Kumo to Tulip

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Movie
Original title Kumo to Tulip
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 1943
length 16 minutes
Rod
Director Kenzo Masaoka
script Michiko Yokoyama
music Ryutaro Hirota

Kumo to Tulip ( Japanese く も と ち ゅ う り っ ぷ , kumo to chūrippu , Eng . "Spider and Tulip") is an anime short film from 1943. The plot, a modern fable, is based on a contemporary story by Michiko Yokoyama .

content

A spider tries to lure a beetle woman into her web by singing, but she recognizes the danger and flees. She saves herself in a tulip, which the spider then wraps her thread around. Shortly afterwards a storm comes up, which the beetle woman survives in the flower, but which tears the spider through the air until it finally lands in a puddle.

Production and publication

The film was produced by Shochiku Doga Kenkyujo in 1943, directed by Kenzo Masaoka . For the first time, a multiplane camera was used for a Japanese cartoon, which, in addition to the cels for the animations, also made it possible to use real branches between the levels. Ryutaro Hirota composed the music.

The film ran from April 15, 1943 in Japanese cinemas. In 1984 the film appeared in Japan together with Momotarō: Umi no Shimpei together on VHS. Funimation released both films in the US on DVD and Blu-ray.

Reception and interpretation

Daniel Kothenschulte sees similarities to the Disney productions The Moth and the Flame and The Old Mill from the Silly Symphonies series . In contrast to these films, in which the natural event is in the foreground, in Kumo to Tulip it is the emotional drama. According to the Far Eastern tradition, nature appears as a soulful, independent actor. The spider that tries to lure the beetle with swing music symbolizes American culture, against which the film is intended to warn. So Kumo to Tulip also ranks in the propaganda films of the war time. The black-and-white aesthetics are captivating, especially in the depiction of landscapes, with a great wealth of gray values ​​and instead of naturalistic depiction of the rain, more abstract, ornamental depiction is sometimes used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Daniel Kothenschulte: Opulence and Limitation - Styles of Early Anime in ga-netchû! The Manga Anime Syndrome . Henschel Verlag, 2008.
  2. ↑ a b Jonathan Clements : Anime - A History . Palgrave Macmillan 2013. pp. 52, 160. ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5 .

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