Yuasa, Masaaki

b. 16 March 1965, Fukuoka, Japan

Yuasa Masaaki came onto the scene as an anime director with the film Mind Game (2004). This most experimental of narrative films incorporates all of Yuasa’s unique stylistic and aesthetic tendencies: the mix of different media forms; the discordant animation styles within and between images; the incomplete colouring of objects and environments. Yuasa’s style would become tamer after the founding of the animation studio Science Saru in 2013 alongside his long-time collaborator Choi Eun-young. In 2020, Yuasa stepped down as director of Science Saru, though he directed Inu-Oh – his last feature for the studio and at this point his last anime – in 2021. After a remarkably productive decade in the ‘10s, and a five-year break since Inu-Oh, Yuasa is returning to animation with Daisy’s Life (2026) for the new studio Ame Pippin.

Yuasa’s animation is unique in the anime industry for its general renunciation of the ‘anime-esque’, Stevie Suan’s term for the conventionalised look that the anime industry strives to maintain.¹ Instead, throughout his career Yuasa has sought to explore the full potentialities of animation. His work incorporates various modes of compositing, various styles of character animation, various forms of movement, as well as various forms of editing and camera work. He also, more than any other anime director, takes us closest to the limits of anime. As cinema has its limit in the impossibility of representing the gaze, so animation has its limit in the representation of depth. In no other popular animator’s oeuvre are we confronted with backgrounds as backgrounds and layers of the image as layers to the extent we are in Yuasa’s work. In this sense, there is a strong affinity between Yuasa and Ozu Yasujirō, whom Shigehiko Hasumi takes as almost negating the possibility of cinema by persistently revealing its inability to capture the exchange of looks.²

There is an additional affinity between these two directors in the consistent articulation of certain ‘themes’ over their careers. Rather than themes such as heroism or flight (constant features across Yuasa’s work) I use the concept of theme that Hasumi developed in his critique of Ozu. Hasumi’s odd notion of ‘theme’ and ‘thematic system’ refer to ubiquitous actions or events across a body of work which assume similar functions through repetition and variation.³ The (non-exhaustive) themes discussed here are watching, transforming, and eating and drinking. The axis around which this network of elements is organised is the thematic system. The richness of Yuasa’s work arises out of this system, as an evolving environment of shifting relations made through thematic connections. The superfluity of these various themes beyond the basic mechanics of plot gives way to a play of exaggeration and excess of individual characters and individual anime, which makes connections with characters and situations within and beyond the individual work. The individual movie or show thereby ceases being just that. Each work instead resonates with every other through the sharing of these visual details, these concrete images and actions, creating a dynamic network and at the same time enriching each individual movie or show.

Watching

There is something strange about Yuasa’s anime, something provocatively unnatural. What is provocative is that this unnaturalness is the unnaturalness of anime itself. Yuasa’s scenes are frequently framed perpendicular to the action, making character movement completely lateral. While this itself is not extraordinary, what draws the eye is the world’s unreality. The particular effect differs according to the image’s particular arrangement and context within the movie or series at large, but there are two general tendencies. In the below image from episode nine of Eizōken ni wa Te o Dasu Na! (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, 2020) an initial sense of linear perspective, as one’s eyes are drawn into the background, is prematurely cut off before ever reaching a vanishing point. Indeed, Shibahama, the show’s fictional setting, is the most lived in and energetic place in Yuasa’s anime, but it is also hardly a place at all. It is rather an abstract world of source-less rivers, entry-less parks, flooded roads that lead back to themselves. Like vision in this scene, it is a cut-off world. One can wander around in it without ever getting anywhere.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

The second tendency is exemplified in a scene from Kemonozume (2006). As the protagonist Toshihiko (a monster-hunter) stalks potential prey, four elements of the image (clearly distinct in their outlines, textures, and shading) move over each other. Three non-character layers slide at different speeds, giving the impression of depth and that Toshihiko is stalking rightward by induced movement. The compositing of this scene is eminently flat. But this flatness does not tend towards uniplanarity.⁴ The movement of layers does indeed imply depth, but the artistic dissonance between layers empties that implication of content. These distinct differences in animation expressly reveal that there is no necessary connection between parts of the world, drawn as they are on distinct layers. Backgrounds, therefore, appear as what they are, so we look at the background as backgrounds. Our relationship to the image as a representation of space leading down and down to a vanishing point is broken. Rather than the possibility for movement into depth – by the characters, camera, or our look – we bump up against a wall. What we see is the multiplanarity of animation itself: the separation of the image into clearly demarcated layers. We come up against the limit of anime.⁵

Kemonozume

The basis of Yuasa’s abstract and unnatural spaces lies here, in exposing anime’s impotence in creating depth and its distinct quality of being drawn. The exaggeration of the drawn, constructed quality of the image emphasises that nothing here is pre-given. Backgrounds are not there with the pre-defined purpose of framing character action, but are actively constructed independently from human figures. This, in turn, gives the world a chance to look back at characters.

Yuasa’s characters are frequently imaged from strangely high or low angles, from within nooks and alleyways, or from distractingly long or close positions, dwarfing them in comparison to their surroundings. Unlike, say, Lang’s penchant for disturbing high-angle shots, which exaggerate the game piece-like fatalism of characters by evoking the city’s observation of them, these shots have no concrete relation to narrative or characterisation. This class of shots tends to disrupt the fixity of perspective in what a character is seeing or capable of seeing, thereby exposing the artificiality of what is being watched. If the compositing discussed above foregrounds the image’s drawn and layered character, the composition in these shots foregrounds the presence of the ‘camera’. Details which otherwise might never have been seen – a sleeping cat’s backside or the underside of a steering wheel – are then revealed. These narratively excessive visual details therefore link Yuasa’s worlds by their excessiveness beyond a character’s vision, unmooring perception from individual characters, locating it, at times, in the world.

Devilman Crybaby

That said, Yuasa still explores the activity of distinctly human perception, through four scenes in particular. Firstly, in Mind Game (2004): the camera tracks down from a wooden structure, holds on a wide shot of two women bathing, then pans 180° and pushes up to the protagonist, Nishi, watching them. In episode one of Ping Pong the Animation (2014), the two protagonists, Smile and Peco, are playing ping pong when the camera rises out of the gym and into the sky, while the sound of the game remains audible, and frames rival player Kong and his coach listening to the match. Yoru wa Mijikashi Aruke yo Otome (The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl, 2017) features an early party scene where the camera pulls back from the titular Girl seated at a table to another table to frame her admirer staring at her. In Kimi to, Nami ni Noretara (Ride Your Wave, 2019), a listening variation like Ping Pong, the camera’s rightwards creep gives the impression that the conversation between unknown characters we are observing is not something we are meant to be seeing or hearing. The camera then tracks forward between two tables and descends down a dumbwaiter. A dissolve transitions to the waitress Youko eavesdropping on the conversation.

These four sequences display a definite pattern: an image of an object – namely, characters acting in some way – and a continuous camera movement establishing a watcher or listener. There is thus a reversal of order by which an object is presented first before the character perceiving it; a number of characters (the object) unaware they are being watched or listened to; and a single act of sensuous perception sustained over a single shot. If these scenes were presented typically – perceiver given from the start, then the object given for them – the latter’s appearance would be pre-determined as the object of someone’s perceptual experience. Here, as above, Yuasa is avoiding pre-given relations in the image and instead depicting perceptual experience as actively achieved by a character through space and time in a sustained camera movement.

Through technical means of compositing and formal strategies such as these observing scenes, the world and objects within it are not inert, passive givens for a just as inert and passive fixed perspective. Rather, they must all be made, or better, are being made. The image’s organisation is persistently disrupted, disturbing a sense of fixity or unity to space – hence also the perception of it – and exaggerating anime’s artifice. Rather than fixity, Yuasa’s anime emphasises activity and dynamism, movement and change, which are both inherent in the world and characters inhabiting it, and a necessity of their interaction with each other. As the thematic system of watching can elucidate the potential and necessity of this dynamism, transforming helps demonstrate that dynamism itself.

Transforming

There are broadly two modes of transformation in Yuasa’s work. First, more distinctive of his early period before the formation of Science Saru, are expressive transformations. These transformations permeate across bodies in Yuasa’s work as a potential held in common: characters will flatten into geometric shapes; faces redden from alcohol consumption; the body or individual body parts grow and shrink; characters may become in part or in whole another being entirely to exaggerate some character trait. Second are individualised, character-driven acts of transformation. As will be demonstrated, Yuasa invokes the transforming theme throughout his work at the most pivotal junctures.

The Tatami Galaxy

To start, physical transformations need not be exclusive to animation’s specific affordances. Yan cutting her hair and changing clothes in Mind Game is a superficial transformation articulating her determination at that moment to enjoy herself after being swallowed up by a whale and forced to reside in its stomach. In Night Is Short, the titular Girl spends the third act helping those she met over the titular night deal with the cold they caught. Her last visit is to her senpai, who was watching her in the scene discussed above and with whom she shares a mutual attraction. When they catch up at film’s end, she suddenly reddens. Initially seeming as immune to the virus as she is to alcohol (she is the only one in the movie who does not undergo that particular expressive transformation), she finally catches the cold. This change in state marks an end and a beginning. It concludes the narrative and her efforts as the only healthy person capable of helping the community deal with their illness. And she kicks off her new relationship by sharing a cold with her new boyfriend.

In Yojōhan Shinwa Taikei (The Tatami Galaxy, 2010) – a time-loop series in which the protagonist, credited Watashi, joins a new university circle every episode – Watashi’s more anime-ic metamorphoses are limited to expressive transformations. The absence of any internally directed physical transformation expresses his lack of psychological or emotional change throughout the series. While his life superficially changes between episodes according to his chosen circle (he plays tennis in one life, learns English in another), his life remains substantially identical across all episodes because he remains substantially identical with all other Watashis. Tatami Galaxy is thus an exemplar of the rigorously episodic TV comedy which, as Susan Napier rightly highlights, de-emphasises character development and overarching narratives.⁶ Indeed, the rare exception of Watashi transforming – bulking up in episode three – demonstrates this lack of character development: he made the transformation for others, but as always, he never considered their desire for him to stay the same as he was. Physical growth thus translates his emotional stuntedness. In the finale, therefore, the shedding of his beard and clothes as he runs to save his friend has the function of announcing a new kind of self-confidence. No longer the panicking, timid narcissist, he is now comfortable enough in himself and what others think of him to be completely nude in public. This is also reflected in mannerism changes, appearing relaxed with his hands comfortably in his pockets or arms crossed, compared to his earlier tenseness. Physical change here manifests the first real change in his character.

The series Kaiba (2008) tends to take transforming out of the single body, because narratively the body and memories are separable. Kaiba is unique in Yuasa’s oeuvre not just in this sense but also in its animation style. Rather than many thin, ragged and janky partial internal lines and outlines forming characters in Yuasa’s other work, characters in Kaiba are composed of few solid lines, filled with bold, solid colours. The emphasis on colour and de-emphasis on the line makes outlines tougher to read as lines, thereby increasing the stability of figures. As Hannah Frank notes, when contours are de-emphasised and made less visible, as in Kaiba, the outline becomes a non-deformable constraining force.⁷ As characters are constrained by the lines which create them, the transformative potential of the body is limited. To transform in Kaiba’s world is thus usually to switch bodies. In the final episode, side character Kichi, in order to allow his friend Neiro to save the protagonist Kaiba, swaps into a fully weaponised robotic body, using every missile launcher and lethal body part to fight off security forces. Despite this modification of the transforming theme, transforming in this context is still decisive narratively. But for this body swap, Neiro would not have been able to reach Kaiba, and the world would be lost.

Kaiba does, however (if rarely), feature more plastic metamorphoses of the body. Hyohyo, a little creature that turns her antennae into propellors, contains Neiro’s old memories from when she and Kaiba were in love. In episode nine, as Neiro – with altered memories tricking her into thinking Kaiba is her enemy – attacks Kaiba, Hyohyo flies down to catch him, desperately trying to pull him to safety. Kaiba’s weight and the force of gravity pull Hyohyo one way, while she pulls herself the other by force of will and love. Stretching translates Hyohyo’s desperation and feelings into a concrete image, embodying immense emotional weight as the only character in the story capable of manipulating their figure and shape to such extents for a loved one.

Transforming is not always a solitary gesture. Kemonozume takes its title from the kemonozume ritual: replace human arms with the arms of a flesh-eating monster, and you absorb the flesh eater’s life force. In the final episode, Yuka (flesh-eater and co-protagonist with her boyfriend, flesh-eater hunter Toshihiko) wants to be of use to him in his final battle against the villain. She thus offers her arms up to her lover. He refuses, because were he to perform the ritual their commitment to sharing their own individual problems would be subsumed by physically merging together. Moreover, history suggests that Yuka would die and Toshihiko would be consumed by the claws and turn into a monster. By not transforming, therefore, they maintain their love for, and life with, each other; and Toshihiko also maintains himself as his own master, winning the final battle as a martial artist with his own physical and mental talents. Kemonozume is the rare Yuasa where transforming takes the form of something outright bad and destructive, distinguishing it from his other work to the same extent as it connects it with anime broadly.⁸

In contrast, Devilman Crybaby (2018), Kemonozume’s spiritual successor, takes physical merging as a means of (as it happens, unsuccessfully) achieving the shared will and goals of a friendship or team. The climax of the show revolves around a battle between the protagonist Akira, who has been turned into a devilman, and his best friend Ryo, who, it turns out, is Satan. In the final episode, other devilmen merge with Akira’s body during his sky battle with Ryo. As they sacrifice themselves to let Akira use them to save humanity, filling in for his own decapitated limbs, the violent fusion is accompanied by flashes of lightning. The metamorphosis of one worm-like devilman into Akira’s fresh arm creates a new spatial relation in the image, pushing Akira into the background and erecting a fresh foreground by stretching outwards from his body. The worm-like arm writhes around as Akira tries controlling it, upon which he leaps forward into the midground with lightning flashing behind him, and the new arm becomes his own. Like the transforming mecha Lamarre⁹ discusses in his study of compositing and the intervals of anime, Akira embodies the multiplanar image in his devilman form, as distinct elements merge together like layers of the image. While character design thus embodies multiplanarity, the interaction of different figures with each other and space is permeated to the core by movement and change. What makes this scene particularly dynamic therefore are the dynamics of compositing, the transformation of space as new relations are generated when new elements are introduced into or taken out of the image, and movement becomes distributed across and between shifting planes. Transforming here expresses this essential technical problematic of compositing and character animation: connecting and combining distinct things into a shared construct. To that extent, it expresses the same as the coming together of distinct individuals, of the formation of a kind of community. This interest in communal relations concretises most clearly under the theme of eating and drinking.

Eating and Drinking

The dining table in Yuasa’s anime is not so much a setting for eating or drinking, but rather a site for the formation, development, articulation, and recollection of relationships. This can be quite simple as in Ride Your Wave, where Hinako, having just moved to a new city, eats the family favourite omurice to remind herself of home. Or in Yoaketsugeru Rū no Uta (Lu Over the Wall, 2017), where teenage Ashimoto is harangued at breakfast by his father and grandfather, so leaves without eating anything. At dinner in a later scene, the same occurs, only he takes food from the fridge to eat alone in his room. But in the second-to-last scene, after the death of Ashimoto’s grandfather, and after his father has opened up to him and the two have reconnected, they eat breakfast together. Lu thereby links the thematic system and narrative structure, as the development of the father-son relationship is communicated through their eating/not-eating together in the second and penultimate scenes.

This linkage between the thematic system and narrative structure is developed more elaborately in Tatami Galaxy, which introduces change into the story’s progression through their play. Episodes follow an identical pattern: Watashi joins a circle; he meets Ozu with whom he gets into antics; he fantasises about meeting a ‘raven-haired maiden’, usually his junior Akashi; a fortune teller tells him to seize the opportunity dangling in front of him; and time rewinds. In six of the first nine episodes (before the structural narrative shift in the final two), Watashi sits in his room towards the end eating a castella, preparing to eat a castella, or boiling water (presumably to cook or drink with). He then notices dangling in front of him Akashi’s stuffed toy. Upon noticing it, he has a flashback to their first meeting and early moments in their relationship.

What is curious about these flashbacks is that their psychological necessity is hardly if at all established within each episode. Watashi is not obsessed with Akashi but with what she represents: the image of the raven-haired maiden. In some episodes she barely appears, yet still he is drawn to remember her alone in his room. The key is in episodes six and seven, where he pursues two different women and gives no thought to Akashi. There is no moment of recollection since he makes no attempt at eating or drinking and does not notice the toy. Every flashback to Akashi then is instituted not just by noticing the toy, but also by actively eating/drinking, or preparing to eat/drink, and by doing so alone. In episode nine, he eats out with Ozu who brings the toy with him, at which point Watashi remembers finding the toy but does not remember Akashi. There is no need to remember another relationship when living such a relationship out. The necessity of these flashbacks therefore is given by the linking of the thematic system and narrative structure. Eating and drinking function as a narrative ritual through which, as a ceremonial communal, relationships are built up. But when that social ritual becomes a solitary act, only the memory of another can be evoked. Watashi is only ever able to look back at his relationship with Akashi. He almost always dines alone. In the final episode, seeing the opportunity literally dangling in front of him fills him with determination to finally change himself and create something new. Crucially, he remembers Akashi upon seeing the dangling toy but without eating or drinking anything. Thus, while transforming articulates the individualised change in Watashi’s character (timid to confident, tense to relaxed), it is not-eating or -drinking which introduces this particular character development and shift in the narrative structure: Watashi’s willingness to connect with Akashi the person instead of fantasising about the raven-haired maiden. Then, having escaped from the endless loop of tatami rooms and given Akashi her lost toy, it is his invitation to get ramen together which expresses the actual beginning of their romantic relationship.

Eating and drinking as communal ritual is presented in Tatami’s narrative successor Night Is Short particularly through boozing. The protagonist drinks absurd amounts of liquor without getting drunk, attracting more and more people to her posse as she goes pub crawling and wedding crashing until it seems all of Kyoto has come to drink with her. She later finds herself in a drinking contest with Rihaku, an old, depressed drunk. The possibility for human connection through competition is underscored by the image’s structure. They share a space, but that space is broken up externally through singles, separating them into two frames with strikingly different aesthetic features. However, the successive images of them facing off, doing the same activity, suggests the possibility for a relationship beyond the contest, conditioned through the spatial/temporal connection made through editing. The final shot of the contest itself is a two-shot, facing off on opposite ends of the table. The binary narrative context is still highlighted through the colour-binary of their backgrounds, but the backgrounds are abstracted in such a way that the spatial context of the scene (narratively speaking) simply becomes the table and their positions opposite each other. The more internal connection made between the two sides of this binary, as they inhabit this space simultaneously, illustrates a fresh development in the possibility of a relationship outside the contest context. The condition for their connection is the alcohol standing literally as the medium between them. It is the mutual, simultaneous act of drinking which makes the relationship possible. And at the end of the movie when the Girl visits Rihaku sick in bed, his invitation to drink some more together gives the relationship shape.

The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl

Eating and drinking can describe relationships even on the physical level. In Kaiba’s sixth episode, Neiro – having taken on a man’s body – is reminded of Kaiba – having taken on a girl’s body – by how he pours a drink at dinner. He raises the flask up high in a smooth arc, a habit flashbacks reveal he picked up from watching Neiro. She picked it up from her mother. With altered memories, she does not remember Kaiba specifically only that he was someone she once loved. Love can be recalled, even if only subconsciously, through the intimacy of gesture. In Eizouken, the disposing of tea bears a similar intimacy. The origins of the character animator Mizusaki’s obsession with movement are revealed in a flashback in episode seven while she animates a scene. She watched her grandmother raise her teacup, swirl the remnants around and in one motion launch them out onto the lawn. Young Mizusaki tries repeatedly to copy her but never performs the movement properly.  She then begins studying how people move through drawing. By sketching her grandmother’s movement, she eventually figures out how to throw tea out. Picking up this skill expresses the intimacy of their relationship, implying the significant time and attention required to effectively mimic her grandmother. Through eating and drinking, therefore, relationships are inscribed in gesture.

But such particular manners of eating and drinking can go beyond the expression of intranarrative relations into the creation of intertextual resonances. Mizusaki shares with Kemonozume’s Yuka the same atypical way of holding chopsticks, with one crossed over the other. In the latter case, this is taken by other characters as embodying Yuka’s otherness, her lack of contact – as a monster – with human society. In the former, it expresses more simply Mizusaki’s quirkiness and peculiar movement. Their manner of eating separates them from other characters in their world, just as it unites them each other. This superfluity which brings characters and situations across works into community with each other is characteristic of the thematic system’s productivity. Ping Pong is an exemplar for the way this productivity can enrich an individual work.

Play: Ping Pong the Animation

The show features two protagonists, Peco and Smile, whose styles of play express and embody their personalities. In the case of Smile, that style is one of robotic precision, with expressive transformations exaggerating Smile’s robotic traits and abilities. However, the first instance of this expresses not a trait but a change. The coach at Smile and Peco’s school recognises the former’s ability and pushes his buttons (i.e., taunting and displaying emotion) to bring him out of his shell – or better, locker. One of the series’ many central flashbacks, which grounds this particular scene, is to Smile stuffed in a locker. In his memory, someone is coming to save him. The Hero who will come whenever Smile’s in a pinch. Smile calls him; but the Hero never shows. Only the monster robot from Smile’s video game. “Your body is made of iron.” Smile must unleash his own power instead of relying on the Hero. “You’re a machine.” His blue eye whirs, his robot arm is linked with joints and wiring. Smile becomes the robot.

Ping Pong the Animation

This robotic transformation is not adapted from Ping Pong the manga. This adaptational change foregrounds the thematic system in its unifying function, and as the site where the creator is most able to set free their imagination.¹⁰] By expressing this moment in terms of the thematic system, Yuasa imbues it with additional emotional weight: disappointment in Smile’s acceptance that no one is coming for him; apprehension that he must become something he cannot stand (hyper-competitive, ruthless winning machine). Like Watashi, Smile shares a certain level of withdrawal – socially and into his own fantasies and memories. But unlike Watashi’s persistent refusal to change for much of Tatami Galaxy, transforming into the robot manifests Smile’s reluctant determination to become independent, to no longer wait for the Hero to save him. Expressing Smile’s loneliness via this solitary act enmeshes him in a network of relations with other Yuasa characters. This support simultaneously evidences the moment’s decisiveness, marking it as the first real stage in Smile’s character arc. He must save himself, and indeed the Hero too. He must save Peco.

In addition to Smile and Peco, the show follows three rival players. In the second arc of the show – preparation for the final tournament – Kong, a Chinese star who was brought in to help improve his new school’s team, decides after being humbled at the first tournament to finally engage in team building. The show’s literal midpoint (the middle of the middle episode) is a lovely scene (again, absent from the manga) where Kong and his visiting mother make wontons together. This same hobby constitutes Kong’s fondest memories with his mother, away from whom he has lived much of his childhood since leaving home to join his province’s team. Gradually more and more teammates flock into the kitchen to join them – much like the growing numbers of the Night Is Short posse. The entirety of the eating and drinking theme is concentrated into this sequence: the private memories of an intimate mother-child bond developed through cooking; rekindling that bond through the same activity; and Yuasa’s most sustained treatment of community building as the team comes together to cook and eat. This confluence of relationships fills the scene with emotion, so powerful as to almost negate the narrative: we become sucked into the maelstrom of thematic play of Yuasa’s work, a living and evolving world which blooms from this scene in all its rich fertility. But at the same time, the scene articulates Kong’s tremendous growth of character: once wanting nothing to do with his teammates, he now welcomes them to join in this intimate activity. This then leads into their shared Christmas eve dinner and a karaoke session, a song about being alone on Christmas eve, while a montage of the show’s other characters plays; every one of them is alone.

In the show’s third arc, the final tournament, Yuasa increases the use of panelling (à la manga panels), which distributes the act of looking across the image and offsets the show’s quieter, more personalised second arc with the excitement and vibrancy of the competition. During matches, one becomes aware of the vitality of this community, of ping pong’s importance in so many lives, as the buzz surrounding the tournament explodes across the screen. This is particularly true in the match between Peco and Kazama (reigning gold medal winner at the Youth Olympics) in episode ten – Choi’s last work as episode director on a Yuasa show before taking on producer roles. The dizzying speed with which Choi and Yuasa move between all the different gazes on the match blows up the world into a host of distinct images and spaces, distinct ways of looking. But they are brought into solidarity via a shared object. Watching thus takes on a communal function as ping pong becomes the site of convergence for a profusion of looks; all eyes are on the game. The persistent return to the wide image of the table, Peco, and Kazama centres them, not just spatially within the crowd, but temporally. It provides a lull amidst frenetic action that offers no time to think and intellectually react. Indeed, neither player has weaknesses in their game for the other to tactically exploit. Theirs is a contest not of wits but reaction speeds. Mixing static panels with frenzied speed through editing and sound design (the constant sound of squeaking shoes, of the net and ball being hit, of players grunting) concretises Kazama’s perspective of his physical performance: his incredible speed borders on motionlessness, just like the dynamism of these often still images.

The turning point in the Peco/Kazama match occurs when Peco imagines a conversation with Smile: “Your knee will be fine. It’s like you always said – the strongest players let you fly the highest. Can you fly?” If he were concerned about his future career, Peco’s busted knee would have led him to withdraw before facing Kazama, having already qualified for nationals. But, without the two ever speaking in the lead-up to the tournament, he instinctively understands that Smile is waiting for him in the final. Peco jeopardises his future to fly with Smile; and the latter knows it. Anyone unfamiliar with their relationship would be appalled to hear Smile robotically declare his plan to attack Peco’s knee. But Smile trusts him to deal with it. Peco, the Hero, has no weaknesses. Similarly, Peco dispels his initial concern when Smile tumbles over into the boundary by smashing his friend’s desperate return as he lies on the floor. Peco trusts Smile to recover and return the shot. This is neither appalling nor unsportsmanlike. It is a pure expression of the complete and utter respect and admiration they have for each other. As Smile leaps into the boundary, his character arc completes full circle in an inversion of episode two’s transforming scene. Peco does come to save him from his locker. “Blood tastes like iron.” Peco teaches him ping pong and implores him to act with emotion, to play with grit. “There’s blood flowing in you, too.” He roars with his own voice, sheds off his iron casing to reveal the red veins beneath. The robot becomes Smile. In the ensuing rally, too, his robotic control over his body vanishes. Sweating profusely, with blood oozing from his knee, he stumbles around, grunting and panting as he desperately tries to return a superior player’s shots. After losing the point, he smiles. The Hero has returned; so Smile has returned.

Ping Pong the Animation

The rally sequence is, so far as I am aware, unique in the history of anime. Everything in the image, in its abstracted white void – Peco, Smile, the table, the grey boundary – constantly shifts around, moving up/down, forwards/backwards, around and around, growing and shrinking, flattening and curving. There is no fixity whatever to this image: the entire frame in fact tilts and rotates. By its singularity, the image loses support as Peco and Smile are isolated not just from every spectator in the stadium, but from every Yuasa character and situation, and anime broadly. Ping Pong is thus enriched through severance, for this makes Peco and Smile’s connection all the more intimate. What separates Peco and Smile from all else brings them closer together; they alone have the privilege of sharing this situation. Indeed, the heightened temporal linkage between them, moving in immediate relation to one another without any cuts, translates not only their skill and focus but their emotional bond into a palpable image; their peculiar emotional connection connects them peculiarly in this image. And it is this which sets them off independently on all their training, all their waiting, to take all those risks and go through all that emotional and physical pain – all for the love of a friend.

This same style of analysis could be applied to any one of Yuasa’s works individually. But what Ping Pong shows is the particular creativity and imagination of Yuasa as an anime director, as an auteur. A simple act such as transforming can bear an array of meanings depending on its narrative function, but it is the expression of narrative moments in terms of the thematic system which makes the scene emotionally moving and gives it its meaning. Not as an isolated action or event, but as part of a living and growing web of relations. The deeply moving eating scene is characteristic. Yuasa could have depicted the rekindling of the mother-son bond and the teambuilding in any number of ways – and many of them may have been touching. But what makes the scene so moving is that the simultaneous (re-)formation of these interpersonal and communal bonds is supported by a concrete image of eating. The emotional weight of the scene is derived not from its narrational content, but by its existence within the thematic system of eating and drinking as that which engraves relationships, in all their complexity and with all their history, on the surface of the screen. The way such narrative information is communicated shifts our reference point from Ping Pong the Animation to a wider domain. In short, the thematic system is what takes the individual movie or show beyond itself, constituting a world of auteurs.¹¹

Endnotes