kakurenbo is an animated short from yamatoworks. it won the 2005
it tells the tale of a group of children playing hide and seek in an abandoned town, where allegedly children have previously disappeared while playing at night. the movie features many elements of japanese mythology and folklore both in terms of plot - the story is based on a folktale which warns that children who play outside at night or in the fog will be kidnapped by oni (=demons, in case you didn’t know)- imagery, and music (at some points you can hear daiko drums). i’ll have to improve my knowledge of japanese folklore as there is a lot of symbolism in the movie that i still don’t understand (what do the kitsune masks stand for? what’s with the nocturnal butterfly? what do the names of the oni mean?)
the characters are very well drawn and each with a personality if its own, although it’s rather difficult to fully develop the characters in a 30-minute film. the backgrounds are beautiful and radiate mystery. the oni are simply marvelous and the next time we role-play and i’m the dm, you can expect to go against these things :p.
anyway, i advise you to watch this even if you’re not an anime fan. the director mentioned in a recent interview that kakurenbo was just a project to test the team (it’s the first anime from yamatoworks) and after it’s completion he intends to work on full-length features. i wish him best of luck and i hope they’ll stick to folklore and mythological themes, although i’m convinced that they could do an equally gorgeous phildickian cyberpunk or a steampunk setting. (if you don’t know what ‘phildickian’ means, look it up on wiki!)
btw, oni is both the singular and the plural of the noun, just like anime and ninja, not NINJAS! (baka gaijin, you lose one point of honor, roll 2d6)
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