Filmmaker of anime Naoko Yamada sees her in the role of a photographer. “I don’t think of it like anime is made by drawings,” she told The A.V. Club. “But actual people and actual backgrounds.” If it’s you’re a genki-trained girl who’s learning guitar or a deaf-bullied kid contemplating suicide Yamada’s characters are a hit with youngsters from all over all over the world. From stylized moe-like figures to more realistic versions her characters appear and feel authentic in animation. The way they move, fall and bounce, and the way they hide their intentions and deceive them.
The way she sees her characters as individuals is a part of her. As a storyboarder and director, Naoko Yamada is also a cinematographer. Her films often mimic the effects of cameras by letting sets move between focus and in focus, while light blurs like if it was shooting through lenses. The framing of her work allows Yamada to fill an artistic space with her characters while bringing her own personal fetishes and idiosyncrasies–cam as well as instruments, flowers and other objects to the medium. Of the few animators who master kinesthetics her style is centered around feet and legs.
While her name isn’t so well-known as the older masters such as Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai Yamada is already having an impact on the industry more than a lot of people (and the handful of women in the group) ever did. Hers aren’t big fantasies or events of the apocalypse. Instead, she is arousing fantasies, imaginative imaginations that are vibrant and school days.
“It is harder for me to create anime-ish anime because I want to portray the existing world around us,” Yamada declares.
Yamada’s films give an impression of looking at the world in a different way, even though. Totsuko is the main character in her debut production, The Colors Within, is a calm and synesthetic high school student from an Catholic boarder school. She perceives everyone around her as distinct hues, each with their own aura. Roommates are earthy hues teachers are warm yellow, and a ballet dancer’s expressive purple. She then meets an attractive girl in the most gorgeous color–lapis blue. Totsuko is lying about her motives to be closer.
Totsuko is the one who brings the girl Kimi and one girl (the shade of green) together to form an unofficial band. She learns to play the piano, creates songs about her feelings toward her new acquaintances, and starts to notice the colors of their friends meld. While they’re not aware of it they begin to show Totsuko’s unique color, one she’s never witnessed in herself.
A documentary about a trio of kids who are quiet and work together to create art with each other. The Colors Within resembles Yamada’s career.
Naoko Yamada was the first director to make her debut the year 2011 in Kyoto Animation with the studio’s adaptation of the manga K-On! The series about the girls of a high school rock band club would erupt in popularity, defining the subgenre of cute-girls-doing-cute-things anime that grew during the 2000s.
At the start, Yamada had Reiko Yoshida. The prolific screenwriter who wrote Studio Ghibli’s The Cat Returns and Mamoru Hosoda’s Digimon: The Movie, Yoshida was the screenwriter for Yamada’s debut, as well as every feature and series Yamada directs since. When asked about their relationship, 15 years later, Yamada admits, “I really don’t know what she’s thinking.” Yamada is the scribe aged 57 by juxtapositions. Yoshida’s writing style is sharp, however, she is also full of emotion–“not excessively, however.” Her character is calm and composed yet also intense. “Even though she has this quiet demeanor…she has this deep universe just swirling around inside her,” Yamada states.
Together, the two of them – along with Kyoto Animation would spin K-On into two seasons as well as an feature film. They would then create an equally cute anime that featured cute girls doing cute things with each other, Tamako Market, into an entire season of television and an additional feature film.
After these success stories Yamada’s career would then shift towards the direction she’s known now. With A Silent Voice, Yamada tried to make something that was less boring and more cinematic. The story of the deaf child and her bully from childhood, who rekindles their friendship in a brutally honest manner exposed the reality of the ableism that exists in Japan that included everyone from teachers to schoolchildren participating in dissociating a child with disabilities from public life. A bully from her class would be the victim of the class’s hatred when the heroine left. In the beginning of the film, the character attempts suicide, and then spends the rest of the film overcoming the shame of his past that has kept him from being accepted while he befriends his former victim as he does so. Silent Voice was a Silent Voice was a box office hit and critical acclaim however it fell short in every way in comparison to the record-setting performance that was Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name., released in the same year.
The most important aspect of the reception however, was the debut of Yamada’s second recurring partner: Kensuke Ushio. A Silent Voice was a breakout success for the up-and-coming musician-turned-composer, showcasing what he could do with muted acoustic instruments and synths. The album Silent Voice displays the synergy of the three artists composed of writer, director and composer. The way that everything is said, seen, or heard is based on negative space. The truth is made clear in a subtle manner. It is essential to feel the sounds and emotions observed and voices must take on their form.
Furthermore, Yamada found a comrade in Ushio. “Although what we create is different, I think as artists our process and how we build things from the bottom up, the way we think in that process is very similar,” Yamada states about their collaboration. In the process of creating, Ushio shared that the two collaborate from the film’s first conceptual idea for the purpose of answering the query “What kind of a film will this be?”
“We don’t really use words to discuss that, but use art pieces, poetry, photographs, mathematical formulas, and architecture to find what the core of this film is,” Ushio declares.
Ushio’s scores highlight the richness of sound such as the piano’s hammers shifting through the mix and the vibraphone’s metallic sound and synths, while they often fill the sonic space. Recently, he was able to integrate the sound of the Theremin (performed by Gregoire Blanc) utilized in the film character Rui on the movie The Colors Within.
“I take pains to bring sounds into the world that I created with Director Yamada,” Ushio declares. “I just keep thinking and worrying about what to do, as if I’m wallowing in mud.”
Following their first film together. Ushio went on to compose the Science SARU marquee series like Devilman Crybaby, while Yoshida would write across the field, including writing KyoAni’s version of Violet Evergarden. Yamada was able to bring them together to score 2018’s critically acclaimed Liz And The Bluebird, another film that earned the reputation of the live-action film and animation enthusiasts. The passionate bond between two high school students singing a duet in the school’s band showed Yamada’s and Yoshida’s capacity to celebrate girlhood using the kind of art that is usually used for the Miyazaki fleets of ships or Shinkai’s fanciful disasters. an allegory fairy tale is told as a similar fashion to the story in colorful watercolors.
Liz And The Bluebird would also be Yamada’s last production for Kyoto Animation. Yamada declares that her desire to quit the studio was to challenge her as a director to create something that she could not but think of. It also came in the wake of an arson attack in the year 2019 at the studio, which claimed the lives of 36 people.
“I wanted to challenge myself with that unknown, unimaginable something,” Yamada declares. The result would be The Heike Story, a premium miniseries based on novelist Hideo Furukawa’s translations of Heike Monogatari. The show was produced by Masaaki Yuasa’s and Eunyoung Choi’s Science SARU, known for its international team of animators who create highly acclaimed work geared towards older viewers, Yamada reunited with Yoshida and Ushio and forged their relationship. This production, titled The Colors Within is the trio’s fourth production.
Yamada, Yoshida, and Ushio’s sluggish creations contrast the best of the anime canon. They have subtle colors, thin outlines and sparse instruments and minimalist sounds, white space and silence. It’s easy to connect these characteristics with feminine characteristics. While Yamada’s roots are in moe like K-On, Yoshida has written many cute-girl-doing-cute-things anime like Girls Und Panzer. (Ushio’s discography, however, is a rock album and one can imagine his turning the slides down on his synths to make Yamada). In comparison the likes of Eunyoung Choi as well as Atsuko Ishizuka Naoko Yamada is perhaps the most well-known female in the industry of anime in the present and possibly the most famous female director throughout its history.
“I do get a lot more interest because I am a female director,” she states. “I believe that’s good. On the contrary, I don’t wish for people to look at my gender when they are considering my work. I’m hoping the gender gap will shrink in the workplace.”
Beyond the use of abstraction in sensory terms Yamada’s most significant distinction from the older and modern masters is in the way gender plays a role in her works. “What’s most important to me in all of my work is to always have respect for my characters,” she says. “I think that’s really connected to always having respect for my viewers…That is something that I always want to hold true to myself.” There’s a huge distinction between Yamada’s perception in her character as being who deserve respect as well Miyazaki as well as Hideaki Anno, who are discussing Nausicaa’s breasts at 16 years old.
Yamada’s films focus on girls in a manner that Miyazaki’s films, which often contain female protagonists not at all, but her films aim to explore connections more than gender. Boys are frequently (but often not) in that dynamic. Her filmography focuses on the humiliation as well as the achievements of adolescence. Her characters are not able to be true to their romantic stories. But not just however. It’s not over yet. Colors Within ends with a tiny hint in its last second.
In the past, Yamada and Yoshida’s narratives always been able to be ambiguous in their endings and this raises questions about the intentions and goals. What do Yamada desire in her movies? “I wanted to create a movie that you don’t understand, but you experience or you feel,” Yamada declares. In this quest Totsuko’s synesthesia is one of Yamada’s strengths. Her work has been built around the idea of animation as a way to use music and movement, time, lighting, and colors that convey deep emotions.
