Unconventional love stories from animator Sawako Kabuki

“Love is a wonderful thing that colours our life, but love is not always visible and sometimes is vague and ephemeral,” Tokyo-based Sawako Kabuki notes sagely. Her latest animation, Ici, là et partout, “is filled with love and shows the state of being carried away by love,” although not using the visual tropes you’d usually expect to accompany a tale of blossoming romance.

Ici, là et partout is the latest in a growing queue of surreal animations with questionable storylines by the Japanese creative. The animator and illustrator, who graduated in graphic design from Tama Art University, is now using her skills to narrate the universal experience of heartbreak. “It is almost impossible to understand each other completely even when a couple love each other very very much and sometimes it causes heartbreak,” she explains. “I expressed the vanity of such a heartbreaking love using a ceaseless metamorphosis technique [in Ici, là et partout. By the way, when this film was completed, my ex-boyfriend had dumped me.”

And as for the slightly haunting track that accompanies the film, it’s thanks to Sawako’s friends. “My friend’s band Le Petit Terezes’s made this song,” she says. “Agatha Morita, the leader of the band, sent me this song on my birthday.” Agatha is also the man behind the song which backgrounds the animation Cockroach Calisthenics (below), which is perhaps best left unexplained.