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8/20 - Uzumaki Chapters 6-11
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Marc
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Jul 16, 2020 05:06AM
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On a lighter note, the spirals in the sky behind the lighthouse are certainly inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night
Whitney wrote: "Chapter 11 has done permanent damage to my psyche. On a lighter note, the spirals in the sky behind the lighthouse are certainly inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night"
Yes I caught that too!
Also VERY random, but the Typhoon chapter, the wind makes the noise "Poo-tee-weet" which is from Kurt Vonnegut! I *think* Slaughterhouse Five, but I can't remember for sure! It's the sound the bird makes.
I have this struggle with the book where I want to treat each chapter individually and not read too fast, but then 100 pages later I've sped through 3 or 4 chapters.It's interesting that each story starts to sound a little repetitive - you know the new characters will probably die.
And the fact that other people are a little oblivious to the spirals and the insane things that have been happening - that's weird! I want to shake them all! Shuichi is the only one that gets it! I guess Kirie does too but even she seems a little like "whaaaaaa?" every chapter.
I'm intrigued how the last third will go!
Bretnie in my house we have both the three-volume hardcover and the three volumes separately, and I find I really like having them separated, because each volume has its own arc and its own feeling. I had the hardcover in my hand and actually went and dug up the 3 paperbacks.
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Yes, it's Slaughterhouse 5! I was wondering if it was Ito who made the reference, or just the translator. Regardless, it does not bode well for things to come.
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That chapter 10 ending, just before 11 ensues, has that serene panel of all the daytime moms with their serene babies... such a perfect segue. And those babies are so cute... This chapter felt like a bad acid trip (ok, I don't actually know what that feels like, but this is how I'd imagine it).
I read chapters 1-4, then 4-8, then 8 to the end!
Somewhere around this point, I started to realize that Ito's style has a very film-like quality to it. The way he draws you along, the almost-exclusive reliance on dialogue for the text, mostly based in the present, with this constant tension... Not so much a what's around the next corner as a what am I going to see when I turn the page. A kinda surrealist body horror nightmare...
My ever-so-helpful-with-things-Ito daughter told me this morning that a 5-episode animated series of Uzumaki is in production, and so far the buzz about it is good. She's happy that they've hired the same composer who did the score for the horror film Hereditary, Colin Stetson.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDEQy..."
Ha, looks like you and Marc were competing to post this (he put it in the general folder). ! Looks (and sounds) very cool. Does anyone know if there's a name for that style of animation, where still pictures are then animated?
I should have known Marc would be on it! I need to hear things from three or four different sources before it sinks in.
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Not at all, Lark. There is no consistency to anything I post--I'll be on the bleeding edge by sheer luck one post and 32 years behind on the next. :D
(I happened to see something about the anime when I was looking up something about the background post, but was hoping there'd be something more about a release date--I didn't want to watch it before I finished reading the book!)
Whitney, I think it's called "limited animation," but I'm not positive that's the right term (limited animation does not redraw frames completely but reuses parts).
After watching the anime trailer I keep wondering if that is what the animation ultimately will look like or if they just took some images from the manga and animated them just for the teaser trailer? I did read that the animation will be all in black and white which is great, it will be more true to Ito's vision imo.
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Nice, looks like that would be the term for the use of the still background with drawn in movement, such as the scene in the trailer with Kirie. Then there's the animation where a still image itself is animated, such as with the face in the smoke in the trailer.
Here's a tutorial to do it in Photoshop with a waterfall. There's other examples, but I can't find a term for a still image that's been altered this way. It's pretty cool, I saw a creepy book cover someone had done this to, but can't find it now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw07w...
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My brain was trying to draw a bigger connection than perhaps exists for Chapters 3, 5, and 6 because they all deal to an extent with teenage love/popularity (chapters 3--"The Scar" and 6--"Medusa" having the teen girl as a deadly object of attraction/desire; in 6, Sekino is so jealous of Kirie, she initiates her own death by spiral-styling her hair---this was like high-fashion meets horror with the hair itself battling--I kinda loved it! Chapter 5--"Twisted Souls" was more like the Uzumaki version of Romeo & Juliet... two spiral-crossed lovers... ).
