asian kung-fu generation / solanin

New single!

Cover art by Nakamura Yusuke

Solanin is the theme song for the movie of the same name starring Aoi Miyazaki, can’t wait to see that one!

Ikigami イキガミ

Over the week, I had a chance to watch Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit, a Japanese dystopian film that was released back in 2008. I came across this movie through my interest in Matsuda Shota, the actor who portrays the main character, Kengo Fujimoto. Matsuda is the son of the late Matsuda Yusaku, a famous Japanese actor who starred in Ridley Scott’s Black Rain. Sadly he passed away at the age of 40 from cancer. In his honour, his two sons Ryuhei and Shota also became actors and obviously have inherited their father’s talent.

Ikigami’s plot focuses on an alternate-reality of Japan, where the government has formed a law called the National Prosperity Law that sacrifices two to three people per day. Through this law, the government keeps a firm hold on its citizens by instilling the fear of death in them. As a result, work production rises and crime rates fall. The deaths are randomly selected everyday from people in the ages of 18-24. Fujimoto works for the bureau that is in charge of handing out letters to those who are chosen to be sacrificed, within 24 hours before their deaths they are free to do whatever the please besides crime. A pension is paid to the family of the deceased, however if they commit a crime before death, that pension goes towards the victim. The film is extremely similar to George Orwell’s 1984, as there are many shots through a surveillance camera. Those who disagree against the government are treated as thought criminals, and like 1984, they go through a process of brainwashing.

Though what interested me about this film, was not how the characters would cause a revolution through heroic actions. No, it didn’t go that direction at all.  It was a film about what a person would do if the inevitable faced them. We witness the lives of the victims, and their final decisions that they place before them. From a rising musician to a flawed son of politician to a caring older brother, the film has a tremendous human quality to it. Here is the trailer below:

CHALK! DIVA200 Website Project

Finally got the website up! Partnered up with Michael and went for a chalk expedition in Granville Island. For more info on the final project, click the link below.

CHALK! DIVA200 Project.

Small video that came along with it:

cole grifter

This August, I had the honor to design and do illustrations on a CD cover for a local B.C. band from Victoria, Cole Grifter. Michael, the bassist and my old boss just sent me a copy of the CD.

Here’s the actual design and logo:

the garden of everything

Another Yoko Kanno (Majority of the music I own is Yoko Kanno, so bear with me) production featuring her protegee, Maaya Sakamoto and Steve Conte from the New York Dolls (!!). The lyrics are written by the eccentric Tim Jensen, and it is a beautiful poem about parallels. The Garden of Everything was written for RahXephon, an animated series just as eccentric and surreal that deals with the theme of love in a post-apocalyptic world. Illustration and design was all by Yamada Akihiro, a artist previously posted.

The series still remains close to my heart through using music as a main element, and a universal tale told in a unconventional way.