SCREENING
ArtScience on Screen: The Modern Fables of Masaaki Yuasa
An illustrious career spanning almost two decades, Yuasa is the first Japanese animator since Hayao Miyazaki (1992) to win the top animation award from the prestigious Annecy Festival.
With a wildly diverse resume ranging from gore-horror anime such as Devilman Crybaby to children’s classics like Crayon Shin-chan to even international favourites such as Adventure Time, Yuasa’s style can be described as lovechild variation between Dali, Disney and Ghibli – surreal yet expressive, eccentric yet lovable, and doused in unapologetically fun-filled freneticism with memorable, empowering characters.
In this programme, we carve out four iconic slices of Yuasa’s illustrious career - a quintessential representation of his signature style that serve as modern fables. From his first ever feature Mind Game (2004) that has become a sleeper hit, to his Annecy-winning Lu Over The Wall (2017), to the very enigmatic pop-culture madness of Japanese drinking culture in The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl (2017), and finally capping it off with his beloved surf-pop love story Ride Your Wave (2019), strap in, it’s gonna be a wild ride!