Masaaki Yuasa (March 16, 1965 -) is a Japanese animation director, screenwriter, modeling designer and original artist. He is good at using “emotional” colors, arranging compositions with absurd scenes and highlighting the sense of lines in the atmosphere. His works focus on expressing the inner world of people, using seemingly absurd and illusory pictures to make people feel his true feelings. This blog will mainly analyze his short animation “Kick-Heart” (2013) from the perspective of visual effects, showing the unique value of director Masaaki Yuasa in the field of animation.

Kick-Heart is a Japanese anime short film that uses surreal-psychedelic animation and storytelling to tell a love story between a professional wrestler and a nun.

First of all, it is about background and composition. In kick-heart and other works by Masaaki Yuasa, the audience often sees wide-angle or ultra-wide-angle perspectives, or exaggerated views from above or below. On the one hand, Yuasa is fascinated by depicting the interactive feedback between the background and the characters. For example, the spiral motion device he designed in Crayon Shin-chan Movie simply transforms the potential energy in the scene into the character’s own situation. On the other hand, the depth of the background is only revealed to the greatest extent in the movement of the characters. Masaaki Yuasa found that the background is actually very unstable, like a curtain suspended between imagination and reality. Sometimes high-intensity movement can even interfere with and rewrite the rules of the space itself. These characteristics were intentionally used by Yuasa in subsequent works.

Secondly, the style of Masaaki Yuasa’s animation is unique, and the reason why the audience can quickly recognize it is also because of the picture. The first is the lines. Masaaki Yuasa uses lines very boldly. Since his paintings are not detailed, he often draws the background together to enhance the viewing experience of the picture. Therefore, the picture becomes a better whole, enhancing the visual effect and emotional expression. The deformation of animation is widely used in this animation. In order to show the surreal state of certain scenes, the body lines will also undergo exaggerated deformation. Here the design of dynamic modeling is not based on the human body’s reaction in real situations, but is designed based on the character’s psychological feelings and visual associations.

Finally, the colors of this animation are very bright and unique. The color purity of the whole animation is very high, and the collision of sharp contrasting colors gives the audience a psychedelic feeling. The visual impact can quickly attract the audience’s attention and leave a deep impression.

French film theorist Christian Metz emphasized the importance of narrative in film and television, and pointed out in “Modern Film and Narrativeness”: “Without drama, fiction, and story, there would be no film.” Looking at the history of Japanese animation, it can be seen that most Japanese animation circles adopt a more traditional linear narrative. Masaaki Yuasa broke away from this mainstream and transformed his wild imagination into bizarre visual effects. It is a difficult task to concretize abstract concepts, but Masaaki Yuasa used exaggerated wide-angle lenses and psychedelic images to use abstract concepts to describe concrete and realistic narrative subjects, forming a unique film and television art style.

In future animation production and practice, I can try to express perception and emotion with pictures, and appropriately visualize the abstract thoughts and psychological activities of characters. In the arrangement of camera lenses, boldly try more perspectives, and choose angles that are more suitable for showing the emotions of characters according to the environment and background. Exaggeration and deformation are important means of animation modeling and one of the main characteristics of animation aesthetics. Therefore, the design of dynamic modeling is also an indispensable skill for improving animation skills. Masaaki Yuasa is an excellent animator in the history of animation. His unique character modeling, narrative style and lens language are very worthy of research and study by animators.

Reference：

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqSDuykPP7s&t=3s
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjtwOl5-zzs
• K. Metz, Li Hengji, Wang Wei. Modern Film and Narrative (Part 2)

Mingyu Deng

26/11/2024