challenge ourselves to watch the series as completionists (to the extent possible).

I have actually done the pilgrimage once. I started in about 2011, and ended in 2013 in order to coincide with the show's 50th anniversary. But I have a terrible confession to make: there were times when I was binging like mad, cramming six or seven episodes into a sitting, and so there are long stretches of the show that I wolfed down so quick I barely have any memory of them at all. So I've decided it might be fun, ten years after I finished my last pilgrimage, to go through it all again, but at a more deliberate pace this time.

Enter the Ten Year Pilgrimage. The plan is to watch every episode of Doctor Who, starting on the 60th anniversary and ending on the 70th anniversary. That's 10 years to watch... I don't know how many episodes. 871 as of today, but who knows how many there will be by November 23, 2033? Right now it seems like two or three episodes per week will be the right pace.

I'm encouraging others to join me, if they are interested, by using the #TenYearPilgrimage hashtag on whatever social media they are using these days. I've worked out a loose viewing schedule and everything. If you'd like to know more, visit tenyearpilgrimage.com.

As for my current Pilgrim's Progress, I meant to watch the first episode yesterday on Doctor Who Day. But unfortunately, some other, lesser holiday happened to fall on November 23rd this year, so I was too busy and didn't have the chance. Because of that, I'll be starting a day late. Luckily, it's a pretty forgiving schedule.

OK that's enough for now. If you've read this far then please reply letting me know which Doctor Who monster would be the most desirable guest at your holiday dinner table. (If you're reading on the blog rather than via email, send your missives to tom [at] nowwearealltom [dot] com). For me it's gotta be the Sontarans. You can't have a holiday meal without a side of potatoes.

I'll have another newsletter for you sooner than usual, I promise! Just go forward in all of your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

Tom