Naoko Yamada is a Japanese film director, famous for directing anime series such as K-On!, and A Silent Voice. Not only winning multiple awards for her work, but she has also become world renowned for her stylistic choices in anime.
Yamada is a self-described observer of the world. She tends to watch people and study how they act, how they belong in the setting they’re living in. Answering a question on why Yamada uses legs as a visual motif in her work, she explained “It might sound awkward, but when you’re nervous, you move your legs around. I think it would be nice to express emotion like that.”
It is Yamada’s unique ability to use legs as a conceptual framework to convey the spectrum of human emotions, which makes them one of her defining traits. She uses legs to deconstruct a character’s psyche, showing how they feel by positioning them in such a way. Yamada strives to convey the small nuances that matter to us: the subtleties in our relationship with others, the difficulties in moving on, and the immense pain in mourning.
“It’s very important to me to treat the characters as individual people.” In Yamada’s words, legs represent the playfulness of youth, the anxiety of adulthood, and the misery of ageing. Legs back away, walk confidently, walk meekly. Legs are full of emotion. They participate in every action we do. As subconscious products of our reflexes, they reveal the truth that our words alone cannot. These factors show power and uncertainty, and they allow us to see insecurities and power dynamics from an outside perspective. It is through her intuition and understanding of human subtleties that Yamada builds a world where meaning can be expressed as translingual, allowing us to peer into the depths of each character.
Personally, Yamada’s smart use of legs to portray emotion of the characters really struck me deeply. My first impression of the show she first directed, K-On!, was that it really didn’t have any meaning. As I watched more and more episodes, I realised that the message K-On! tried to convey was to “enjoy the little things in life”. Watching it around the time when I graduated secondary school, the way the characters behaved, along with Yamada’s plotline and artistic direction, really struck me emotionally. Yamada’s use of legs to add further realism to the show’s characters really made it seem that I was having a conversation with a real person; a simple show seeming like real life. Yamada’s one technique has led to many others like me to fall in love with shows that has provided us support at one point in our life, and I’ll forever be grateful for her brilliance.
Sources:
kVin. (2016, November 7). Tamako Love Story Stage Greeting — Naoko Yamada x Ryousuke Takahashi. SAKUGABLOG. https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2016/11/07/tamako-love-story-stage-greeting-naoko-yamada-ryousuke-takahashi/
Harding, D. (2019, November 29). Celebrating Kyoto Animation’s Naoko Yamada’s Growth as a Director. Crunchyroll. https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2019/11/28/celebrating-kyoto-animations-naoko-yamadas-growth-as-a-director
Amritansu, A. (2020, August 23). A Silent Voice and Not-So-Silent Legs. Medium. https://anime-ashoka.medium.com/a-silent-voice-and-not-so-silent-legs-1c78e230e145#:~:text=Yamada%20uses%20lower%20extremities%20to,the%20way%20she%20tells%20stories
Okimoto, S. (2015, January 31). Tamako Love Story/Director Naoko Yamada interview: Media Arts Festival ver. Ultimatemgax. https://ultimatemegax.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/tamako-love-storydirector-naoko-yamada-interview-media-arts-festival-ver/
Images:
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