by Robert Kohr

A month has passed since the end of Big Apple Anime Fest 2003. Last year I wrote about BAAF/ AXNY, Anime Expo’s first try at building a traveling anime festival. AXNY was not in New York this year, rather they are running an expo in Tokyo. BAAF was the only show in town. From talking with some of the speakers, I found that BAAF is in a unique rank of festivals where they actually do have access to a movie theater, where most do not. BAAF is still young and the only festival that hits New York City, though semi-disorganized at times, in the end it seems that they pulled it off pretty well at least better than last year.

This year the big feature was “Initial D The Movie”. This film did nothing for me, “Initial D” just seemed like souped up video game trailer rather than a feature film. The end of the story did pick up as a love interest was developed. Keep in mind that this is a third part to a trilogy rather than and original entity. Sure I liked “The End of Evangelion”, but without seeing the entire 26 episode series it makes absolutely no sense. I have never encountered “Initial D” prior to this screening; it is a road-rat, muscle car flick with nothing to offer to a female audience or to anyone not privy to the series. To add insult to injury it was projected in High Definition Video rather than on film.

As previously reviewed, “The Animatrix” was shown and it looked spectacular on a 35mm print. The producer and director of “World Record”, Masao Maruyama and Takeshi Kioke, were at the premiere. Masao Maruyama is the founder of the animation company Mad House, known for “Trigun” and “Vampire Hunter D”, while Takeshi Kioke worked on “Ninja Scroll” and earned “World Record” as his directorial debut. Takeshi Kioke quotes his influences for one of the characters as Brad Pitt, and style of the short was inspired by the work of Frank Miller. Over all, most of the shorts are pretty good, though the few standouts were “World Record”, “Detective Story”, “Kid’s Story”, and “Matriculated”. Unfortunately the Peter Chung segment was a let down.

As we know, Dreamworks has recently disbanded its traditional animation department, and from speaking to a their representatives at BAAF I found that this seems to only be a brief intermission for them. First off, we all know that they started the new indy distribution company Go Fish, which picked up Satoshi Kon’s “Millennium Actress” and Production I.G’s “Ghost in the Shell: Innocence”. But don’t confuse Go Fish as an anime distributor; they are looking to buy foreign and domestic properties that range from animation to live action. In fact they will be at Sundance this year looking to add to their list of acquisitions. I missed Satoshi Kon’s intro to “Millennium Actress”, but I did get an opportunity to see his newest feature “Tokyo Godfathers”, which he brought to the show on his own volition. Currently it has no distributor and is showing in Japan. It was quite an interesting film and follows the style of his last two films, “Perfect Blue” and “Millennium Actress”. Its about a homeless trio that find an abandoned baby and take care of it like their own until they can find the parents, meanwhile solving the reasons of why each of them is homeless. One is a ex-cross dresser, another and alcoholic father and another a runaway.

One nice thing that BAAF offered this year was a generous look into Korean animation by presenting “Hammer Boy”, a cute kids film, as well as “Doggy Poo Poo”, which as you guessed is a story about dog poop. Unfortunately they did neglect to show the two most recent animated films that came out of Korea, “My Beautiful Girl, Maria” and “Wonderful Days”. Though these both seem to lack in story, they are still beautiful pieces of animation.

BAAF expanded, what was called the artist alley last year, which seemed to me little more then a few artists who draw fan art. But this year they stepped it up a bit, offering artists such as Becky Cloonan and Brandan Graham as well as the “Broad Appeal” people. There were also a bunch of presentations and discussions with North American animators and illustrators to discuss the future of American animation and comic industries as well as the effects of Japanese art in it.

Over all it was a fun three days. I bought way too much stuff, but hey that’s the point right? I am happy that I was able to attend and I thank BAAF for their kind help in writing this article.