17th Entertainment Division New Face Award
YAKENOHARA “RELAXIN’”
Music video
Saigo No Shudan (ARISAKA Ayumu / OITA Mai / KOHATA Ren) [Japan]
Outline
This music video for the YAKENOHARA song RELAXIN’ uses stopmotion photography to depict the objects in a room shifting, inserted with Saigo No Shudan-esque nostalgic hand-drawn animations. A bedroom is the individual world of its inhabitant and each has its own flow of time. The objects there each possess memories, time and atmosphere, forming a membrane modeled on the inhabitant within a wealth of memory. Within this cosmic space, this work creates a single shared flux, a wave and a wind, and in which is enclosed a hidden theme and message that expresses time as a constant cycle of changes.
Reason for Award
Combining stop-motion photography and hand-drawn animation, this work leisurely exemplifies a “relaxed” mood. The stop-motion is particularly striking. Diverse objects in diverse people’s rooms move en masse, busily, as if undulating. There is no protagonist, nor are they heading towards a clear destination. The whole space is just groovingand, afterwards, the viewer is left with a unique feeling of having been steadily gazing at the very texture of this movement. Its merit lies in how it is beyond words. It is a video work that feels close to what music is like. (NAKAMURA Yugo)