mimio-Odyssey, Konoike Tomoko

Konoike Tomoko’s animated work mimio-odyssey evokes a fairytale, but it deliberately lacks a conventional, linear narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end. Konoike remarks that the absence of plot and narrative devices grants her work metaphorical force.

This animation centers on the white, plush fuzzball named mimio, who is a creature existing between innocence and evil, in a zone between humans and animals. As mimio wanders through an ancient forest, it is joined by a six-legged wolf and a knife-wielding fairy. The animation blends material from indigenous Japanese sources, such as noh drama and Shinto, the traditional religion of Japan, with modern-day imagery of cities and technology. The result is a world caught in circular time that dissolves distinctions between human civilization and the realm of nature.

Projected on a large, white, blank book, Konoike Tomoko’s animated work mimio-odyssey evokes a fairytale, but it purposely lacks a conventional narrative structure. Konoike remarks that the absence of plot and narrative devices grants her work metaphorical force. Joseph Campbell, the great modern thinker of mythology, observes: “Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words.”
The animation centers on the white, plush fuzzball mimio, a liminal entity that Konoike characterizes as “a being between innocent things and evil things, existing in a zone that cannot be distinguished between human and animal.” As mimio wanders through an ancient forest, it is joined by a six-legged wolf and a knife-wielding fairy. The animation blends material from indigenous Japanese sources, such as noh drama and the animistic traditions of Shinto, with modern-day imagery of cities and technology, resulting in a world caught in circular time that dissolves distinctions between human civilization and the realm of nature.