A whole bunch of anime films · 11:57pm May 31st, 2014
I've been watching so many of these recently that I thought I may as well just give a short, spoiler-free impression of each one, instead of going into too much depth. If you haven't seen these, then let's just say that you should have.
Night on the Galactic Railroad
I thought this would be a light hearted film, like a Ghibli movie, since I heard that it was based on a children's book. In fact, it's rather somber and mysterious. The first half hour of the film is very slow and, honestly, a bit boring, but it's all a set-up for when the enormous train thunders in from the stars and sets off the adventure. This isn't so much the sort of film where you get fully engaged with emotional highs and lows while watching it, it's more like something that you watch with a steady fascination. There's some really outlandish ideas in this film, things that could only work in animation, even if the animation quality itself is only average. I would say that the ending is strangely quiet and contemplative, but that's really the standard for the whole film. It's funny how I can now see just how many newer anime have subtle references to this film, it must've been very influential when it was released. Also, it's nice to see some cats in anime that aren't shown as super-duper kawaii blobs, cats are more complex animals than that.
Angel's Egg
This film is something else. There's hardly any dialogue in it, since most of the run-time is made up with atmospheric moments. The story progresses slowly and steadily, with plenty of time for the viewer to think over what's just happened, but trying to describe what the film means is a puzzle; really, it actually feels like a huge puzzle. If you'll let me extend that analogy, I'd say that trying to figure out Angel's Egg is like having a huge jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces can be put together in different ways to make various different images. But no matter how many different combinations are made with the pieces, there'll always be a few left over. The art and music in this film are fantastic, and they kept me interested when there seemed to be nothing going on. There's nothing I can really say other than this: watch it. WATCH IT NOW. You'll be left speechless afterwards.
Tekkonkinreet
It's very lively and extremely colourful, with a great story behind it. But the way that story is handled is a bit odd, since each scene seems to run at the same pace and bleed straight into the next one. This has an odd effect, making the watching experience of this film a bit like being in a dream. Whether that's intentional or not is a bit of a mystery to me, since the story itself has very little to do with dreaming, but it works well in my opinion. The soundtrack by Plaid works really well in a lot of the scenes, but it falls a bit short in some others (like one scene when two characters are in a strip joint and the music is a synth doing a bad impression of a saxophone). The animation is also very good indeed. In fact it's almost too good, since it made the images freeze on my PC screen while the audio kept going. But, you know, all the complaints I just made are nothing more than nitpicking in all honesty. This is still a good film, and it's well worth watching.
The Wind Rises
I was lucky enough to see this one in the cinema a couple of weeks ago, since it was released theatrically released in the UK just then. Technically this film should be controversial to westerners, since it's based on part of the life of the man who designed the Zero aeroplane. If you don't know, those were the planes that the Japanese flew when they attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941 and started the USA's involvement in WWII. But this isn't an issue, really, since it's always made clear that the main character only wanted to design beautiful aircraft. If anything, it's more tragic that the only use for the aircraft at the time was for making war, rather than existing for the sake of the freedom of flight. But, basically, this is Hayao Miyazaki's final film, and it's a fine send-off for a man who's had such a magnificent career. I saw this film with a friend, and as we were leaving he summed it up in a single word : "lovely".
Robot Carnival
This is another one of Katsuhiro Otomo's anthology films, like Neo Tokyo and Memories (both very good). As a collection, this one is easily the most mixed in terms of quality and subject matter, in comparison to those other two films. A couple of shorts aren't that great, whereas some others are fantastic. Some of them are comedies, some have action, there's a thought-provoking sci-fi tragedy, and one of them is simply beautiful. The animation is absolutely fantastic at times, since the whole thing was handled by crews of talented animators working at 24 frames per second (as opposed to the anime standard of 8 frames per second). Most of all, I think it's astonishing that this thing was even made at all. Basically, a bunch of amateur anime directors (including Otomo) were recruited to make a short film each and were given a huge budget. The only creative restriction they had was that the short they made had to be related to robots in some way. No way would that happen today, only in 80's-economic-boom Japan.
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
This is another Miyazaki film, although a much older one. It was the one Ghibli film of his that I had left to watch, and now I've done the lot. (Just need to work through all of Takahata's films now.) This film is like a condensed version of Miyazaki's TV series, Future Boy Conan, but with more impressive animation and a different world setting. The ending also reminds me of the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga, too, in some ways. This is a real fun and lively adventure: not as light hearted or as serious as Miyazaki's other films, somewhere in the middle. I don't think there's a whole lot else to say, really. It's the usual high standard of Ghibli, so there's really no reason at all miss this. If I was a father then I'd want to show it to my children, and they'd probably love it.
Angel's Egg and Robot Carnival sound really neat so I'll probably watch those very soon. Also, I'm probably going to get caught up on ghibli films soon...maybe throughout all of next week. Castle in the Sky was my first Miyazaki film actually though I don't remember much about it other than that robot. I'll definately take a note of these films and try and watch all of them when I have the time, thanks for sharing!