Due to the time pressures of not having been too well recently and trying to get more painting done to start a new art career, I've been struggling to get many reviews written. So what I've decided is that I'll write longer reviews for really good (or bad) films and for the more average of offerings, I will do a little mini-review. Here we go then with my first. Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack.
It all starts off as pretty bonkers, yet entertaining, with scenes of fish walking on metallic legs attacking people left, right and centre and even a cheeky threesome (fish not included).
Then, at about the halfway point, the fish creatures are replaced by human creatures and the whole thing - whilst continuing the bonkers theme - falls apart into a turgid mess. A disappointment after the promising first half.
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.
Ever since Fermat's Last Theorem got solved I've been waiting for another tricky equation to have a crack at. And now I've got one: Loups=Garous. Mmm, I'm not sure that the majority of mathematicians are quite prepared for that one yet. But I'm going to spend the next eight years of my life proving it and star in my own documentary on BBC2.
I'm going to zoom off on a tangent now before I actually get on with the review. It's possibly not a secret that I'm not a big mobile phone user (for some evidence check out one of our vintage intermissions - Retro Phones, and yes, I still own and use that phone). Because I rarely use my phone, I am in the privileged position of being able to observe others using their mobile devices. I'm not going to give any judgements, I'll just detail some things I've noticed:
Walking along with one other person chatting away when suddenly they start to use their phone. (I believe that this is called phubbing.)
Two people in the same room communicating on Facebook.
A man and a woman - possibly partners - sat in a cafe for twenty minutes having a nice cup of tea. They didn't talk to each other the whole time due to phone usage.
A family of four sat in a service station having a nice cup of tea. Again no interaction between any of them.
A mother walking along with a baby in a pushchair and/or a toddler, not engaging in any attempt at communication, yet again due to phone bothering. (I've seen this numerous times.)
Going to a popular music concert only to be severely disappointed because virtually no-one danced. They were too busy holding up their phones to record it.
A young woman with a new iPhone out in town gets it nicked and her mum gets saddled with a rather long contract.
The same young woman with another new iPhone on the toilet, drops it down it. Her mum gets saddled with a rather long contract at the same time as the previous one. Cheers.
A young woman (a different one this time) with a new iPhone out in town gets some dubious substance put in her beverage and wakes up to find her phone missing (and saddled with a rather long contract - but at least she paid for it herself).
I was on a course recently and everyone was engaged in the thrilling subject of lone working. It got to dinner time and the bloke said that we could get some snap (translation - dinner, or alternative translation for people who are wrong - lunch). As soon as he'd said this, I sat back and had a little stretch. Everyone else, and that's nine people, immediately got out their phones and started fiddling, their eyes glued to their screens. It was silent. I looked around amazed and slightly concerned that I'd slipped back in time to a fifties black and white science-fiction fable in the style of Children of the Damned.
"Wait a minute. Just on Facebook. Want to see our Rachel's having for her dinner."
In all of the above cases no-one actually used their phone to ring someone up and talk to them. I went to Italy relatively recently and the culture was very different there. People still used mobiles, but they used them as literal mobile phones, to chat to others using their vocal cords.
Right, I'm supposed to be reviewing Loups=Garous, something possibly about a werewolf, and yet I'm wittering on about mobiles. (It's not really a werewolf film in the traditional sense, but we'll come to that later.) The point is that Loups=Garous is the first film that I've seen that has picked up on these behaviours. It's not subtle about it either. The basic message is: stop living your life through a tiny screen, throw it away and experience life for yourself. It also delves into the use of the word monitor. It used to be something that we looked at and now it is something that can look at us. Pretty relevant stuff.
Set in the future, Makino is a young lady with a communication disorder. She never has real conversations with anyone, only through her monitor (for 'monitor' read 'mobile'). You can possibly see where the communication disorder has come from. She gets put in a group of children to develop her language skills. But murder is afoot, as always. The plucky chums try to discover the secret behind all of this bloodshed.
Makino has to be the wettest lead character I've ever seen. Other characters in the film have some top battling skills, like knife wielding or the fancy use of kenpo. Makino's top talent is to shut her eyes. (Hey, don't knock it. It worked in City of the Living Dead.) Towards the end of the film she has to rescue her friends. And she does so in fine style. By falling down the stairs and whimpering a bit. Despite all that I couldn't help but like her, especially in her final scenes.
My favourite character has to be Tsuzuki. She's one of Makino's gang and is a tad giddy. She has a love of life that is infectious plus an ability to render monitors useless (I did say that it wasn't that subtle). The other main character is Kono who is a tad confusing in the trouser department. At one point Kono is referred to as 'he', but he seems to have lady lumps and a preference for wearing one stocking. But that's all part of the puzzle.
And a puzzle it is. Well, for me anyway. It took me two watches - and a few rewinds - to work out what was going on. I was expecting a full on werewolf film, and it's not in the slightest. It takes a while to work out what it is. It's not that I didn't enjoy it. My comment on numerous occasions was, I'm not sure what's going on, but I like it. Everything is there for working out the story, it just took me some time. The only thing that still bothers me is in one scene where the moon is waning and I'm not sure why (you'd have to watch it to understand).
One of the best things about Loups=Garous is the use of music by Scandal, who contribute a few of their ditties along with appearing in the film in Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil style. I've since downloaded the tracks for my listening pleasure. Because they're good.
So if you hate mobile phones, love wet lead characters, Japanese pop rock girl bands and plenty of shots of gibbous moons (let's face facts - who doesn't love a gibbous moon?) then this could well be for you.
I spoil you.
7/10
evlkeith
If you like this you could also try: Purchasing a phone like mine that even struggles with texting.
What a completely dull title. It's so dull, it wouldn't even show the reflection of Liberace's teeth. The original title of Children Who Chase Lost Voices is a lot better. They should have stuck with that.
This is Makoto Shinkai's love letter to Hayao Miyazaki. Well, it's a bit more than a love letter actually. It's a sidle up to him on the settee, drape an arm round his shoulders and give him a cheeky kiss on the lips kind of affair. The general idea of a mysterious hidden land, populated with strange guardians will be familiar to any of Miyazaki's fans. The designs also feel strangely familiar too. See what you think of the story:
Asuna is a young girl who, due to circumstances, has been forced to develop a lot of independence. She uses a mysterious crystal radio device to try to find a signal. One day she does. She hears some strange music and her interest is piqued. She gets attacked by a huge creature on a bridge and is subsequently saved by a young fellow called Shun. He tells her that he is from Agartha, a hidden land. Amazingly enough, Asuna wants to find Agartha, and so sets off on a journey.
Journey to Agartha deals with such issues as love, death and the aforementioned independence and as such it is fairly adult in tone although it looks as though it's aimed at a younger market. The look is definitely more childlike than either of Shinkai's previous works, The Place Promised in Our Early Days and 5 Centimeters Per Second. Despite dealing with more adult themes, I found it quite dull. It took me a fair few watchings to get through it because I kept nodding off. Now this could be due to tiredness but I think it's more that not very much happens in the film. Looking back on it a couple of days after I've seen it I can't really remember many memorable moments.
The story has the feeling of having been adapted from a book that isn't really that suitable for being adapted. On investigation, it turns out that it's an original story written by Shinkai himself. The action scenes are beautifully shot but way too short. And seeing as though it spends a lot of time dealing with the death of loved ones it is a surprisingly unemotional experience (apart from one unexpected incident, which I won't spoil). Oblivion Islandalso deals with loss, albeit in a shallower form, but it is a lot more fun and entertaining than this.
Despite this my overall feeling about the film is how gorgeous it looks. You could randomly freeze frame it with eyes closed and you'd be rewarded with a stunning image. There are so many lovingly drawn details (again something that makes it feel like a book adaptation). Disney have moved on to 3D animation but this shows the evolution of 2D animation and how great it can look.
One example, and one of the few memorable moments, is a scene toward the end involving God. Being anime, and being based in a hidden world, God doesn't float in on a white cloud and have lovely white hair and a fluffy beard. In fact, this God is more of a Transformer. Cool. It's one of the only times when the story and the images gel together perfectly.
It's a film that I'd like to watch again (and probably fall asleep to again) as it's not an unpleasant experience. My review score may actually increase with repeat viewings. But if Shinkai really wants to snuggle up with Miyazaki he's going to have to lift his story writing to bring it up to par with his beautiful visuals. 6/10 evlkeith
If Insomniac Games (of Ratchet & Clank fame) joined forces with an anime production house and made a film, Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror would be that film.
Haruka is a young girl who loses her mirror at an early age. It turns out that it's been nicked by a fox, one of a group of foxes whose job it is to acquire things that have been neglected by humans. She sets off, amazingly enough, on a wonderful journey to find her mirror and meets an amazing cast of colourful characters along the way. Mmm...
The first thing to comment on is how gorgeous the film is. The initial reveal of Oblivion Island is as beautiful as anything in Final Fantasy VII. And like that game, it's a mix of 2D backgrounds and 3D characters, albeit with a slightly higher polygon count. It occasionally goes into full 3D mode, especially for the obligatory rail/minecart sequences, and it still looks rather dashing. It's all so colourful and full of visual creativity that it takes a couple of watches to take it all in.
There are some minor problems that let down the general gorgeousness of the production. The foxes look a little bland and textureless, almost like the characters in Little Big Adventure. Compared to the luxurious feel of everything else they stand out like a sore thumb. The other sore thumbs are the background characters that wander around like the jarring motion captured mobs in Assassin's Creed (or for a film reference, Titanic.) At one point, when a train departed, I spent about five seconds watching one of these clowns mill about. And five seconds seems like a long time when watching low quality animation.
Back on track with the stunning visuals there is a treat of a boss battle along the lines of Shadow of the Colossus, when Haruka has to clamber around a huge beastie in order to defeat it. But unlike that game, there is no feeling of guilt or sadness when it finally dies. It's still cool though due to the involvement of a small toy sheep.
The Baron is a pretty creepy main villain, coming across as a mixture of The King of All Cosmos (Katamari Damancy) and Bionic Commando. His airship has some very unnerving fingers (?) that move in a very spider like fashion. Not to be outdone in the creepiness stakes are the Petitloss, a group of thieving types that live underground. One scene containing them is enough to send a little shiverette down the spine.
So, I've possibly overstated the fact that Oblivion Island borrows heavily from games, and you would think that this makes it a bit on the rubbish side. But it's great. Things that have become ho-hum in games, such as the minecart sequence, are done brilliantly here, even bordering on exciting and never less than fun. That's the best word for this film: fun. I've recently watched Headhunters and I can't be bothered to review it due to sheer blandness. It's not that it's a bad film, it's just that it's not that entertaining. Not fun. I know which of these two films I'm going to be purchasing on Blu-ray very soon...
But Oblivion Island has got even more than the fun factor going for it. There are many small moments of animation, some of which even border on heart-warming, that lift it above the average. It is a children's film, but it doesn't include cheeky little nods to the adult audience or pop culture references. And it's all the better for it. Embrace your childlike side and give it a whirl. 8/10 evlkeith
Appleseed (1988) is probably the most faithful visual representation of the manga by Masamune Shirow (creator of Ghost in the Shell). The later films Appleseed (2004) and Appleseed Ex Machina are both CGI and due to the 3D nature of their character models differ greatly from their 2D inspiration. Ex Machina makes the furthest departure by making Deunan worryingly attractive especially compared to the fairly butch shot-putter in this version.
It may be faithful visually but the names are all over the place. Deunan Nat (normally known as Deunan Knute) and Bularius (Briareos in the manga) are members of SWAT in the utopia known as Olympus. You wouldn't think that SWAT would have to lot to do, or even exist in a utopia, but exist they do and they've got problems; someone is not happy in paradise. So unhappy that they decide to thieve a mobile gun platform and obliterate the city. But how have they done this? Maybe they've had some help from a cop on the inside...
Appleseed combines mecha, cyberpunk and sociology to produce something a little bit different. The way it's written makes the viewer identify with the terrorists - always a risky choice. When one of the characters discusses how some of the city's inhabitants are still not happy, despite having everything they want they have nothing to fight or strive for, I can see where he's coming from. This brings to light the important distinction between what people want and what people need. What I want is a huge Scalextric set with all the trimmings, but what I need is a slap.
The mecha action is only so-so and there are better examples out there (Neon Genesis Evangelion to name but one). The finale involving the mobile gun platform never quite gets going and feels like a bit of a letdown. The designs are pretty cool, especially on the baddie Sebastian's landmate which is particularly nasty with its evil claw action.
The main draw of Appleseed, as always, is the relationship between Deunan and bunny-eared cyborg Briareos. They obviously work well as a team but deeper feelings are also hinted at. The depth of their relationship is never revealed in its entirety. It still all feels a little underdeveloped though and this aspect maybe only fully comes to fruition in Ex Machina.
This is quite an old slice of anime and it has dated, but at only 67 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome and I managed to get it dirt cheap. If all of this doesn't convince you that it's at least worth a punt, it contains a pipe smoking lady and a male cop called Karen. But there are better entries in the series... 5/10 evlkeith
If you liked this you could also try: Patlabor, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell.
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.
