Japanese Student Film ‘Yapolaponky’ Is Playful, Thought-Provoking, And Emotionally Resonant
For those who didn’t catch it at Annecy, the Japanese student film Yapolaponky is also available online (watch below) or can be seen theatrically next week at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
Yapolaponky is beautifully animated using digital paint and rotoscope techniques and features a minimalist guitar soundtrack, adding to its gentle strangeness. The story is, on the surface, simple: a man who encounters a strange creature in a field. They quickly become friends and embark on a series of playful adventures.
It’s an enjoyable piece of eccentricity, open to various interpretations. On the one hand, it can be seen as a celebration of friendship, life, and the joy of living in the moment. On the other hand, the opening and closing scenes of a car driving along a road suggest a deeper, more poignant narrative. Is everything unfolding in the mind of a child, either on the way to or returning from the funeral of the man in the field? Perhaps what we see is an imagined afterlife of the child’s father.
However you want to interpret it, Yapolaponky is a playful, thought-provoking, and emotionally resonant work.
Tokyo-born Kihara graduated from the graphic design course of Tama Art University in 2023. He is currently enrolled in the graphic design course of the Graduate School of Art and Design at Tama Art University. His other films include Ryota (2022) and Tomoya! (2023).
