Review - King of Thorn (2009 - Dir. Kazuyoshi Katayama)

I was expecting great things from this. King of Thorn: a tale of one man's fight to turn a struggling South Yorkshire market town into a thriving canal boat metropolis whilst wearing a shiny king hat. Wait, it says here that it's about a horrific virus that turns people to stone (the Medusa virus) and some nonsense about some people getting cryogenically frozen until they can find a cure, but when they wake things have gone a bit pear shaped. So nothing to do with reopening Woolworths then. Shame.

Actually it starts off really well. The virus is suitably chilling and the way that the story of Sleeping Beauty is weaved in to the characters being frozen, maybe for a hundred years, is all quite intriguing. When Kasumi, a young girl selected to be one of the survivors, wakes up things really kick off and I was thinking that this could well be an anime to buy and add to my collection. Many questions are raised during this first part: is it all a dream, what has it all got to do with a game that a little boy is playing, and has the shady corporation created the virus for its own evil ends? All questions that initially kept me engaged.

Then it all dissolves into a big mess. The story quickly becomes virtually unintelligible and I couldn't have really cared less about answering the questions. I could roughly follow the plot but it was hard work. All of the talk about dreams, games and Sleeping Beauty quickly becomes overdone and increasingly tiresome. It doesn't help that it's way too long at nearly two hours. Things are explained (kind of) at the end and it hints at something altogether better if the script had been a tad clearer. It's based on a manga by Yuji Iwahara, and it's entirely possible that a familiarity with this would help massively.

The traditional 2D animation is gorgeous and almost worth watching for that alone. There's something about watching a new anime on shiny blu-ray. Everything is so crisp and fluid. Then we get to the abomination that is the CGI animation. Now, I happen to think that CGI can work really well within anime; just look at Oblivion Island, Appleseed: Ex Machina or Vexille. But here it's terrible. It looks like it's running at a frame rate of 12 frames per second; it's all so jerky. This completely trashes the quality feel generated by the 2D work.

The best thing about King of Thorn has to be Marco Owen, a prisoner who is chosen for the project. He's massive and charges about punching and shooting stuff. And he says his name a lot. Things generally pick up when he gets into some action.

Apart from a promising start and Marco Owen things are pretty bleak. I normally save anime for times when I want to watch something that will at least get a 6/10 rating. This has left me feeling rather disappointed. 
3/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Origin: Spirits of the Past, Princess Mononoke.

Review - When the Wind Blows (1986 - Dir. Jimmy T. Murakami)

I mentioned recently in my review of Dr Strangelove that the threat of nuclear war was all too real for me in my teenage years. I'm not surprised when I was watching stuff like When the Wind Blows.

James and Hilda Bloggs are your average elderly couple. They lived through World War II and all of the hardships that that entailed. He's gone out to work all is life, while she's stayed at home looking after the house and children (I'm inferring this from the dialogue, their age and her love of clean cushions). Finally he reaches retirement age and what happens? A nuclear war is on the cards between Russia and America. Typical. In preparation, he nips out and procures some government pamphlets on surviving the nuclear holocaust. Everyone loves a good pamphlet.

This surely must be up there as one of the most upsetting and depressing animations. The book was by Raymond Briggs but this isn't The Snowman. Watching a couple of pensioners try to cope with a nuclear bomb and the aftermath is not pleasant viewing despite often being really funny. The humour is often bittersweet. Laughter would occur followed by a realisation of the implications, resulting in yet more depression.

The main source of humour comes from Hilda and her relentless drive towards wanting to have a neat tidy house and keep up appearances. Couple this with Jim's relentless drive towards following governmental instructions, such as, building a shelter out of the house's doors or whitewashing the windows, and you can see where the two may clash. (As a side note, I can't see anyone following governmental instructions now. They'd have to use reverse psychology on us.) 

You may have twigged that the characters are pretty one dimensional, and yes, they are. In the latter half, it almost becomes a little tiresome to hear Hilda make a completely naive comment about what the neighbours will think if they pop round, or hear Jim talk, naively again, about popping out to the shops to get supplies. I say almost, because it is their complete belief in normality resuming that makes the film so upsetting. When a chink appears in their armour at the very end of the film it is even more powerful. A mention has to go to Peggy Ashcroft and John Mills for their perfect voice work.

The film is made using a mixture of styles: the backgrounds are all models and shot using stop-motion animation and the two characters are traditional cel-drawn animation. The model backgrounds allow the camera greater freedom of movement, giving it a different and more depressing feel than usual. Watching Jim sweep up real rubbish makes it all so much more realistic. The whole film looks very atmospheric and bleak (I was bound to love this, wasn't I?).

As a teenager, I always hoped that if they did start dropping bombs, that they landed right on top of my house. I worked out that they'd probably bomb Sheffield so I'd be on the edge of the blast. I didn't really want to suffer the after effects of the bomb. Watching this again now makes it all too obvious to me why I had these thoughts.
9/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Threads, Barefoot Gen.

Review - Waltz with Bashir (2008 - Ari Folman)

Brilliant, I thought, a cross between Deep Space 9 and Strictly Come Dancing. What can go wrong? Surely Alexander Siddig and Bruce Forsyth are in it? Er... no. And it's a film about a man trying to recall his memories of events in the 1982 Lebanon War. Ah... maybe this isn't the light-hearted sequin festival I was expecting.

When Ari Folman (the director) was 19 years old, he was a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. After realising that he has been burying memories about a massacre being perpetrated by members of the Lebanese Christian Phalange militia, he interviews various people, including a psychologist and people who he believes were there with him. So Waltz with Bashir is a documentary. But it's also animated.

The animation is slightly disappointing with a severe Flash animation look. It takes a while to accept it, although it helps that there are some gorgeous images. One recurring image of Ari and two of his buddies rising from the water at sunset and walking, naked, towards the city, is particularly great. Another aspect of the film that goes a long way to glossing over the dubious animation is the music. The minimalist score by Max Richter is one of my favourites for quite a while. Well worth a listen.

I've reviewed a couple of films recently that employ the use of switching between styles or techniques to create a great emotional impact (colour to black and white news footage in The Hindenburg, and black and white to colour in Portrait of Jennie). At a critical moment, Waltz with Bashir uses a similar technique. It pulls the film together and makes the story real for the viewer. Great stuff.

The thread of Ari trying to recall his lost memories runs through the film and is probably the most engaging aspect. Other stories are woven into this, but they are not necessarily connected, creating a larger picture of war. This gives the film the feel of an anthology with the usual problem of some parts being better than others. Despite this, if a film is able to make me interested enough in an historical event to make me want to learn more, then it's got to be pretty good (and it's also way better than any Star Trek/glitter prance crossover could ever hope to be).

7/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Persepolis, City of Life and Death, The Congress.

Review - The King of Pigs (2011 - Dir. Sang-ho Yeon)

As we walked to the cinematic picture house Doccortex asked me a pertinent question: "So, is Korean animation any good?" Based on this showing. No.

Beavis and Butthead boasted higher production values (albeit similarly grotesque teeth). The walking animation makes Bod look like John Travolta at his silkiest. The King of Pigs bears the hallmark of low budget animation: still screens where only slight portions move. And whereas Paprika, and more recently Redline, delighted in distorting faces, this does the same. But it doesn't necessarily look intentional.

You may think that as a lover of gorgeous animation, such as Nausicaa and Laputa, this would all be the kiss of death for The King of Pigs. Not so. It actually makes it quite endearing. They've made a film regardless of the lack of budget. And while it still has its problems, it also has its moments.

Jong-suk and Kyung-min were childhood friends and meet up years later. The conversation drifts to their life at school and the bullying that they put up with until Chul, a mysterious lad in their class, entered the fray. The film flits between their conversation and flashbacks. Now, I'm not normally a fan of flashbacks, but in this, they make up the main bulk of the story so I'll let them off.

The bullying action is all pretty familiar to someone who went to a relatively rough high school in South Yorkshire. But whereas, the cock of our school was invariably the most violent sociopath, here the school is ruled by the posh clever kids with rich parents who are able to bribe the teachers with cash and other services. (One of the bits of teacher bribery is a pearler and should become common practice in the UK.) 

The Dogs (as they're called) are generally unpleasant characters. One of them has a penchant for fiddling with other boys privities and then questioning their sexuality if they start to enjoy it. They don't take kindly to show offs either. A lad joins from another school who can write and work out hard maths questions. He doesn't last long, filthy little show off. Easily the best bully is a lad in an orange jumper. He's a right sneaky little grass who hides behind the bigger lads and eggs them on.

A large problem is that all of this bullying happens quite slowly. A little bit of a pace injection wouldn't have harmed things. Add to this an ending where there are some startling changes of heart by the characters and it gets increasingly difficult to see why I liked it. But as soon as I see the screen shots I feel a warm sensation in my chest (although that could just be the dodgy pickled eggs I had for brekkie).

If you decide to watch The King of Pigs you are in a select little gang. There was only one other person in the cinema screen with us, and he spent most of his time looking at his phone. We quite liked it though. It's got some of the greatest manic laugh animations to hit the screen in a fair while. And at least this time we didn't get eggs thrown at us on the way home. Bonus.
6/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Tekkonkinkreet, Bod.

Review - Redline (2009 - Dir. Takeshi Koike)

It's Wacky Races in anime form. Only not as good.

That's being a tad harsh because at its best Redline is stunning. The first race is a blistering exercise in linking speed, sound, visual distortion and sensory overload. I played the Blu-ray at the normal volume setting that I generally use. The soundtrack came belting out and shook all of the pictures off the walls. Fair enough. It needs to be watched at a very high volume to get the full effect. When a character uses a nitro boost, the screen distorts to a dramatic degree and the music lulls, waiting for the moment when the speed kicks in and the music relaunches. Breathtaking stuff.

Then we hit the story. JP is a racer in the Redline competition, and he also has a neat sideline in race fixing (a bit like certain Doncaster Rovers players). And he's got large pointy hair. There are some other characters in the style of Wacky Races but it's all a bit of a waste of time. The reason why I say that is because I only watched this two days ago and I can pretty much remember nothing from the middle section. All I was doing was waiting for the final race.

When the final race eventually comes it's yet more sensory overload, with a sprinkling of character overload. The race is held on Roboworld and the leader of Roboworld is not overly impressed. In typical fashion, he sends in the army. And a big mutant energy baby. It loses it for a while until the story focusses on the racing action. But it never reaches the peak of the first race.

The animation is a mish mash of Paprika with its distorting unpleasant characters and one of the sections of Gotham Knight (Deadshot, I think) where black shadows are used for the characters. Except here we have black shadows in the background too. I'm not overly keen on the style and it feels generally dirty and unsavoury but it's all down to personal preference.

This took seven years to make and I can see why. It's just a shame that the story is almost non-existent. If you do decide to watch this, enjoy the first race at a rather loud volume. Possibly skip forward to the last race. Then, for indulgence, watch the first race again.
4/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Speed Racer, Paprika, Gotham Knight.

Review - Batman: Gotham Knight (2008 - Dir. Yasuhiro Aoki, Yuichiro Hayashi, Futoshi Higashide, Toshiyuki Kubooka, Hiroshi Morioka, Jong-Sik Nam, Shoujirou Nishimi)

This post should have some type of award for the longest post title ever. There are loads of directors because Gotham Knight consists of tiny bite-size little stories in the style of Animatrix, each segment a perfect length for watching with your tea. The producers would tell you that all of the tales interlink and are better watched as a whole. There are some links between the stories but they don't really add much. There are also links to Batman Begins but the same goes for them. Saying that, I'd have paid full price for the first section on its own.

Have I Got a Story for You is the best segment by miles. It's directed by the animation direction of Tekkonkinkreet, Shoujirou Nishimi, and it shows. It has a very similar style that is equally as fresh, especially when it portrays four different versions of Batman that lets the animators play with his design and movement. The shadow Batman is visually stunning. The animators were given a chance to stretch their creative muscles in this way because the story deals with three children recounting their encounters with Batman. the children are all unreliable narrators. Hence the different portrayals of Batman. Not content with multiple Batmans (should that be Batmen?) the story is fragmented and told in reverse order. In addition, the backgrounds are gorgeous, reminiscent of Dave Gibbons' work on Beneath a Steel Sky. Sheer viewing pleasure. If this was a short film it would get 10/10. 

But it's not. There are five other segments of varying quality, as always happens with this type of production. In Darkness Dwells feels a smidgen like my least favourite part of Arkham Asylum: the Killer Croc section. There's even a bit of detective mode vision in there. Walking Through Pain is like the really dull mystical episodes of TV Sci-fi. It ends on a high note with Deadshot with some preposterously entertaining sniping action.

The flour and water paste that sticks all of the disparate anime styles together is Kevin Conroy. Previous mentioned in these hallowed pages, (Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman) the man is Batman. Well, his voice anyway. If I was Christopher Nolan I'd get him to dub over Christian Bale. In post-production obviously, so Bale can't get all giddy.

If you think of Gotham Knight as a brilliant short film, with five extra shorts you won't be disappointed. Plus you get four episodes of the animated series too. And it's really cheap, especially on Blu-ray. 
6/10
evlkeith




If you like this you could also try:
Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, Tekkonkinkreet, Animatrix.

Review - To (2009 - Dir. Fumihiko Sori)

I'd pre-ordered this based on Sori's previous work - Vexille in particular - but after seeing a not-so-great review in SFX I cancelled the order and thought that I'd rent it instead. I should have stuck to my original plan and not bothered reading other reviews first. As with Vexille, it's not the best film ever but something about it gets under my skin and makes me want to watch it again.

To is two separate stories (this severely confused me, when the credits for the first part came up after not that long, it took me a while to realise there was a second story), based on the manga 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino. Both stories deal with what will happen when humans start to venture out into space. Will we make exactly the same mistakes again?

The first story Elliptical Orbit concerns the shipment of a new energy source. Fifteen years after setting off, the ship transporting the liquid protons back to Earth has to stop off for repairs at a space station. The female captain of the ship meets up with Dan - the head honcho of the space station - and they obviously have a history. But what has happened between them? This story is not really concerned with the science and more with how relationships will be affected by long haul space travel. It contains some strangely static space battles but is nonetheless quite enjoyable.

Then we come to Symbiotic Planet. This is a riff on Romeo and Juliet with two lovers hailing from two different antagonistic nations. Being planet-bound this one has a different feel and atmosphere to the first story but the style and theme ties them both together. It also has a comedy ending that made me chuckle. Fairly standard issue characters are the norm, especially the military types, but I could easily imagine this kind of thing happening. Again, this is more of a love story than hard science-fiction.

A mention has to be given to the title sequence which is one of the best I've seen in years. Music and clean visuals come together beautifully, whetting your appetite for what is to come. I could watch it repeatedly - nice and loud.

The style is a little odd - not quite anime, not quite the CG animation produced in Hollywood - but if you've seen Vexille or either of the similarly styled Appleseed films you'll be used to it. I like it as a way of telling stories differently. There is some resistance to it, with people worried that it might replace traditional anime. As Sori himself says, there are some worlds that you can only produce with hand-drawn animation giving Miazaki's work as an example. I think there's room for all of these different styles. I like this. I like anime. 

I have a strong suspicion that my rating of this film may go up over time. It's one of those films that I just feel myself drawn back to again and again. I better go and order it now...
7/10
evlkeith

(As an aside, the extras are quite interesting - especially the brilliantly titled 'Special Questions'. Sori explains how most western films are dubbed into the Japanese language for a Japanese audience. It seems that the whole world is a bit subtitle averse.)


 

If you like this you could also try:
Vexille, Appleseed, Appleseed: Ex Machina.