Nova Seed
Director ~ Nick DiLiberto
2016, Japan-Canada
Writers ~ Joe DiLibertoNick DiLiberto
Stars ~ Joe DiLiberto, Nick DiLiberto, Shawn Donovan
With a nonsensical, unrelated tagline, ‘Nova Seed’s story is the kind of thing derived from sci-fi pulp of influences like ‘Heavy Metal’ or ‘Métal hurlant’. That is, it has juvenile sensibility in that you have a mute brute-saviour lion-man mutant, a power-source that’s a naked woman without agency, a bum-chin gladiator, and a bad guy called Mindskull (I mean…). But the narrative tears along, benefiting from the shorter runtime, is mostly action set-pieces at a steady jog, stays terse and doesn’t get bogged down in backstory. There’s no need to engage brain as the story wholly honours tropes in a heady and joyous nostalgic recreation of its influences – the vibe of 80s kids cartoons and Bakshi are evident. There is no anime-like insistence on its own superficial emotional weight through melodrama.
It is reminiscent of doodles on a genre-crazy teen’s pad, where the world-building is informed by tropes. And this doodle-like vibe is a chief pleasure. This is predominantly the work of Nick DiLiberto, his brother Joe and some friends, and for that, it’s impressive. The animation goes from the simplistic character design to dense art design, shimmering a little like ‘Roobard and Custard’; but there is also excellent composition and fluid image movement, and similarly the colour-scheme goes from felt-tip bright to more subtle (for example, torchlight crossing scattered debris). Some 60,000 hand-drawn frames; 4 years in the making.
Arena! A dogfight in the sky! The bad guy’s lair! There’s always something to entertain and there’s an obvious wealth of love gone into this; the details on the craft and decor – cyberpunky and junky – are a highlight (the nose-boned native more questionable). The most out-there and amateurish element is the sound design, which sounds like it was improvised and recorded on an old tape recorder: even electronics and crashes are vocalised (“beepbeepboop! BFFFFTtTt!!”). All this could have obviously been recorder slicker – the pumping contemporary electronic music and some sound effects are clear and dominant to demonstrate this – and yet even this uneven quality adds to the kids-at-play D.I.Y. ambiance, however crude.
And ultimately, it’s this built-from-scratch aesthetic mashed-up with its obvious filmmaking accomplishments, and the ambition of making it predominantly action-centred, that make it so winning and entertaining, overcoming any deficiencies, intended or otherwise.
