Read the following text and answer the quiz below.
[1] Yoshitoshi Shinomiya is a Japanese director. His anime feature film debut is called A New Dawn. Shinomiya said he wanted the film to emphasise the value of preserving tradition and landscape. He told journalists at the Berlin Film Festival last month that the issue was largely due to technology and globalisation.
[2] The film is the third Japanese animation to feature in the main Competition category after Spirited Away (2002) and Suzume (2023). It follows a young man, Keitaro (voiced by Riku Hagiwara). He has to wrestle with the approaching destruction of his family’s home and fireworks factory. Once surrounded by greenery, it now must be cleared to make way for a new highway. The film combines themes such as childhood bonds and family legacy with broader topics like urbanisation.
[3] The director said he thought losing local communities and natural catastrophes were universal issues. Keitaro holds out after his father, brother and friend leave. He remains in the factory, which was once close to the sea. Now it faces a filled bay. It shares the same fate as Shinomiya’s home as Japan worked to reclaim land from the waters.
[4] The animation alternates soft pastel colours with more vivid, mesmerising imagery and even 3D illustrations. It draws on Shinomiya’s work in traditional Japanese visual art. It even includes physical tricks such as filming through holes in a black sheet of paper.
[5] The director said there was a nostalgic element to the handmade craft. He was asked how he expected artificial intelligence to affect the industry. Shinomiya said that delays in completing the film made him wonder whether they should tap into the technology. However, AI was not developed enough for the task. Elaborate backgrounds were key to the animation, he said. They showed the characters’ emotions.
[6] Shinomiya previously worked on Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name (2016) and The Garden of Words (2013). He said he thought people would still find tradition and human creative work appealing, despite the rise of AI – or even because of it.
Source: Reuters, February 18
Content provided by British Council
