Note: Yoshinari’s concepts are visuals only and have no accompanying sound.
Some shorts just leave you craving for more, aching for more in fact. Director and animator Yoh Yoshinari’s collection of all too brief concepts for various Osamu Tezuka’s works is precisely one of those shorts. While not only perfectly capturing and interpreting Tezuka’s signature style, Yoshinari offers movement and dynamism that seems precisely in keeping with what Tezuka implies by the line work, composition, and page arrangements of his manga. For Western viewers, Yoshinari even offers the added cachet and cultural capital of representing works much less known on this side of the Atlantic – The Devil Garon, Zero Man, Angel’s Hill, Roppu-kun, The Mysterious Underground Men, King Burunga. Hardcore fans will particularly appreciate the appearances of characters like Spider and Hyoutantsugi, small cartoon characters based on the scribblings of Tezuka’s siblings that appear throughout his comics. Given the large fan base for Tezuka’s work, Japan’s tradition of animated anthology features, and the rise of crowdfunding, how is this not yet a larger work?!?
Make Mine Criterion! 