Original message (1350 Views )
| |  "Studio Colorido, or truly amazing ads" , posted Mon 8 Aug 06:16:  
Studio Colorido works page
Studio Colorido specializes in making short animations, and one of its animators created the impossibly good Fumiko's Confession years ago. Their most recent stuff is for the Japanese zipper company YKK, and they've somehow created the most compelling animated series for kids that I've seen in a LONG time. It manages to be both marketing material for particular products of YKK (e.g. water-sealing zippers) while not being as obviously and blatantly product-selling as many other animated series (see: every super robot anime or magical girl anime since forever). But wait, there's more! In addition to fantastic animation, the music for these episodes is made by Perfume! There's serious money behind these!
Watch it now! English and Chinese dubs are right on the site!
But even weirder: YKK is principally a B2B company. Ordinary consumers aren't the ones buying premium 30-cent zippers in massive quantities from them. So why is the marketing material in the form a kid/family-friendly anime series? I have no idea.
Anyway, this series is amazing for all kinds of reasons that are really timely:
- the engineering and mechanical genius is a girl
- the one who provides the emotional support is the boy
- they are adopted kids who live with a wheelchair-bound elderly lady engineer who may not have ever married, and the one who fixes the mechanical wheelchair is of course the girl
- their outfits are ones that kids could have made up with what they have, as opposed to the fantastic costumes nobody could ever reasonably have
- they fix problems, not defeat villains
- the rich girl character in episode 2 appears to be of mixed-race (superficially judging by the appearances of her mom and dad), and is dark-skinned
- in every shot that has background civilians, there is a mix of young, old, male, female, dark/light-skinned characters. There are pregnant women, senior citizens, babies, kids... while the blond, stubbled pizza driver is driving up a hill, he passes by a woman wearing a kurta! In a completely natural fashion, just by the crowds, the city feels multicultural and populated in a realistic way.
But this series is also FANTASTICALLY animated, with delightful and inventive uses of obviously fantastic zippers. Not since Sticky Fingers have zippers been this awesome.
They previously did an ad for McDonald's, which in addition to looking great, was brilliant for the emotional and human marketing message it smoothly contained. In particular, you imagine it had to appeal to an entire younger generation of anime-watchers:
- people want you there
- the people there find joy in making people happy and interacting with them
- there are senior workers there who will mentor you and be your friend
- it's a job people will move on from, but that's ok
- one day you'll be the senior, and you'll be the one bringing people in and mentoring them
- it's a job you can be emotionally invested in, and isn't just a lame minimum wage grind
In a tiny span of time, it sells a complete narrative arc and an emotionally appealing vision. It contains a notion of "and they had more adventures in the future" but without feeling cheap, abrupt, or incomplete. It's perfectly executed.
I don't know if they have any ideas that are feature-length, but goodness I'd line up day 1 to see it.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Sat 13 Aug 17:50] |
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| | "Re(1):Studio Colorido, or truly amazing ads" , posted Tue 9 Aug 11:23:
quote:
Studio Colorido works page
Studio Colorido specializes in making short animations, and one of its animators created the impossibly good Fumiko's Confession years ago. Their most recent stuff is for the Japanese zipper company YKK, and they've somehow created the most compelling animated series for kids that I've seen in a LONG time. It manages to be both marketing material for particular products of YKK (e.g. water-sealing zippers) while not being as obviously and blatantly product-selling as many other animated series (see: every super robot anime or magical girl anime since forever). But wait, there's more! In addition to fantastic animation, the music for these episodes is made by Perfume! There's serious money behind these!
Watch it now! English and Chinese dubs are right on the site!
But even weirder: YKK is principally a B2B company. Ordinary consumers aren't the ones buying premium 30-cent zippers in massive quantities from them. So why is the marketing material in the form a kid/family-friendly anime series? I have no idea.
Anyway, this series is amazing for all kinds of reasons that are really timely:
- the engineering and mechanical genius is a girl
- the one who provides the emotional support is the boy
- they are adopted kids who live with a wheelchair-bound grandma, and the one who fixes it is of course the g
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What a delightful discovery, thanks a lot for sharing! It's a shame these guys have been flying below my radar until yesterday, but they can count me as a fan from now on! Their HQ seems to be really close to my office as well, ha ha.
It would be great if they had the chance to do a full feature film or a TV series on the near future, but perhaps they do good enough with their CM stuff and they're not even interested on that. Seeing the current state of Japanese animation industry, it would probably be the wisest decision.
EDIT: by the way, "Colorido" means "colorful" in Spanish, which is a most appropriate way to describe their works.
A Talking about Japanese History sword in hand
[this message was edited by Maese on Tue 9 Aug 11:24] |
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