Forum - View topicBuried Treasure - Fairy Florence
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nicomorr
 Posts: 127 Location: London, UK. |
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@zac - The Death Star Cocktail Lounge must have very good all-night facilities! What - it's around 3am in Canada?
Now that's Jazz, NM |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Even Fantasia ran up against the well established bias, even back then, that "cartoons are only for kids" and therefore never had a chance. So what chance did a foreign film like Fairy Florence have to buck that bias?
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LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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I feel the same but unfortunately mass consumerism doesn't favor art...... Might need to look out for this one. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Yeah, that would never happen. Aside from the myriad legal problems, most of the shows I like are for thematic reasons, and that's hard to convey with just clips. (Besides, as a guy who does web video, I can say that doing this is a gigantic pain the ass.)
ROFL I have always harbored a secret fantasy to teach, but honestly I do NOT have the personality for it. AT ALL. |
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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everapril
 Posts: 112 |
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Hm, I would say that big-budget family films in the last decade or so have all but put aside the art and whimsy in favor of appealing more to the parents and adult reviewers in the audience (e.g. Shrek, The Incredibles, Cars). These movies have always been there (Brave Little Toaster? Rover Dangerfield?) But now they are produced at the exclusion of more adventurous faire. It's hard to remember (even for me, and I am not that old,) but children don't need a watertight plot or pandering observations of current events - pretty colors and simple melodrama will hold them absolutely rapt, hence why the genre of animation has become so synonomous with children's entertainment! Outside of typical Disney faire (and some Don Bluth,) my favorite films growing up were mostly of the Fairy Florence variety, loved Little Nemo, Totoro, Twice Upon a Time (does anyone else remember this one?), The Last Unicorn. Heck, there was a period in my childhood when I watched Puff the Magic Dragon everyday. I can't imagine a parent (or the adult me) appreciating the surrealism of Puff the Magic Dragon on that level. |
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Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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For the record, I don't think that film appealed to anybody. |
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writerpatrick
 Posts: 680 Location: Canada |
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I picked up the "Just for Kids" release VHS tape a while back but I've forgotten where I got it. I think it was at a second hand store. (I know I paid very little for it.) The audio dub is a little off though since it's only on one track while the music is on both. The only way to sanely watch it is in mono, which is a shame because of the classical music.
I don't think The Thief and the Cobbler would have been anything more than what it turned out to be. There were some great bits of animation but the overall storyline was poorly developed. Some things seemed to be animated just for the sake of animating them. And I get the impression the thief was originally meant to be a silent character. And although there's the "restored" version, there's a lot of people re-editing old material. Someday, someone might go back and rework it into something great, including some new animation where needed. As for Rover Dangerfield, that movie was a mistake, sort of like the animated Robocop TV series. Dangerfield's material was too adult for kids, yet much of the animation at that time was treated as kiddie fare. Although, at the time he seemed to be in just about everything. It's still worth a watch for animation fans, and the story is more appealing than one might expect, but one shouldn't expect much from it. |
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Warrick
 Posts: 13 Location: Seattle, WA, USA |
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I remember that George Lucas was one of the Executive Producers. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Uh.. yeah, you should probably see the restored version. The story is no great shakes either way but there are also no awful songs, and all the cheap animation Miramax dropped in to "finish" the film is gone, so there's that. And yeah, the thief is silent. |
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tubesoda
Posts: 1 |
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Thanks for spreading the word about this and other classic Sanrio Studio anime, many of which are much better than most people would assume. I think Fairy Florence is the most visually spectacular of all their films, although the story does lapse into cheesiness. In terms of production values and "pencil mileage," it stands right up there with movies like Akira and Spirited Away, so it seems rather odd that it ended up as something that's nearly unknown even to devoted anime fans.
Comparing it to Fantasia is certainly justified. You may know that Shintaro Tsuji, the founder of Sanrio, essentially idolized Walt Disney and was obsessed with Fantasia ever since he saw it as a child. His obsession comes through pretty clearly in most of the films he produced or wrote (such as Metamorphoses/Winds of Change, Legend of Sirius, Nutcracker Fantasy), but Fairy Florence was the culmination of this obsession. It was also pretty much the end of his dream of running a Disney-like animation studio. He knew very well that Fairy Florence would be the last Sanrio Studio feature, so he decided to pour a lot of money into it and go out with a bang. Turns out that selling stationery with cute iconic characters is much more profitable than producing expensive animation. I want to clarify that most of this movie was animated on twos (meaning a single drawing takes up two frames of 24 fps film), and only sometimes animated on ones. Animating on twos is generally considered "full animation" in Western animation. Most of the classic Disney films, Warner Bros shorts, etc, were animated on twos and only occasionally on ones for fast action scenes for example. Animating on twos is rare in Japanese animation, which is mostly animated on threes or fours (sometimes even sixes). Even a big budget film like Howl's Moving Castle was animated mostly on threes, but sometimes on twos or ones for fast motion scenes. The only hand drawn animated feature film I can think of that was animated (almost) entirely on ones is Thief and the Cobbler, which others have mentioned. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4788 |
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I was kind of amused when I first learned more about the movie and found out that this was the original creator's intent for that character, since the thief's mutterings were one of the few amusing things that stuck with me from that movie. Part of me wants to go back and see the film again, now that I'm much older and understand the backstory behind it, to see if I can get a better appreciation for what the original intent was. (Well, the thief's mumblings and the line, "THE BAAAAAALLLLLLLLSSSS ARE GONE!!!" If that didn't become a meme, it should have.  )
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reanimator
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Are you sure? I hope you're watching in 24 fps instead of 30 fps. I remember watching OVA "Portrait de Petit Cossette", there was scene where the main character kneels down in ones. Ending animation for "Dunbine" has running sequence animated in ones. "Princess Mononoke" has ladder climbing sequence done in ones. I think you got term "full animation" all wrong. It's not about how smooth animation moves, but it's about every part of the body moves along when character moves. Example would be when character talks, the jaw moves along with head and hand gestures. |
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StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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At the end of the day, that's all it is.
Whatever floated Tsuji's boat at the time just did. Too bad we don't have current DVD releases of these efforts for the moment. Apart from the film mentioned here and a few others, there was also several US-involved efforts like "The Mouse & His Child (animated at Murakami-Wolf Productions) and "Metamorphosis" (an even bigger bomb that was solely animated at a studio Sanrio set up in Pebble Beach, CA).
Those two Unico films were co-produced with Madhouse studios I believe.
Those two Unico films were co-produced with Madhouse studios I believe.
I thought the "Ca4K' mentality didn't really start until the advent of television?
24fps would be the case since that's often the same as the regular film format anyway, unless newer digital works have often stretched it further to 30 to coincide with NTSC levels. And no, what you stated isn't always true (that's more limited animation right there). There, forgot to add it all in one lump sum! |
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