10 years ago, Toei Animation released Nijiiro Hotaru: Rainbow Fireflies, the stunning culmination of a lengthy production to honor the iconic works of their past and the power of traditional animation altogether. A decade later, the loss of projects like this threatens the studio’s future.
Back in May of 1993, Japanese audiences got to experience a curious experiment: studio Ghibli’s first and essentially last large-scale TV project, a film meant to put their younger staff under the spotlight for a change. Let’s look back at a fascinating little chapter in their story, since both its achievements and shortcomings are rarely discussed with the full context in mind.
Dissociating individual elements from productions as a whole isn’t as easy as it might seem, but sometimes it feels like some aspects are faring particularly well. We’ve had seasons of anime with many instances of outstanding voice acting, animation, and this time around I would say we’re lucky in another regard — the art direction. There’s little to no barrier to appreciating beautiful sceneries in anime, and yet it tends to stay just as that, without giving actual names and underlining…