A Short Piece About Short Peace.

I finally got around to using my advance ticket to Short Peace and it's a good thing too, because the movie closes this week.

In the lobby are two lovely posters (I'd love to snag one!)

When I bought the ticket, I received a set of 5 postcards, one for each vignette and one for the opening sequence. After the movie, I picked up a set of Clear files. I'll showcase these along with a little review of the Short Peaces.



For those of you who are not in the know, (and I am one of those), I'd assumed that the whole package is the brainchild of Katsuhiro Otomo but it is merely based on some of his works. Here's a recap: "Short Peace is an omnibus project assembling "top creators at the leading edge of Japanese animation, exploring possible future avenues of expression." Short Peace is also the title of a collection of Otomo's manga shorts that was first published in the 1970s.

The opening sequence is contributed by Koji Morimoto (The Animatrix's Beyond, Noiseman Sound Insect, Genius Party's Dimension Bomb) and is a charming bit with a young gal who emulates Alice and falls through a Rabbit Hole to another dimension and undergoes several cosplay changes.

The first of the quartet of films to be viewed is very cool and fairly easy to understand even without any Japanese ability. 九十九 Tsukumo is by Director Shuhei Morita. Be sure to click that link for a few more details. The postcard I got was of a bizarre frog made of umbrellas and the clearfile shows the protagonist, a Samurai who is adept at sewing and craftsmanship.

The next piece I saw was called  火要鎮 or Combustible. This was Otomu's creation and it was visually magnificent. With a plot involving star-crossed lovers who get burned (literally), it was worth the price of the ticket alone. (BTW, the price of a ticket was more than most movies AND the entire movie clocked in at an hour!)

Next up was my favourite about a cute little girl and her bear. There's also a troublesome Oni along the way.
Surprisingly, the title of this vignette was in English and called Gambo.

The final piece of Peace was called 武器よさらば (Buki yo Saraba) and is based on one of Otomu's original designs. It was pretty violent and confusing and awesome and funny and reminiscent of his groundbreaking Akira.

The obverse of the two clear files were copies of the posters, pretty nice in their own right.

If you get a chance, run out and see this mini-masterpiece. You've only got two days left, it's only at Nagamachi and is only shown at 8:00!