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Crayon Shin-chan is occasionally cited as the Japanese parallel to The Simpsons, but, in fact, creator Shunji Sonoyama's 1976 TV anime Hana no Kakarichou is a far stronger parallel and predecessor. Unlike 1974’s Dame Oyaji in which the father is henpecked and always abused, or 1989’s Kariage-kun in which the salaryman protagonist is an unrepentant a*shole to everyone around him, the protagonist of Hana no Kakarichou, Ayanoroji Mashumaro, simply suffers through the daily struggles of routine adult life with co-workers who tease but like him. And he maintains a loving & sexually active home life with his dear wife. Tonally Hana no Kakarichou feels a ... bit like a predecessor for George Akiyama's Koiko no Mainichi. In many respects, to create Hana no Kakarichou, Sonoyama simply transitioned the setting of his prehistoric slice-of-life stories Hajime Ningen Gon & Hajime Ningen Giatrus to 1970s “modern day” Tokyo. So the character design, typical of Sonoyama’s style, may put off viewers used to contemporary, more realistic aesthetics, but the design works well as cartoon exaggeration to emphasize basic characteristics. Viewers unused to more freewheeling vintage anime may also be surprised by how sexually frank and bold this show is.

Independent animator Kaichi Sato & Studio Deen’s CG short film Yuukai Anna will inevitably polarize viewers depending partially on viewers’ familiarity with cinema nostalgia. The movie contains several references to the 1967 classic film The Graduate but moreover is inspired by the French New Wave. The movie seeks to condense and elevate a chic, aloof, existential coolness that directors including Truffaut, Godard, and Chabrol propagated. The entire point of the short film is cinema for the sake of cinema. Shots are deliberately composed with an emphasis on visual appearance and costume design, on color theme, and editing. The narrative is abstract, revolving around the uncertainty ... of the nature and longevity of love and loneliness. Like the films of the French New Wave, the movie is meant to be taken as an atmospheric and aesthetic experience more than as a literal, realistic narrative. The use of CG further elevates the film into the realm of stylistic abstraction in which order and sameness, represented by the ex-girlfriends, the police, and the blind, is contrasted with rebellion and revolution in the form of Anna. And the two forces are manipulated by the Professor who visually appears uniform with the former group but psychologically sides with the later forces.