You
do not have to save the world to be an anime hero. It certainly doesn’t hurt,
but Japanese animation is arguably more interested in the lives of average teens
and adolescents (and even adults) than the Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks factories. You
can see that clearly in two of the constituent shorts that make up the
anthology film, Modest Heroes, which screens tomorrow at the 2019 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, ahead of its American BluRay release.
Stick
with Modest, because it starts with the weakest film of the three,
relatively speaking. It also happens to the only one without subtitles, by
deliberate choice. Fortunately, viewers really do not need a word-for-word
translation of the minimal dialogue in Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s “Kanini &
Kanino.” In some ways, this story of two young water sprites struggling to find
their injured father is the most Ghibli-esque of the three short films, which
is a heavy statement, but it is also the most like other films we have seen
before. Regardless, there is no denying the fine quality of the elegant
animation.
In
contrast, Yoshiyuki Momose’s “Samurai Egg” (a.k.a. “Life Ain’t Gonna Lose”)
features a sketch-like illustrative style that nicely suits the tale of a young
boy dealing with a life-threatening egg allergy. It is a simple tale, but the
relationship between Shun and his mother is deeply moving, in a realistically
human kind of way.
The
best of the three is Akihiko Yamashita’s visually striking “Invisible.” This nameless
drone has long been an invisible man in the Ralph Ellison sense, but he seems
to have evolved into an invisible man in the H.G. Wells way, through a
Kafkaesque process. He is invisible to our eyes too, which leads to some highly
cinematic sequences involving his transparent body animating his salaryman
suit. It is quite a sophisticated film, both thematically and stylistically, in
which the fantastical and the metaphorical become indistinguishable.
It
made sense for Studio Ponoc to collect these three short films together, because
there is definitely an international market for anime of this caliber. Still,
the comparatively brief fifty-three-minute running time makes it a bit of a
programming challenge. Regardless, fans will appreciate its artistry,
especially that of “Invisible.” Highly recommended for connoisseurs of international
animation, Modest Heroes screens tomorrow (6/10) at Annecy and releases on
BluRay in the U.S. on 6/18.