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The Fascinating Career Of Animator Atsushi Wada

I recently saw that Atsushi Wada’s short film “Bird in the Peninsula” premiered at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival and was received quite warmly. I confess that I had never heard of Atsushi Wada but, upon seeing some of the artwork in his animation, I did remember seeing some of his works listed under independent Japanese animation before. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at Atsushi Wada, what he does as an animator and his fascinating career.

Atsushi Wada was born in 1980 and studied at the Osaka Kyoiku University, the Japan Institute of the Moving Image and the Tokyo University of the Arts. By 2002, he began to create short animated films which have a very distinct art style. In contrast to the typical anime aesthetic, Atsushi Wada’s films have a style that has been referred to as minimalist, featuring blobby characters in a low detail but highly stylised world.

Atsushi Wada.

As far as I can tell, Atsushi Wada has released 17 animated shorts over the course of his career. From 2002 to 2007, he released 11 shorts such as A Whistle, This Mayonnaise Is Too Liquid, A Clerk In Charge, Day of Nose, A Manipulated Man etc. However, it was in 2010 with the release of his film “In A Pig’s Eye” that he started to draw industry attention when he was nominated at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival.

After that, his next big breakthrough was at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2012 where he ended up winning the Silver Bear for Best Short Film for The Great Rabbit. It’s also worth noting that this short also won the special prize at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival “for the creation of a completely believable yet illogical world“.

A shot from The Great Rabbit.

Since then, he has released The Mechanism of Spring, Anomalies, Bird in the Peninsula as well as a game called My Exercise which he did in collaboration with Japanese developer Ryoya Usuha and the Swiss studio Playables.

Atsushi Wada and his career as an animator are truly fascinating and I would very much like to see more Western attention directed towards his works. Let me know your thoughts on Atsushi Wada, whether you have seen any of his works, what you thought of them, what you think of independent animation in general and any additional information you might have on the topic.

Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!

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