‎#207: Tempura (2014)

 

Director: Ujicha

Screenplay: Ujicha

Voice Cast: Enji Aoyagi, Yuichi Washio and Satoshi Okuda

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

John!

This will be a short, short review as, only a few minutes long, this piece in Ujicha's growing filmography of "geki-mation" is barely more than a fever dream. Searching for John, a dog, two men including a smoker with a robot arm enter a cave where animals are burnt to the wall with tempura batter. John the dog has tragically been deep fried alongside a variety of creatures, and the occupant of the cave has intentions for the intruders.

This, made before Violence Voyager (2018), definitely feels like a prototype to that feature film. A strange block headed creature is armed with small guns which fire dangerous ammo, in this case burning hot tempura batter from two guns. This short, if you had no context of its creator's career, or the fact the creator has a one name pseudonym based on "green tea", would baffle and surprise anyone. Never mind the fact one of the leads is also nude for some reason, but in mind that the art style is unique and tempura will never be viewed the same way again.

It has not really needed to evolve between The Burning Buddha Man (2013) to Violence Voyager, baring that Ujicha has jettisoned the live action sequences from the previous film, as the art style has always been strong. Based directly on a 1976 television adaptation of Kazuo Umezu's manga Cat-Eyed Boy, which was done in paper cut-outs, this is a painstaking art style to even finish for a very short work like this. Even if the animation process involves moving paper cut-outs by hand, and Ujicha (for gross effect) using liquids, the craft to draw these characters and the worlds in the background is a lot to do. It means a great deal, with his unique and grotesque style, that Ujicha can draw extremely well.

Again, this is an extremely short review, but we are dealing with a little fragment here. I am happy to have a piece here, for a little slight piece, just to repeat the virtues of this creator and hope he succeeds with future work.