Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

As Mulan and Tarzan are still relatively well-regarded, Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur were set apart by being strange experiments and The Emperor’s New Groove is one people tend to be on the fence over, Atlantis tends to have the unenviable place in the Disney canon of the one people can point at and go, There! That’s where Disney’s ‘difficult’ period started! Usually then looking at Lilo & Stitich the year after and adding, Yeah, well, Lilo & Stitch is a weird anomaly.

It’s true that Atlantis is probably the point that Disney was most visibly slipping out of its ‘renaissance’ return to glory. Ironically Disney’s most dry film, it has no songs, very few bright colours and comic relief only in an incredibly sarcastic switchboard operator, a deadpan demolitions expert and a dirty, perverted and creepy Frenchman. It aims for childlike wonder in the Jules Verne mould but by only packing the well-trodden story of a single half-hour cartoon – young dreamer is taken to magical city by mercenaries only for them to turn out to want to plunder the place – it ends up rather dull. Very unusually, I didn’t even want to finish it in a single sitting.

I didn’t catch Atlantis at the time, and really felt very little attraction to it. In the years since it came out, I’ve mostly heard about in the context of ‘You know how The Lion King ripped off Kimba? Yeah, well, Atlantis ripped off Nadia! And Laputa too!’ Honestly, I don’t see it – the ideas that are in both are pretty ubiquitous adventure story elements and staples of adaptations of Verne works, so I can let Disney off the hook on this charge...not that I’ve seen more than two episodes of Nadia, mind you. Yet!

There’s a lot about Atlantis that appeals. Getting a left-field artist like Gerald Scarfe in to design characters had worked nicely on Hercules, so having Hellboy creator Mike Mignola work on this film seemed like a good bet – and there are some great designs here. The cast is strong, with big names experienced in animation putting in good work – Michael J. Fox is very much at home, and Leonard Nimoy’s rumbling patriarch plays to his strengths rather more than Galvatron did. Cree Summer also appears as the poster girl, the veteran putting in an excellent performance – and though she’s one of the very first voice actresses I ever took an interest in (through her work in Inspector Gadget and Rugrats), she certainly isn’t always spot-on...I’ll never forget how irritating she was in the dub of Final Fantasy X.

For all that these elements appealed, however, the film falls down in far more respects. The animation is functional but the heavy use of CG is badly dated now in a way that the wildebeests in The Lion King never will be, having been too foregrounded. The design is too haphazard, feeling at times like the researchers just threw everything that suggested ‘ancient culture’ at the board to see what stuck. The animation is bizarrely careless for Disney – just look how the chalk that rubs off on Milo isn’t reversed as it should be. That story just has far too little brain to move anyone, and we’ve certainly seen the concept too many times already. The large cast don’t have time to be adequately developed or distinguished. Whoever thought of the Ireland/Iceland mistake doesn’t quite understand translation. And then there’s the fact that Milo, for all Michael J Fox tries hard, is deeply unlikeable. He’s too cocksure for an underdog, his clutziness seems affected mostly thanks to his animation, and there is zero chemistry between him and Kida.

The best Disney films have a lot of heart, emotional turmoil that isn’t scared of crossing into cheesy territory, believable romance and some point of identification for the kids. The problem with Atlantis isn’t that anything is done drastically wrong, just that...well, nothing manages to stand out as superb either. 

とある飛空士への追憶 / To Aru Hikuushi-e no Tsuioku / Recollections For a Certain Pilot / The Princess and the Pilot

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to get hold of The Princess and the Pilot a while back - it took a while to get around to watching it and I've forgotten whether I just wanted another interesting-looking Madhouse film to watch or if somehow, from the Japanese title, I thought it had something to do with the 'To Aru' series (Index, Railgun et al), which I am currently enjoying. Either way, I got it, forgot about it for a while, and then finally got around to watching it. 

The Princess and the Pilot is something a little different from the usual Madhouse film, which I suppose is to be respected. Most Madhouse standalone films have a certain everyday quality, a real-world grounding, even when concerning werewolf children or time-travelling teenagers. There's a remoteness to The Princess and the Pilot, an otherworldliness to its fantasy setting, even though its fantastical elements are rooted in reality and nothing magical or particularly outlandish happens. 

In the world of this film, which largely resembles our own in the early 20th Century, there is a war on between the Levamme Kingdom and the Amatsukami Empire. If that sounds vaguely European and heavily Japanese to you, respectively, I suspect that this is no coincidence. Levamme could be Imperial Russia or Britain or even the US, and we can extrapolate a few things from the names which are largely either British or Italian, and possibly even from the hatless American-style indoor salute, but when it comes down to it, this is a fantasy world and Levamme is a homogenised 'The West'. Levamme, meanwhile, is a slightly unsettling fantasy of Japanese empire. They are the 'bad guys', yes, but they are an established Empire with superior technology to all around them, honourable and highly skilled pilots and - in case you are unsure if this global empire is really Japan - a code of 'samurai' one-on-one duels. To make things worse, the two eponymous main characters are really the only likeable characters in the whole thing, save perhaps the pilot's one friend at the start and the captain at the end with the twinkle in his eye, and other than that everyone in Levamme seems to be a nasty piece of work who is deeply racist against 'bestados', not far from the Portuguese 'abestado' but more like 'bastard' - the racist term for half-Amatsukami kids who suffer a life of extreme prejudice. 

In this unpleasant world, one bestado has managed to rise up to become the flying ace of the Levamme Kingdom - our hero Charles, amusingly rendered 'Sharuru'. He is entrusted with an important mission - to take the kingdom's princess covertly through enemy lines to her Prince, that they may be married and troop morale bolstered. Of course, things don't go smoothly, the princess Fana is extremely good-natured but accident prone and the idiot prince has leaked the nature of the mission to the enemy, leading to many close calls. There is a nice moment where the mercenary Charles reveals that what he said about being incentivised by money was not actually true, and that really what he wants is to finally take on a mission to save someone rather than to kill, but largely their trip is a long, tedious one and the romance that springs up between them is strained and awkward, entirely lacking in chemistry largely because neither of them is very interesting. 

This is the central flaw of the film that all the high-octane aerial dogfights and near-drowning scenes can't make up for - it never makes its central characters interesting, and with almost no other characters getting significant screentime, that's a huge problem. It doesn't have the redemption, comedy or subtle romance of Porco Rosso,with which it shares much terrain, so to speak. It is all very sincere, but there's very little heart there, and the contrivance that the two had met in their childhoods is very strained and lacks credibility. 

Not a waste of time to see, but certainly not a favourite, or one I would recommend to any but the biggest fans of aerial combat. 

 

Little Postman

Quite a few of these short animations get showcased on the Nintendo 3DS, but this is the first one I've felt compelled to comment on individually. I had the notion to do a compilation post one day, but this one needed a few more words.

A Polish animation with money from the kinds of bodies that make arthouse fans pay attention, including that country's Canal+, it deals perhaps inevitably with the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. It aims for profound and moving but lands on rather mawkish in a remarkably similar conceit to Disney's recent Paperman- albeit of course far less light-hearted – but what it does manage is a great beauty.

The short was made by BreakThru Films, not to be confused with Atomic Betty’s Breakthrough Films, but one of the two studios behind the Oscar-winning Peter and the Wolf short, which beat out such extremely strong competition as Madame Tutli-Putli and Aleksandr Petrov’s My Love – the latter of which shares with this its hand-painted quality.  Its style is nothing if not ambitious: the story of a sweet little boy scout who acts as the only form of communication between the oppressed peoples of occupied Warsaw, only to be blown up yet still manage to send his letters to their recipients in the few moments of afterlife that remain to him, is quite brilliantly told as if through animated graffiti. The boy appears on walls and billboards, leaving a trail behind him, as do the bomber planes and the fantastically-rendered explosions. The twisted form of the barricade that results from the explosion is seemingly a reference to the studio’s feature-length The Flying Machine, as is the rather obvious use of Chopin, and indeed I now read that this is in fact one of 25 short films made to accompany that project.

If I see more, I may have to add to these impressions, or it may be that this entry becomes an anomaly. But enough impression was made on me by the striking visual style that even out of context, I wanted to write something.

I think this also stands as the shortest piece of animation I’ve reviewed yet. Will it be outdone by She and Her Cat?

手塚治虫のブッダ 赤い砂漠よ！美しく/ Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha: The Red Desert! Beautiful / Buddha: The Great Departure

Tekuka, so often called the ‘God of Manga’, never really paid much attention to the original stories he was adapting. When it came to Metropolis, for example, he simply riffed off the impression he got when seeing the poster for the film. When it comes to the life story of the key figure of one of the most significant religions that make up the melting pot of Japanese syncretic faith, one might expect a little more reverence. And reverence there is, even though this account is highly fictionalised – what Tezuka opted to do was to create an original story about the Indian caste system and run it in parallel to the early life of Siddhartha Gautama, providing action and drama to complement the biographical story and bringing the main characters of each strand together as prominent figures in a key battle. Unlike most accounts of the life of Buddha, Tezuka opts to not to take an abstract, historically isolated view of the young prince, in which he is kept in his palace and sheltered until as a young adult he goes out into the world and sees the hardships there, leading to his becoming a mendicant, here he is shown training in martial arts, participating in battle and being exposed at an early age to death, poverty and, as a result, compassion – but being too young to do anything about it. This nuanced version could be argued as bringing a sense of realism and thus maturity, or as being more juvenile because it allows for typical shounen elements like battles, swordplay training, melodrama and cackling battle-freak antagonists, which is an interesting microcosm of the general reputation Tezuka maintains.

The manga ran from 1972 to 1983, and this adaptation contained perhaps the first third of the story, which tallies with reports that there will be a further two parts of this 2011 animation, though it having cost a billion yen to make this one and the result being…not exactly spectacular may throw a wrench into those plans. There is a lot of appeal to the production here, and it’s clear a lot has been spent, but, well, even for a Toei movie it doesn’t exactly look superb. The aesthetic finds an uneasy medium between slick new-millennium character design and Tezuka’s charming caricature style – though it seems the Buddha manga was even more restrained than Black Jack in terms of characters with exaggerated features, reflecting the historical background and reverence due – ultimately ending up with a style that looks slightly retro but mostly a bit generic. The major characters also stick out from the background cast as over-attractive and pale in a rather jarring way – and not just the sheltered prince. There’s a notable lack of that charming, somewhat babyish Tezuka humour I’m certain was in the manga.

Shortly before Siddhartha is born, a lower-caste urchin called Chapra transcends his station in life by aborting an assassination plot at the last moment and instead saving its target’s life, for which he is adopted and raised as noble. Meanwhile, the young Buddha is born and raised in a martial tradition. Sneaking out of the palace, he falls in love with a girl named Migaila, but when the possibility of a relationship reaches his father, she is flogged and has her eyes put out, while he is given an appropriate bride. At first a rather wet child, not apparently divine other than the Lion King-esque gathering of animals for his birth, Siddhartha becomes a warrior, and when his father’s army must clash with that of the rival kingdom of Kosala, headed by Chapra, the two meet – if only for a fraction of a second, where Chapra, poisoned by an arrow, falls just short of killing the prince. Chapra survives thanks the intervention of his magical friend – a small, seemingly eternally young boy named Tatta who can possess animals in the strangest supernatural element of the film – but ultimately the caste system will once again prove its inequalities cannot be held at bay forever.

Though I enjoyed this, liked the unique spin on the traditional story and found the art appealing overall, it fell well short of really wowing me, and structurally was a mess. It may have worked in an ongoing manga paced this way, but in a feature film it was confusing and uneven, resulting in batches of boredom. The voice cast was also odd, for while I’m sure no expense was spared, Toei seem to have decided to bring in a large chunk of the cast of Naruto, including many of the most distinctive seiyuu: Takeuchi Junko (Naruto himself) is the young Capra, while Tatte is Konohamaru (also Pikachu and Chopper). Temari (Paku Romi, in female mode) plays Tatta’s sister, while the slug Katsuya shows up as Siddhartha’s child bride and Hinata goes a little against type as Migaila. Hinata’s seiyuu, Mizuki Nana, was also Collette in Tales of Symphonia, and is joined by Orikasa Ai as the young Siddhartha, who played Genis – as well as the boy in the third One Piece movie and Quatre in Gundam Wing. While there’s much to say for an all-star cast, this one was just too full of distinctive shounen voices – which got distracting.

Overall, well worth seeing, and I want to see more, but this could and should have been a whole lot better. 

ブラック★ロックシューター / Black★Rock Shooter

Thoughts on the original OVA: here

Studio Ordet are likely here to stay, for while the full series of Black★Rock Shooter was a little disappointing, it was also extremely memorable, visually striking and really came into its own in its final two episodes. If this is what happens when KyoAni bow to pressure and fire one of their directors (Ordet being founded as a direct result of the backlash against Lucky★Star leading to director Yamamoto Yutaka being sacked), maybe they should do it more often.

Until near the end, I was finding Black★Rock Shooter something of a disappointment, which is why I fell out of the habit of watching each episode as it came out – the series ended back in March. It was, I felt, little more than the OVA stretched out a little and very slightly altered. After all, this series only got 8 episodes of prestigious noitaminA airtime, while the OVA was 50 minutes long – about 2 ½ episodes. And I wasn’t impressed by what was added.

One of the things I liked about the OVA was one of the things that I saw criticised most widely – the contrast between the exaggerated and fantastical world of Black★Rock Shooter and the rather mundane world of two girls, and how the small, rather silly problems of who is best friends with whom seem like the world-shattering battles that the alternate world makes literal. The very first episode of Black★Rock Shooter did all it could to destroy that nice subtle, observation by making the things that lead to the internal battles of the girls’ other selves generally screwed up: new character Kagari is a screwy wheelchair-bound Munchausen’s sufferer and masochist who is openly hostile when she meets young Kuroi Mato, making jibes involving macaroons and having loud screaming fits. This all gets translated to macaroon cannons and a creepy voice repeating ‘Kaere’ in Black★Rock Shooter’s world – it’s all just a bit too exaggerated to work and would have been much better if Kagari were subtly cruel and manipulative.

After the situation with Kagari gets resolved, the plot settles into a slight variation on the OVA’s – there, Mato and Yomi make friends, but Mato also making friends with Yuu causes a lot of tension. Here, Yuu and Mato have been friends a long time, and everyone’s relationships are manipulated by a creepy student counsellor at school – which is the stage at which I became a bit bored. I was also slightly saddened by the treatment of the sporty Kohata, whose story arc was pat and whose counterpart(s) in the other world didn’t impress at all.

However, it was all rather redeemed in the last two episodes where many things were revealed: the manipulative counsellor was hiding a connection with Yuu and had a very interesting relationship with her, told in a rather adorable flashback; Yuu herself was rather unlike what everyone had assumed; Dead Master was unexpectedly not going to have the role expected of her and there was actually going to be more of an explanation of who the characters in the other world were and why they looked like the main girls. While the OVA heavily hinted they existed independently of the girls and could simply enter their hearts – which made the physical resemblances as random as some of those in Kingdom Hearts – here, they were ‘other selves’ who take on the burden of physical pain for the girls, and when they are defeated, all the stored up pain disappears, though seems to take memories with it. This made for some interesting moral questions as to whether or not it was acceptable for the girls to offload their suffering, though some of the passive-suffering-while-another-fights when Mato became aware of the world was as creepy a glorification of suffering as anything in Loveless. Indeed, the series probably could have done without taking every opportunity to get its schoolgirl characters naked. It could be handwaved as showing their vulnerability, that they had been internalised by their counterparts, that they existed outside of any normal plane as something of an essence – but ultimately when it happens that much it just looks like fanservice.

That aside, the story ended up being quite an interesting and thought-provoking one and certainly better than I had expected at the beginning. The characters were likeable and the otherworldly designs were awesome – I had a particular fondness for the giant arms of Strength’s body (no matter who inhabited it). The CG work here was superb, cel shading good enough that most of the time it just looked like extremely dynamic hand-drawn animation, but allowed for great sweeping camera shots and those staples of girls-with-guns fans’ favourites: huge weapons and a rain of glowing bullets.

Perhaps it could have been more, and it got off to a bad start in my view, but its aesthetic was extremely memorable, its story turned out to be surprisingly strong for the limited number of episodes, and it eventually hit the right emotional notes. A near thing, but ultimately a success story.  

フルメタル•パニック!/ Full Metal Panic!

I finished watching FMP! some months ago, but for some reason never stopped to write down my thoughts as I always do. I just assumed I already had until I went looking for what I had written in my archives, only to find nothing!

Full Metal Panic! was a big hit when I was getting into the anime scene, and already had the feel of a bit of a classic, so often spoken of alongside the likes of Kenshin and Trigun that I still have trouble thinking of it as a 2002 anime, rather than late 90s. After Gonzo made this adaptation, Fumoffu? kick-started Kyoto Animation’s rise to their current dominance, and it was really for the sake of Fumoffu? I started watching this. After all, mecha isn’t really my thing and it failed for a long time to grip me. Despite this, however, I’ve yet to actually start Fumoffu?, never mind The Second Raid.

FMP! draws heavily from past mecha series for its bare bones – there’s plenty of Patlabor and Macross Plus here, and none of the heavy symbolism and angst of the post-Evangelion generation, though the heavy-drinking Melissa is more than a little reminiscent of Misato. What FMP! really brought to the fold, however, was the mix of action with giant robots and warships and the small-scale comedy of a high school drama that would later work so well for the likes of Mai-HiME and ROD the TV. Obviously there had been action-based series with light school scenes before, but FMP! made the contrast very stark while everything still remained unified.

The story is that the stoic, taciturn young covert military officer Sagara Sousuke comes crashing into the life of normal schoolgirl Chidori Kaname tasked with protecting her, which gives rise to the memorable first episode title, ‘The Guy I Kinda Like is a Sergeant’. Popular, brash Kaname soon finds Sousuke annoying, though, assuming he is just some military otaku who has decided to stalk her. However, Kaname of course has latent psychic powers and is targeted by terrorists, especially the thoroughly nasty Gauron, who of course has a history with Sousuke. Generally, the series swings between big fights in mecha and fun high school comedy, such as when Sousuke ineptly tries to pretend he is Kaname’s boyfriend. The format works well.

Sadly, though, for me that was about all that worked well. I found FMP! to be so dull as to be reprehensible. Sousuke is funny at first, and some of the glimpses into his past make him more likeable, but ultimately he is even duller than Heero Yuy, the Gundam Wing character upon whom he is clearly based. Kaname’s ‘picked up in America’ acerbic personality just makes her irritating, and Gauron, with all his talk of cutting up and raping everyone, is far too dull and obvious a bad guy to hook me in. I didn’t like Tessa, who was badly conceptualised as a superior officer and was an early indication of the negative pitfalls of what would soon become known as the moé girl stereotype. And the rest of the characters, mostly Sousuke’s military comrades, were left very much undeveloped over a slow-moving 24-episode series.

Indeed, I think the biggest problem is in the pacing during the serious episodes. Nothing at all will happen for protracted periods of time, mostly padded out with the juvenile images of the girls being naked while they use their powers, only for important events to happen far too quickly. The climax of the last episode is plain confusing, which is the last thing you want your series finale to be. It took me quite a while to figure out who was in the coffins and why Tessa was crying.

Oh well. It was well worth watching for its classic status, though I wouldn’t recommend it too highly. Now I can progress to Fumoffu! and see what the fuss was all about there. 

桃太郎 海の神兵/ Momotarou: Umi no Shinpei / Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (1945)

Well, here it is, once thought lost forever and remembered by anime historians in a slightly tacit, embarrassed way despite its remarkable quality, deep influence on Tezuka’s work and historical significance. This 74-minute black-and-white film is the very first feature-length animated film Japan ever made, the first step on the path to what is now such a vast industry. Its animation is uneven but on average high-quality, full of the influence of the Golden Age, and it establishes many of the tropes of anime aesthetic long before Tezuka could do so and be so highly lauded for it – indeed, he was there in the audience for this film, purportedly moved to tears by it, and the AIUEO Mambo from Kimba is seen as a tribute.

So, if the animation is both of a good quality and historically significant, why is the film kept rather at arm’s length? Why has the low-quality print not been cleaned up, even lovingly coloured, for a modern update? Why are there no English subtitles available? It’s certainly better overall than what as far as I can tell is Japan’s next animated feature, Hakujaden, and it could be considered Japan’s Snow White, or at least be considered alongside Princess Iron Fan. Well, it’s simple – it’s because it was made in 1944 and released in 1945. That is to say, during WWII, when Japan were part of the Axis Alliance. In other words, those cute little bunnies and puppies are Hitler’s cutest widdle allies, and this is explicitly a war propaganda film, especially at the end. When the Japanese were engaged in such pursuits as (at least according to everyone in the world but them) the Rape of Nanking. And this film isn’t just cute animals training to go off to war: the last section actually takes place on the battlefield.

The conflict that the film centres on is actually one less well-known in the West: Japan’s invasion of the Dutch East Indies, now parts of Indonesia, in the name of liberating Asia for the Asians. Thus, perhaps adding another layer of awkwardness for a modern audience, the enemy are the hakujin – the white men. Who come in all the glory of the kind of caricatures you might expect from a war propaganda film. And in some shots are actually brutally killed (though seem to get better). Ironically, given that only in the last couple of years with the likes of Ika Musume and Edenof the East have weekly anime started to actually get fluent voice actors to do English lines rather than having extremely strained accents presented as perfect, the English here is delivered by someone with impeccable English. If they could find someone to do it when at full-scale war with just about the entire English-speaking world…why not in 2005? Then again, it makes you wonder just who that stuttering Englishman was…

Of course, what happened in the months after the film was that two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, forever altering the national consciousness, and Japan surrendered. That was not the end of the conflict in the area, though – in Europe we tend to consider 1945 the end, but in Indonesia there was a huge mess that took quite some time to clear up, and I don’t mean those famous Japanese soldiers dotted about the world who thought the war was still going on into the 70s. Indonesia was officially back under Dutch control, and the Japanese had to be turfed out. But the Dutch were not exactly in any position to reassert control, and under Japanese rule the seeds of Nationalism had become mass consensus, so Indonesia pushed for Independence. The bizarre situation arose wherein the Japanese, having surrendered, had to keep the terms of their surrender by assisting the allies, turning against the Indonesians they had formerly supported (though also arguably starved, robbed of resources and enslaved in the name of their own war effort). Indonesian independence was eventually established in 1949, but whatever fantasy of liberation and victory this film painted had fizzled away.

The plot is loose but straightforward: four cutesy animals are off to war, so spend some last days with their families. The big bear and the puppy play with their siblings, the pheasant sees his little chicks, and the chattering monkey regales all the local youth with his boasts, until his little brother runs off with his hat, falls in the river and has to be heroically rescued. (‘Wasshoi!’)

The four then go to help set up a naval camp, where for whatever reason a classroom is also made and the animals learn their alphabets in the AIUEO song, which I have to say is a great catchy number and a scene that does deserve to endure. Glorious general Momotarou then makes his appearance (Having previously bombed Pearl Habour in director Seo Mitsuyu’s short animation Momotarou no Umiwashi) and drawn in the traditional way the Momotarou figure usually is. Like the animals, he looks pretty cute unless they decide to draw his lips and teeth in a close-up, when he starts to look a bit terrifying. But hey, this was an art style at the beginning of its evolution. Momotarou leads the troops (all but him cute animals) on a heroic parachute invasion of Allied-occupied Celebes, they shoot, bayonet and grenade the huge-nosed and spaghetti-armed allies and accept their surrender. Victory! The film ends with a rather mysterious shot of the animals back home playing a game which makes it look like they are jumping into and stomping on a map of the US – though that may be my misinterpreting.

It’s probably obvious, but this is not the most comfortable subject manner. There’s much of interest in the artistic decisions, from the way the Japanese like to present themselves as cute little animals to the fact that the famous ^_^ expression so deeply associated with anime was already in place in 1944, but it’s hard to get past the white devils and propaganda message.

Seo, the director, was really only doing what he was told. A leftist, he had actually been arrested for work with ProKino, but the Navy funded him to make these propaganda films. Momotarou no Umiwashi, it would seem currently available only through the National Film Centre in Tokyo, was a hit, so this longer feature was commissioned. There is a great deal to admire in it, from smooth animation of shots from ambitious angles to lovely imagery such as dandelion seeds becoming paratroopers. It also shows how remarkably early Japanese popular art established its cute aesthetic. There is some interesting mixing of media – the historical section showing the Dutch to have basically been liars who threatened the happy, kindly sultans with piracy, mixes in the aesthetic of shadow puppetry, and there’s quite a bit of Disney-esque rotoscoping going on – just look closely at the hands of the bear family near the beginning for a good example. But of course, Seo made his film at a very specific time, and though he was able to make one more short – Ou-sama no Shippo – there was no longer a place for him in the world of anime and he would slip out of sight to write children’s books, likely believing his work destroyed for many years: the negative only resurfaced in 1986. Seo himself lived to be 99, dying in 2010 a reclusive legend of anime.  

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

It seems almost unbelievable that when this came out, South Park had been airing for less than two years. It’s even harder to believe that it came out in 1999, well over a decade ago.

I’ll leave it until I write my thoughts on the full series, which will be when it finally ends for good, to talk about how I first got into it, remarkably early and certainly before its popularity exploded over here in the UK (I’m so 90s hipster), but movies get separate entries, and this one definitely made enough of an impact to deserve it. South Park was still young in 1999, still fresh and rebellious and admired for the political edge Drawn Together so inadequately tried to criticise in their direct-to-video movie. Timmy wasn’t a character yet, and Butters was barely more than a face in the background (a fact Parker and Stone remark on when they gave their audio commentary for this film in 2009).

But it also marks about the time when South Park got a lot smarter. The first episodes that were so anarchic and bizarre now mostly seem to be trying too hard or to fall flat, but this film showed just how far Parker and Stone grew from anal probes and lame cliffhangers about Cartman’s parentage. The film built on many of the show’s ideas and was chock-full of moments to please fans, but it was also very clever, very varied and satisfying in terms of basic narrative.

When the South Park boys get mixed up in a debate about censoring a comedy film, their parents as ever take things to extremes and decide to wage war against Canada, because that’s where the film came from, and because it’s easier to attack a scapegoat than to question whether it’s actually their parenting at fault. Adding – fittingly, given how it happens – fuel to the fire, Kenny dies emulating something from the film, but this time we see him in the afterlife and meeting the angsty Satan, as ever locked in an abusive homosexual relationship with Saddam Hussein – as the one suffering. The parents manage to succeed in getting the stars of the offensive film condemned to death, so Stan and Kyle decide to form a resistance movement to rescue them. Cartman’s potty-mouth leads him to be subjected to a ‘V-chip’ not for the TV but for the head, which shocks him when he swears to correct his behaviour, Eric Idle’s short turn as the doctor who implants the chip making up a little for his bewildering turn in the previous year’s Timmy to the Rescue (Timmah!). All these plot strands come together at the end in a rather contrived way revolving around prophecies of Hell breaking free, but it cannot be denied that it is awesome when it does, especially with Cartman featuring in one of the best of the show’s numerous anime pastiches and Mike Judge showing up to give Kenny a voice just for a moment or two.

The film probably has the best pastiche soundtrack of any comedy film. The remarkable thing is that it not only imitates Menken numbers and the soundtrack of Les Misérables, it does it to a level of quality about on a par with them. James Hetfield pops in for an anonymous vocal cameo that presumably because of legal wrangling couldn’t be on the soundtrack and he pretended for a few years he didn’t do, the extremely silly ‘Kyle’s Mom is a Big Fat Bitch’ from the series gets fully expanded and ‘Blame Canada’ even got nominated for an Oscar – complete with a performance on awards ceremony night by Robin Williams (losing, inexplicably, to Phil Collins’ dreck from Tarzan). The medley that grows out of the Les Mis parody, including the great couplet ‘They may cut your dick in half and serve it to a pig/And though it hurts you’ll laugh and dance a dickless jig’, is inspired and should’ve been the one that won that academy award.

This was made while South Park was a rising star, and long before anyone was bored of it. And it shows: it’s clever, confident, full of ideas and absolutely hilarious. Miles better than The Simpsons Movie and a little better than Beavis and Butthead do America, it’s very probably the best movie adaptation of a TV animated comedy there’s ever been.

スカイ•クロラ/ The Sky Crawlers

Another Production IG project from Oshii Mamoru – bringing with it the hallmarks of that partnership: beautiful visuals, main characters with blank expressions and glassy eyes and questions raised about humanity and existentialism. But all the flaws of the Ghost in the Shell properties are here – with very few of their virtues.

The plot here unravels incredibly slowly, with the audience disoriented and left to speculate. Two fighter pilots, young enough to be called children by some, go to a diner with their girls. They drink, smoke and take the girls somewhere they know they can sleep with them. But the younger, more childlike one is confused. He has just arrived on the military base, but nobody will talk about the person he’s replaced.
We soon learn that the country is at war, battles mostly waged in the air. The pilots are ‘Kildren’ (or kirudoru, ‘kill-dolls’ in the original), apparently unable to age, dying only in war – hence, perhaps, their willingness to indulge in cigarettes and alcohol. But these are not party people – that is very much emphasised. They are grim, angst-ridden youths, every day facing the possibility of death in battle, most questioning themselves, their pasts and those around them.

The main problem here is that the film is long – two hours long – and very dull. The idea is clearly that the sombre, slow-moving story will come over as mature, challenging and intellectual. But it just gives the impression of very little story to tell. The story comes from a novel, but for all that it gets spun out and for all the loose ends lead you to think there is more to be revealed than you see, it is just very thin and very predictable. We had figured out within ten minutes the twist that would come at the end – and what would happen after the credits – and the rest was just waiting to see if our expectations were to be bourn out, or if I’d just been watching too much Gunslinger Girl and Evangelion. In the end, nothing presented as a twist came as a surprise, and I disliked this for the same reason I dislike most of Chiaki J Konaka’s work.

Also, while there are two relatively normal characters near the centre of the story, they are very much secondary to the two main characters – who are always kept at arm’s length. They are strange, don’t understand themselves or one another and mostly deal with their feelings by staring.

Everything is totally beautiful – the character designs are simple but the lighting, the movement, the mise-en-scene and especially the backgrounds look amazing. The film superbly cracks the problem of how to make CG look right in traditional animation – which is not through making edges bold or cel-shading obvious, but by simply making everything else in the shot look every bit as good as the CG does. Visually, this is one of the best films anime can offer, and if you want something to show people to convince them anime isn’t all giant eyes and sparkles, this would be a good choice. But for fans of conventional storytelling, strong characterisation, a good balance between action and drama or anything that would resemble fun, look elsewhere. I would have much rather this were a 30-minute Twilight Q-style experiment.

銀幕ヘタリア Axis Powers Paint it, White（白くぬれ！）/ Ginmaku Hetalia: shiroku nure / Hetalia Movie – Paint it, White

Don’t expect any Rolling Stones references based on that comma in the title – it goes no further than that.

If I were writing the review I expected to, that would be a neat way to start a rant about a franchise that likes empty references to poorly-understood ideas. And c’mon, a plotline involving aliens wanting to turn everyone on Earth into a homogenous mass of white blobs so that there will be no more conflict or war, only for our loveable personified countries to fight back in order to prove it takes all sorts, variety is the spice of life, and the different national characteristics are what makes the world such a wonderful place? It sounds utterly terrible. And they don’t even have enough footage to fill the feature-length run-time, so they pad the film with scenes from the weekly series! Sounds horrible, right?

Well, guilty pleasure as it is, I actually liked this quite a lot. Almost everything I disliked about the Hetalia series derived from the annoyingly inaccurate or short-sighted historical snippets. It would be much better, I said, if the mangaka had dropped ideas of historical commentary and concentrated on national stereotyping.

And that’s what this movie is. The only grating times are times that had grated before, like the snippet about France’s offer to join the Commonwealth being reinterpreted as a marriage proposal from France to England (who is really ‘Britain’ but generally gets called England). Other segments that randomly made the cut were more welcome, like the scene where England – presumably because of all our fantasy literature seen as able to see ghosts and mythological creatures – meets with a kappa while in Japan, somehow breaking up the pacing of the climactic scenes just right.

The shoestring plot fitted the adaptation of silly comedy shorts to a long piece, lazy as it was. Aliens called Picts have decided Earth is a sad, underdeveloped place, so decide to whitewash it – and everybody in it. The flying saucers send out a beam that turns people into mindless white blobs and architecture into crude wobbly line drawings. The minor characters of Hetalia are given little cameos as they are transformed, like Poland and Greece, while as usual any country in the Southern Hemisphere is not worth bothering with. Switzerland and Liechtenstein, meanwhile, are protected from all the film’s events because their permanent neutrality also protects them from interstellar war. The nine members of the World 8 (China thrown into the G8 for whatever reason) who had met at the beginning of the film but failed to collaborate now reunite (minus useless Canada) to strike back. Donning Pict kigurumi, they sneak into the alien mothership and divide into unlikely teams (the old Axis Powers, France and England and then the rest – ie the symbols of Capitalism and Communism thrown together without comment). They are soon caught, but for a moment sway the aliens with displays of their different cultures (Russia coercing the countries he’s conquered into cross-dressing and doing ballet), until England ruins it all by giving them scones, which of course nobody in the universe could think tasted good.

They beat a hasty retreat, but to no avail, and all the countries but Italy are transformed. The spirit of the Roman Empire returns to be one of the most surreal dei ex machina I’ve ever seen, singing an off-key metal version of the old (wish I knew HOW old) ‘In Heaven, the cooks are French…’ joke and bequeathing Italy with a pen – which is all he needs to show the joy of individuality to the faceless aliens. Then everyone does a Bon dance, by far the least annoying song ever associated with Hetalia.

It’s a simple outline, but it trundles along and allows for the interaction between stereotypes without it getting bogged down with historical inaccuracies. Things like ‘France and England always fight but quite like each other really’ and ‘China likes to produce cheap knock-offs of what the other counties do’ are the sort of thing the series needed more of. They ring true and are generally just funny. Of course, Sealand – who I always found the funniest – gets a brief chance to shine, and him jumping aboard his ‘country’ like a ridiculous mecha pilot was the biggest laugh the whole film got from me.

I don’t know why I decided to watch this film just when I did, but I wanted something light. It wasn’t easy to find, though – English subbed versions seem to have the rehashed sequences cut out and horrible streamed quality, so I watched a Spanish fansub in DVD quality, and pieced together the meaning from the Japanese and the Spanish subs, going to the streams the once or twice I couldn’t understand at all. I could always have just waited for the official English DVD release next month, but…I was in the mood for Hetalia last night, and that’s not something I can say often.

As pleasant a surprise as The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi, this was genuinely funny and didn’t annoy me at all.

ואלס עם באשיר / Vals Im Bashir / Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir got a lot of attention – primarily with arthouse audiences – upon its release in 2008. With a striking, realistic art style, a hard-hitting and intellectually fashionable subject matter and unconventional structure, it was nominated for an Oscar not for best animated film but best film in a foreign language, won the equivalent award at the Golden Globes and earned top awards from respected animated film awards such as grand prizes from Zagreb and Tokyo Filmex. It is not hard to see why it was such a darling of the arthouse animation crowd: completely adult-oriented, based on harrowing real-world experiences and from a culture not generally associated with animation (this and $9.99 being the first animated films made in Israel since 1962), it is certainly not the average animated feature.

Key to its seriousness and distinctiveness is that it is an animated documentary. Not a thousand miles from Nick Park’s Creature Features work, a series of interviews are taped and then the animation is made to match it. But these interviews, some repeated or even conflated to make the details work better for a film, are not simple observations of life delivered by cute animals: they are recollections of Israeli soldiers from the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The main character of the film, the director and writer Ari, has a strange memory of his time serving in Beirut, but can remember almost nothing of the actual events. So he sets out to interview others who were there to try to piece together the truth. There is brutal violence, graphic depictions of death, even one absurd sequence where gratuitous pornography is animated, something I doubt could be featured in live-action. And at the very end, in a fine moment of contrast, real news footage is played, reminding the audience with stunning simplicity just how real these events are, and the distance between reality and animation is artificial.

This is not made to tell the story of a war. It is not to educate, to make political statements or to excuse. If you don’t know the background, you may well be lost. If you don’t know why there would be Palestinians in Lebanon, or who the Phalangists were, you might struggle to understand all the implications of what is happening, but you are likely to understand the stories individuals tell and the sense of despair, helplessness and disgust so many of them retained after the event.

Visually, there is much to be praised, though it is somewhat annoying to read other film reviewers who clearly have very little to do with animation clearly not recognising the very obvious visual characteristics of Flash animation, presumably because they see only blockbusters and have no knowledge of the evolution of Flash on the web or the cartoons from the likes of Cartoon Network that make extensive use of it. Those disconnected limbs and that odd fluidity, the slow movements of the heads and the way the camera can squeeze in and out – all are hallmarks of Flash. There were accusations of rotoscoping here, presumably because those bold lines and the smooth motions are reminiscent of the likes of Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings and the like, but the filmmakers vehemently deny the technique was used. On the other hand, there are a few junctures where I suspect that at the very least the faces are traced or very heavily drawn from film footage – for example, one martial artist demonstrates a kick in a sequence the filmmakers were clearly so proud of they repeat it a few times – and his face has the most realistic expression for a person doing martial arts I have ever seen in animation.

Other sequences are fine for their strangeness and the symbolic elements, the very reason for making this a piece of animation; the are visions and dream sequences that come with really surprising and impressive moments of beauty, including the eponymous waltz. On the other hand, there is much that doesn’t satisfy: the idea of the suppressed memories seems artificial and forced, and the fleeting mentions of the Holocaust needed far more development to be valid thinking points.

But Waltz for Bashir is nothing if not memorable, powerful and unique. Well worth watching, if not one to enjoy.

劇場版 鋼の錬金術師 シャンバラを征く者 / Gekijouban Hagane no Renkinjutsushi: Shanbara-o Yuku Mono / Fullmetal Alchemist movie: The Conqueror of Shamballa

The concept set out at the end of the Fullmetal Alchemist series was not inherently a bad one: while I'm not usually keen on mixing a fantasy world with the real one (beyond Narnia-style framing narratives), particularly not so late in a series, the idea was not really explored in depth. Which isn’t to say it was anything more than a starting point for a distinctly average story.

This wasn't a bad movie tie-in, but didn't really fulfil its potential. A little too much mindless action, and not as much character exploration as I would have hoped. I feel the potential was a little wasted; the peripheral characters get so little screen time that I wished the movie was twice as long, with less of Nazis and dragon-Envy and more discussion of why things were happening as they were.

Still, there was a great scene with the two surviving (non-dragon) homonculi, Wrath and a rather different Gluttony. Alfons Heinrich was a good character, sweet yet selfish and a great contrast to Alphonse Elric. Some great little in-jokes with alternate versions of major characters made me smile, though why they're all German/gypsies while Ed is apparently British I'll never know, and I wasn't keen on the way Hughes was used.

Despite this, I found it all highly enjoyable, well-animated (with a bit of dodgy CG) and with great vocal performances and some very funny moments. And the Flame Alchemist kicked some serious butt. They don't really try to answer all the questions the fans have had, instead just having a new story to concentrate on: you know what happens to pretty much all the characters, but whether your question is 'Do Roy and Riza get together?' or 'Will Ed ever get back home?', you'll just have to keep watching, or go to the manga. They had a very open-ended final sequence. If you don't mind knowing that, read on...

Ed and Al end up staying in our world at the end, Al with his own body, leaving poor Winry behind. WWII is looming, of course, and we don't know what has happened to Envy (who was used to open the portal between the worlds), so there is definitely no resolution.

Personally, I don't particularly want to see the next movie being Ed and Al Battle The Nazis...Hess and Haushofer were quite enough for me.

Not the story or ending I would have chosen, but definitely a worthy next step in the Fullmetal Alchemist anime story.

(originally written 24.7.05. There was an earthquake while I was in the Tokyo cinema! This was the last story in the original series’ continuity, as the next Hagaren animated by Bones was the Brotherhood reboot)

鋼の錬金術師 / Hagane no Renkinjutsushi / Fullmetal Alchemist (Original series)

Hagane no Renkinjutsushi is one of those iconic anime that dominates the community for a while. It made a big impact as a manga, gained a large fanbase when its anime begun airing and reached its peak once it was licensed and (very badly) dubbed.

Like Shugo Chara, it’s an anime based on a monthly manga that ends up taking the ideas and characters of the manga and rewrites the story (unlike, say, Naruto or One Piece, which are mostly direct translations from page to screen, with throwaway ‘filler’ to waste time if material runs out). Also like Shugo Chara, it’s one of the rare series I feel works as a companion piece to a very different manga as an alternate timeline, rather than as a replacement.

Besides, since then, a new animated series has been made, going back to the manga faithfully.

The story is complex and very well constructed save for a few small issues. Two boys, the Elric Brothers, live in a world where alchemy exists – the ability to transmute one material into another, as long as there is ‘equivalent trade’: all the right materials in place to be rearranged. Something cannot be created from nothing. One day, these boys attempt to bring their mother back from the dead, using all the raw materials used in a human body – but they do not take into account the additional element of human life, and the alchemical reaction claims not only all the materials they provided, but one of Edward Elric’s legs and his little brother Alphonse’s entire body.

In something of a trance, little Ed manages to save Al’s soul in exchange for his own arm, but not his body, so the younger brother ends up a real ghost in a machine – or, more specifically, a suit of armour. Two years later, Ed’s arm and leg have been replaced by metal prosthetics, and the brothers get involved with the military in order to further their search for the Philosopher’s Stone, which will grant unlimited power to any alchemist who wields it, and get their bodies back.

Hagaren’s greatest strength is perfectly balancing the serious (with moving deaths, some shocking psychological traumas and issues of racial prejudice) and the comic (Ed’s ‘automail’ prosthetics have stunted his growth and given him a complex; Barry the Chopper has a great grasp of bathos; Alex Louis Armstrong the musclebound nobleman is about the funniest character I’ve ever seen). With some incredible action sequences, it is original, intelligent and immensely enjoyable. Though occasionally cheesy and sometimes a bit artificial in its portrayal of how people think, nonetheless it comes very highly recommended, and I genuinely would recommend watching the first series before the remake.

(Expanded from original impressions, 21.2.05. I originally wrote that Mai-HiME was a manga first, which is not true. Movie impressions here)

新世紀エヴァンゲリオン/ Shin Seiki Evangerion / Neon Genesis Evangelion

It was close to a decade between me seeing the first two episodes of Eva, when the were the only episodes released on VHS, dubbed, in the high street, and my finally finishing it. This is where my anime experience really began – and for me, it is the big one. This is the anime that kick-started the current movement towards intelligent, eloquent and ambitious anime series that really drew me in. Just as Dragonball influences everything in the popcorn-entertainment side of anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion pushed back the boundaries of what can be achieved in just 26 episodes. And unlike Dragonball, Eva has yet to be bettered.

On the surface, the concept seems banal. Strange creatures are attacking the earth, and the only ones who can save the planet are 14-year-old pilots of Evangelions, which appear to be giant robots. Not the most original prospect of all time. But then we begin to see the references to Christian mythology, and though there is little real significance to the allusions, they give a veneer of intelligence that makes you pay attention. Then the characters begin to develop, and it becomes clear that not only are the adults very much adults, doing their laundry, having affairs and neglecting their children, but the children are children: they bicker, their hormones are out of control, they are confused about their sexuality – the boys fight, the girls menstruate, and Shinji reacts to extreme situations in increasingly inappropriate ways, until one incredibly memorable scene by the side of a hospital bed in one of the movies. People who think that anime is just for kids need to pay attention.

Honestly, the power and inventiveness of the storytelling makes this amongst the few things I consider to have most influenced me in my life – in any medium. I didn’t see it all when I was about Shinji’s age, but I saw plenty of it, and I am not exaggerating when I say that my ideas of visual impact, good storytelling and the way people interact have been shaped by the anime. It is that important to me, and while I know that there are some slow episodes, some bad ideas for angels that should have been left out in favour of more development of the exemplary peripheral characters, at its best, Eva’s untouchable. The angst-&-robots-by-numbers of Soukyuu no Fafner and Gundam just can’t compare.

But then there is an issue of contention in any discussion of Eva – the ending(s). There are three, essentially: first, the final episodes of the series. These left some unsatisfied, so two movies were made, one of which is mostly recap, the other of which basically follows on from there. These provide the ‘saabisu, saabisu’- ie fanservice - that Misato promises throughout the series. There are huge fight scenes, the characters get another chance to shine, we get sex, explosions and a high body count, including casualties amongst the principle cast. And the world ends. However, despite some fantastic scenes, these movies in my opinion don’t provide a more satisfying ending. They spell out what Instrumentality is a little better, but their flaws are their shallowness in delivering a trite climax that the audience wanted, and the empty ambiguity of the ending.

The last episodes didn’t go down well because they look bizarre. Taking place entirely within the minds of the characters, this alternate perspective is represented by different types of art, from line sketches to watercolours, which often look lazy, as though the episodes were never finished. This works far better than the empty symbolism of the movie, and crucially, it coheres. Shinji learns that he doesn’t want all the souls of the world to mingle. He wants restraints, and he wants the freedom to choose what he can be. He imagines his ideal, normal life (bizarrely, yet appropriately, given Shinji’s character, extremely like the beginning of a typical shoujo series), and then realises that he CAN change what is around him, and it is how he perceives things that really matter. This is what the series was building up to, and while the final scene is rather abrupt and a touch silly, it works far better than the explicit, bangs-and-flashes apocalypse of the movies, which only further complicated the story and irritated fans. The original worked.

Brilliantly adult despite its juvenile characters, Eva is a strong and cohesive story, a simple premise spun out into some fascinating character studies, and peopled with some of the best characters found in any medium. One of my top five anime of all time, and certainly the first one I loved, I cannot recommend it enough, ending included.

(originally written 28.6.05. Since then, the new rebuild movies have been announced and released: You Are (Not) Alone and You Can (Not) Advance)

アリソンとリリア / Allison and Lillia

I must admit to being a little suprised by Allison and Lillia.

I really expected it to be my sort of anime. It had a nice, simple yet pretty art style and a slow, lyrical pace, both in the World Masterpiece Theatre mould.

Set in an old-fashioned European-influenced world in the shadow of war, I thought it would be sophisticated, epic and ambitious. Which is why I am now more than typically hostile to it now, after it came to an end. What a letdown!

Adapted from a series of novels, it concerns a long-running war and its resolution, then the various adventures of those who were instrumental in bringing about peace, as well as the lives of their children.

The big problem with the series was its paucity of fine detail and horribly rushed storytelling. Stuffing full novels into a few episodes made resolutions stupidly simple and pat, revelations abrupt and babyish, and character reactions and dialogue irksomely basic and unconvincing. Far too many unintentional laughs in this show, when baddies go tumbling over balconies for no real reason, heroes are saved by stupid coincidence and big twists are revealed to be painfully badly thought-through. Not to mention painfully obvious dialogue, horrible cheesy speeches that melt the blackest hearts and over-simplistic resolutions that contribute to the sense of bathos.

There are cute elements, the comedy of an admiring partner and a totally clueless object of affections often genuinely eliciting warm laughs, and the main characters are likeable, if not enough to elevate them from being dull. It's just that the action is so lame and cheesy, the emotional attachment possible with the characters is so insufficient for the running time, meaning the abiding impression left by this series is of how shallow, goofy and very, very dull it has been.

And the dénouement at the end of the series made me want to punch things.

(originally written 22.2.09)

舞-乙 / Mai-Otome

Well, since it’s been well over a year now since Mai-Otome: Sifr came to an end, and it looks like the planned follow-up has turned into Sora–o Kakeru Shoujo, the preliminary plot possibly going into the new Mai-HiME manga, so I felt it was finally time to watch the very last episode and lay out my impressions.

Mai-Otome is the follow-up to Sunrise’s highly successful Mai-HiME, which I enjoyed very much. Rather than the usual continuation of plots and new perils for the same characters, however, Sunrise took the unusual decision of total reinvention. The general idea is that hundreds of years have passed, present-day sci-fi transformed into a futuristic and very, very silly vision. Sunrise are all for embracing the silliest concepts they can and then taking them very seriously, filling their plots with melodrama. That’s the case here – a naïve but sprightly young girl called Yumemiya Arika, looking for clues about the life her mother lived, goes to a special school where they train otome (meaning ‘maidens’), young girls who for whatever reason can use old nanotechnology to fly, wield huge weapons and become incredibly resilient. So incredibly strong are these girls that they have becomes the primary way wars are fought, all the leaders of the world employing an otome. Arika not only gets tangled up with her future queen, but manages to enrol in the school and in spite of her natural haplessness, becomes rival and friend of the best student.

The link between this and Mai-HiME? Strange. One character is, it is inferred, the same as in the original series, but the rest just happen to look identical to older counterparts. Some are reimagined cleverly, like Mashiro, while there are surreal turns in other places, one or two characters returning as animals. Essentially, the link is tenuous and if anything, it comes over as a hollow attempt to cash in on a successful series despite offering something completely different. Oh the other hand, Otome was successful enough to spawn not only a second series but a rather confusing and lowbrow OVA prequel as well. The characters are fun, pretty and likeable, the daft premise soon becomes deeply enjoyable, and when things turn serious, it all works well. Arika is a great character, and so are Nina and Mashiro. Mai-HiME was nothing very sophisticated, although it did get surprisingly heavy and emotional, and Mai-Otome was considerably lighter yet, but for something to relax to and enjoy, few action series did it better.

(originally written 6.3.10)

ブラッド・ザ・ラストバンパイヤ / Blood: the Last Vampire

This 45-minute theatrical feature animation managed to gain quite the reputation, but I found it difficult to see why; I can’t recommend it in the least. It has just one thing going for it: some above-average, albeit not stunning, animation sequences.

Released in 2000, Blood: the Last Vampire has spawned its own animation series, Blood+, as well as various video games. The plot is basic – vampires in an American military base situated in Japan must be hunted down by a kickass babe in schoolgirl’s clothes. Cue lots of bloodletting, lots of ugly, cheesy monsters and a fair few clichés that will have you burying your face in your hands. Not bad for three quarters of an hour.

If your idea of anime is stuck in the 80s, that is to say that you pick up a DVD from Manga Entertainment expecting a splatterfest of gore and maybe some idealised girls and explosions, but don’t care about plot, then just maybe this will be for you. If you like any semblance of plot or characterisation, look elsewhere, for our protagonist is a typical ice-maiden that it’s very hard to care about, and the sympathetic character at her side is even duller - although her character design (a dumpy middle-aged lady) is a welcome deviation from the rest of the clichés surrounding it. Much better action adventure anime can be found – just look at Princess Mononoke or Mai-HiME. Fans of vampire anime would do far better with Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust or Trinity Blood, which take their subject seriously but with strong characters and interesting storylines. There’s also the classic Hellsing, which is also cheesy in its way, but infinitely cooler than Blood: the Last Vampire because it revels in its schlockiness.

Perhaps the title was marketed heavily towards the English-language market because some half of its dialogue is in English. But this is to the detriment of the title, because the badly-written dialogue is made still worse by some stiff and lifeless English-language acting. And the way some of the black guys are drawn borders on offensive.

The integration of CG and hand-drawn animation is technically impressive, in the opening scene in particular, but that alone does not make Blood: the Last Vampire worth seeing. I also think it a little reprehensible that the running time is not supplied on the DVD case. I’m sure several people have bought this thinking they’re getting a full feature, only to have a piece of animation the length of a single TV special.

(originally written 11.9.07)

火垂るの墓/Hotaru no Haka/Grave of the Fireflies - Live action version

(This review may not make sense without first reading my review of Ghibli’s version)

In my review of Studio Ghibli’s Hotaro no Haka, I pondered how the movie would have worked if it were made in live action. Having now seen the recent non-animated adaptation of the same novel, I think I was right in my conclusions then – while it is perhaps easier to empathise with live-action actors, there are certain elements that worked better in animation because they were no more or less realistic than everything around them, whereas here there were occasional jolts of unwanted Brechtian V-effekt purely because the special effects weren’t realistic enough to be believed.

But I couldn’t tell you which version of the story is superior, because both have considerable merits. However, I would say that the animation tells the core story with more brevity and simplicity, and it was the live action piece that felt like it was complimentary, rather than the other way around. But who knows? Maybe I’d’ve felt differently if I’d seen this version first. Indeed, if I’d read the novel, perhaps I’d think something else entirely.

While a lot of visual images seem to purposely echo the Ghibli version, this is a very different film. For one thing, the narrative framework and the first half of the 250-minute drama are centred not on young Seita-kun and Secchan, but on the relative who takes them in when they lose their mother, but whose selfishness eventually drives them away. It’s an interesting and daring idea, to tell the tale from the perspective of the least sympathetic character in the piece, and keeping her unsympathetic even though we can understand her motives a little more here, but it works well. We see the aunt’s hardships, trying to feed six children and her brother-in-law, whose physical handicap keeps him from the fighting, but we also see her merciless decision to protect her own and drive out the children who need her. She is more obviously conscious of her failings and her callousness here, and she is given some degree of redemption towards the end, but that does not change her behaviour.

However, the shift of focus towards her makes sense, because the actress who portrays her (Matsushima Nanako from Ringu) gives a brilliant performance, dignified and yet so very hateful; the way she uses silence or simply ignores the beseeching words of her daughter or brother-in-law is chilling, especially when we know that the façade isn’t perfect and have seen her at her most emotional on other occasions.

But this Japanese dorama, which I believe was made for TV, suffers many of the same problems that blight British made-for-TV dramas: one or two superior performances surrounded by a supporting cast who really aren’t up to the same standard (the young actors in particular), a budget that makes directors ambitious but doesn’t get the special effects, cinematography or set construction to the level they need to be (the CG fireflies in particular, despite being one of the most important motifs of the movie, look very poor – resulting in the aforementioned V-effekt), music that knows no restraint and as a result smothers powerful scenes in molten cheese...and an inflated sense of self-importance that here results in not only the excessive running time but also a horribly vulgar montage run under the credits, where shots of Setsuko and Seita are juxtaposed with a lot of children from the Middle East, presumably Iraq and perhaps Afghanistan, with a moralising message reminding us that today, there are still many young war victims like the ones in the story. It’s unnecessary, it’s patronising and it’s inappropriate. The message isn’t wrong, of course, but evening drama shows are not the kind of forum for glib politics.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the deeply sad story is one of the best ever told about war, one of the most tragic and one of the most moving. Even though the men who die in the war are featured in this version (they are absent in the animated version), it is the fact that the film brings home the way that tragedy does not just happen on the battlefields that makes it so potent. While I personally found myself feeling more sorry for the younger-looking Secchan and the Seita-kun driven to worse extremes of petty crime in the Ghibli version, whose acting I never felt to be questionable or excessive, I’m quite sure that there are a lot of people who will find it much easier to feel for real children than drawings. Both media are equally valid, and I can only advocate seeing both.

Would I ever have seen this if not by association with anime, though? Well, no…but that would have been my loss.

(originally written 5.11.06)