John UM
Adapted from Mori Kanden’s animated film “Penguin Road”, with a beautiful picture and bold imagination, it tells a summer adventure of nostalgia and novelty, describing a wonderful world of daily and non-daily superposition.Since the film was released in Japan last summer, it has been well received by many film critics and ordinary audiences, and won the Canadian Fantasy Film Festival Today Minor Award
The Studio Colorido, which created “Penguin Road”, was founded in 2011, focusing on digital painting and bringing together many young creators of bloody Fang Gang. Penguin Road is their first animated feature film. This is the supervision of Ishida Yukang. Although the film was only 30 years old at the time, it was young in Studio Colorido, but it started to make animations in high school. It is already a well-received senior animator
Colorido, a small and junior, was created with a short animation and CM as the center. However, in 2015, after completing the middle-length animated film “Noda of Typhoon” directed by another core of the studio, Shinji Eijiro, they decided to challenge the long animation
If the first long film is original, it will give Colorido some heart. But they want to be free from the original, and design the picture from scratch. In addition, they may adjust the details of the story and the background of the times. Therefore, when Ishida Supervisor is looking for alternate original works, he will read novels for reading – there are still novels without illustrations
Ishida Supervisor looks for alternate original works in juvenile-centered children’s literature and adventure dramas, and wants to separate the read works into elements and make charts. However, when he read the original novel of Penguin Road, he immediately put the analysis behind him and thought: “This is it!”
In the novel, the protagonist Qingshan Jun and his classmate, Uchida, pursued the penguins and explored the city. This reminded Ishida Supervisor that he had had such an “exploration” experience as a child, although he did not make maps as seriously as Qingshan Jun. He felt that the child read “Penguin Road”, which would be purely a fantasy work chasing the mystery of the penguin; while the adult read it, he would recall his childhood and feel nostalgic
The original novel is written in the form of a diary. In addition to the main story, the amount of information in the work is also very large, and each little story has a sparkling charm. Coupled with the image of the protagonist Qingshan Jun is also very popular. He put all the words he learned and what happened around him in his notebook and made it into a language. Ishida Supervisor looked at it and realized the joy of seeking knowledge
“Penguin Road” is a fascinating adventure for children, but it also has a multi-layered charm: a sweet and sour psychological description, a sci-fi plot, fear of touching unknown things, and The theme of joy and hidden death metaphor… This makes Hetian supervision hesitant. I don’t know if such complicated works will be too difficult for him to direct a long film; but the work is too fascinating to him. The novel is also the story of the protagonist Qingshan Junyi who is a strong man. He also wants to try it out
The mysterious sphere “Sea” that debuted from the middle of the work also made Ishida’s supervision very desirable. This naming is very clever, and the explanation for this phenomenon is also fascinating. As he read the original, he imagined: “What should the surface look like? What is the transparency? How high is the viscosity?” The more you read, the more curious. Moreover, such incredible things are floating in the middle of the grassland alone. Ishida Supervisor really wants to paint this scene
More than just the “sea”, there are many scenes in the “Penguin Road” that are curious and stimulating. Ishida’s supervisor tried to use the paintings one by one, and unconsciously, he has already painted more than one hundred conceptual maps
Ishida Supervisor wrote the plan and gave it to the original Sumami Morihiko, but he ate the door. Under the introduction of the producer, the screenwriter Ueda joined the crew and re-polished the plan, which was approved by Mori
Ueda and Mori have seen him from a very close time. He once worked with another animation supervisor, Tokio Masahiro, to reorganize Mori Kanden’s works into animations. The TV animations that were broadcast in 2010 were the four-and-a-half myths. “The Department” and the “Spring Festival is short, the girl is moving forward”. Both works have been highly praised both at home and abroad
He is not only a “relationship” who is deeply trusted by Sen, but also has a soft attitude, clear thinking and a compassionate production team. Ueda can absorb the Mori-seeing ingredients in the original work into his own interior, instead of writing “Sengmo Festival”. In addition, Ueda himself also loves science fiction and put forward a lot of ideas. It was he who skillfully compressed the original intricate story into a two-hour period, making it possible to make the film
Ishida Supervisor himself also deeply participated in the script meeting, from the overall structure to the details of the lines, unreservedly put forward their own opinions. Since Ueda lives in Kyoto, they usually communicate by mail, and they regularly invite Ueda to Tokyo to meet directly. At the meeting, Ueda painted a chart full of humor on the whiteboard and put forward his own thoughts on the structure of the script, which impressed Ishida
The charm of Penguin Road is that life is suddenly shaken by non-daily erosion. Therefore, the film’s paintings and performances also pay great attention to the difference between the two. The production team describes the daily beauty and joy in the eyes of young people, and only reveals the scales of the puzzles. It wants to balance the “table” and “li”, bringing the audience unconsciously in this process of reciprocation. The feeling of extending his head to the abyss
The “sea” mentioned in the previous article was only the object of the free study of the juvenile bookshelves, but it gradually became a threat to the human world. In the original work, the meaning of its gradual change is described in the mysterious and magnificent way. When it comes to painting, it is very troublesome
“Penguin Highway” is hidden behind a rich and colorful charm, but it appears directly on the screen, and it is also the characters such as Qingshan Jun and Big Sister. Ishida Supervisor is also very careful to shape their image
Confidently, the Nobel Prize-winning elementary school boy, Aoyama Jun, is a teenager who is too clear in everything and logically thinking about everything. Sometimes, he will not understand the subtleties of the classmate’s heart, and asks “Why do you want to undulate the girl you like?” “Since you like it, do you like it?” But this is also because of his pure and straightforward character
Aoyama Jun is working harder than others, knowing a little more than a child of the same age; and vice versa, there is something that has not been learned, and a bit clumsy. For example, he would say, “If you want to get angry, think about the chest. So the heart will become very calm.” This kind of ambiguous, but seemingly justified. Ishida Supervisor believes that this kind of action mode that does not hesitate is the charm of Qingshan Jun, and must carefully depict his inner world
And another major character, Big Sister, is both a chess teacher of Qingshan Jun and his dentist, and Qingshan Jun maintains an ingenious distance that is inseparable, and his character is somewhat embarrassing. For Qingshan Jun, she is a natural person in her daily life, but it seems to be related to the mystery of the penguin. At the same time of good character, there is a mysterious atmosphere. Such a big sister, as well as his own heart for the big sister, is also the research theme of Qingshanjun
Familiar with the audience of Ishida Yukang, it is not difficult to feel the connection with his past works in the “Penguin Highway” animation. In fact, one of the reasons why Ishida’s supervisor is fascinated by this work is that he feels that he can pretend to be the episode of what he has been painting in the movie. This made him feel that he was destined to make this work and he could make a good work
He intends to add his own color, there are two scenes. One is the scene inside the production group called “Penguin Street”, the protagonist and his son riding a penguin. Because of the calm and daily routines, Ishida Supervisor wants to join such a dynamic scene. Therefore, in this scene, they are not letting the penguins run, but sometimes they are slightly distorted, sometimes intertwined with the ups and downs, so that the action is more fun
Another place is a scene after a group of people enters the “sea” and is called “the end of the world.” Ishida Supervisor made this development form of his graduation design short “rain town”, and the characters standalone in the vast scenery. Ishida Supervisor attaches great importance to this quiet space. In the scenes of colorful streets, he occasionally mixed into such dreamy and unclear scenes, making the audience feel like they could touch the deep psychology of Qingshanjun
These two scenes are elements that are not found in the original and the script. However, Ishida’s supervisor felt that such a scene is indispensable if he wants to do this work himself. Thanks to this scriptwriter, Ueda is a stage performer. In the script, there is not much direct description of the picture, leaving him the space to freely design the picture. You can freely adjust your own color without being reluctant
The last work by Ishida Supervisor and the short animated film “The Green Rain in the Sunshine” released in 2013 is also themed on birds. When he was making “The Green Rain in the Sun”, he liked the bird and went to the Ueno Zoo several times to see the bird. He felt that it would work well in the animation
Ishida supervised himself, although he was afraid of heights, he was addicted to fighter planes as early as junior high school, and he was drawing military aircraft from all over the world every day. When I was in college, I fell in love with cute things. The bird flies like a fighter, and it is cute and cute. It can be said to be the most attractive thing in the world. So he used a lot of birds in “The Green Rain”. After making “Penguin Road”, he felt that he had to fall in love with the penguin
As mentioned in the previous article, before the “Penguin Highway”, there have been a number of Mori’s works adapted to the animation Zhuyu. Ishida supervised himself to study at Kyoto University, and he also saw very strong in the “Four and a Half Myths”. He is supervised by the superficial supervision of the ghosts. When he started to adapt his work, he was willing to pay tribute to Tang, and on the other hand, he should pay attention to the influence of Tang Yu
Start with getting rid of the impact. The original novel is written by the first person of the protagonist Qingshan Jun, and the unique monologue of Qingshan Jun is also one of the charms of the novel. Therefore, when creating a movie, Ishida Supervisor also used a large amount of monologue at the beginning. However, in the half, he found that not only would this be similar to the “fourfold and a half”, but it would also damage the simplicity of the Qingshanjun primary school students. So he changed direction in the middle and deleted the monologue as much as possible
And in respect of tribute, the “four stacks and a half” tells, in the final analysis, is that the protagonist “I” uses the standard of “four stacks and half rooms” to measure the world. In the opinion of Ishida, this has something in common with Aoyama’s “square notebook.”
In the works, Qingshan Jun always carries a square book and memorizes everything in detail. This is the way he views and organizes the world. If you think about it, Qingshan Jun thinks that he can understand the world as long as he sorts out the items on the square. This “self-confidence” is also in line with the “I” in the “fourfold and a half”. In addition, whether it is a four-and-a-half-story room or a square lattice, the squares are square. In the supervision of Ishida, the two gradually hang hooks
In fact, Qingshan Jun finally untied his own conceit and understood that there are things in the world that have no squares in the grid and that they do not understand. The same is true of “I” in “fourfold and a half”, and I understand that there are things that I need outside of the fourfold and half world
So although the audience may not be easy to detect, in the end of “Penguin Highway”, the scene in which Aoyama Jun wrote something in his notebook, is not a square, but a blank notebook
References:
- ダ・ヴィンチseptember 2018.
- アニメージュseptember 2018.
- キネマ旬报 2018 September early.
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