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canmom's avatar

Always glad to see appreciation for the works in Short Peace. 'Combustible' is an exceptional short, and it's really cool to see these production materials. The settei are so clean - as expected of Otomo's circle! but given how tiny these characters appear in the short, it's amazing seeing the details up close.

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Animation Obsessive Staff's avatar

For sure -- the production materials for this one are gorgeous. It's crazy to think about how experienced this crew was (Hidekazu Ohara was once a Topcraft animator on The Last Unicorn and Nausicaa!). Short Peace in general may be the best overall anthology film Otomo's been in thus far. So many great shorts in there. We've wanted to profile A Farewell to Weapons for years and years, and we might finally have enough material now, maybe even without the hyper-overpriced artbook. We'll have to see!

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Daisy Church's avatar

I actually purchased Short Peace after coming across Possessions on YouTube and wanted to own it in high res. Love this anthology, wish they could do more shorts like these!! Thank you for this awesome backstory- rewatched the short again after reading this!

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Animation Obsessive Staff's avatar

Love to hear that! Thank you. And we're definitely crossing our fingers for more Otomo shorts -- he's working on *something* animated right now but we're not sure about the details.

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Facundo Nehuén López's avatar

Beautiful article. I didn't know about Combustible at all, love to read about its creation, I need to watch it now.

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Animation Obsessive Staff's avatar

Thanks so much for this kind comment! And absolutely, Combustible is amazing despite its low profile. The main downside is how hard it is to find the Short Peace anthology on streaming services. Wish we could offer more help there. Either way, hope you're able to track it down!

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Lauren S.'s avatar

Wow I will have to keep an eye out for it in the future.

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Animation Obsessive Staff's avatar

It’s a great one. So weird how many of Otomo’s films are tough to find today — given his fame, you’d think they’d be more available. Short Peace does appear to be on Kanopy, if you have access to that: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/short-peace

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C. Lee McKenzie's avatar

Fascinating animation!

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Animation Obsessive Staff's avatar

A favorite of ours, for sure!

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Auzin Ahmadi's avatar

so cool! I think I found this on Mubi!

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Animation Obsessive Staff's avatar

Ah, that's great! We could only find it on Kanopy where we are -- it's so rare to see it around on most services. It deserves so many more eyes.

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Nov 19
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Animation Obsessive Staff's avatar

It really is. If only the film was more widely available to watch! So many people could be enjoying it (and this whole anthology) if they just had the chance.

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