he must reconcile his aspirations with his reality through deliciously dangerous trial and error in a fast-paced, classically wacky animated short full of gags, attempted magic, and lots of flying shrimp.
his very first gig, but accidentally ends up in the restaurant next door to the theater! Jake is incredibly nervous with palpable excitement as he’s surrounded by lights, fire, pizzaz and---! Wait, Jake is now a teppanyaki chef?! His top hat was replaced with a chef’s hat, the audience is a lot smaller than he thought and are now bored and hungry diners. Well, the show must go on... Jake does his best to fumble through his magic tricks that almost translate to a teppanyaki show, but everything keeps going wrong! The last straw is when he tries to pull a bunny out of his hat, but ends up bringing out the pigtailed toddler who was sitting across from him, horrifying her mother. Defeated, Jake starts to wheel his cart away until he hears a *bing.* *Bing.* *Bing-bing-bing-b-b-b-bing!” It turns out the teenager sitting at his table has been livestreaming his performance and his online audience is going crazy! Infused with confidence, Jake tries again and puts on a spectacular show. What I like about this story is that it shows someone making the best of his circumstances while still putting his own spin on it with his own talents. It’s a lot of fun to imagine magic tricks translating to what we see in Benihana restaurants, with sleight of hand, visual gags, physicality, and a disastrous onion volcano. I’d love for the short to feature classic cartoon wackiness similar to the poppy squash and stretch we see from Sony, and the charm of 2D aesthetics rendered in 3D in the Peanuts Movie. The design is very kawaii-cute with chubby proportions and cel-shading that makes Ghibli food adorable and delicious at the same time. Overall, I hope this short will allow for artists to showcase the fun that can be achieved in animation and induce a lot of “cute-aggression” during production.
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