I love Minna no Uta. That, La Princesse insensible and Ciné si occupy a special little trinity in my heart (The Herbs and Clangers being somewhat divided from those if only by being in my native tongue and the regular characters). But in particular… Well, La Princesse insensible benefits hugely from being projected rather than on the television screens it was made for; that or looking at production stills is the only way to get an idea of the detail of the background (and is particularly effective in those episodes which offer further background). But Minna no Uta, somehow, looses something when shown on a big screen and seen by many people in regimented lines of seats: I can say this from experience and I don't think it's down to physically "closer" shots (I use the parentheses as of course in drawn animation it's usually rather that drawings that are bigger) or that I've usually been seeing them for the second or third time when projected. It feels not really right, like tapping on something and expecting it to be solid but hearing it sound hollow, or the reverse; I put this down to a general mode of intimacy that mysteriously characterises Minna no Uta despite the revolving door of visual and musical contributors, a factor that should theoretically place Minna in a whole other world to Oliver Postgate and Michel Ocelot's very creator-led series (and much closer to the animated and experimental sequences of Sesame Street; how that series introduced at least one generation to experimental animation and non-narrative filmmaking is blog post in itself). Perhaps it's that an idea of what the "world of" Minna no Uta is has been collectively formed by the staff of earlier years of it, each new contribution simultaneously propagating that collectively-formed spirit while simultaneously forming, remoulding what that spirit is by the very nature of its addition to the cannon. It really feels to be television as chamber film.

Also, talking of Ciné si, Dragons et princesses, which still seems to be operating under that title, now has a roughly predicted broadcast period of June 1010 pencilled in, accorded to this on AFCA's weblog.