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Category: On screen
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1983)
This was another one that had sat on my to-watch list for absolutely ages but didn’t seem appealing enough for me to make time to watch. To be honest, it wasn’t all that great but isn’t bad either; for those of us who appreciate that sort of thing it has enough genuine drama to make it more than a film studies history lesson but it’s a bit dated and the sedate pace isn’t what viewers these days are accustomed to.
This is very much a product of its time: it features Tomoyo Harada, a screen idol of the early 80s who has since become a singer/songwriter with a pretty respectable back catalogue, albeit no longer as a household name. The director Nobuhiko Obayashi is another old industry regular that I’m not familiar with but he’s apparently notorious for his surreal style; any oddness present in this film isn’t excessive, but it’s interesting.
Mouryou no Hako, a boxful of wonderfully hard-boiled madness
I started watching this back in ’08 but for a number of reasons I didn’t get around to finishing it. The subbing was sporadic, the plot derailed into a lengthy period of three blokes sitting around a table talking, other shows caught my interest, etc., etc.. Last week though I finally sat down and practically forced myself to finish the thing; the mid section was as tedious as I remember but pushing on to the finale was worth every minute.
This is an extremely unusual series, which is why I’m not surprised that it’s already virtually forgotten. It’s straight-faced and serious as hell, challenging the viewer from the outset by starting off very weird indeed. And it gets weirder. Even so, I found it to be a piece of sheer bloody genius with a multi-layered maze of a plot that starts off with bizarre yuri overtones, moves into hard-boiled detective fiction with serial killers and femmes fatales, dabbles in esoteric Japanese folklore and rounds it all off with a closing act that reaches Nasu-esque levels of twisted insanity.
Remembering Satoshi Kon
I must admit I didn’t hear about Perfect Blue until around 2004, when the only anime I’d watched were Miyazaki’s Laputa, Anno’s Evangelion and Tsurumaki’s FLCL. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least, but that day was a pretty significant turning-point in making me the fan I am today.
I’m sure the obituaries and tributes to Satoshi Kon from his family and friends will be formed as I type and my sincere condolences go out to them. I’m afraid I know nothing about who he was as a man: I sadly never had the opportunity to meet him. His work however is something I’ve become very familiar with over the years, and it’s my love of this that I want to express, as my way of acknowledging what he achieved.
Categories: On screen
Tags: Anime, community, editorial, realistic fiction, Satoshi Kon, serious business
10 Comments
Tokyo Sonata
Tokyo Sonata is a domestic drama from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a director who has made his name in the horror genre with the likes of Kairo and Bright Future. This film then is a marked departure for him but it is also unlike most titles in Japanese cinema that I’ve seen on international home video release. Its quietly powerful realism and topical themes make it, for me, one of the most important Japanese films of recent years.
If there’s one thing I find fascinating about contemporary Japan it’s the presence of contrasts that are baffling to an outside first-time visitor. This has been heightened in the past decade or two by fundamental changes that are inexorably altering the society’s status quo, so the ramifications for its defining features of harmony, tradition and smooth routine are quite striking.
K-On!!, cats and finally forming an opinion on moe
As of this week I’m looking after my sister’s cat, which is one of the reasons why I’ve been too busy to post and reply to comments lately. Now I have three full weeks of paid leave I’m able to keep an eye on the kitteh, update here, catch up on animu and movies, visit friends, write songs, arrange my career change, etc., etc..
Classy
I’ve been following High School of the Dead and Shiki only a couple of eps behind people who’ve kept up with them properly but K-On!! is the one thing I’ve found time to watch every week. My earlier attempt at explaining my position only caused misunderstandings, although the resulting discussions made up for the disappointment I felt at the time. I just can’t bring myself around to the view of the hypothetical ‘haters’ for the simple reason that the series shouldn’t elicit a stronger negative reaction than a mere lack of interest…a view I can explain with my view on moe. And cats.
News just in: waffling idiot tries to solve the fansub debate
A recent comment thread on GRSI, plus this bit of news and my experience with this site, has led me to ask myself a question so bleeding obvious that I feel stupid asking it. I’ll stress right now that I’m not a professional computer programmer (why else would I be using a stock WP theme?) and I don’t follow the industry too closely (Omo does some very insightful and in-depth analysis on the subject though) but even so, I do wonder: I’ve noticed a potential solution that would help fans AND make money for the industry…two facts that ought to mean it should’ve been done already. Only it hasn’t.
The current attempt at a solution to the fansub/piracy problem is through the streaming with region-locking and paid subscriptions, i.e. Crunchyroll’s model. I’m not aiming to criticise what CR are doing here: they did great things in giving Eve no Jikan exposure, made last year’s Global Shinkai Day even more special and are so far the only independent site that has made a high-profile attempt to seek the middle ground.
Cat Shit One could be more than just rabbits with guns, but that’s fine for now
I’ve been hearing rumblings about this one for quite some time but since my brain makes connections in the most arcane and awkward ways I attached a bizarre preconception to it (something to do with it sounding similar to Cat Soup, which is a show I’ve considered watching for the Yuasa factor but never summoned the courage to try…go figure). It turns out to be nothing like whatever I expected, anyway. It’s all about rabbits with guns.
Cat Shit One is very, very different from pretty much everything else around right now, which is reason enough for me to recommend it on its own. The idea of anthropomorphised rabbits rescuing hostages from armed terrorist camels is indeed absurd but it was surprisingly easy for me to forget the sight of cottontails twitching prior to an all-out firefight because it was, with this quirk aside, hell of a lot of fun. So much so that I was able to accept the concept and simply enjoy the action.
Ookami-san and High School of the Dead first impressions
I try to avoid the lowest-common-denominator trashy titles what with my free time being at such a premium and with the Backlog being the way it is, but there’s no harm in giving new shows a fighting chance. Long story short, there’s a lot of stuff around that doesn’t interest me and I still haven’t found the opportunity to write some deep ‘n’ meaningful editorial for a while. I haven’t got as far as the latest NoitaminA offerings yet though, so all isn’t lost. Legservice, boobs and zombies ought to be a good place to start though, right?
I’m late to the You Can (not) Advance party and spotted familiar faces, but…
Considering the challenges in the ‘feature-length retelling of the TV show’ concept, I sometimes wonder why the studios bother. They need a keen eye for what to retain and what to leave out in order to condense the storyline effectively, it has to entertain the viewers on its own merits so we can momentarily forget the old version but at the same time it has to remain true to what made the original good enough to be worth retelling.
RahXephon for example suffered greatly from the condensed plotline issue and Eureka Seven lost a lot of the spirit of the TV show, so both were disappointing to me. The Evangelion rebuild in particular is an undertaking I personally wouldn’t enjoy being responsible for since it’ll piss off a significant proportion of the fanbase regardless of what the production team do. Over the past decade and a half it’s bred so many conflicting opinions that whatever approach is taken, it’ll hit somebody’s sore spot square-on.
Categories: On screen
Tags: Anime, Eden of the East, Evangelion, feature film, Hideaki Anno, tsun-tsun
4 Comments
Cossette revisited: Shinbo, Nasu and the Kajiura connection
Looks like I made it to the second round of the tourney thing, but I’m sadly short on topics for writing thanks to the fact that my laptop is the only working PC I have right now. It’s able to cope with DVD playback though so I can at least rewatch old favourites; I’ve had Le Portrait de Petite Cossette for instance on my shelf for a while but only came back to it last week…and I’m glad I did.
The first time I watched this I felt a bit overwhelmed by the visuals so didn’t really grasp what it was trying to say. I guess it was slightly wasted on me at the time but watching the three episodes again, across as many days, worked better for me so now I really feel I appreciate it more than I did then.
Categories: On screen
Tags: Akiyuki Shinbo, Anime, experimental, Kara no Kyoukai, Yuki Kajiura
5 Comments