100 Greatest Animated Shorts / Sink / Satoshi Tomioka
Japan / 1999
Former Tokyo hydrodynamics student Tomioka started producing on his own films while at college, before combining his work for mainstream animation studios (commercials for Honda and Japanese Rail JR amongst others) and his unique home made personal CG visions for which he also composes the music.
Individualistic Japanese independent animators distinct from the formulaic mainstream anime studios seemed a rare breed for many years (or at least unknown in the West ) but now with the internet and the popularity of international animation festivals, artists such as Tomioka, Atushi Wada (The Great Rabbit, 2012) and Mirai Mizue (And And, 2011) are achieving international recognition and a cult audience.
Sink is set in Tomioka’s brightly coloured yet worn and grubby surreal world, where on this occasion we see commuter trains packed with deep sea divers reading pornography. Sealed off behind their protective shells from any real human contact, the commuters are clearly inspired by Tomioka’s experiences on Tokyo’s underground but perhaps represent everyone who shuts themselves away behind iPods, computers and books, afraid of real face-to-face human interaction.
If ‘steam-punk’ sub culture is a nostalgia for a Victorian parallel universe of technology and design, then Tamioka seems to be about fantastically elaborate systems designed in 1960s Japan, with a fetish for punched and riveted steel. This colourful and deranged vision of humans happily penned in and propelled about by clanging and juddering machines typifies Tomioka’s films. Coin laundry XYZ, Gas Tank Mania and Justice Runners create the same ambiguous atmosphere and seem, like much Japanese anime, to simultaneously attack and celebrate Japanese ‘Otaku’ culture and the impersonal aspects of the modern technological society.
Like most modern directors, Tamioka has stated he wishes to move away from the limitations of short films to longer form projects. In 2006 he moved closer to this aim by directing a TV series entitled Usavich (Japanese for ‘Rabbit’, an increasingly popular theme amongst this list of films!). Made for MTV Japan through the director’s studio Kanaban Graphics, this series of short episodes tells of an old pair of rabbits on the run from a soviet style Gulag prison camp.
Note: The 100 greatest animated shorts is an list of opinions and not an order of value from best to worst. Click here to see all of the picks of the list so far. All suggestions, comments and outrage are welcome!