Tokyo Loop

Conceived and coordinated by Image Forum, the Tokyo-based distributor, exhibitor and mainstay of non-mainstream cinema, "Tokyo Loop" is a remarkable animation anthology which brings together veteran animators (some of them inactive for years) and new talents. It was made to celebrate 100 years of animation. Each contributing artist was asked to respond to some aspect of Tokyo life- and to feel free to stretch the boundaries of the medium. The 16 segments, in order of appearance, are:

• Tokyo Strut (Sato Masahiko, Ueta Mio): A man takes a walk with his dog. A work of "undeniable expression."
• Tokyo Trip (Tanaami Keiichi): The great graphic designer offers a morph of shapes, genders and sensations of the city.
• Fishing Vine (Seike Mika): A new take on the construction boom, considered as an erotic encounter.
• Yuki-chan (Oyama Kei): A young girl has died, an earthworm lives. Life is ephemeral, but living things have "grotesque strength."
• Dog and Bone (Shiriagari Kotobuki): Dog chases bone through the world and its wars, including Desert Storm. Shiriagari: "It's my first animated work, but while I was making it, I really felt like I became a dog."
• Public Convenience (Tabaimo): A sketch of everyday life in Tokyo, as seen from a women's toilet.
• TOKYO (Uda Atsuko): A bus ride through the nighttime lights of Tokyo, with a title from HTML programming language.
• Black Fish (Aihara Nobuhiro): Darkness and light, as seen by a Buddhist erotist.
• Unbalance (Ito Takashi): A negative image of Tokyo- images of pain and suffering to suggest the upset of our emotional balance.
• Tokyo Girl (Shimao Maho): Tokyo girls are naked. So are cats, penguins, raccoons, newts, elephants...
• Manipulated Man (Wada Atsushi): How mothers teach their sons to behave- and conform.
• Nuance (Murata Tomoyasu): The inner world and the outer world, as seen in "treated" photographs.
• Hashimoto (Furukawa Taku): A cautionary study of the smoking zone on the opposite platform of Hashimoto Station.
• Funkorogashi (Kuri Yoji): The first film in more than 20 years from one of Japan's greatest animators. A protest against people who let their dogs defecate on the street.
• Fig (Yamamura Koji): A short story about one dark night in Tokyo, and a return to the origins of animation.
• 12 O'Clock (Iwai Toshio): What if the pre-cinema phenakistoscope had evolved into a clock?