[Critique by work category] Long Animation (Movie, TV, Original Video Animation)

In the final screening process, a rather harsh view emerged that no piece of work from this genre was worthy of a prize, but after the audition, I paused and realized something. KAIBA, The Sky Crawlers, HELLS ANGELS, SOULEATER, the Garden of sinners, and HAKABA KITARO. Believe it or not, these works are all set in "higan" (the other shore, where the dead live). The river that divides the dead and the living seems to be a keyword in 2008. The suggestion may be that "higan" is the world where we live now or that we do not know whether we are living or dead. Someone once said, "To be conscious of death is to feel truly alive." Now, does animation stick with that point? The jury members were divided over whether we should give an award to the Garden of sinners, and whether we should consider it as a new work or as merely a citation of a previous work. Debate raged over the issue but we eventually decided that we should wait and see next piece of work, and decided not to award a prize. The auditions for those "higan" works seemed to be taking us jury members to the other shore but left us with the feeling that we were stuck halfway.