Jumping

Genre: Comedy
Format: 1 Movie
Allegiance: Tezuka Productions
Director: Tezuka Osamu
Vintage: 1984
Intelligence Agency Report by: The Macaque
A six minute short clip shown through the eyes of a girl (or possibly a young boy), based on jumping. The main character, who’s never shown in this experimental clip, is jumping higher and higher, through forests and cities, only to end up on the same country road where she (or he) started.

Field Agent Report by: The Macaque
Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio
6.00
4.00
8.00
7.75
6.00
Overall 6.00
(not an average)

Jumping is another one of Tezuka’s experimental shorts, focusing this time on the use of some fun perspectives. It’s only six minutes long, so even if it lacks a plot, it’s still quite refreshing to watch especially as an in-betweener in longer anime marathons.

Jumping doesn’t really have any other point besides showing what the world looks like through the eyes of a person with a super-pogo-stick. Most of the fun comes from the various landing spots where you catch a short glimpse of some quite unusual situations. Without giving away too much, the movie has it’s high point in a certain scene of brief nudity,

However, I won’t give Jumping a higher grade than this, although I do not regret watching it. It’s a fun concept, but definitely not a good basis for a longer movie. Since it’s more of an animation experiment, you should treat it as such. Quite strange, by the way, that a six minute short would have five directors. Go figure.

Tezuka’s Jumping was released on video during The Second Image Software Awards in 1988, together with a series of experimental flicks by other directors for people who couldn’t attend the award ceremony. Among other experimental Tezuka shorts which also found their way onto the market this way, Jumping is nowadays considered to be an ineffaceable part of Japanese animation history.