KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Manga + Video Games

Evan: In the video game room (curated by Sims creator and game design super-genius Will Wright!), the focus was on ways that particular games enhanced the idea of play over time, creating ways for gamers to interact with a virtual world and still feel invested in the experience.

The three games on display were Pac-Man, Super Mario World, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - the latter two of which are works of the "Father of Nintendo," Shigeru Miyamoto. This really shows not only how much respect Wright has for Miyamoto, but also how instrumental the Japanese developer/producer has been in the formulation of modern game design.

Pac-Man was created by Toru Iwatani and is considered significant for its use of simple ideas like a game of tag and the concept of eating things, as well as its exploration of dynamic sound and color as ways to "enhance the game experience."

Super Mario World is praised for using "emergence," a game design concept wherein simple rules (hit a box, get a mushroom; land on a turtle, he goes into his shell) are combined to create a complex experience.

Finally, the exploration of The Wind Waker highlights its distinctive visual style, but also touches on a brilliant description of the game's design philosophy: items are "nouns," to be collected and eventually used as "verbs," meaning that the game works because it touches on the innate concept of language building.

Scott: I felt very disappointed in the video game room, especially considering Will Wright's involvement in it. When KRAZY! was exhibited in Vancouver, it also included Western pop culture mixed in with the Japanese. When the show moved to New York City, it included purely Japanese content. Perhaps this limitation is why the video game section felt so incomplete.

Shigeru Miyamoto is a very important video game creator, probably the most influential in all of video game history. But he's not the only Japanese creator out there. Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear Solid series is also very significant for his creative input into that franchise, as is Hironobu Sakaguchi for the Final Fantasy series.

The unique style of games by Suda Gouichi (killer7, No More Heroes) would have felt completely appropriate if it was in the nearby manga section. However, except for Iwatani, Miyamoto was the only other video game artist included in this show. This made the video game section feel more like a side note than an essential part of the exhibit.

Evan: I think that the main reason for the exhibit being heavy on the Miyamoto was that it featured The Wind Waker, which is certainly a good game, but is not quite the landmark work that Pac-Man or Super Mario World is. I agree that something like Metal Gear Solid would have been a very appropriate choice for this show instead.

Also, I must mention that the entire video game room was filled with chairs shaped and colored like the enemies from Space Invaders. Awesome!

Scott: Yes, the Space Invaders chairs were, in fact, awesome.

Scott: If I thought that the works of Anno were the most visually appealing part of KRAZY!, then the six-screen wall of projected anime scenes was the most visually awesome part of the exhibit.

For the final portion of the exhibit, viewers are taken to the "Anime Garden", a darkened room with a white seating deck overlooking six large screen projections. Clips from Paprika (Satoshi Kon), Super Dimension Fortress Macross (Ichiro Itano), The Place Promised in Our Early Days (Makoto Shinkai), Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo), Patlabor 2 (Mamoru Oshii), and Mind Game (Masaki Yuasa) brightly illuminate the black surroundings and white furniture. It would be the perfect interior design for the most awesome techno dance club in the world.

Evan: The six-screen video wall was definitely amazing, but I also loved the six little viewing pods, featuring more isolated viewing experiences for each of the works being shown.

The placards explained the significance of each film, and provided some brief yet fascinating critiques of the messages in each film. For example, Paprika deals with the "conflict of patriarchy, misogyny, and feminism," while Akira is an "allegory of post-war Japan," and Patlabor 2 explores the "blurring of fiction and reality, the fuzzy boundaries between war and peace, and [...] the illusory and ambiguous nature of love."

Scott: The viewing pod that caught my eye featured Mind Game, a 2004 film from Masaki Yuasa and Studio 4°C that includes very surreal encounter between the main character and God.

God's image changes rapidly, displaying oddities likes a photo of a goldfish or a goofy looking cartoon green hippo. It's a very similar style to Yuasa's other surreal anime works like Cat Soup, Kaiba, or the Happy Machine short from the Studio 4°C anthology Genius Party. This clip always generated a crowd of onlookers, who would laugh at each new form God would show himself as while he was talking to the film's protagonist.

Evan: In the far corner, there was also a small soundproof listening booth featuring music from anime's most celebrated composer, Yoko Kanno. The exhibit showcased her compositions to show that most anime are the result of the "efforts of large creative teams," which I thought was an interesting step away from the auteur theory typically espoused by many anime fans and critics.

Kanno is a great example of someone who revolutionized anime without being an animator or director, so I think that she easily deserved to have her works on display next to greats like Satoshi Kon, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Mamoru Oshii.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Evan: All in all, we both really enjoyed the exhibit. There was an astounding variety of works, and it provided a nice balance between the fun, irreverent style of pop culture and the more literate, serious tone of art criticism.

While rather short, KRAZY! is a great experience for any anime or manga fan who is open to another way of looking at Japanese pop culture. It's rare that American fans have a chance to see their favorite media portrayed as art instead of as pure entertainment, so be sure to check this out.