By Nickie Wang/ Manila Standard Today
LaMB premieres 8 p.m. tonight. It is the first multi-platform, multi-disciplinary, and multi-media production for online, mobile and television produced by Animax.
This $6-million animated film, the biggest Animax original production, is also the channel’s first production in High Definition to be broadcast across several countries. The story is inspired by the script submitted by Filipino amateur writer Carmelo Juinio to the Animax Awards 2007 pan-Asia scriptwriting contest.
Juinio’s entry entitled Laminated Woman: To the Sand Planet Cerra, won in the Philippine leg of the competition and was sent to the regional competition in Japan where it won second prize.
“I lost in the finals in Japan. I massively missed on the fact that I do not have a strong child character in the script. I think all animés should have a strong child character even if it is just a sidekick. Most animés are really about kids,” Carmelo Junio told us before the special screening of the full-length animated movie.
Laminated Woman lost out to the competition winner Takane’s Bike written by Hayato Takamaga from Japan.
According to Animax, Juinio’s script impressed Japanese industry experts with its dark beauty and soulful depth, and was accorded a Special Award recognition for his amazing talent. Handpicked from over 3,000 entries across Asia, LaMB is centered on the life of a woman in a laminated suit.
“Japanese people have a peculiar way of shortening long words. So from laminated, they made it lamb,” the amateur writer said explaining how the title became LaMB from the original “Laminated Woman,” adding also that lamination is a system of virtual slavery that punishes convicts yet still makes them productive members of the society.
The writer’s meme
LaMB revolves around the story of two protagonists named Eve, a laminated woman or simply a LaMB, and Jack, a scientist who is on a mission to turn the unforgiving landscape of planet Cerra green.
“The real-life inspiration would be two people sitting in the same room, probably colleagues at work, they’re seated right across each other but they don’t communicate. It is the same thing here, but it is more extreme,” Juinio conveyed.
He added that a laminated person can barely speak nor make his own decisions. So the two protagonists are practically in the same room but they are not communicating until they discover something which is very Filipino, a communication tool which is equivalent to text messaging.
“My ideas are accidental; it’s opportunistic in the sense that for example the dinosaurs became extinct and the little furry creatures at that time evolved into large mammals and eventually into us, humans. So I guess it’s opportunism in a grand scale, mine is opportunism in a smaller scale,” the writer related.
Juinio seemed awestricken seeing the animated film for the very first time. He believes that there were changes made in the script to adapt the story to other Asian audiences.
“I tried to control my emotional level because it’s bad for the health, it causes ulcer and all, you know. My excitement is actually gradual; it’s like gradually a rising hill. I’m not overly excited,” Juinio said before the screening.
Juinio, who proclaimed himself as a professional bum (a creative bum that is), said that the idea of the story has been with him all along. Something came to him at the turn of the century but it was only when the contest came around that he took opportunity to evolve the idea into something concrete.
“It came about through evolution, it was a very germ of an idea, I can’t remember what precisely it was but it was a very simple idea like a song in the night, I have this vision of two people holding hands and not touching,” Juinio concluded.
LaMB will have special encores on March 25 to 29 for the Part 1, and Part 2 will be broadcast on March 30. The animated movie also features French-Canadian band Simple Plan and the American band The Click Five. Both bands produced songs that serve as title tracks of the movie. Meanwhile, Hong Kong actress Josie Ho and Taiwan’s heartthrob Van Ness Wu are also part of the animated movie as voice actors of the main characters, Eve and Jack.
