What if Up was an anime? It’s a question no one was really asking, but one we got the answer to thanks to Pixar’s recently released Pixar Remix video, which condenses the entirety of the beloved 2009 Pixar film into a cheery two-minute anime opening. And it’s awesome. Watch the Up anime opening below.
Pixar Remix: Up Anime Opening
Up just became a viable contender for Top 10 Anime OPs (OP being the industry word for the opening song/credits of an anime series, for all you non-weebs). Pixar has released a “Pixar Remix” of Up, the 2009 Oscar-winning film directed by Pete Docter, which imagines the film as an anime, condensing the entirety of the film’s heartbreaking, moving, exhilarating storyline into a fast-paced anime opening credits video, complete with 2D animation style and a peppy theme song.
In less than two minutes, we move through the sweet relationship between Carl and Ellie, which quickly takes a turn for the devastating, before we jump right to Carl flying away in his balloon-buoyed house, getting caught in the storm, and finding Paradise Falls. The animation style doesn’t resemble any particular anime, it just looks like Up has been put through an anime filter (though with greater precision than that). But the opening itself feels very much like an ode to popular shonen anime openings like Naruto, Bleach, and more recently, My Hero Academia. The only thing it’s missing is a voice singing along to the catchy tune, but maybe it’s fitting considering the famously wordless opening sequence of Up.
But there’s one specific reference most people could likely spot in the video: When Charles Muntz appears, the thing goes full Dragon Ball, with Charles and Carl battling with swords, enveloped by their own color-coded flames — until they both crack their backs.
It’s a really fun video, but mostly a reminder that I haven’t seen Up in a while. I totally forgot about that fight sequence, which was admittedly much more tame than the version we see in this anime-style video (it was probably the lasers and flames that caught me off guard).
This isn’t the first time Pixar has remixed one of its own films. The studio previously released a remix of Wall-E as a 16-bit video game, which suggests that there will be plenty more to come. But while this Up remix came as a nice surprise, the video could be a way of building up awareness of the upcoming Dug-centric spin-off series Dug Days, which will be released on Disney+ in fall 2021. Or maybe someone at Pixar has just gotten really into My Hero Academia lately.
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