Anime in 2022 in a Nutshell! ONE PIECE FILM RED", "Suzume no Dokkimari" and "THE FIRST SLAM DUNK" - each of them re-animate the reality of 2022.

As the era is changing from Heisei to 2022, the series "Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World" attempts to capture the contemporary landscape through time reviews of notable anime.

In this issue, we take a stab at theatrical anime in the year 2022, which has seen a string of blockbuster hits! We will be looking at three films: "ONE PIECE FILM RED," the biggest hit in the series' history; "Suzume no Dokkimari," the latest work by director Makoto Shinkai, who is now attracting worldwide attention as post-Hayao Miyazaki; and "THE FIRST SLAM DUNK," a film adaptation of a classic manga that has shone brilliantly throughout Japanese manga history by the original creator himself.Critic Daichi Nakagawa will discuss thethree films!

Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei Era World Vol. 11 "ONE PIECE FILM RED," "Suzume no Dokkimari" and "THE FIRST SLAM DUNK" - Each Re-Animated Reality of 2022

The second half of 2022 saw a string of blockbuster hits with box-office revenues of more than 10 billion yen.

In the previous article, while reviewing the films screened in the first half of 2022 related to anime, we dared to take a look at the live-action film "Haken Anime! However, the second half of the year has seen an overwhelming number of high-profile anime films that leave no room for such lures: "ONE PIECE FILM RED" released on August 6, "Suzume no Dokkimari" released on November 11, and "THE FIRST SLAM DUNK" released on December 3, As of this writing, they have already grossed 18.7 billion yen, 10 billion yen, and 5 billion yen, respectively, all of which are on track to break the 10 billion yen mark at the box office.

Two of these films are based on the popular manga series of "Weekly Shonen Jump," and are in line with the mood created by "Demon Slayer: Infinity Train" in 2020, which became the highest-grossing domestic film of all time, helped by the special circumstances during the period when film exhibition was restricted due to the Corona disaster. The film adaptation of a popular Weekly Shonen Jump manga has become a hit of a type that has never before been seen in the box office. In this sense, the success of "Jujutsu Kaisen 0 the Movie" in 2009, which was regarded as the post "Kimetsu" series, can be seen as a natural follow-up to the success of the previous two films, which were based on a new generation of manga series that began in the late 2010s and were linked to TV series produced by up-and-coming animation studios such as ufotable and MAPPA. While "ONE PIECE" is the oldest manga series in existence, celebrating its 25th anniversary, and "SLAM DUNK" is a historical manga title that represents the 1990s, and both have been adapted into anime for many years, they are both long-established manga films. The fact that Toei Animation, a long-established manga film studio that has been making animated versions of each of these works for a long time, is also very conservative, and the two are in very different positions in the same Jump series. Despite this, the director's innovative approach in terms of creativity and planning was successful in updating both films to the modern era, and this should be understood in the context of business and productions that were different from those of the previous year.

The fact that Makoto Shinkai's "Suzume no Domekomari" was released in between the two films, keeping up with Mamoru Hosoda's routine of releasing a new original film a year later in a three-year cycle, and continuing to meet the expectations of the industry for a "national anime artist" is ideal for the Japanese anime business to be in harmony with its schedule. The way it is, at the end of a year in which domestic and international upheavals such as the war in Ukraine, global economic turmoil, and the shooting death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should surely have undermined the foundation of the country's routine, "What's Your Name?" (2016) and "The Weather Child" (2019), the film's "disaster trilogy" seems to overlap with the way the protagonist of the previous film, Hotaka, tells himself at the end of the film, "We'll be fine.

In a special program on NHK's "Close-Up Today" aired on December 12, 2011, the film, which depicted the motif of the Great East Japan Earthquake, was juxtaposed with footage of the protests of victims who had actually lost family members in the disaster, and the response was that entertainment must have the power to move people's hearts to accept the reality of the situation. (External link: "NHK" Director Makoto Shinkai's "Entertainment and the Earthquake" in "Suzume no Tobirakimari" (Unreleased interview )). ( External link: "NHK" Director Makoto Shinkai's "Entertainment and the Earthquake " in "Suzume no Dokkomari". From a critical point of view, this could be nothing more than a media performance to defend himself against possible criticism of his handling of the disaster by spreading a public image of "a sincere artist who faces up to the situation with sincerity" and "an anguished expressionist who sticks to his beliefs even if it hurts someone else" (see below). However, this is not the case.

Nevertheless, even before evaluating the work, Shinkai's clownish role as an exemplary general theory on the relationship between fiction and reality is certainly a line that creators must not lose sight of. Below, we will once again compare and contrast how the three films that have become the flagship titles of the 2022 anime series have faced the "reality" of their respective eras through their respective methodologies.

FILM RED" which uses a music film format to address global inequalities and divisions

First of all, let's take a look at what kind of film "ONE PIECE FILM RED" is.

Like "Doraemon," "Detective Conan," and other long-lived manga series, "ONE PIECE" films are basically made as festive projects that are not strictly consistent with the story line of the original works, but since "ONE PIECE FILM STRONG WORLD" in 2009, "ONE PIECE FILM RED" has been made in the same way as "ONE PIECE" films. However, since "ONE PIECE FILM STRONG WORLD" in 2009, Eiichiro Oda, the author of the original story, has been deeply involved in the planning of the concept of the film as the executive producer or general producer. The 15th film, "FILM RED," was screened as an event film in 1998 before the TV series, "ONE PIECE: Overthrow the Pirates GANZAK," as it entered the final chapter of the original work! The director, Goro Taniguchi, who had experience working on the anime adaptation of "ONE PIECE" for the first time with "Pirate Gyanzak," an event screening in 1998 before the TV series was even made, was appointed to direct the film, and the fact that it features the red-haired Shanks, who gave Luffy the straw hat and became the starting point for his quest to become the Pirate King, can be said to position this film as a "One Piece Movie.

Traditionally, Toei Animation usually appoints a director from Toei Animation who has worked as a series director of a TV series to direct a One Piece movie, but Goro Taniguchi has worked mainly on original projects for Sunrise from "Infinite Leviathan" (1999) to "Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion" (2009), which is his first film. After making his mark on Sunrise's original projects, in the 2010s Goro Taniguchi became a freelance director, working with a number of animation studios on original juvenile science fiction action films, and establishing his own unique artistic style.

In terms of films that bring a change to the royal pattern of "ONE PIECE" by introducing such outside talent, "ONE PIECE THE MOVIE Omatsuri" (2006), the sixth feature film directed by Mamoru Hosoda, just before his breakthrough as a theatrical animation director with "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" (2006), and "ONE PIECE THE MOVIE Omatsuri (2005), which Hosoda directed just before his breakthrough as a theatrical animation director with "The Baron and the Island of Secrets" (2006).

It is a well-known anecdote that this film reflects Hosoda's experience of facing a crisis in his career as an animation director, when he was originally scheduled to direct "Howl's Moving Castle" (2004) at Studio Ghibli, but was removed from the production team and dropped out. As a result, "ONE PIECE" became a work of art. As a result, the film has become a work that fundamentally questions the theme of "bonds with friends," which the Straw Pirates have always held dear in "ONE PIECE." As a Mamoru Hosoda work, it is sometimes regarded as good as or better than the original works since "Summer Wars" (2009), but as a One Piece film, it is often regarded as heretical among fans. However, as a ONE PIECE film, it is often regarded as an anathema by fans.

In the case of "FILM RED," as mentioned above, Taniguchi is an "outside" writer who was welcomed back to "ONE PIECE" in a "triumphant return" as the director who animated the original manga earlier than anyone else, and he worked closely with Eiichiro Oda to create a film in which one of the most important characters in the story, Uta, is the daughter of Shanks. In the sense that Uta, the daughter of Shanks, is entrusted as an original character in the film, the film is more authentic to the original story than any previous film. The core of the film's challenge as an animated film lies in its depiction of Uta as an existence that denies the obviousness of the romance surrounding "pirates" that underlies the shonen manga work "ONE PIECE".

She was a childhood friend of Luffy's who had spent time with Shanks more than a decade before the first depiction in the original work, and initially shared with Luffy the motivation to admire the free and righteous nature of Shanks and the Red-Haired Pirates. Later, however, Uta received a musical education on the island where Shanks left her behind through the incident depicted in the play, and she came to hate pirates themselves, whose inherent attributes are violence and plunder. She is set up as the antithesis of Luffy, who aspires to become the pirate king, as she stands in front of Luffy and the Straw Pirates with the goal of becoming the world's number one diva and ending the era of the great pirates with the power of music and creating a "new era" in which everyone is forever free from violence and poverty.

As a specific means to achieve this goal, she has become an expert in the "Utaura fruit," a demon fruit that is a promised item in "One Piece," and like the Sirens of Greek mythology, she is able to put people into comas with her singing voice and trap their consciousness in another world, "Utaworld," a dream-like world that is different from reality. The power of this ability can be harnessed through the live performance of a visual telegraphic worm. She attempts to realize the new era she believes in by transmitting her power to the world through live broadcasts using a visual telegraph bug, and by bringing people from all over the world into the peaceful Utaworld.

The film "FILM RED," which features Uta as the villain, features Kaori Nazuka, who played Nanny in Taniguchi's "Code Geass," as the voice actress, while Ado, whose major debut song "Ussewa" (2020) was a breakout hit on social networking sites for young people, is used to sing the song. The film is made as a musical film with seven songs in the film, including the song "Shinjidai" from the live scene at the beginning of the film. The highlight of the film is that it introduces the rebelliousness of reality clad by a diva of the net-native generation as a challenger to the worldview of "One Piece," which has been serialized for a quarter of a century.

By appropriating the format of a musical film similar to a music video, the film utilizes the dreamy visual effects emphasized in the music scenes as an antithetical expression of the virtual world and applies them to a drama that contrasts the harshness of reality, a concept that, oddly enough, is also found in Mamoru Hosoda's "The Dragon and the Freckled Princess" (2021). The film is also conceptually similar to Mamoru Hosoda's "The Dragon and the Freckled Princess" (2021). The film pays homage to "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), the animated musical classic that defined the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s, in which the protagonist Suzu, in the process of becoming the diva Belle in the virtual world of "U," a metaverse on the Internet, regains her identity and faces the difficulties of reality. It is an interesting linkage that Hosoda's recent work, which once included "Baron Omatsuri," anticipated the motif of a new One Piece film that once again tackles the thematic theme of "ONE PIECE.

However, the depiction of the reality of the Internet society and domestic violence that Hosoda attempted to illuminate through "U" in "The Dragon and the Freckled Princess" and the development of the story were less convincing than the weight of the themes he attempted to deal with, and were subject to many harsh criticisms, making it difficult to say that the film was a success. This is not limited to this work, as Mamoru Hosoda, as a candidate for "national anime artist," has been trying to create a type of drama about youth set in a rural area of Japan, connecting science fiction/fantasy-like tools that are easy to understand and enjoy with the pleasures of animation, with more intimate themes such as love, marriage, and child-rearing based on his own personal experiences. This is also a mistake in the construction of the level of reality, which has consistently failed since he found his originality in his own style.

In the case of "FILM RED," on the other hand, the film is based on the solid worldview of the huge original work "ONE PIECE," and overlays on it the connection of the world through global capitalism and Internet culture, as well as the problems of disparity and division that have been brought to light in the present age. This allegorical approach introduces a critique of reality.

Of course, this is only a flavor of the series, which has been packed with a lot of service elements for "ONE PIECE" fans, such as the vast number of characters and foreshadowing of detailed settings that have been accumulated in the series. Therefore, many people may feel that it is nonsense to compare it as a stand-alone film with the original project.

However, when one considers that the works of the post-Hayao Miyazaki generation (specifically, after Hideaki Anno), who were expected to become "national anime films," have tended to be somewhat domestic and regressive due to the limitations of individual creators' vision and awareness of issues, it is rather interesting to see a Jump-type original work in which creators from a wide range of contexts react chemically. In this context, it is the hybrid synthesis of manga films based on JUMP-related works, in which creators from a wide range of contexts create chemical reactions, that is demonstrating the power of future-oriented content that is both entertaining and critical, and that is accessible to a more global consciousness of issues. The growth of Jump-oriented anime films during the after-Corona period can be reconsidered as a change in the tide of Japanese anime since the 1980s, when Studio Ghibli-like attempts to emphasize originality continued.

The way Ado crossed the wall between reality and fiction, appearing in the Kohaku Uta Gassen in 2022 as "Uta" without showing his face, is reminiscent of the way Luffy, who was assigned the role of maintaining the values of the old generation based on actual experience, resumed his voyage to become the pirate king toward the final chapter of the great pirate age that resembled the rough and tumble of global capitalism. The final chapter of the great pirate age, which resembles the stormy waves of global capitalism, may have been a signal for the arrival of a "new era" on this side of the TV screen, somewhat different from the end of the movie, in which Luffy resumed his voyage to become pirate king.