anime

Akira

by James McNally on June 20, 2007

in DVD

Akira

Akira (Director: Katsuhiro Ôtomo, Japan, 1988): Ok, I know I’m not going to be able to do this film justice. It’s tough when you put some­thing into the DVD player at 10:00pm. Sometimes a long movie just feels longer when it’s after mid­night and you’re lying hori­zont­ally on the couch. Like many Japanese anime, Akira was based on a longer manga series, which may explain why there seemed to be a lot of plot jumps that force you to fill things in on your own. When the film was released in 1988, the anim­a­tion was con­sidered cutting-edge, and although there has been a lot of innov­a­tion in the almost twenty years since, the film’s visuals still have the ability to amaze.

Set in 2019, more than thirty years after World War III has des­troyed the old city of Tokyo, the film tells a com­plic­ated story of a secret gov­ern­ment pro­ject designed to develop powerful psychic powers in chil­dren. When Tetsuo, a young member of a biker gang, stumbles across one of the escaped chil­dren, he is abducted by shadowy mil­itary forces and sub­jected to exper­i­ments which unleash his latent psychic powers. His friend Kaneda becomes involved when he tries to rescue Tetsuo and by the end of the film’s 124 minutes, there is a lot of carnage and gen­eral mayhem.

I’ll have to admit that I found the plot con­fusing, and the film over­long. In gen­eral, I’ve found anime’s plots fairly pre­dict­able (while at the same time mad­den­ingly vague), and Akira may have set the standard. Having recently reviewed Paprika, though, I found that a few of Akira’s scenes were just as spec­tac­ular, and I sus­pect that most anime have bor­rowed from Akira in some way or another over the years. For a film that’s almost twenty years old, the anim­a­tion still feels fresh and in a world of CGI and twenty years of copycat films, that’s quite an accomplishment.

I know this film has a lot of ded­ic­ated fans, so I’m hoping some of you will chime in with some insights in the comments.

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: animation, anime, DVD, japan, manga, scifi

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Death Note

by James McNally on June 5, 2007 · 4 comments

in DVD

Death Note (Desu nôto)

Death Note (Desu nôto) (Director: Shusuke Kaneko, Japan, 2006): Based upon a very pop­ular manga, Death Note has since been made into an anime tele­vi­sion series, but this live-action ver­sion, along with its sequel, Death Note: The Last Name, ruled the Japanese box-office last year. The concept seemed inter­esting: Light Yagami is a law stu­dent and son of a local police invest­ig­ator, hoping to follow his father into a career involving the law. One night he finds an empty note­book that prom­ises “The human whose name is written in this note shall die.” Pretty soon, crim­inals all over Japan are drop­ping like flies, and the police are trying to track down the vigil­ante respons­ible for these mys­ter­ious deaths. They call in the elu­sive “L” (described ludicrously as “the world’s top detective”) to help them crack the case. Later, we find out “L” is just a sullen teen­ager with a sweet tooth, but that makes about as much as sense as the rest of the movie.

I’ve pre­vi­ously men­tioned my interest in Japanese anime, but I’ve never really gotten into manga in a big way, mostly because this type of fic­tion gen­er­ally sac­ri­fices char­acter and believ­able plots in the interest of keeping the action going and appealing to their chosen demo­graphic. All these flaws are present in this film adapt­a­tion of the manga. The very fact that both prot­ag­on­ists are teen­aged boys living in Japan seemed funny, but that was nothing com­pared to some of the plot holes and stun­ning coin­cid­ences neces­sary to move this story along to its con­clu­sion. Death Note makes Japan look like a nation bursting at the seams with violent and unre­morseful psy­cho­paths, when in reality the crime rate is quite low. And there are really no sym­path­etic char­ac­ters at all, since Light, who started by trying to rid the world of crime, ends up killing anyone who gets too close to finding out who he is.

The film is slickly made, for the most part (well, except that the “Reaper” who ori­gin­ally dropped the note­book for Light to find looks like a giant grin­ning mari­on­ette). But it’s unbear­ably silly. Death Note is obvi­ously enter­taining for many people, judging by its com­mer­cial suc­cess; just not people like me, I guess.

Official site for the film

5/10(5/10)

Tagged as: anime, DVD, japan, manga

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Paprika

by James McNally on June 4, 2007 · 5 comments

in Theatrical Release

Paprika

Paprika (Director: Satoshi Kon, Japan, 2006): I’m not really a genuine otaku nor do I aspire to be, but I do have a little bit of exper­i­ence with Japanese anime, including the films of Hiyao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro) and the excel­lent sci-fi series Ergo Proxy. So I don’t claim to know or under­stand all of the con­ven­tions of Japanese anim­a­tion. With that dis­claimer out of the way, I can hon­estly say that Paprika (or “Papurika” which is the Japanese title) is quite a trip. Like many anime, the plot is tricky, but the visuals are abso­lutely eye-popping. The fact that the film is based on a well-known and pop­ular novel by Japanese sci-fi master Yasutaka Tsutsui led to high expect­a­tions among Japanese audi­ences, who have received the film enthusiastically.

Paprika

The press kit syn­opsis: “Dr. Atsuko Chiba is a genius sci­entist by day, and a kick-ass dream war­rior named PAPRIKA by night. In this psy­che­delic sci-fi adven­ture, it will take the skills of both women to save the world. In the near future, a revolu­tionary new psy­cho­therapy treat­ment called PT has been invented. Through a device called the “DC Mini” it is able to act as a “dream detect­ive” to enter into people’s dreams and explore their uncon­scious thoughts. Before the gov­ern­ment can pass a bill author­izing the use of such advanced psy­chi­atric tech­no­logy, one of the pro­to­types is stolen, sending the research facility into an uproar. In the wrong hands, the poten­tial misuse of the device could be dev­ast­ating, allowing the user to com­pletely anni­hilate a dreamer’s per­son­ality while they are asleep. Renowned sci­entist, Dr. Atsuko Chiba, enters the dream world under her exotic alter-ego, code name “PAPRIKA,” in an attempt to dis­cover who is behind the plot to under­mine the new invention.”

Paprika is like Dr. Chiba’s sub­con­scious self, or her id, flirty and pix­ieish, but she is able to do things the uptight Dr. Chiba can’t do. It’s funny that later in the film, Paprika refers to her­self as “the missing spice.” With the help of police detective Konakawa and the device’s inventor, the food-loving Dr. Tokita, this Spice Girl will make the world safe again.

Though the plot is almost ridicu­lously com­plex, it’s a very fun ride, just to see what the anim­ators can come up with next. Some of the film’s most mem­or­able images wouldn’t be out of place in the off-kilter world of video­game Katamari Damacy. Along with the visuals, the jaunty elec­tronic score adds to the cool factor, making Paprika a sort of Spirited Away for grownups.

The film opens in lim­ited release in Toronto on June 15th.

Official site for the film

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: animation, anime, japan, scifi, Theatrical Release

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Brave Story

by James McNally on April 14, 2007 · 2 comments

in Film Festivals,Sprockets,TIFF

Brave Story

Brave Story (Director: Kôichi Chigira, Japan, 2006): Wataru is a normal eleven-year-old boy. When Ashikawa, the new kid at school, tells him about a doorway to a magical world where wishes are granted, he’s curious. Then his father tells him he’s leaving the family, and a few days later, his mother col­lapses and has to be rushed to hos­pital. With his family coming apart, Wataru finds his way to the portal, hoping to restore his family to the way it used to be.

What starts off as a fairly standard “quest” film becomes much deeper as the story unfolds. Wataru dis­covers that Ashikawa is also in the magical world called Vision and that both of them are searching for five gem­stones which will allow them to meet the Goddess of Fortune, who will grant only one wish. On his journey, he makes friends and acquires a sort of gang. When he finds out that Ashikawa is des­troying parts of the world and causing the deaths of creatures in his single-minded pur­suit of the gem­stones, Wataru begins to re-evaluate how important his wish is.

By the time the two friends end up con­fronting each other, Wataru has changed. His exper­i­ence in the world of Vision has helped him to see that there are more important things than self-interest. He decides to use his wish another way. But first, he has to stop Ashikawa from des­troying the world com­pletely. I liked the implic­a­tion that Ashikawa was treating the magical world much like a game, and that he didn’t care about any of the creatures in it.

Some very big themes are addressed in a film aimed at such a young audi­ence, and it was strangely moving in one scene to watch Wataru lit­er­ally “battle” another ver­sion of him­self who wanted only to have his family back. I was touched by the way he was able to integ­rate all of his anger, sad­ness, selfish­ness, bit­ter­ness, and as he puts it, imma­turity into the more heroic person he’s been while on his quest. Though the film was unabashedly sen­ti­mental, it cer­tainly didn’t seem shallow.

I’m always curious about the way Japanese films about chil­dren always fea­ture missing par­ents. There were them­atic ele­ments shared with films like My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away, and I sup­pose the lesson is that we only really grow up when our par­ents aren’t there to take care of us.

Technically, the film was beau­tiful to look at. There were some anime staples, and also some visual bor­row­ings from the Miyazaki films, but there was also some really eye-popping use of CGI blended with the tra­di­tional two-dimensional animation.

My only real cri­ti­cism is that the linear quest struc­ture of the nar­rative made the film run about 15 minutes too long. At 111 minutes, I think it’s pushing the limit, espe­cially for younger viewers. That being said, I really thought the theme was an important one, and not just for chil­dren. Life is full of sad­ness as well as hap­pi­ness. Instead of trying to change things that are out of our con­trol, we need to accept our lives and create our own destinies.

Trailer at Apple Japan site

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: anime, children, japan

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