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Music

Enter a Pop Wonderland in This Hand-Painted Music Video

In the video for “Sukitte nandarou...namida,” Japanese pop star Yuki and animator ShiShi Yamazaki shapeshift in surreal watercolors.
Screencaps via the author

This article contains adult content. 

If ever there were a one-woman artistic wrecking crew, it would be Tokyo-based artist ShiShi Yamazaki. When she’s not hand-drawing animated films (many of them in gouache), she’s producing paintings, collages, prints, and installations. Yamazaki often bounces back and forth between commercial and gallery work, and she doesn’t shy away from any intersections of the two.

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These tendencies are on full display in Yamazaki’s animated music video for iconic Japanese singer YUKI's “Sukitte nandarou…namida.” It’s a visual blend of the music industry’s fixation on pop star posturing and Japan’s culture of incredibly patient, hand-painted animation.

Typical for a Yamazaki work, the music video features gouache as the medium, but it’s not the watercolor flourishes that most impress—it’s the way the objects, including Yuki and Yamazaki herself, within the frame are set in motion. They zoom in and out, becoming abstractions one second, then identifiable shapes the next.

YUKI 『好きってなんだろう・・・涙』/ YUKI "Sukitte nandarou…namida" Music Video from ShiShi Yamazaki on Vimeo.

Click here to see more of ShiShi Yamazaki’s work.

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