The horrific yet cute clay animation of Takena Nagao

Takena Nagao is a student animator who makes stop-motion movies where truly horrific things happen to cute, clay characters. I've never been a fan of that contrived, juvenile "Sick and Twisted" animated stuff (the Happy Tree Friends et al), but Takena's work - as disgusting as it is - deserves to be seen. It's well-designed and cleverly animated, with stories that are actually involving. Takena has a genuine flair for gore.

Here's Takena's clay zombie epic, Chainsaw Maid. There's no nudity or swearing, but the zombie violence makes it very not safe for work indeed.



I guess the big problem I have with a lot of the Sick and Twisted dorks is that they inflect horrific punishments on characters who have done nothing to deserve it, they take creepy, sadistic glee in watching their characters suffer. The Happy Tree Friends are just doing cute cartoon animal things, and then one of them falls into a wood chipper or something for no reason, and blood spurts out all over the place. Where's the fun in that? But in what I've seen of Takena's work, the violence is arguably just as excessive and gross, but it mostly happens to the bad guys, who are evil and frightening creatures who deserve whatever they get.

I have no interest in seeing a little girl chainsawed into bloody chunks... But I have no problem seeing a maid protecting that little girl from zombies, by chainsawing said zombies into bloody chunks. It's a dodgy distinction to make, but I'm sticking to it. (Unfortunately I think Chainsaw Maid's bloody work is far from over. Despite what seems like a happy ending, the little girl's father has been bitten by a zombie, and we all know what that means.)

Pussycat gets into even more iffy territory, telling a positively Tarantino-esque tale of cat girl who goes on a date with a pig who has serious issues, while a hungry wolf in a sharp suit skulks around outside. This one is incredibly twisted, and hard to defend. It's also pretty hard to stop watching, once you've started.