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Naturally, there’s flower language used in The Witch From Mercury as well. This also caused me to go back and look at its usage in other works again, and thoroughly prepped me for Naoko Yamada - who many credit for a recent crop of directors using flowers as a secondary visual language in their works - and her direction of A Silent Voice. It was Kobayashi’s Kiznaiver and specifically Mai Yoneyama’s ending sequence that inspired me to write my first flower language post on this blog, despite having seen flower language used in other anime properties. Kobayashi also, interestingly enough, has had a direct influence on this particular anime blog’s direction. Although there’s a more obvious and direct through line from The Witch From Mercury to Utena in series composer Ichiro Okouchi, who wrote the Utena light novels, whether The Witch From Mercury will deliver something anywhere near as incisive or fun as Utena, will rely on Kobayashi’s direction. This time it’s Hiroshi Kobayashi and his take on the Gundam franchise, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. (Not-so-coincidentally, the Revue is a major influence on a lot of other media properties in Japan and an obvious visual and structural inspiration for Ikuhara as a director.) Last year there was Shin Wakabayashi’s Wonder Egg Priority which started well and ended catastrophically. The excellent Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight helmed by Tomohiro Furukawa was pitched to me this way and deftly managed to be a love letter to and incisive criticism towards the Takarazuka Revue. I’ve avoided writing about Utena directly many times for fear of not having something “good enough to say” given how many wonderful analyses there are of its characters, visuals, and thematic elements. A more streamlined version could truly blossom.There are a few specific things you can say to me that will make me check out an anime faster than “This draws from Kunihiko Ikuhara’s Revolutionary Girl Utena.” Utena is a series that I hold close to my heart in a way that has actually been detrimental to doing any sort of public analysis. This is a beautiful but flawed adaptation. For a show that pivots on language, the script – which also draws on Shinkai’s subsequent novelisation of his film – often feels overly perfunctory as it tries to encompass everyone crowding the stage. The net impression is one of too many gaps – of something missing here both in terms of plot and, importantly, emotional nuance. Susan Momoko Hingley suffers from this as Takao's mum. But a swirl of other issues, from alcoholism to coercive teenage relationships, are compressed into jarring simplicity. Berrecloth – who makes his stage debut here – and Nakagawa have the through-line to forge an affectingly tentative relationship. The problem is that we don’t get the same sense of fluidity and wholeness from the many other characters whose stories overlap. It’s a rich backdrop for the story’s themes of longing, love and painful change in the face of social disconnection.
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Dangling strands resembling shredded paper gesture at the Man’yosha poetry underpinning the narrative.įurther bolstered by composer Mark Choi’s lushly wistful score, the aural panorama of Nicola T Chang’s sound design and Rajiv Pattani’s stylised lighting, Tokyo itself becomes the show’s most fully realised character, reproduced on stage like a heightened memory. Designer Cindy Lin’s set mixes changing video projections and practical elements to gorgeous effect. It’s a visually striking evocation of animation. Where this production definitely succeeds is its atmosphere. She, too, is at a crossroads in her life. Unbeknownst to him, she is a teacher at his school who has been falsely accused of inappropriate behaviour with a student. One day, bunking off school in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, Takao meets Yukari Yukino (Aki Nakagawa). Takao Akizuki (Hiroki Berrecloth) is a lonely 15-year-old, neglected by his mum after his dad abandons their family and with a distracted older brother about to move in with his girlfriend. The play is adapted by Susan Momoko Hingley and director Alexandra Rutter from Makoto Shinkai’s 2013 film. However, the translation between mediums isn’t as seamless here. ‘The Garden of Words’ follows on from the RSC’s hugely successful ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ as a screen-to-stage adaptation of Japanese anime – indeed, many of this production’s cast were also in the latter.