Yamamura Animation

A segment for Image Forum Festival 2005's Tokyo Loop

A miserly man eats the pits of some cherries he can't stand throwing out. A tree starts growing from the top of his head. He cuts it off; it grows back. After a while, he gives up and lets it grow, but the crowds that gather on top of his head to enjoy the tree (and leave huge mounds of trash) eventually drive him to uproot the tree. This leaves a crater on top of his head, which fills with water, which becomes a popular lake.

Short by Koji Yamamura

A seaside school. In the corridor stands the principal, beloved of the high-spirited youngsters. Gazing at a picture of a whale drawn as a child, the head teacher is swept away with sentiment into a flashback from the past.

Koji Yamamura's allegory the immutability of time, love and devotion, and the unbreakable nature of the parent-child bond, into interlacing story.

A very old crocodile is shunned by his family after eating one of them.

Here, everything is The North. This is an account of the people I met in The North. However, my fragmented memory doesn't capture the essence at all.

Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. sit down to discuss their highly anticipated May 6 showdown.

A hapless country doctor describes with breathless urgency a night-time summons to attend a young patient. Events soon take on a surreal aspect as "unearthly horses" transport him instantaneously to the bedside. The doctor, preoccupied with personal distractions and grievances against those he is employed to care for, fails to find what is revealed to be a vile, fatal wound. He is humiliated by the villagers, who are "always expecting the impossible from the doctor," and doomed to an endless return trip, losing everything.

A Parade for three managers and four performers. Sketchy drawings in a neatly arranged palette, involving quotes from the French composer Erik Satie, set to the music of Parade performed by the Dutch Willem Breuker Kollektief.

Using the constellation as a motif, the heavens and the earth, metamorphose all the creatures.

An animated archive of imaginary monsters written by a fictitious mosterologist in Medieval Europe.

Buildings, black crows, a flood of bar codes, clone-looking businessmen, shopping-addicted ladies...these images which probably symbolizes excessive, standardized and overcrowded modern cities are condensed in this animation. Various techniques, like modified photo, drawing animation, 3D object and permeating lighting are combined onto a multi-planed (line drawing) stand, with a challenge to express a unique sense of unity and compression.

Several painted figures are superimposed.

A normal day turns into a day of adventure when an elevator that carries a boy does not stop where it should.

One night Mr. K went for a walk with his pet...

A child whose head is numerals, a child who winds his own face and has it under his arm. What was left is his identity, a child whose eyes are provided by fishes, a child who cannot say anything because of a zipper across his mouth. Ecology and philosophy of children with sadness and humor.

A series of nine flipbook-like vignettes showcasing simple revelations of movement and color. Koji Yamamura's animation refers back to the phenakistoscope, one of the earliest mechanisms used to make drawings move.

Short by Koji Yamamura

This work was commissioned for the 20th Anniversary Edition of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and made possible by support from the 2016 Champion and Patron Members of Reel Asian. Chinese Zodiac is 60-years cycle by 10 heavenly elements and 12 earthly animals, 20th anniversary is just one third. In this movie appearing and changing into 20 elements from 1997 that was started the festival to 2016.