Koji Yamamura Launches Karo & Piyobpt Web Manga

Oscar-nominated director Koji Yamamura has launched a web manga titled Karo & Piyobpt on Friday. The animator is releasing the “silent manga” style series on Twitter and Instagram.

The manga features characters from his 1992 anime shorts on the Puchi Kurei (Petit Clay) program. His three shorts on Puchi Kurei ran on NHK in December 1992. The anime shorts were created with a combination of clay animation and three-dimensional props along with traditional cel animation.

Yamamura is a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts‘ Graduate School of Film and New Media, and an independent animator best known for his short films. He received an Academy Award nod in 2003 for his short “Mt. Head,” although he did not win.

Yamamura’s Dozens of Norths (Ikuta no Kita) anime film won the Contrechamp award at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2022. The film also won the Grand Prize for Feature Animation at that year’s The Ottawa International Film Festival (OIAF) and the Jury Prize in the International Competition for Feature Films at the Buncheon International Animation Festival .

The Japanese government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs awarded Yamamura the Cabinet Minister Award in the media fine arts category of the “Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Fine Arts Recommendation Awards” in 2017. The 16th Biennial of Animation Bratislava event in Slovakia awarded animator Yamamura the Prix Klingsor, a lifetime achievement award presented to “a significant personality whose works perfectly connect artistic and film qualities and reach children’s viewers, in 2022.

Yamamura’s other award-winning and nominated shorts include “Muybridge’s Strings,” “A Country Doctor,” “Satie’s Parade,” and “Notes on Monstropedia.” Yamamura himself received the Kawakita Award in 2012.

Yamamura has completed his upcoming virtual reality anime short “My Inner Ear Quartet” (“Mimi ni Sumu Mono”). The anime will be in Japanese and English is currently is in the process of submission to film festival competitions inside and outside Japan.

Thanks to Jordan Scott for the news tip.

Sources: Karo & Piyobpt’s Twitter account and Instagram account