Presentation Proposal

For my presentation, I would like to discuss the some of the works and stylistic approaches of director Satoshi Kon. I specifically want to talk about 2 of his films (each with very different tones, but both equally as great!) Perfect Blue, and Tokyo Godfathers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Akira and Cyberpunk

Watching Akira in class was such a blast- the film is so exciting and fast paced, I really wish we were able to screen the whole thing! Akira is so important to the history of anime for being the most expensive animated film at the time (1989), and for being a landmark of animation as an art form. I always found the cyberpunk aesthetic of Akira to be incredibly inspiring, with its bold colors, detailed environments, and badass bike-chases- it does a lot to make itself memorable after all this time. The themes of Akira eerily still hold up to this day- specifically those about the consequences of war, and the threat of nuclear destruction. These themes are very prevalent in most cyberpunk works- especially those that come out of Japan. Another cyberpunk anime that I've always enjoyed is Ghost in the Shell, specifically the 1995 film directed by Mamoru Oshii. It handles similar themes of war, but with the added complication of the blurred relationship between humans and androids. ...
Read more

My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness/LGBT in anime

I remember reading My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Kabi Nagata when it initially got big in the west (2 years ago, I believe?), and feeling incredibly excited by the idea that manga dealing with more realistic depictions of LGBT life were beginning to become mainstream! Growing up as a queer girl with an interest in anime was a very lonely experience for me, but in an entirely different way. I found that most of my friends who did know about anime were super deep into Yaoi content- and I just really couldn't get into it (and now, I understand that its because those girls were straight- a lot of Yaoi content is obviously geared toward this exact demographic!!). With that, I also tried looking into Yuri content, but without much luck- because that genre is, of course, geared towards straight men! So, I gave up looking for quality LGBT anime content for a very long time! That is, until I read My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, which was such an honest breath of fresh ...
Read more

Garden of Words

This was my second time watching the Garden of Words, and the first time watching it dubbed. I felt like I enjoyed it more in Japanese, because the overall portrayal of the characters through the acting felt more nuanced and relatable- here I found the characters to be too stoic and robotic. It was mostly enjoyable to me for its visuals and calm slow pace- which is a key component of many more serious/emotional slice of life style anime stories. However, I honestly find the emotional core of the film to be quite empty and not as impactful to me as Shinkai may have intended. The way the two main characters interacted felt unrealistic and awkwardly romanticized to me, where they have very little chemistry. For instance, the moments where they are clearly enjoying each others company have no dialogue, and instead music is played over it. While that can be impactful in some cases, I found it to be shallow because there was barely an established camaraderie between them in the first place...
Read more