Harmonia feat. Makoto

Harmonia is a music video released by yuichi NAGAO, an artist whose music career has been in uenced by dance music and game music. OTANI Tarafu, who created the lm, came up with the unique motif of a young girl dancing with her futon from the sense of oating between illusion and reality that he felt when he heard the song, which starts with the sound of waves. The effects would usually be created using computer graphics, but this ani- mation, with each cut drawn by hand, has an analog touch with the kind of warmth associated with colored pencils and watercolors. The images are created to depict the concept of “a rest in a world of illusion,” with curves that evoke the waves of the music appearing one after the other. The colorful images that appear and then disappear like air bubbles and the dynamic and smooth movements of the young girl trans x the viewer until the very end. OTANI Tarafu has built a solid career as a producer of television, promotion videos, com- mercials and exhibition videos. This lm reveals his solid technique.

This lm is a masterpiece. Figurative objects occasionally appear within the symbolic metamorphosis, creat- ing a wonderful animation. The ani- mation, which is entirely hand-drawn, including the effects, is spectacular. It starts with the sound of the waves and an abstract depiction of waves, and gradually changes into anima- tion of uid transformations. The im- ages of the girl and futon, suddenly appearing and taking shape again, recreate that dozy feeling when you have not yet woken from a dream. The animation is structured so that the viewer gradually understands this, and the changing movements of the futon make it a character as well, which is very entertaining. The video that turns the song into background music and the animation that illus- trates the song stand on their own, which is not meant as a criticism—it is rare for music, lyrics and animation to succeed on their own but become an even richer depiction when com- bined together, as they do in this vid- eo. This is really an ideal music video. (KIFUNE Tokumitsu)