Work of the Week: 30/07/21
Being totally honest, any beautifully crafted anime-style ad is likely to have instant fans among the LBB team. But this one? This week’s new Taco Bell spot isn’t just any beautifully crafted anime-style ad. It hits right on so many levels.
Firstly, there’s a legit reason for it borrowing from the tropes of Japanese animation. The 60-second mock trailer premiered during the opening ceremony for the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. So it's only fair to celebrate the host nation's contributions to animated filmmaking, right?
Then there’s the brilliance of the idea - a fake trailer for a classic mecha-robots-versus-giant-monsters action movie, complete with hyper-earnest lines about how everything is at stake. Except it’s about Nacho Fries. The writing from the team at Deutsch LA amps up this juxtaposition with exquisite lines like, “Either we fight together, or we fry alone”.
The animation itself, courtesy of director Luca Vitale (previously responsible for some concept work on an underrated LBB favourite for Travel Oregon) and the team at Psyop, is spot on too. It keys into tropes and clichés of not just anime broadly, but of the overblown, saving-the-world-from-evil mecha stories Japanese studios have been producing since the ‘70s. The robots look awesome, the heroes look badass and the fries look implausibly delicious.
That’s one stand-out piece of work in a week of strong creative work. The rest of our picks feature Danny DeVito and Awkwafina getting seriously surreal, Anna Friel indulging her evil side, Skittles at its wonderful weirdest, a terrifying taste of life with paralysis, Mardi Gras solidarity from a fast food chain and frenetic film craft from Oscar Hudson. Check it all out below.
