Peace Eco Smile: Another Car Company x Anime Company combination

By TheBigN

After being notified of this work by a cool reader of the blog, as well getting a notification from some sort of official company somewhere (I think – shady business all), I figured I might as well link to the trailer for an upcoming combination between Toyota and Studio 4°C, Peace Eco Smile:

Via the press release-ish e-mail I received:

This extremely entertaining 7 episode romantic comedy explores the adventures of a fun-loving alien named PES. The intergalactic traveler falls to the Earth and lands in Japan, while his friends NaSuBi come to rescue him.

From the trailer itself, and from ANN’s summation, the story does seem pretty whimsical.  And colorful. And flowing with that awesome animation and energy that Studio 4°C works tend to have. Totally up my (and dm00’s) alley, for sure. But it does also come off as obvious product placement for Toyota as well (the 2nd official trailer sort of drives that point home – pun intended). Granted, it’s not the first time that this has happened before, but I’m hoping when the mini-episodes come out that I’m not beat over the head with how wonderful a Toyota is.  That being said, just by the studio alone (though it does look like this is the director‘s first solo directing effort), I’m intrigued and hoping for something special. When Houkago no Pleiades, a Subaru and GAINAX production, came out last year,  it was pretty entertaining (not really special though), and other than the name of the main character, there was little overt focus on Subaru’s products and focus was kept on the adventures the quintet of magical girls.

I’m looking forward to see what comes out of this combination though. Should be pretty interesting. :3

Guilty Crown/Kung Fu Love

by dm00

Guilty Crown is definitely turn-off-your-brain eye-candy. Nonsense, but very pretty nonsense.

In a way it’s a pity that so much talent is being used in the service of such nonsense, but Studio 4C has taught me that, if it’s pretty enough, I won’t mind if it’s nonsense:

Update: The youtube snapshot has horrid jaggies, the video is a bit better (and, it’s part of Studio-4C’s Amazing Nuts!, there are ways to find better versions of this short film). When you get to the six-minute mark you’ll see why Inori’s leap into space in Guilty Crown 4 reminded me of this sequence.

Anime Nevsky

by dm00

 

No, Alexander Nevsky does not return as a magical girl

 

First Squad: the Moment of Truth is a Russian-written Studio 4C production.

Nazi sorcerors conjure the Teutonic Knights, bringing them back from the dead to reprise “the battle on the ice” in the service of Hitler’s push to the east, and Soviet Intelligence’s Psychic Squad (their most valued remaining agent: 17-year-old Nadya) scrambles to thwart their plan applying the immortal principles of Dialectical Immaterialism.

The film is presented as a quasi-documentary, alternating animated story flashbacks with interviews of live-action talking heads presenting Russian and German veterans, psychologists, and historians all talking about “The moment of truth” portrayed in the film.

 

No Heroine of the People is complete without her samurai sword nor her Young Pioneer bandana

 

All the dialogue is in Russian (except for some of the German veterans), all the animated dialogue (including the Germans) is in Russian.

Studio 4C’s “Junk Town”

by dm00

The other day I came across a 15-minute film, Junk Town (Japanese title: Garakuta no machi), from Studio 4C. It’s so obscure, it doesn’t seem to have an animenewsnetwork encyclopedia entry, yet.  It’s directed by Nobutaka Ito (wo worked on Kemonozume, Kimagure Robot, and was animation director on several of the later episodes of Samurai Champloo). It’s available on the Deep Imagination DVD.

Stylistically, it looks a bit like Tekkonkinkreet or the Studio-4C contribution to Gotham Knight, as well as some of the music videos that Studio-4C has created.

The villain?

Studio 4C short: The end of the world

by dm00

I watch a lot of anime, but what really excites me is independent animation projects (pretty much from anywhere in the world, though I’m most focussed on Japan).  Things like Pale Cocoon and Aquatic Language (from Eve no jikan’s Yasuhiro Yoshiura and Rikka Studio), the clever Kakurenbo.

Among my favorite sources of delightful shorts is Studio 4C, a studio which does a lot of music video work (and as a result, have developed a tightly-edited style that manages to tell a coherent story in just a few minutes).  Studio 4C has only had one solo release make it to the United States — the magnificent Mahou shoujotai Arus, released in the US as Tweeny Witches (at the moment, RightStuf has a pretty good deal on the Tweeny Witches collection).  With luck, their new release, Genius Party (a collection of shorts), will make it over here.  It’s been shown on the festival circuit.

But here I’m going to give you a glimpse of one of Studio 4C’s shorts, the ten-minute long The end of the world.

The end of the world starts in a seedy club, where our two protagonists encounter one another for the first time:

Ne, I hear there's this new band called Beck.

They hit it off, and end up wandering back to one of their apartments, which is spacious (by Tokyo standards) even before the interdimensional portal opens up:

As her host panics, the guest pulls out a PDA with a killer case-mod:

She rides through the interdimensional portal, to deal with some baddies:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

But things don’t go well.  Fortunately, her new-found friend shows up and brings about the end of the world.