And working at it is like exercise or learning to ride a bike. You’re training a muscle, training a concert of neurons to begin firing together so that they’ll build dendritic bridges making the next journey easier. Rather than slashing machete-like through the grey matter of your brain, you’re walking a neatly built stone bridge.
Loved both this and the Anime Herald piece. I'm especially amazed by "an artist attempting to explain something to himself that he doesn’t have the language for" in a visual medium like this, where the artist has to explain a vision they don't fully comprehend to a team of dozens of people who will have to get the unexplainable thing "right." I can't fathom how it's done, how it's possible that no one in the process was able to overwhelm the chaos with one strong push toward greater order. It feels miraculous that something so detailed can remain so amorphous, start to finish.
That's a good point! It's astounding, really, and maybe speaks to how strange the anime industry was in the 80s that these people were allowed to make this baffling movie.
I’m glad they were! I’m interested in seeing it now. The sparseness of story and bafflingly intense visual theme was something that drew me to watch weird anime movies alone at night when I was a kid, but this one never crossed my path.
I studied canonical music and just found myself gravitating more and more toward Difficult Canonical Music the more I got into it.
So now when I discover difficult music I have a hard time getting into, I feel like this is a Thing I Can Learn. I just need to listen to less difficult jazz and get to know the genre and train myself to play a little and work my way up into the more difficult parts.
This is always an interesting progression that I think happens with whatever we're familiar with. At a certain point, we start looking into the deeper waters to see what wondrous or frightening beasts dwell there.
I've listened to a lot of difficult music over the years and the funny thing, to me, is that I now like regular pop music much more than I used to. Like my brain and ears needed to relax a bit.
And working at it is like exercise or learning to ride a bike. You’re training a muscle, training a concert of neurons to begin firing together so that they’ll build dendritic bridges making the next journey easier. Rather than slashing machete-like through the grey matter of your brain, you’re walking a neatly built stone bridge.
This is a fantastic paragraph.
I knew all that neuroscience would come in handy someday!
Loved what you wrote for Anime Herald! I really have to watch this movie now. I love Amano, esp the FF 6 art.
That was part of why I sought it out!
The whole movie is in the embedded YouTube video above.
Loved both this and the Anime Herald piece. I'm especially amazed by "an artist attempting to explain something to himself that he doesn’t have the language for" in a visual medium like this, where the artist has to explain a vision they don't fully comprehend to a team of dozens of people who will have to get the unexplainable thing "right." I can't fathom how it's done, how it's possible that no one in the process was able to overwhelm the chaos with one strong push toward greater order. It feels miraculous that something so detailed can remain so amorphous, start to finish.
That's a good point! It's astounding, really, and maybe speaks to how strange the anime industry was in the 80s that these people were allowed to make this baffling movie.
I’m glad they were! I’m interested in seeing it now. The sparseness of story and bafflingly intense visual theme was something that drew me to watch weird anime movies alone at night when I was a kid, but this one never crossed my path.
This is how I feel about Difficult Music.
I studied canonical music and just found myself gravitating more and more toward Difficult Canonical Music the more I got into it.
So now when I discover difficult music I have a hard time getting into, I feel like this is a Thing I Can Learn. I just need to listen to less difficult jazz and get to know the genre and train myself to play a little and work my way up into the more difficult parts.
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YKcVWVuq4Q
This is always an interesting progression that I think happens with whatever we're familiar with. At a certain point, we start looking into the deeper waters to see what wondrous or frightening beasts dwell there.
I've listened to a lot of difficult music over the years and the funny thing, to me, is that I now like regular pop music much more than I used to. Like my brain and ears needed to relax a bit.