THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
The richness of Japanese animation does not only come from mainstream productions, but also comes from an obscure crowd of freelancers, lonely geniuses and unrelenting dreamers who crop up from time to time on the international stage.
On-Gaku our rock, one of the most original objects seen recently in the field, which passed by the Annecy international animated film festival in 2020, must first be considered from this angle: as the work of one man , Kenji Iwaisawa, born in Tokyo in 1981, who worked in his corner for seven years, drawing it by hand outside of any professional setting, and with no experience or curriculum other than a handful of short films.
The result does not correspond at all to what is usually classified under the name ofanime. It is, on the contrary, a small nugget of raw art with a shaggy singularity, a silly and wicked comedy, with a lively flayed sensibility, that it would be a shame to let drown in the flood of releases accompanying the return to theaters. .
Adapted from a self-published manga by Hiroyuki Ohashi, the film goes through music to sing the virtues of amateurism, and ultimately only speak of what it is itself: a gesture of spontaneous creation. Kenji, a high school student and band leader, picks up a guitar during an abortive fight and decides to start a rock band with his cronies without knowing how to play a single note.
Astonishing graphic touch
Here are the three oddballs – two basses and a drums – who engage in single-string improvisation sessions, unleashing a sort of primal and hypnotic drone in direct current, without beginning or end. The group Kobujutsu (a pure onomatopoeia without any meaning) was born and immediately arouses the amazement of Morita, leader of a symmetrical formation, Kobijutsu, who in turn practices sensitive and sophisticated folk (quite the opposite). The two groups find themselves playing at a rock festival and, like two opposing poles, will operate an explosive fusion.
All the flavor ofOn-Gaku starts with a cold humor frisky with embarrassment and absurdity, based on the marginality of the characters, and which is reminiscent of a certain American animation team linked to the MTV channel, with rock series and for teens, like Beavis and Butt-Head (1993-1997) or even Daria (1997-2002).
The astonishing graphic touch of the film is due to the large difference between, on the one hand, the ultra-simplicity of the line, an almost childish scribbling and, on the other, a great precision of rendering in the movement, especially during the musical passages – obtained through the use of rotoscoping, a technique that consists of filming scenes before drawing them. Iwaisawa also walks his characters in a beautiful series of sets which, here and there, are worked in a watercolor style, or pastich famous record covers (Abbey Road the Beatles or Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield).
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