I love this visual technique. I appreciate that the New York Times is slowly moving the needle on digital storytelling with their different incarnations of "scrollytelling." This is a technique I feel like I haven't seen yet.

There seems to be at least 10 years history of people trying to create the "Ken Burns" effect in browser. This article seems to use it really well. It's a reminder how a much more interesting web experience is right in front of us, but we hardly ever see it because everything is just SEO optimized look alike designs. https://amp.dev/documentation/examples/visual-effects/ken_bu... https://www.kirupa.com/html5/ken_burns_effect_css.htm

> A serpentine passage cuts through an ordinary little marsh, on a highway that connects Kyoto to Edo (now Tokyo). No graceful landscape, this. We’re somewhere commonplace, undistinguished.

It's hard to say if the author is trying to bring a western audience along for a story, or has misunderstood the grace of an ordinary little marsh (if in fact this is a marsh, and not a farm).