New Shiseido ad is an inclusive Halloween-themed love story

The Party Bus is a beautifully filmed romantic story of a teenage girl who finds herself choosing between Dracula and a samurai at a Halloween party. And like the brand’s previous, hugely popular, High School Girl? film, it comes with a twist

The new film is directed by Show Yanagisawa, who also helmed High School Girl? and sees a similar attention to detail in its craft, which mixes elegant live action shots with sweet scenes of stop-motion animation, as our main protagonist – who incidentally is dressed as Princess Kaguya – drifts into an imaginary world where her make up forms characters which dance across her face.

As with High School Girl?, the film was created by the in-house team at Shiseido.

The story of a girl torn between two suitors may be a familiar one but, according to the Creative Director Masato Kosukegawa, its inclusive approach is significant in Japan, which has rarely explored LGBTQ topics in its advertising.

The making-of film, featuring storyboards and revealing the inspirations behind the animations included in the ad, is below:

Credits:
Creative director: Masato Kosukegawa
Creatives: Aya Ueki, Mike Burns
Director: Show Yanagisawa