Anime Writers Look Back and Review the Hottest Animated Films of 2020

The writer, who has seen a lot of animated films, looks back at the films released in 2020! We picked up "Violet Evergarden the Movie" produced by Kyoto Animation, "Music," an animated adaptation of Hiroyuki Ohashi's manga, "Pokemon Coco the Movie," the 23rd "Pokemon" movie, "The Magic of One-Half" produced by Pixar, and the classic turned attraction movie "Mobile Police Patlabor the Movie 4DX" was picked up.

Violet Evergarden the Movie

The film begins with a cut to a chase after two ruts left on the ground. What is important here is not the metaphor of the ruts, but the fact that the wheels that made the ruts are not shown. It is to follow what unmistakably existed in the past, relying on physical traces. This leads to the story of a young girl called Daisy, who investigates the woman who wrote her great-grandmother's letters on her behalf.
Daisy then visits an island and learns of the woman's past living there. Her accomplishments as a substitute writer can be seen in the fact that she herself has become an icon connected to the letter, even if she can no longer be traced back to the person in question. Everyone will be struck by the cleverness of the story about symbols, which begins with an index and ends with an icon.
That is why we were puzzled by the illustration suddenly shown after the end roll. We were surely hoping for this, but we wondered if we were allowed to take a peek at a scene that no one else in the film had been able to reach. In contrast to "Liz and the Blue Bird," the reason for the protagonist's expression at the end of the film was not depicted.

Music

Director Kenji Iwaisawa completed this rock animation after seven years of production. The film depicts a group of high school delinquents who are beginners at playing musical instruments who form a band on a whim and compete in an outdoor rock festival. The production process used the rotoscoping technique, which traces the movements of live-action footage. In the case of rotoscoping, character designs are often made to resemble live-action images, but for this work, a simple design with few lines was used. This gives rise to a unique worldview in which the characters have a realistic presence even though they are apparently comic book drawings.
The chaotic fun explodes from the beginning, when the main character, Kenji, who does not move at all, and the delinquents, whose bodies are drawn up and down as they breathe, are alternately cut back and forth. The film offers the true appeal of animation, where the viewer can't take his eyes off the action, even though the pictures are just moving. The cast features a number of actors and musicians. As an animation fan, I am also happy to see Naoto Takenaka in the cast. 2020 will bring "Human Survival! and "Kimi wa Kanata" included, it was also a year to fully enjoy Naoto Takenaka's appearances.

Pokemon Coco the Movie

The latest film in the "Pokemon" series tells the story of Coco, a boy who was raised by Pokemon. The role of Coco is played by Moka Kamihiraishi. She played the difficult role of a boy who does not understand human language, so when he talks to Satoshi, the main character, he speaks in a halting manner. Another important point is that she plays a male character, following her role in "Mirai no Mirai. Combined with Coco's cute visual appearance, her somewhat shaky voice has a unique charm. This is symbolic of the character Coco, who is in between human and Pokémon and cannot stay on either side of the fence.
Of course, there are plenty of action scenes. The battle using the vine of Coco's foster parent, Zarudo, looks great on the horizontal screen. Pikachu is also a character to be admired, not only for his signature 10-man bolt, but also for the coolness of his iron tail, which turns into a steel and rips the enemy apart.

One-half magic

This is an adventure fantasy in which the main character, who has magically resurrected only half of his dead father, tries to find the phoenix stone with his brother and bring him back to life completely. Not to mention "Fullmetal Alchemist" as an example, there is no way there should be a story about resurrecting the dead. Therefore, the ending, in which the protagonist is unable to reunite with his revived father, is predictable and definite even without seeing the film, but even so, the ending is strangely moving.
Blocked from his path by a huge stone, the protagonist is unable to approach his father, who has been resurrected, and can only watch him through a small opening in the stone. The view from there is depicted as if we are looking at a movie screen, using the frame-within-a-frame technique that Pixar has often used in its past films, and the protagonist and the audience become equal. And the representation of the father disappearing in a sparkling light as the magic is about to be broken is kept from being mediocre thanks to the restriction of only being shown in telephoto due to the physical distance between the two men.

Mobile Police Patlabor the Movie 4DX

In recent years, there have been many revival screenings using "4DX" or "MX4D," a sensory movie screening system, and "Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack 4DX," which was released in 2019, was a rich film that even expressed the posture control of mobile suits under weightlessness and the warmth of the psycho-frame, but it was set in outer space, so there was a lot of water splashing in the scenes. The only regret was that there were not more scenes with water splashing because it was set in space (the lack of water splashing in the scene where Ques Paraya spits on him cannot be forgiven for an ordinary mistake!) .
On that note, "Mobile Police Patlabor the Movie" has no trouble with water, as its climax is in Tokyo Bay under a typhoon. With a mist to moisten your face, you feel like you are in the 2nd Platoon about to fight a decisive battle. In the middle of the film, when there is little action and the main character gets to the heart of the case, the gimmick of the seats moving in time with the quick panning of the camera to complement the performance is interesting and makes one imagine what would happen if the sequel, "Pato 2," were converted to 4DX. This is a film that pursues the possibilities of attraction-type theaters.

(Text by Katsunori Takahashi)

(C) Kana Ake, Kyoto Animation/Violet Evergarden Production Committee
(C) Hiroyuki Ohashi, Ota Publishing / Rock 'n' Roll Mountain All Rights Reserved.
(C) Nintendo, Creatures, GAME FREAK, TV Tokyo, ShoPro, JR Kikaku (C) Pokémon (C) 2020 Pikachu Project
(C) 2020 Disney/Pixar.
(C) HEADGEAR all rights reserved. produced by GENCO INC.