Although Korean painting is not well known in the west, it has held an important place in Korea from a very early date. One of the difficulties in studying Korean art is that conflict which has been so much a feature of life on the Korean peninsula through the ages has destroyed so much of what certainly existed in prior periods. Additionally, invasion and conquest has resulted in much of the best of what remained after battle being removed to other countries where it is more difficult to study and relate it to other Korean developments.

 

Despite these complications in the study of Korean art, Korean art is fascinating because although it has been deeply influenced by Chinese art, the most productive periods in terms of art often do not coincide between the two countries. This can be particularly noted in Koguryo wall paintings, Buddhist paintings of the Kayo period, landscape painting in the first portion of the Chosen dynasty and the landscapes painted of Korean scenes in the eighteenth century. Korean painting therefore was influenced by Chinese painting while still pursuing its own path. This resulted in different results and developments than that found on the mainland and give Korean art an interest all its own.

 

The history of Korean painting stretches back to the early murals painted on the walls of tombs during the fourth century, and continues to the present, in which a great number of Korean artists keep the styles and forms of the traditional artists alive, blend the traditional styles with modern motifs, or paint in a completely modern style. Just as today, painters from many countries study abroad to learn the styles of other countries master's or their traditions, so did the early Korean painters travel abroad to study the works of those that were considered the masters. In the fourth century, China was considered, both by itself, as well as by many Asian countries under its influence, to be the center of the universe. As such, many Korean painters were sent to China to learn modern Chinese painting styles. What they learned influenced not only the paintings of Korea, but also the art of Japan, as many Korean artisans migrated to Japan.

 

As can be seen by the preceding short introduction, Korean painting although on the face adhering to Chinese models developed a clear Korean tradition in painting that yielded numerous unique developments. As Korea proceeded into the 20th Century, Korean artists could look back on a tradition of painting that yielded many Korean forms and renderings of older more traditional techniques and subjects.

 

History of Korean Paintings

The historty of Korean painting stretches back to the early murals painted on the walls of tombs during the fourth century, and continues to the present, in which a great number of Korean artitis keep the styles and forms of the traditional artists alive, blend the traditonal styles with modern motifs, or paint in a completely modern style. Just as today, painters from many countries study abroad to learn the styles of other countries master's or their traditions, so did the early Korean painters travel abroad to study the works of those that were considered the masters. In the fourth century, China was considered, both by itself, as well as by many Asian countries under its influence, to be the center of the universe. As such, many Korean painters were sent to China to learn modern Chinese painting styles. What they learned influenced not only the paintings of Korean, but also the art of Japan, as many Korean artists migrated to Japan. 

Types of Korean Paintings

Landscape


Often called the realistic landscape school, the practice of painting landscape based on actual scenes became more popular during the mid-Chosun period. During this time, many painters traveled the countryside in search of beautiful scenery to paint.

 

Genre

At the same time as interest in realistic landscape surged, so did the practice of painting the realistic scenes of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Genre painting, as this has come to be called, is the most uniquely Korean of all the painting styles and gives us a historic look into the daily lives of the people of the Chosun period. Some of the most notable of the genre painters were Kim Hong-do (1745-1818) who left a large collection of paintings portraying many different scenes from Korea's past in vivd colors (see some of his paintings here). Another of the greatest genrs painters was Shin Yun-bok (1758- ), who's paintings often risque scenes were both romantic and sensual (see some of his paintings here).

 

Minhwa

Minhwa, or folk paintings are by far the most interesting of the traditional Korean paintings. The characteristics of Minhwa paintings are that they were all painted by unknown artists, and all were painted near the end of, or after the Chosun period. Though many of them appear rather childish, and unrefined, quite display great painting skill. Under the Minhwa category of paintings are many sub-categories. In brief they are:

Landscape Paintings, Magpies and Tigers, Flowers and Birds, Peonies, Lotus Flowers, The Ten Longevity Symbols, Dragons, Paintings of Tiger Hide, Fish and Crabs, Manchurian Hunting Scenes, One Hundred Children, Paintings of the Life Circle, Bookcases and Scholars' Rooms, Shamanistic Deities.

Spring Wish and Special Thanks to Lovely and Friendly People Around Here

Miyazawa Yukino is used to being the center of attention. For years she has played the role of the model student: humble, and scholastically and athletically superior to others. Though idolized by her peers, she is nevertheless left without any friends because of the facade she plays out on a daily basis. Only her family knows that she is a self-serving, ambitious workaholic who thrives off of the adoration from others. Her plan was turning for the best, that is until a young man named Arima Souichirou proves to be her equal as a student... and thus becomes her rival. Being the vindictive person that helped her make it to the top, she sets on a path of destruction with Arima being her chosen target.

Unlike a Gainax anime, there are no mecha battles nor any overt biblical references. Like a Gainax anime, there exists only a provocative psychological and sociological study in its purest form... from a male and female perspective. Who better to undertake such a daunting task of forming a coherent product out of seemingly random braincandy than the master of obtuse anime himself Anno Hideaki, the man behind Neon Genesis Evangelion and a card-carrying member of the original Honneamise bratpack?

She says: I love the extremely stimulating, intelligent dialogue and monologue! Anno-san doesn't resort to the usual plot tactic of "convenient idiocy" to move things along; everyone in this anime is smart and very self-aware. Splashes of beautiful manga-style pencil sketches (showing hints of FlCl) are simple yet elegant; a picture does say a thousand words! All this and I caught myself humming to the catchy music for hours after the show was over.

He says: Sometimes all that deep, psychological introspection needs a good counterbalance, and we have that with timely, hilarious comedy! That's the good thing about His and Her Circumstances; it's an exercise in extremes. Super deformity are the buzzwords for the day and is used generously throughout to convey emotion. Backtracking to the subject of dialogue: what are words on paper without a talented voice crew to pull it off? Congratulations to Enomoto Atsuko for a brilliant job portraying Miyazawa Yukino and the spunky Shintani Mayumi (Haruko from FlCl) as the lovably demented Shibahime Tsubasa.

They say: The second half of this series is plagued by one too many summary episodes and an ending that was a tad forced because the anime had finally caught up with the manga. His and Her Circumstances is about people dealing with others and themselves. It's truly one of a kind and is not to be missed!

  There are way too many "top ten anime" lists on the Internet, and their composition is heavily influenced by what anime are en vogue at the moment. All too often, heavily hyped series make the top for a few weeks, only to fade back into oblivion when the Next Big Thing comes up. I'm not a big fan of top ten lists for that reason; however, His and Her Circumstances belongs on the top spot of the "best shoujo romance anime" list.

Some have argued that Tsuda Masami's wonderfully lively and energetic manga translates into anime form almost by itself; however, it's the special touch that Gainax added to the production that make this series so adorable. Not only is the plot a beautifully composed mixture of sincere romance, real-life complications and genuinely funny humor, the directing also does its best to give each and every scene the mood needed to work. In the course of a single episode, you can experience joy, hate, sadness, anger, love and melancholy, and the transition won't feel forced at all. It's the lovable and original cast of characters (and their wonderful seiyuu), like the ambitious Miyazawa Yukino, that carry the mood. But it would all be for naught without the director's touch. Of course, you can't talk about a Gainax anime without mentioning how they managed to go overbudget yet again... only that this time, they managed to turn this to their advantage. Many of the later episodes feature long stills, half-finished pencil drawings and even stick figure animation, but the directing makes everything look as though it were intended in an artistic way. Gainax has done the impossible and turned a flaw into an asset here, at least most of the time.

Unfortunately, the artistry couldn't cover up all of the budget cuts, it seems, as sometimes large parts of the episodes consists of re-caps. It's not as bad as what Studio Bones did with Wolf's Rain, but one-and-a-half episodes in the middle of the series are nothing but "the story so far." After that, an annoyingly high amount time is wasted during the later episodes to sum up the plot over and over again. My finger was dangerously close to the fast-forward button not once but a few times, and this is not a good sign. Still, His and Her Circumstances is utterly and thoughly enjoyable, and there would be no real arguments against recommending it wholeheartedly to everybody... if it weren't unfinished. The fact that everything ends without any conclusion to any of the several sub plots, and even worse, right after starting a new one, immensely hurts the otherwise splendid impression this anime will make on new viewers. There won't be a second season, as Tsuda Masami apparently wasn't pleased with the work Gainax did.

His and Her Circumstances has everything a great romantic drama needs, and the additional quirky humor makes every single minute of it enjoyable and memorable. It's hardly a flawless series with its budget problems and missing conclusion, but strangely, they don't distract from the overall enjoyment at all. As a friend of mine put it when he first introduced me to this anime: His and Her Circumstances is the best obviously flawed anime you're ever going to see.

 

Alternative title:

Entre Elle & Lui (French)

Hans och Hennes Omständigheter (Swedish)

Kare Kano

Kare Kano: Mein Geheimnis,dein Geheimnis (German)

Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (Japanese)

Las circunstancias de él y ella (Spanish)

Le situazioni di lui & lei (Italian)

Tales at North Hills High

彼氏彼女の事情 (Japanese)

그 남자! 그 여자! (Korean)

 

 CD Box of His&Her Circumstances:

                  Strongly Recommendated: 天使のゆびきり(フルsize)    天使のゆびきり(TV Size)    
[ You may try Kugoo to download its MP3 music or ask me for it with your own E-mail adress left in comment area. ]

When Oliver Twist first began in serialized form in the monthy magazine Bentley's Miscellany in 1837, its subtitle was "The Parish Boy's Progress." For the first few installments, Dickens' intention was to describe for his readers what it was like to be a "Parish boy" in the years following the passing of the new Poor Law Act of 1834. Dickens would have seen the bill being hotly debated when he was a parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle, and he would continue to attack it in his fiction and journalism for the rest of his life.

Prior to 1834, poor workers were given a tiny sum, or "dole," by their parish to keep them from starvation on their fixed agricultural wages. It was intended as emergency funds to tide people over until they could get on their feet again. The infirm and unemployable were also the responsibility of each parish. While there were many problems in the old system that the new legislation was intended to redress, many people felt that the cure was much worse than the disease. The new act designed to prevent idle people from living off the community, grouped parishes together into "poor law unions" and established "workhouses" (which became known as "unions"); here, people with no other home or means of support were housed and put to work for the parish.

"That is the social background to the story of Oliver Twist." says Roman Polanski."London in that period was the biggest city in the world and it was developing with incredible speed. It had massed of people drifting to the city from course, it's incomparable with today's London or today's Paris, but if you think of cities like Bombay or Bangkok, they still have a number of poor children. An orphan boy in a developing country always seems the same and always meets the same destiny."

Polanski turned to his Academy Award-winning Pianist screenwriter Ronald Harwood to turn Oliver Twist into a screenplay, an idea which Harwood took to instantly. Harwood calls Dickens"the first real social writer of his time, The workhouses, the way the poor were treated, the way orphans were treated, that's what inspired him." Dickens himself came from a poor famliy and he worked in a blacking factory when he was a child because they needed money. There's a sequence in the film in which the boys are made to pick oakum the fibers of a rope that had worn so you could reues the rope. It was the most awful, painful, agonizing, filthy work, and they put kids and convies in prison to it. Dickens knew all about these things."

Kingsley sees Polanski's new film is "a gift to that next generation who are starved of any kind of historical depth and historical density. The children of Dickens' London were alcoholics and prostitutes. Whole streets were given away to brothels. Child abuse, child prostitution and murder were probably equivalent to the street kids in Rio de Janeiro today and the life expectancy was about the same."

Kingsley adds, "What we don't have today is a Charles Dickens who will say come over here, go round that corner, there are three kids who are playing truant and sniffing glue and one of them will be dead by the afternoon!" That is what Dickens did. He actually had the guts. Today you have a lot of posturing and speech-making, but noboady is answerable to anybody. We can get away with stuff but nobody says "This is enough." So Roman looks at how we continue to squander the great wealth of children and he shows us that through his perception of Charles Dickens."

What fascinates Harwood about Oliver Twist is how Dickens dramatizes and deals with every level of Englsih society of the time in a way both eye-opening and entertaining."In Oliver Twist it starts at the lowest level, in the workhouses, with pompous officials like the Beadle, who are violently cruel to the poor kids. And then he slowly works his way up. There's the undertaker, then he escapes to London and falls in among thieves. Then he meets Mr. Brownlow and is introduced to police society before being dragged back to the savage world of Fagin and Bill Sykes, Dickens does that better than anybody. He tells you what it was like to be alive then which fiction can do much better than non-fiction."

To Harwood, there's a direct link between the kind of mesmerizing yarn-spinning Dickens did and the incredible legacy of Polanski's cincmatic storytelling. "Dickens was also a great actor, who filled out vast halls doing readings from his novels. People were spellbound by it. Roman has that quality of storytelling also. You get Roman to tell you the story of Oliver Twist and he would tell it exactly as Dickens told it and probably invent a few things as he went along."

When it came to adapting the novel, the challenge was retaining the book's scope of socially pungent character its complex patchwork of the needy, the seedy and the greedy -- without diminishing the propulsive plotting Dickens fans
love.

Says Polanski, "The book is dense and very long and meanders, since it was a period when writers wrote for magazines or papers in daily, weekly or monthly instalments. So the novels of that period don't have the rigid construction which is required for a motion picture. Our work on the adaptation consisted mainly in keeping the spirit of the book with scenes and characters ntouched, but climinating the subplots so we could stick to the main plot. We planned it like a Greek tragedy with three acts."

Harwood, fresh off his Academy Award for adapting The Pianist into a wrenching film, wasn't daunted by the task of winning a massive book into a two-hour film. "It's a driving narrative." Says Harwood. "The great genius of Dickens is the storytelling power he has. What happens next? And then? It's breathtaking."

Producer Alain Sarde remarks that although Oliver Twist is a period piece, it has contemporary overtones. "Roman wanted to make a film that wound interest an andience to feel that they are living in London at that time and involved with the adventures of his young boys."