Studio Ponoc wants its anime to change the world — and escape Studio Ghibli’s shadow

DailyBlockchain.News AdminJuly 5, 2024

4 minutes read

Studio Ponoc Wants Its Anime To Change The World — and

When Studio Ponoc premiered its first feature-length animated movie, 2017’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower, audiences and critics alike championed Ponoc as the successor to Japan’s famed Studio Ghibli, which at the time appeared to be on a probably everlasting hiatus. With the studio’s newest movie, The Imaginary, Ponoc is aiming for one thing increased. In an interview forward of The Imaginary’s American debut on Netflix, Studio Ponoc founder Yoshiaki Nishimura informed Polygon that he’s prepared for Ponoc to create its personal model and legacy, and transfer out from underneath Studio Ghibli’s shadow.

“With [Mary and the Witch’s Flower], I wanted to carry on [Studio Ghibli’s] conviction and the legacy they created,” Nishimura mentioned. “For The Imaginary, I was focused more on the pure filmmaking — not something to carry on from Studio Ghibli, but the creation of film itself. How would I want to depict this imaginary world?”

Based mostly on A.F. Harrold’s 2014 youngsters’s ebook of the similar title, The Imaginary facilities on Rudger, the imaginary buddy of a younger woman named Amanda who lives alone together with her newly widowed mom, Lizzie. Rudger and Amanda are inseparable, embarking on fantastical adventures in lovely worlds conjured up by the latter’s creativeness. When an accident separates them, Rudger embarks on his personal journey of self-discovery whereas making an attempt to reunite with Amanda.

The Imaginary is Studio Ponoc’s first movie since the 2018 anime anthology Modest Heroes, and the studio’s first feature-length film since Mary and the Witch’s Flower, its 2017 debut. Other than Tomorrow’s Leaves, an animated brief commissioned in honor of the 2020 Summer time Olympics in Tokyo, Ponoc has been quiet since Modest Heroes. When requested why Ponoc took so lengthy to launch a brand new movie, Nishimura was candid: The studio merely wanted the time to iterate earlier than committing to a brand new animation model.

“We wanted to move forward and explore different styles,” Nishimura informed Polygon. “In order to do that, we started creating shorter pieces and faced different challenges. […] That is one of the reasons why it took us as long as it did.” The 2018 demise of Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, who Nishimura labored with on Takahata’s remaining movie, The Story of the Princess Kaguya, additionally contributed to Nishimura’s reluctance to leap into a brand new feature-length venture.

A blond haired anime boy with brown years stares intently at something off-screen as a group of colorful characters including a red-haired girl and a pink hippo look at him from a campfire in The Imaginary.

“This is very personal for me,” Nishimura mentioned. “Isao Takahata, who I was involved with in creating things for maybe eight or 10 years, passed away. I really had to take time to think about what kind of work we should be creating. I went into depth thinking about [the] direction I should take in creating animation after his death.”

The results of that prolonged interval of experimentation and contemplation was The Imaginary. Directed by Yoshiyuki Momose, a former Studio Ghibli animator who additionally directed Tomorrow’s Leaves and the animated brief Life Ain’t Gonna Lose as a part of Modest Heroes, the movie employs a lot of the similar comfortable, pastel-and-watercolor-infused artwork model of these movies. However it’s accentuated with CG animation, which is clear in the early scenes, as Amanda’s creativeness transforms the cramped dimensions of her home’s attic right into a winter wonderland of snow-capped hills and huge forests.

A colorful attic space filled with books and toys in The Imaginary.

For Nishimura, who produced and scripted The Imaginary, a necessary piece in creating the movie got here in the type of proprietary software program created by Les Films du Poisson Rouge, a French animation studio identified for its work on Netflix’s 2019 animated movie Klaus. “When I saw this [technology], I said, ‘I have to use this, I need to use this,’” Nishimura informed Polygon. “For The Imaginary, […] we drew 130,000 drawings. So if you really want to control the shadows and the lighting of all these drawings, [it would’ve taken] two or three times more than usual. So using this company’s technology, we were able to control this lighting and shadow digitally, where it was more efficient and we could create it faster.”

Japanese animation has considerably expanded in attain and impression over the previous three a long time, rising from a distinct segment cultural export right into a bona fide world phenomenon. Studio Ghibli’s movies — particularly, these directed by studio co-founder Hayao Miyazaki — have performed a pivotal half in the transformation of anime’s repute throughout the world, regardless of the director’s disdain for the time period itself. When requested about his time at Studio Ghibli, Nishimura defined why the studio distanced itself from “anime” as an outline, and why that’s now not the case.

A brown-haired anime girl and a blond-haired anime boy playing beneath a blanket in a colorful attic in The Imaginary.

“The reason is because 20 to 30 years ago, when [the] Western world referred to something as ‘anime,’ it included pieces where [that] involved something sexual or violent,” Nishimura informed Polygon. “But as you know, there are so many diverse, different forms of anime now, and now that people have an understanding of anime as something very diversified, we don’t have to define and differentiate ourselves.”

As for the purpose Studio Ponoc continues to focus totally on creating animation for kids, Nishimura says he believes it’s his goal in life.

“When I was 14, I made a decision that I am going to live for children,” Nishimura informed Polygon. “That’s why I went into the animation industry. [If I could] provide [a] message to children [about] what’s important […] in their childhood, if they would accept that message […] when they grow up 10 years or 20 years from now, [I would tell them] I believe this world is going to be a better place if they understand what is very important. The reason is, this is something I would like to share as a person who had an opportunity to spend time with Miyazaki-san and Takahata-san. We truly believe that one film can really change someone’s life. We believe that could even tie into changing the world itself. That’s why I want to face the children. That’s the reason.”

The Imaginary is streaming on Netflix now.