Taku Furukawa is best known for his doodling style of drawn animationin films like Phenakistiscope (1975) and Tyo Story (1999) and his much lovedcontributions to the NHK’s Minna no Uta series. He has also played with other techniques of making animation such as directanimation (painting directly onto the film stock) in Calligraphiti (1982) and DirectAnimation (1987) and he was one of the first indie animators to experiment with early computer animation in Mac theMovie (1985) and Play Jazz (1987).
Nice to See You (ナイス・トゥ・スィ・ユー, 1975) is a silent film that Furukawa made early in his career. At the beginning, it appears to be anabstract animation that plays with black shapes drawn on a colourful background. Shaky black squares shot on 16mm dance on agreen background, their blotchy edges occasionally blurring into one another. The black squares then transform into greencircles on black and then back again as if the two patterns were fightingagainst each other for control of the screen. The movement of the shapes is such that it is hard to determine whetheror not the shapes are moving across the screen or the camera is moving acrossthe paper on which it has been drawn. The patterns shift and move with the ease of a kaleidoscope.
All of a sudden the shapes get smaller and the camera moves back toreveal that the pattern of dots and squares were not random, but together makeup the image of an eye. The message ofthe film is clear: how we interpret images – and by extension how we see theworld – is determined by our perspective. The closer we are to something does not necessarily mean that we see itmore clearly. Sometimes we need to stepback in order to see the bigger picture.
Nice to See You appears on the Anido DVD Takun Films and can beordered through their website.
Taku Furukawa re-made Nice to See You in collaboration with videogame producer and CG animator Noriyuki Boda and called it TAKU BODA (2009).
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011
