Jumping

Even at the twilight of his life and career, the legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka continued to busy himself with several circulating manga publications, as well as dabbling in animation as a hobby. In fact, there have been accounts of him going out of his way to fund projects with money from his own pocket. One of those instances is with Jumping, Tezuka’s entry for the 1984 Animafest Zagreb, a prestigious animated film festival organized by the International Animated Film Association or ASIFA.

Back in 1981, Tezuka enlisted the help of animator Junji Kobayashi, who famously worked on the ambitious animated cityscape scene in Hi no Tori 2772, also a film by Tezuka. Jumping is envisioned to be a grand expansion of that scene—a continuous, fluid short of a child who jumps, and jumps, and jumps until he reaches clouds, skyscrapers, forests, and normally unreachable areas, while subtly infusing outlooks on society represented by quick shots of the environments he jumps to. With limited technology, Kobayashi had to think out of the box to be able to acquire reference shots for the short. Unlike Hi no Tori 2772 where he and the animation staff were able to create a model of the futuristic city within the Tezuka Pro office hallway, the sheer scale of Tezuka’s storyboard had led to him hopping on similar roads to imitate the movement, as well as riding on a Cessna plane to take the aerial shots necessary. The result was a six-minute visual wonder consisting of approximately 4,000 cuts (!) made over the course of a two-and-a-half-year long production period.

While admittedly not consistently fluid (and at times possibly nauseating), the formidable scope within this short, as well as the fact that this work is produced without any reliance on CGI, is nothing short of inspiring. Within a short amount of time Tezuka crams in as much visual information as possible through each jump, not being overbearing on its gradual shift to disturbing imagery while imbuing in as much meaning as he can. Unsurprisingly, Tezuka would go on and win the Zagreb award, in fact being the first Japanese to ever do so, and the only one alongside Koji Yamamura to win it to this day.

Jumping is possibly one of Tezuka’s most nuanced and definitive works. Kobayashi, of course, also deserves recognition for undertaking in this monumental project. This film is one of the many testaments that display the man’s infectious passion for the medium that continues to be felt within the industry beyond his death.