Mono no aware

Ah, that time of year again…as much as I’d have liked to have taken time off work for the full duration of the festival and watch as much as time allowed my finances wouldn’t stretch (especially since it’s an hour away by train). It became more of a social occasion what with the screenings of First Squad: Moment of Truth, Ponyo and Summer Wars forming the perfect excuse to meet up with friends and discuss the movies over a meal and a drink or two.

For some reason I prefer to watch episodic anime and the more headscratch-inducing stuff on my own at home but the feature-length efforts are more enjoyable when the experience is shared with friends and on the big screen. I’m certainly expecting these three to wind up licenced; assuming legal red tape doesn’t get in the way I see no reason why they won’t. I hope.

I always find the “How did you get into anime?” discussions fascinating. Way before my first proper anime experience I watched an obscure animated feature film that gave me great memories. I mentally filed it under Something I’ll Never See Again and almost fooled myself into thinking I’d forgotten about it, so it was quite something when I spotted a familiar-looking image on the front of a DVD case over a decade later and bought the thing on the spot. The DVD in question was Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which I later bought again on Japanese import because that was the edition that contained the older English language dub I remembered so held the real nostalgia value.

I wonder if the quoted value of 5cm per second for sakura petals is altitude-dependent

While I normally blog from the point of view of the cynical 27-year-old I am today the reason why my opinion of it is the way it is stems from experiencing it through a child’s eyes; it is after all a kids’ adventure story so that tack makes more sense to me. I’ve done a very simplified run-down of my favourite bits from my original viewing, with numbered annotations to include the benefits of hindsight. It’s an unusual approach for me, so I hope it works here.