FLCL and Two Types of Suspense (alternative title: How to Build your Patience for Cinematic Storytelling)

It took me awhile to finally get into FLCL, and only recently have I finished the acclaimed six part anime OVA that inspired the creators of the series Avatar: The Last Airbender. The first few viewing tries were unsuccessful, mostly because I couldn’t get past the ten minute mark without growing impatient or irritated. For some reason, whatever made the series so appealing to so many people I know was making me feel like I was developing a hernia in my brain. 

Then one day, as if the hernia had decided to develop somewhere else besides my brain, I realized what made FLCL work: it’s a modern take on gnostic suspense, where narrative logic and consistency is suspended and imagery and aesthetics take a front row. This runs contrary to circumstantial suspense, where regardless of what is not happening at a given moment of time, you are confident something will happen soon after. 

Take Alfred Hitchcock, the master of classic circumstantial suspense. Known for his mastery of the genre film, Hitchcock knew exactly what and how to keep his audience in a continuum of suspense, where at any given moment sequences of silence, calm or non-violence would be interrupted with something jarring. A perfect example would be the shower stabbing scene from Psycho: 

For a quick scene dissection to further demonstrate how Hitchcock creates a (relatively short) circumstantial suspense in this scene, here are a few screenshots to tip us off: 

As Marion enjoys her shower, Hitchcock positions her on the (lower) left of the screen…

Then slowly zooms in as it becomes apparent that someone has entered the bathroom without her knowledge (we know she’s oblivious because she doesn’t turn around when Mr. Bates casually sashays in)

The camera has zoomed in even more, and now Mr. Bates shadow against the curtain is even more evident. For the virgin viewers, we’re not sure what exactly he’s going to do (Hitchcock has been mindful to highly eroticize Marion’s shower scene to perhaps suggest Mr. Bates is interested in her sexually…)

… and then we have the famous curtain-drawing plus dagger holding silhouette, thus dispelling the possibility of sexy time and letting us viewers watch a full on murder assault, with the famous music to accompany it as well!

Another masterful example would be the introduction to Fritz Lang’s M, where we are introduced to the murder of a young girl with Lang’s ingenious use of diegetic sound, light/shadow, and mis-en-scene/props: 

A classic monster example of circumstantial suspense is the all-knowing Jaws, where little miss skinny dipping gives us a preview of mister fishy-fish as she gets dragged to and fro: 

For a example involving prehistoric reptiles (?) with fangs and claws, we have the rather remarkable scene in Jurassic Park where Tim and Lex do their best to elude the velociraptors:

So basically, circumstantial suspense is a classic component of the traditional narrative, where the audience’s expectations are suspended just enough to keep us on edge, either in fear, anxiety, or excitement. 

On the other spectrum, gnostic suspense is a auteur’s and surrealist’s wet dream, and is a fantastic way to test your patience with cinema. A master of gnostic suspense is Jan Švankmajer, the Czech filmmaker who made the famous short film Jabberwocky in 1971 and (the insanely grating) Alice in 1988 (arguably, he’s influenced modern filmmakers like Tim Burton and Henry Selick, and maybe even Wes Anderson to an extent). For a taste of what I mean when I say “a fantastic way to test your patience with cinema,” try and get through these six minutes of Alice without wanting to shove a chair in your eye: 

A less testing but equally surreal clip comes from Jabberwocky down below: 

Here’s the experimental short film Photographs by the talented Krishna Shenoi, brought to my attention courtesy of Mr. Roger Ebert (and I dare to say we may be seeing more of him in the future of filmmaking) 

Now if you’ve been brave and watched the above clips, you’re probably asking yourself why anyone would sit through more than a minute of a film like Alice or Jabberwocky. That’s where the magic of gnostic suspense comes in: unlike circumstantial suspense where you know something must happen at a given point in time, with gnostic suspense you’re left hanging, and the only thing keeping your attention is that small, minute hope that after all of the inanity, all of the surrealism there will be something, anything to clear up what is otherwise a clusterf**k that’s messing with your sense of (and grasp on) reality. The deux ex machina-like hope is really what makes gnostic suspense appealing and infuriating at the same time.

So when it comes to FLCL, a anime that goes out of bounds in self-reflexivity, pop cultural reference and mishmashing animation styles into a greater hodgepodge, you might see why I consider it a more modern employment of gnostic suspense, though to some meager sense there is a logical (???) narrative connecting each episode into an overall story (whether you call it logical narrative really depends on if you’re familiar with how over the top some anime can go, which I won’t even divulge into here). FLCL is really an artist’s and musician’s anime, a series that throws reasoning to the wind and asks us to simply enjoy every anime cliche amplified and caricatured tenfold with non-diegetic rock music blasting in the background, reminding us that hey – it’s just a cartoon. I recommend this short series for any animator stuck in a rut, or really for anyone who likes driving vespas with a bass strapped to their back. It’ll take some patience, but if you could sit through six minutes of Alice I guarantee you can sit through this entire series – and enjoyably so (though I can’t guarantee the same for Transformers 2, Skyline, or Fantastic Four 2). 

Some clips from FLCL if you’re curious for a taste of what the mini-series has to offer: 

If you’re interested in watching FLCL for free, visit the Funimation youtube page here. 

For the Love of Animation – the Medium

Dear Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 

If there is anything I’d like to see change in my lifetime, please for the love of Brad Bird, Sylvain Chomet, Satoshi Kon, Hayao Miyzaki, Nick Park, Andrew Stanton, Isao Takahata – please change that damn award category “Best Animated Picture” to “Best Animation for a Feature Length Film,” or even “Best Animation” for short. 

Why would I implore such a change, you ask? It’s simple really: I’m tired of everyone thinking animation is a genre – 

A distinctive type or category of literary composition, such as the epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, and short story, 

– and want desperately for people to regard it as a medium, 

Material used by an artist or designer to create a work.

The distinction couldn’t be clearer and more important. To regard animation as a genre implies that any narrative that animators bring to life automatically relinquishes any sense of seriousness or weight for adult sensitivities, instead caters to the attention span of ADD children coked up on glucose with horrendous retrofit 3D and the comic timing and intellect of cow manure. So when the Academy calls an award category “Best Animated Picture,” they are implying that somehow, by virtue of being animated, narratives told via animation rather than live action are diluted and dumbed down, stupid even. 

Oh Academy please, if you could look past your long history of Disney fare and see that beyond what an American animator and entrepreneur sold to the mass public there are artists out there frustrated by the restraints of big animation studios turning down quieter, smarter, darker scripts for interest of preserving their business – not creating, mind you, but preserving it. They ask themselves, “why risk it if the public wants cheese for cheese’s sake, packaged as kid-friendly because they’re animated?” There are artists out there outside of Pixar and Dreamworks, creating stories with the magic of animation that live action could never, ever come close to accomplishing. When I hear your presenters saying “Persepolis” is unusual because it’s animated but adult-oriented, a little part of me hits itself against an imaginary wall, hoping that this performance act stunt will shed some light on your own ignorance of what animation can accomplish beyond musical sashays and sassy side characters. 

When you say “Best Animated Picture,” you instantly stratify animated narratives into a separate cohort, a subcategory to live action regardless of the narrative’s quality or characteristics. You instantly say films like “Grave of the Fireflies” are the intellectual and narrative equivalent of “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”; you assume the “The Illusionist” is as emotionally acute as “Madagascar”; worst yet, you bring films as politically charged as “Persepolis” or psychological subversive as “Paprika” down as the equivalent of stupidly written films like “Alpha and Omega” or “Shrek 4” – a virtue resultant of these narratives being animated rather filmed live, no doubt. 

So tell me, Academy, what’s it going to take for you to realize that animation is a medium and not a genre? How many more animated films are you going to see willingly that run contrary to your expectations of princesses singing about faux feministic independence while they wait on their prince from their domestic royal chamber? 

When people see the award category “Best Cinematography,” do they think the lighting is a designate genre? No. So why the same for “Best Animated Picture,” where most Academy voters consider animation as a genre despite animation being a highly, incredibly meticulous technical process? Cinematographers create the illusion of perfect lighting on every star in every shot, are masters of making people and sets look good; animators create the illusion of movement, drawing and redrawing and drawing again primary and secondary motions, facial expressions, and numerous other gestures that the everyday observer takes for granted in their perception of the world. Animation is just as technically important as cinematography, and vice versa – both are necessary components of creating a comprehensive narrative. It just so happens that people tend to notice the narrative contribution of animation more than that of cinematography, and too easily are influenced by Disney precursors into believing all animated narratives lie in the same narrative framework. It all falls back to most moviegoers believing that narratives told via animation has the narrative potential of cheese nips, oblivious to the fact that they are observing astute, detail oriented animators from all departments working tirelessly to create the same illusion cinematographers do in live action film. 

So please, Academy, wake up and hear my cries that so many cinephiles and animation enthusiast have been screaming out for years – animation is not a genre, so stop treating it like so and change that damn award category to reflect this understanding. I’m tired of having to explain to people why “Grave of the Fireflies” is one of the greatest anti-war films to date, or why “The Triplets of Belleville” is a worthwhile example of superb animation despite rejecting Disney aesthetics of clean lines and bright colors, or why “Wall-E” was one of the greatest dares in modern narrative when it omitted syntactical dialogue for the first forty minutes, and why it deserved that “Best Picture” nomination over “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” period. 

I hope you’ll see that animation lends itself to potential live action could never, ever dream of tapping into, that under the hand of apt technicians like any other film production animation can dive into the deepest cores of our psyche, of hopes and dreams, and everything in between. 

Yours, 

Q. Le

Realistic films show the physical world; animation shows its essence.

- Roger Ebert, “Princess Mononoke”

“A Town Called Panic,” 2009

“Coraline,” 2009

“Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” 2001

“Fantastic Mr. Fox,” 2009

“Grave of the Fireflies,” 1988

“Mary & Max,” 2009

“Millennium Actress,” 2001

“My Neighbor Totoro,” 1988

“Perfect Blue,” 1998

“Paprika,” 2006

“Persepolis,” 2007

“Princess Mononoke,” 1997

“Ponyo,” 2008

“Spirited Away,” 2001

“The Cat Returns,” 2002

“The Illusionist,” 2010

“The Iron Giant,” 1999

“The Secret of Kells,” 2009

“The Thief and the Cobbler – Recobbled Edition,” 1993 (Note: I watched the fanmade “Recobbled” cut that was put together in the aftermath of the film being destroyed by its distributing studios, which you can read about here). 

“Tokyo Godfathers,” 2003

“The Triplets of Belleville,” 2003

“Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” 2005

“Watership Down,” 1978

“Whisper of the Heart,” 1995

The Playful and Ephemeral Opening of "Paprika"

I rewatched Paprika not too long ago (within a week’s time period, I believe) and couldn’t get over how visually astounding and beautifully done the opening sequence was animated. It establishes the feel and aesthetic of the film in a mere two minutes, introducing us to the lovely and bubbly Paprika and her physical (?) counterpart Atsuko without saying anything. There’s a playfulness to it all, a characteristic all too appropriate to Paprika’s upbeat nature. There’s also a rather surreal element to it, where Paprika goes in and out of, well, anything: her ephemeral presence is both light and warm, unrestrained by the physics of reality and free to bound from place to place, sky to sky, street to street, and person to person – and all just as seamlessly like a dream. Here’s a video link to the opening scene and some following screenshots to help me describe what director Satoshi Kon does so exceedingly well – which, if anything, is an excellent example of dynamic and creative transitions: 

In this cut with Detective Konakawa flipping over Paprika’s business card, there is a warm orange hue that really begins the introduction to Paprika’s character – unique and outgoing, and warm too. 

This next cut is a nice transition from the business card to the highway street, where Paprika drives on by on her scooter. Though she is center there is a lot of movement going on here so the framing doesn’t seem stagnant. 

This first fluid transition (where Paprika goes from one place/medium/whatever to another) is probably the most unexpected one, since at this point most first time viewers aren’t aware of Paprika’s dream nature. Again there is a prevalent orange color with the rocket ship, as well as a playful wink at hyper-cartooned anime aesthetics. 

Here’s a nice little fluid transition of Paprika (literally) blasting off into the night sky…

… and as she flies through the night sky she fluidly transitions again, this time into two advertising billboards (I’m not sure if this is product placement on Kon’s part, as I’m not entirely familiar with Japanese products/beer…)

This is really the first rough-cut transition, where we’re not quite sure how Paprika ends up in the monitor of this (exhausted) employee. 

(Notice, too, how Paprika is wearing a white dress quite similar to that of the woman’s attire in the sleeping employees photo, just left of the monitor. A nice little detail I only caught while taking screenshots of the opening sequence!)

As she begins tiptoeing away, Paprika begins to bounce into bigger and bigger strides, leading to this fluid transition below…

I love how Kon depicts Paprika as a bouncing entity, a characteristic that not only emphasizes her playfulness but more importantly the dream nature of her existence, one that so cheerfully bounces around within the colder barriers of reality. Notice, too, how her red-orange shirt contrasts with her blue surroundings, again emphasizing the warmth of her presence. 

This is sort of a fluid transition from the office building, where prior to seeing her bounce on the street we saw her bounce her way through the hallways. This is another playful and humorous moment in the opening scene, where in her frustration she simply lifts up her hand..

…snaps her fingers…

… and stops traffic like that!

The effect here, of course, is one of really establishing a sort of surrealism regarding Paprika’s presence in the real world, a presence that is almost God-like in some respects. She simply bounces around carelessly, free of worry or fear of breaking physical or anything that otherwise bars everyone else chained to the physical world. The aesthetic effect is also creative, echoing back to the days of pausing video cassettes (DVD kids be damned!)

Here is the second rough-cut transition in the opening sequence, where we suddenly see Paprika biting into a hamburger. We also see her reflection in the background mirrors, which are a rather important part of this brief (and comedic) scene: 

As the two guys hit on her, we see Paprika’s mirror reflections express disgust in different ways to a comedic effect (a cascade of rejections, I must say!) The interesting part is that like the sleeping employee prior, Paprika is interacting with people in the real world; however, the difference here is that two guys are also interacting with her as well, just like a real-life conversation. The multiple mirror reflections reveal multiple dimensions of Paprika, dimensions that otherwise don’t reveal themselves in the real world – a theme that is prevalent throughout the entire film. 

This fluid transition here is probably one of the most creative I’ve seen in the entire movie. As Paprika runs out of the eatery to get away from two suitors, she manages to disappear by jumping into a man’s shirt and then jumps out back onto the screen, looking straight at us the viewer. This jumping in and out of frame recurs constantly throughout the rest of the film, too, where in your dream state you can really do anything you want, just like a God – the only limit is the span of your imagination. 

(The transition is inventively reminiscent of Cinderella, Paprika style)

This is only shot that doesn’t involve Paprika, establishing the real world at hand and the sunrise encroaching. It leads to the third and last rough-cut transition below…

…where we see Paprika again riding on her scooter on the high way. 

We see Paprika get behind a car, and as a car passes by the camera we see that she is now driving the car. 

Another car passes by the camera and we see that is now another woman driving. Her hair down and flowing in the air, another car passes by the camera for the final fluid transition…

… and introduces us to Atsuko, her hair now tied up and no longer flowing in the air. 

One of the nicest things about this opening sequence is that besides being astoundingly creative, it really utilizes the stretches the potential of animation to its limit: Paprika is a dream avatar, and by such she can really do anything we otherwise wouldn’t even think of in the real world. It also gives us a nice transitional introduction to Atsuko, Paprika’s physical counterpart, and gives us a lot of hints regarding how both characters are similar and drastically different one another. 

Paprika is truly one of the most visually astounding films to date, and probably one of the best films regarding dreams as well. It definitely isn’t one of the more accessible films; in fact, I think it’s even more complex than the linearly drive narrative of Inception (if you’re one of the people who said “holy mind f**k” at the end of Nolan’s film, you’ll probably find Paprika absolutely incomprehensible). Regardless, I couldn’t recommend this film enough for anyone, especially for animation enthusiasts and fans of psychological/dream-themed films – and I do hope this opening scene will bump hesitant film fans to take a leap of faith into the magnificent mind of Satoshi Kon. 

Scene Dissection - Haru Introduction from "The Cat Returns"

There’s a common conception that anime productions tend to take short cuts in order to reach deadlines and keep costs to a minimum, thus resulting in rather minimal facial and body expressions as well as jumpy animation as a whole. This isn’t entirely unfounded – I’m sure many of you have had your share of anime where the production team very obviously ran out of money – and oftentimes, it’s best for artists and animation students to first learn the basics of depicting human emotions before simplifying their style into anime-influenced minimalism (back in my high school days, my art teacher commented that many portfolio graders of AP Practice of Art students’ work rarely gave out high scores for anime artists). 

Like all things, however, there’s always something that defies conception. In this case, the introduction of Haru in The Cat Returns is one of the best character animations I’ve seen in awhile. Without saying anything, all of her movements convey the sort of insecure high school girl not uncommon during adolescence, and even implies her relationship with her mother, who her friend is, and whom she quite fancies. Director Hiroyuki Morita clearly spent a lot of time defining and fleshing out Haru’s character to the extent that without saying anything, we know instantly what kind of person she is from the get go – uncertain, insecure, daydreamy, perhaps a bit passive and clumsy, and undoubtably a perpetual tardy. Here’s a video link for the scene and some following screenshots to illustrate this fantastic demonstration of excellent anime/animation: 

After seeing a hand go thump on the cow alarm clock, we see Haru still in bed and rolling over; however, she soon realizes she’s late and jumps out of bed. 

As she quickly (and messily) makes her room, we get a sense of what her room is like and just how rushed she really is (it might also be a hint how only a few seconds ago we saw her in pajamas, again emphasizing how pressed she is to get to school). 

Haru’s double take with the mirror is a notable directing choice: in the first screenshot we see her getting ready vigorously and run out of frame; in the second screenshot she’s run back to the mirror to double-check herself, making sure that, while still hasty, she still looks decent enough. It’s the double-check, second-guessing quirk of these two screenshots which is more or less prevalent throughout this entire introduction of Haru. 

We see Haru running around looking for her bento lunch box, and when she does she quickly puts it into her schoolbag standing up rather than bending over – all in an effort to make up for lost time getting to school. 

These screenshots are fantastic for a few reasons: foremost, it again reinforces Haru’s indecisiveness, and second because it establishes the sort of teasing relationship she has with her mother. There’s a moment where we can see Haru really wants to sit down have a bite but is conflicted about being tardy; she first looks intrigued, then sort of painfully conflicted before grimacing and running out, and finally exclaiming at her mum for not being unfair in the sort of “too bad you can’t have some of this delicious breakfast like I can hee” teasing. 

This is a nice establishment shot of Haru running down the street, and sort of the span and distance from her house to school (it’s also a subtle implication of why she panicked upon realizing the time – it’s a pain to be in a rush, nonetheless a long distance to where you need to get to). 

These two screenshots are a nice detail about how rushed Haru is. In the first picture, we see that she’s looking forward; in the second, we see that she abruptly turns to cut through the bushes, undeniably trying to minimize the time it takes to get to school. 

Of course, with any “unpaved” short cut, getting caught in a branch is possible as seen with the above screenshots. We see Haru quickly swiping away the branch, probably not thinking about a possible rip that could happen if she wasn’t careful or just unlucky. 

We see Haru running at full speed, and again finds herself in mishap when her rushing and inattentiveness to certain aspects of the environment causes her shoe to get caught on the sidewalk and removed. The last two screenshots are a nice illustration of Haru’s speed/running, as she has trouble stopping herself due to momentum. 

In her panic, she tries to maintain some dignity by skipping towards her shoe (possibly, she may trying to not get her sock dirty). 

As luck as it, a baseball team is taking a jog and blocks her path. We see her meekly trying to get through, but it’s obvious that the team is oblivious to her pardons (they probably can’t hear her either), and she soon gives up trying to get their attention in exclaiming “oh no!" 

Now at her classroom, we see Haru trying to sneak in inconspicuously…

…but again to her luck, she’s caught by the teacher and immediately stands up obediently. There’s not an ounce of relaxation, and there’s a great deal of nervousness conveyed by how stiff her shoulders are and how straight (and quickly) she stands up. 

These two screenshots illustrate immediately who is Haru’s friend in the class, who merely comments "caught again” and does not laugh at Haru, merely smiling in the sort of exasperated manner one does when both pitying and chuckling at a good friend’s mild misfortune. Also, without seeing Haru’s face, we can infer her embarrassment by how stiffly she stands in the first picture, and how hunches and hangs her in a subservient-like manner int he second. 

In these five screenshots, we see Haru looking up shyly, and for a moment the camera switches to her POV and reveals that she’s focusing on a boy (who also happens to be laughing in good spirits). Clearly, his laughter bothers her particularly, and she hangs her head down even more in an attempt to curtail the embarrassment of having everyone focus on her and laugh about her tardy mishap. More importantly, it’s implied that she has a crush on the boy of interest, and his participation in the classroom laughter only reinforces her own insecurity. 

These last two screenshots demonstrate another aspect of Haru, which is perhaps one of a daydreamer as she stares out at the blue sky. Her friend, Hiromi, stands watching others play on the rooftop; and in yet another unfortunate chance, Haru gets smacked in the head with a ball, snapping her back into reality (Hiromi gets a good chuckle at the accident, of course – really who wouldn’t?)

As you can see (and probably even better from the video), the opening sequence and introduction of Haru reveals quite a bit of her character without explicitly saying so. It works well because of her body movement, and the sort of double-takes, hand swiping and head hanging she acts out – the sort of task the best animators can do without so much a blink of an eye. 

A similar (if not even better demonstration) of superb animation bringing a distinct character of life can be seen in this blog article about a pencil test by Milt Kahl and Ollie Johnston on the Disney film The Rescuers. The blog author, Jamaal Bradley, comments on the film: 

This clip is one of the reasons why I love animation. The ability to make a character come to life combined with technically achieving line control is amazing. Milt’s animation on Medusa is broad but not overwhelmed with obscure posing and he applies it twice by animating her reflection. Ollie just captures the subtle but unsure movements of a young person. Both characters are completely believable. This is animation at its best….at its best!

The clip can be found here, and I highly recommend anyone to take a look at it!