The Tender March

This is a humorous animated work in which a young girl walks through a mysterious town with both tranquil fields and buildings, followed by various monsters. The thoughts and feelings of the young girl as she daydreams are visualized on a monitor screen or by being likened to the forms of the monsters; the closed inner world of a young girl is depicted incisively, against a soundtrack of up-tempo music. The light shades and the lines drawn with a delicate touch and strong sense of design create a unique world view and transparency.

Visualizes the nihilistic persona of a young person on a graphical screen
In terms of its graphical layout and buoyant music this work is directed in the tempo of a music video; it succeeds to a certain extent in expressing the nihilistic and violent psychologies of today’s youth. However, while we understand the goals of the two-dimensional layout, we can also see the limits of this style. If we were to recommend a direction for future development, we might note the necessity to move toward more filmic camera work and layout, as one sees in the works of Koji Morimoto, which seem to have had an influence here. The character realization is average; here too the artist should aspire to a more original expression. In this sense, although we find the work to be strong, we still consider it to be the work of a filmmaker in training.