This 15-minute stop motion animation is animportant landmark in Japanese animation history. AWonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965) is thefirst independent film by TadanariOkamoto (岡本忠成, 1932-90) after he founded his ownstudio Echo Productions (EchoKabushiki-gaisha) in 1964. It isalso the first stop motion / puppet animation to win the NoburoOfuji Award, which for 1965 was jointly awarded to Okamoto and experimentalanimation pioneer Yōji Kuri. Okamoto was to go on to win this prestigiousaward more times than any other animator.
A Wonderful Medicine is an adaptation of the short-short story Nusunda Shorui (盗んだ書類) by novelist Shinichi Hoshi (1926-1997), acclaimedfor his “short-short” science fiction stories – many of which were illustratedby another Ofuji award-winning animator MakotoWada and one of Kuri’s fellow AnimationSannin no Kai members Hiroshi Manabe. Short-short stories belong to the genre flash fiction, and as such tend to be notonly short but also boast fresh, innovative storylines and unexpectedendings.
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| The evil genius imagines the medicine giving him powers of defying gravity / the winding road leading up to the scientist's lab |
In an opening reminiscent of To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock,1955), an open top convertible winds its way up a coastal hill to a lookoutpoint. But instead of Cary Gant andGrace Kelly, the car holds a tall, skinny, evil genius with a Poirot moustache andhis short, checked-cap-wearing lackey. The two men are targeting a moustachioed elderly scientist who quirkilyhas a boy assistant and a talking crow.
Posing as a potential customer, the evilgenius spies on the scientist and overhears him making a new discovery. Believing this new “wonderful medicine” to besomething useful for his plans for world domination, the evil genius and his lackeyplan a bold mission to steal the “wonderful medicine.” Comical at every turn, they are almost foiledby the alarm systems and the talking crow, but in the end their cunning allowsthem make off with their prize. In ahilarious twist at the end (spoiler alert), the lackey – who is coerced intobeing the guinea pig – takes some of the “wonderful medicine” which turns outto be a cure for turning a wicked heart into a good and wholesome heart. Overcome by his new-found sense of morally upstanding principles, the lackey confesses his crime to the scientist, who is delightedto learn that his new medicine works as intended.
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| Examples of special effects |
Compared to Okamoto’s graduate work Mirror (1960), one can see an improvement in thefluidity of character movement and general expressiveness of the characters –skills which Okamoto acquired during his period working under Tadahito Mochinaga at MOMProductions. In an amusing touch, thescientist and the evil genius, whose mouths cannot be seen, both talk via their moustaches going up and down. Theestablishing shots, both exterior and interior, set the scene beautifully. The most innovative sequences occur when thecrow tries desperately to prevent the thieves from taking the medicine. Scribbles and even foam have been overlaid ontop of the scene in order to depict the chaos of the fight in a dynamicfashion – I am guessing that as with Eastern European puppet films of thisperiod (hugely influential on Okamoto throughout his career), and indeed aswith Kihachirō Kawamoto’s earlypuppet films, this film was shot on the horizontal surface of an animationtable with the camera looking down from above. This would have allowed Okamoto to add depth and special effects on plates ofglasses placed at different camera distances above the puppets.
A Wonderful Medicine appears on the firstDVD of the Collected Works of Tadanari Okamoto (JP only), which I reviewed for Midnight Eye. This review belongs to my series on the Noburo Ofuji Award.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012
