25th
Award-winning WorksAnimation Division

The Animation Division received a total of 565 entries
this year. Amid the unceasing COVID-19 pandemic,
production in a restrictive environment must have been
harder than expected. Therefore, getting a greater number of entries than last year was a joyful surprise for
the jury.
My overall impression was that there were many entries with “death” for a theme or motif. This may have
something to do with both physical and visual experiences of “death,” literally, in our everyday life through
the news about the world-shaking pandemic and political unrest. However, outstanding works tended to be
highly critical in nature, such as reinterpreting humanism and “life” through the image of “death,” rather than
portraying “death” itself.
Among such diverse works, the Grand Prize winner,
The Fourth Wall, stood out not only for its unique motif,
but also for its totally unexpected visual aspect. “The
fourth wall” is a theatrical term meaning the boundary
between fiction (story) and the audience. It is interesting that a microcosm representing a relationship within
a family invades the audience’s world through pointof-view shots and whirlpool-like spinning images. The
mother becomes a washing machine, and the father
becomes a refrigerator viewed from the child’s point of
view. The expression of dripping water is also excellent.
A wide variety of works won the Excellence Awards: the
animated feature film Dozens of Norths, the animated
short film Letter to a Pig, the animated feature film
FORTUNE FAVORS LADY NIKUKO, and the animated
TV series Sonny Boy. The former two works demonstrate a willingness to move forward while struggling,
even though their major themes are negative, such
as human suffering, death, and anxiety. The latter two
are entertaining, yet I think they address the major
themes for young people: What is life and how to
perceive the world?
The Social Impact Award went to PUI PUI MOLCAR,
which is a stop-motion animation featuring unique puppet characters, guinea pigs with wheels. Loaded with
funny jokes, the series deals with topics that make both
children and adults think, “This happens in real life.” The
work is befitting the Social Impact Award, in the sense
of being the first three-minute animated short series
featuring puppets that went so viral.
The New Face Award went to the animated TV series
ODDTAXI, animated short films A Bite of Bone, and Yallah! All of them encompass “death,” but their outputs
vary. ODDTAXI can be classified as a mystery entertainment film that associates issues in modern society
with the accidental deaths of the protagonist’s parents
and the mysterious death of a prospective pop star. Terrors hidden in a convenient and familiar world—online
auctions, in-game purchases, and social networking
services—also startled me. A Bite of Bone depicts the
inner world of a child (the artist), inspired by the custom of chewing bones of the dead after cremation. I
was engrossed in the film, as the impressive pointillist
technique and expression of light ingeniously make the
story of death and trauma fantastical. Yallah! is a 3D
CG film inspired by the 1982 civil war in Beirut. The
contrast between a boy who is determined to go to a
swimming pool and a frustrated grownup is interesting,
even though it takes place in a war-torn world where
“death” is close at hand. Even a child’s modest wish
for swimming can be a major issue; the film shows us
such absurdity.
In my three years of serving on the jury, it has been a
great honor and joy to glimpse the transition of various
animation techniques and expressions in such a short
period of time. There were many excellent works that
missed awards but were comparable to the award-winners. In addition to the Award-winning Works mentioned
here, there were 32 Jury Selections. I hope that you will
enjoy them firsthand and find your own “favorite.”

This year’s entries had an abundance of excellent
works, making it hard to select award winners. However, we were ultimately able to determine Award-winning
Works and Jury Selections from each field (feature film,
short film, and TV series) in a well-balanced manner.
The Grand Prize-winning short film from Iran, The
Fourth Wall, is a complex fusion of live action and various animation expressions. This film was highly praised
as it profoundly provides a sense of the pristine comfort
of animation to “animate inanimate objects” and innovatively produces a visual experience never seen before.
The story and direction of the Excellence Awardwinner, Sonny Boy, are quite daring for a television
series, successfully portraying an unrealistic world with
a unique and thrilling reality. Another Excellence Awardwinning feature film, FORTUNE FAVORS LADY NIKUKO,
cleverly incorporates “exaggeration” to transform an
otherwise graphic and tragic subject into a humorous, easy-to-watch, and moving one. Both were highly
esteemed for their enthusiasm to “tell a story through
visual expressions unique to animation.” Dozens of
Norths, the first feature film by director YAMAMURA
Koji, who has produced many short films, took the jury
members by surprise with its composition and direction
that departs from the standard tactics of feature films.
The New Face Award winners were also outstanding. In particular, A Bite of Bone, created with beautiful
and striking pointillism and a transparent effect, brought
me the joy of a new filmmaker’s birth and expectations
for her future work. PUI PUI MOLCAR won the Social
Impact Award not only for its excellent character design, story, and animation but also for the popularity of
this short children’s TV program among diverse people
of all nationalities and ages, gained through online distribution and social media.
The judging session was very meaningful and reassured the jury that many promising films are being
produced in various fields, expanding the possibilities
of animation expression.

The 25th Award-winning Works showed remarkable diversity and balance befitting the title of “Media Arts.”
The judging process was truly fulfilling for me as well,
having opportunities to see so many international and
diverse animation expressions.
The Grand Prize winner, The Fourth Wall, is a beautifully perfected work that makes viewers “experience”
“something interesting even though how it’s made is
a total mystery.” As I mentioned earlier, entries had a
wider variation and more variety in the ways of expression, but most of the top-prize winners had one thing in
common: the creators’ attention is directed toward the
viewers, instead of showing off their drawing or technical skills.
Meanwhile, I also found some issues in the course of
the judging process. One such issue is the dilemma of
evaluating only the submitted movie versions of works,
such as Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie:
Mugen Train and Revue Starlight The Movie. These
works originally started as manga or TV series, and
every context to create the movie version artfully led
to moving people and becoming a great hit. From the
standpoint of publicity for having a box office record, I
wondered if the Social Impact Award (newly established
the year before last) might be more appropriate. But PUI
PUI MOLCAR, which went viral on its own without any
context and is still fresh in people’s memories, got an
advantage in this respect.
The above-mentioned works such as Demon Slayer
-Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train surely provide excellent viewing experience to fans, so the result
might have been different if it was possible for all jury
members to have the real-time experience of all the
steps from the beginning of the original work to the release of the movie, and if such an experience could be
included in the scope of the judgment. In this modern
age where real-time sharing is highly appreciated, one
of the challenges for various competitions will be the
pursuit of an evaluation system that goes with the
movement happening at the moment.

After being a jury member for the first time, I recognized
anew the unique standpoint of this Art Festival: evaluating works created by using a wide variety of platforms
(film, TV, online distribution, etc.) and formats (feature
films, short films, series, music videos, etc.) all together.
Despite the inevitable hardship in determining criteria
for evaluation, it turned out to be a valuable opportunity
for me to ponder an ideal form of each format.
Among the first things to be mentioned is the bountifulness of feature film works—a format considered to be
rather “old.” The tendency of standardization and stereotyping can be occasionally found in terms of stories
and themes, but in terms of images, I was amazed to
find each work has an extremely high-level and comparable combination of drawing, art, and filming. I was
personally impressed by two films: Mobile Suit GUNDAM Hathaway, which employs Western film-inspired
drawing and direction to go beyond “realism” in conventional commercial animation, and Revue Starlight The
Movie, which releases chaotic energy via a patchwork
of Japanese program pictures and theatrical performances. It is interesting that the use of live-action films
as reference in both films consequently demonstrates
an ability that only animation can possess.
As for the TV series, Sonny Boy outclassed all the
others with its art style and plot development that are
exceptional for a standard 30-minute 1-cour series. I’d
like to highly praise the Social Impact Award winner, PUI
PUI MOLCAR, for its significance in increasing the
acceptance of stop-motion animation in Japan, where
it has occupied a marginal position compared to in
the West.
Finally, I’d like to note that YAMAMURA Koji, a leading
director in the short film industry that places a greater
focus on the artist’s individual aesthetics, created his
first feature film, Dozens of Norths, while maintaining
the same tension as his short film series. An increasing number of short film makers advance into feature
films worldwide, and the significance and potential of
this trend will probably become a subject of discussion
in the future.

I participated in the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival as
a jury member for the first time. For me, this was a very
enlightening experience. Everything was truly instructive, from watching foreign short films that I usually see
rarely, the need to make an effort to verbalize my value
judgments, to the experience of understanding other
members’ evaluation criteria.
I believe the judging process itself went well, although I have nothing to compare with since it was my
first time. It seemed to me that it was not only because
the jury members had clear evaluation criteria, but
because we shared an idea about what kind of works
should win awards (i.e., whether a work demonstrates
an approach and message of the Animation Division).
Precisely because we had a shared idea of our goal,
we smoothly reached the result in which “everything fit
into the right place,” even though the result rested on a
very delicate balance. This was also a great experience
for me.
In the course of the judging process, I found it hard
to evaluate the theme of a work. Entertainment works
often have simple themes. In the case of the entries,
this tendency was more pronounced in majorly distributed works from Japan. This in itself is not a bad thing.
Still, when compared to short films with intense themes
that can be portrayed only in a short timeframe, these
works certainly give the impression that they are not
innovative. Since “an ability of a work to contribute to
expanding the range of expression is an important factor” for these awards, a simple theme alone is inevitably
hard to evaluate—even though the theme itself is not a
flaw of the work. In the judging process, how important
should the theme of a work be? This was a question I
kept asking myself during the judging process.