japanamerica

 [Finally resuming my monthly "Culture Clash" column for The Japan Times.] Indie studio Tonko House's coming-of-age story portrays a multiethnic Japan Fairy tales usually move from humdrum reality to fantasy and back again, with the protagonist and the rest of the audience transformed along the way. Think Alice and the rabbit hole, Chihiro and the tunnel in “Spirited Away.” But the CG-animated limited series “Oni: Thunder God’s Tale” opens in a Japanese dream world before crossing the threshold into an urban Japan that is darker and far more dangerous. “Oni” is the latest work from indie animation studio Tonko House, with a script by veteran anime writer Mari Okada (“Macquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms”). The series uses digital techniques to mimic the tactile, slightly jerky movements of stop-motion animation, making its visuals feel intimate despite the story’s dizzying array of characters and Hollywood action-adventure scope: a four-episode, 154-minute epic that b...

In less than a year, Tonko House earns an Oscar nomination By Roland Kelts They had plum roles at one of the best companies in the world and their successes were the envy of their peers. But last summer, two peak-career professionals quit their lucrative day jobs to found a start-up. With no income or investment, they built their own studio, mostly by hand, and started working long odd hours, seven days a week, on the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California. Typical Silicon Valley fairy tale? Hardly. These two make animation. “I just felt like I had a lifelong dream to make art,” Tokyo-born, 40-year-old director Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi told me at a café in Berkeley. “And that if I was going to do it, I better do it now.” Tsutsumi and his Tonko House Studio cofounder, Japanese-American 34-year-old Robert Kondo, both left positions at American industry giant Pixar Animation Studios last July — Kondo after 14 years, Tsutsumi after seven. Their resumes include gl...