Aya und die Hexe

The expectations attached to Earwig and the Witch are exceedingly high, because it is branded with the Ghibli studio logo at the beginning and the studio’s key personnel appear in the credits. The paradox of the project is that it was evidently initiated by Ghibli’s court producer, Toshio Suzuki, as part of a long-term technological experiment in which they would try out 3D computer animation, as that seems to be the dominant current trend. Hayao Miyazaki tried a combination of computer and hand-drawn animation in the short Boro the Caterpillar and his son Goró lent his patronage to the TV series Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter, which combined 3D models with a cell-shading visual whose sketches were created in the Ghibli studio. Goró Miyazaki then got the green light from the studio’s veterans for the feature-length Earwig and the Witch, but with a lower budget, as it would not be shown in cinemas, but would be only a special made-for-TV movie. The target medium could theoretically explain the shortcomings of the screenplay. The film gives the impression of being a television pilot and, instead of dramatic conciseness, it relies on an episodic nature and only basic outlines of the characters and their development and mutual dynamics. Unfortunately, that does not change the fact that the screenplay doesn’t work as a whole and it comes across as a very shoddy adaptation of the book by Diana Wynne Jones. Whereas the amazing Howl’s Moving Castle drew out the essence of its source material by the same author and further developed it, Earwig and the Witch tries to get by with merely scratching the surface of the book’s basic concept. Paradoxically, the film’s end credits, where the further development of the characters and their lives together are shown in drawings (similar to what Katsuhiro Otomo did in Steamboy, for example), are more fun and bring out more emotion than the whole preceding story. However, the main drawback of the film consists in the 3D computer animation, or rather in the idea that viewers would want to watch something that was intended from the beginning to be a technological test. This assumption points out the overall outdatedness and confused nature of the project, which attempts to return to times long ago when everyone excitedly watched the leaps and bounds made by early computer animation in Pixar’s shorts. In Earwig and the Witch, unfortunately, Ghibli relates its level of animation, or rather shading textures, physics and virtual lighting, to those wooden years. Whereas the competition took its first CGI baby steps a long time ago, Ghibli is just now attempting its first hesitant steps and going back to the beginning on the level of the first Toy Story, but unfortunately without a sufficient degree of self-reflection. At Pixar, they were aware of the limits of the technology of that time and therefore came up with a story from the lives of plastic toys. At Ghibli, they immediately attempted to find out if they could, with their limited possibilities, create the equivalent of their renowned animated films with human and fantastical characters. Unfortunately, the result looks like someone shot a variation of Ghibli films with action figures. It is necessary to acknowledge that in its constituent elements, particularly in the expressive movements of the figures and the design of the characters and exteriors, the film asserts its origins and demonstrates the creative abilities of the animators, though it lags behind technologically. When Hayao Miyazaki reportedly compared Earwig and the Witch to Pixar, he meant Pixar’s early days. As previously mentioned, the main problem with the film consists in the fact that viewers do not expect a mere animation demo, especially not one that is technologically underdeveloped in comparison with the current mainstream standard. The sad result is that Ghibli, which embodied the global peak of feature-length animated films and was a role model for all other animators, is presenting to the audience a half-retro work that can stand up to comparisons with the antediluvian stage of computer animation, which has long since moved on from generic visuals and plastic textures and, in projects such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (2020), demonstrates a broad new scope of technological possibilities that the veterans evidently haven’t even dreamed of. (15.02.2021) (weniger) (mehr)