On December the 1st 2017, I watched a movie called “Kubo and the Two Strings”. It is a 3D stop-motion animated movie and if you like such a type of movies, for example “The Nightmare Before Christmas” or Jan Švankmajer’s films, you can enjoy it in relaxed mood, not concentrating to analyze it but watching it as if it is a daydream. The cultural expressions of the movie are inspired by medieval Japan (but in many parts from Edo period or ancient Japan), though they are slightly different from actual culture in that age, and you may notice “Kubo” is used as first name basis, despite it is a surname in reality. Storyline is very modern Westernized, because in real Japan in that age humanity was much crueler and full of scorn. However, you can enjoy beautiful stop-motion of origamis as expected.
This story is a fairy tale from the view of a child, not emphasizing actual nature of the world systematically (you can notice it explicitly at last), though there were a lot of similes and metaphors incorporated in the story. That’s why I called it as a daydream. It was good to hear a song from George Harrison two days after the day of his death anniversary.
I also noticed that the face of last monster appeared looked like what I’ve seen in my nightmare after I posted a tweet for Arai-san on October the 10th 2017. However, in the dream the monster was appeared with reality, not like a deformed creature in the movie, and by far fearful for most human beings, far beyond the monsters appeared in Guillermo del Toro’s movie. It first appeared as a woman in purplish grey spearing to me in dark. Then the purplish grey vanished into the air and the horrific nature became apparent. But soon after that, the monster also vanished into the air and I woke up. The detailed expression in my dream is sometimes far beyond what I can do by drawing or making clay figures by myself. Similar thing also happened in Japanese manga “The witch in the end of the world（世界の終わりの魔法使い）”, when I saw a witch of very similar appearance about 20 years before the publication of the manga.
