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The premise Hey ADTRW, I've been thinking a lot about how there just isn't a lot of talk about movies around these parts, except for some movies by certain directors that I'm sure a lot of you could name. Movies just aren't as easily accessible to the casual viewer since there aren't a lot of them at the usual streaming sources, so you typically have to go out of your way to watch 'em. And I figure the best way to change things, if only a little, would be to do my part in trying to encourage people to go out of their way if they don't already. So inspired by the reading challenge thread in The Book Barn, this is a thread that's a lot like that, but for anime movies. The rules This is all for fun and trying to get out there, watching stuff you might not normally watch. But to keep the spirit of the challenge intact I gotta hammer down a definition. Anything filed as a movie in an anime database of your choice counts, as does feature-length OVAs that aren't distinguished by episode count. It gets a bit messy what with how OVAs get theatrical screenings these days but something like say, the one-off OVAs for Gall Force are a series of movies but Gundam Unicorn is not a collection of 7 movies because it's marketed as a 7 episode OVA. That sorta thing. It's up to you to set your own goal. If you just wanna keep it simple come up with a number of movies to watch throughout the year, something like saying you just wanna try to watch 26/52/etc movies in a year. Wanna add some other qualifier to the mix? Go wild. I, personally, am planning on watching at least 52 movies in 2018, making sure to include a movie from as many different decades as possible and at least 12 of them will be suggestions from others. Either way, use this thread to keep a running list of what you've watched. It's not mandatory but I highly encourage you to talk about the movies you watched as you add them to your list. Not like you need to write a huge effortpost or anything (if you do that'd be badass though!), but hey even just a few sentences about your thoughts on a given movie can go a long way and keep this from becoming a faux-PYF thread, y'know? Especially since it could help others in choosing what movies to watch. Resources Last year there was an excellent Mike Toole article series about anime that aren't typically on best anime movie lists. I'll let the preface for that do the talking: quote:When I see articles like Paste's Top 100 Anime Movies of All Time, I grit my teeth a little, because I know what to expect, and it's hard not to get a little frustrated. List articles, so-called “listicles,” are the junk food of the internet—they're fun and easy to read, and from a writer's standpoint, fun and easy to create, so the supply of them is limitless. Before I even clicked on the link to the article, my brain exploded in visions of Studio Ghibli's oeuvre dominating the top 25. In that respect, the Paste list lived up to expectations – it dutifully included every single Ghibli film minus three (two of them being Goro Miyazaki movies), as well as a trio of notable pre-Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki outings, plus all of Satoshi Kon's films and most of the filmographies of Mamoru Oshii, Makoto Shinkai, and Mamoru Hosoda. That alone makes up for no less than 39 entries. So right from the start, almost 40% of the list was sort of a gimmie, a fat stack of well-known favorites that'd be really easy to write about. Here are the links to the articles themselves: Part 1: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-03-19/.113010 Part 2: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-04-02/.114168 Part 3: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-04-16/.114706 Part 4: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-04-30/.115495 Here's the Paste list by the way. It's certainly not a bad list, just a safe one. If you're not well-versed in the common movie recs it's worth a look. And the bottom half has some interesting choices you don't always see precisely because it had to fill a list of 100. If you have trouble finding enough movies to watch with both of those lists then you're far more powerful than I could ever hope to be. There's not much else to say at this point, so have fun and good luck!
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Jan 2, 2018 23:38
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I dunno if I need to reserve the second post or not but I'm doing it and you can't stop me.
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Jan 2, 2018 23:38
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Strange Quark posted:Is this an invitation to take suggestions Yea but I'll gradually take 'em when I need 'em, don't wanna get overwhelmed! homeless snail posted:I accept your challenge, prepare to die You can't kill what's already dead. GorfZaplen posted:I'm putting myself down for 12 movies, and 8 of them have to be things I already own or have downloaded and haven't watched yet. I hope Marine Express is included in those 8!
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Jan 3, 2018 01:20
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I have watched, Short Peace. A Sunrise anthology movie containing four shorts. I might as well knock them out in the order presented. Possessions: An okay enough start. It's a fairly typical yokai story but it's directed in such a way that makes full use of its CG instead of just being CG for its own sake. Hard to say a lot about this one. Combustible: Easily the weakest. I knew Otomo directed one of the shorts but I didn't look it up beforehand so it came as a complete surprise that this was the one he did. The style is that of old japanese paintings, presented on a scroll and while it's interesting to look at in the beginning, it partially abandons that style fairly quickly so all you're left with is a story that falls flat once you get past the spectacle of a burning village (and to its credit, they make those fires look quite fierce). Gambo:  Gambo is light on story and it features a bear fighting an ogre. That's all you need to know. There's a lot of weight to its action and a lot of blood too. It's the shortest but it's as long as it needed to be for its purpose. A Farewell to Weapons: When I first watched this I assumed that Otomo directed this one. I was partially right; it's based on an Otomo manga. The actual director is a mecha designer from Sunrise and this was his first and only anime he directed. Featuring a military(?) operation to take out a mech in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city, this was definitely the best short of the movie. There's this attention to detail in their tactics that I appreciate. Most notably that the soldiers would have to take great care when firing at the AI mech as it would be able to determine the firing point upon taking a hit and immediately retaliate, so when a soldier has to pull the trigger themselves they fire and get the hell away from their firing spot. Combine all that with a pretty good stinger at the end and it's a fine way to cap off the movie. As far as anthology movies go, imo the sign of a good anthology movie is when there's no universal consensus on which shorts are the best. I don't think that applies to Short Peace as the latter two shorts are quite a step above from the first two. But hey of the four shorts I only disliked one. I don't think it's a must-watch or anything (There are far more anthology movies that are better uses of your time) but it was a pleasant enough watch that I'm glad I took the time to see it. Next on my list, I'm gonna jump on the Book Girl bandwagon. List so far: 1. Short Peace
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Jan 7, 2018 00:50
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Strange Quark posted:It’s okay, srice has already abandoned this thread. I have been busy as heck but not so busy that I haven't been watching movies! I'll make my effortpost, when I'm not drowning in work.
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Jan 23, 2018 13:02
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The Colonel posted:vostok if you watch the heartcatch precure movie next devoid of context of the show i'm going to cry I did this and it did enough for me to get the deal with the cast!
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Jan 23, 2018 13:03
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I've been terrible about keeping my list updated but as far as movie-watching goes I've been doing pretty alright. Book Girl - As a long time anime fan there are plenty of very brief spurts of popularity I can remember that have all but died down these days. One of them was School Days. Most people have at least heard of the memes so I won't go into detail but long story short Book Girl reminds me of it in some ways. Not in the ending; nobody gets decapitated here. But rather in how much some of the character relationships quickly become a messy, soap opera-y melodrama, complete with some dramatic & ill-advised actions being taken in the heat of the moment. It works great in a single movie instead of being confined to a slow burn over a dozen episodes, it's easy to imagine a scenario where one of said actions becomes the focus of an entire episode instead of something that just happens and the characters are left to deal with the consequences. The only thing that gives me pause in recommending it is the weak ending but other than that, it's hard to find anime that can consistently produce that level of wild melodrama these days so heck if that sounds appealing to you then by all means hit it up! One-Million Year Trip: Bander Book - Last year I started to gradually watch some of the Tezuka made for TV movies. Most of them are usually watchable enough: they tend to have plots that are hyper-focused on being a morality tale for whatever hot take Tezuka was having that year be it global warming, genetic modification, etc. Add some Tezuka characters to the mix and it's usually entertaining enough. Unfortunately Bander Book is a convoluted mess. it never quite knows what it wants to be and the individual vignettes miss more than they hit (they somehow made Black Jack moonlighting as a space pirate kinda boring!). In the last 15 minutes the movie finally decides that it's against industrialization and for incest + living off the land. Crayon Shin-chan Movie 01: Action Kamen vs. Haigure Maou - The Shin-chan movie I always hear great things about is The Adult Empire Strikes Back, so naturally like an idiot I decided to watch the very first movie instead. My experience with the series is limited to catching just a few episodes back in the day when it was on Adult Swim, and for the first 20 minutes or so I was reminded of that; there's some decent comedy in Shin-chan's antics but unfortunately once the plot kicks in most of the jokes fail to land and the toku spoof that's the focus of the movie is in that awkward spot where it's mixing levity and seriousness in a way that satisfies neither. Admittedly one factor that hurt my enjoyment is that the fansubs for the movie were the awful mid 2000s kind of bad fansub where words with a very basic 1:1 translation were left untranslated and this absolutely destroyed some of the jokes beyond repair. It wasn't bad enough to put me out of watching more Shin-chan movies but next time I'm definitely gonna pick one of the movies with a good reputation instead. Princess Arete - Definitely the best out of the recent movies I watched. Last year I watched the director's most recent movie In This Corner of the World (which is good as hell, everyone should check it out) and I only knew that this shared directors after the fact, but once I learned that I could definitely see the similarities. It's the sort of movie where if you like it the pacing is "deliberate" and if you don't it's "too slow". It's a feminist take on some familiar fantasy tropes (to be precise the princess is captured and imprisoned but unlike those stories there's no knight in shining armor that comes to save her, she's all on her own) and much like In This Corner of the World over the course of its slow pace it frequently communicates through visuals what many weaker anime would do through exposition. It's a movie that really deserves some more exposure, but I can understand why it hasn't gotten that in the west; visually it looks like a children's movie (with some fantastic designs that make me think they were trying to appeal to a western audience to some degree) but it's the sort of movie that a lot of children would be bored by. I'd recommend checking out In This Corner of the World first as it's definitely the better movie, but this was fine in its own right and it was fascinating to see just how much the director evolved in the years since. List: 1. Short Peace 2. Book Girl 3. One-Million Year Trip: Bander Book 4. Crayon Shin-chan Movie 01: Action Kamen vs. Haigure Maou 5. Princess Arete
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Feb 5, 2018 01:15
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Haha. I think I'm fine with the Book Girl train becoming a thing.
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Feb 5, 2018 01:29
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I got bad at keeping up to date in the thread due to personal stuff getting in the way of basically everything for me in 2018 but fortunately I was still able to barely scrape by with enough movies! What follows is a lot of scribbled notes I wrote over most of the year that's largely unedited so if I say anything dumb I was scatterbrained at the time and if I say anything smart that was definitely on purpose and you should treat it as such. Dragonball Resurrection F - It's just a dumb movie, and unlike most dumb things in Toriyama works it's not funny but frustrating. Since it's Dragonball more than enough has been said about it but it left me feeling like the only modern Dragonball content that has been worth my time has been Battle of Gods and I should just leave it at that. Napping Princess - Wound up feeling a lot like a Disney live action movie in its plotting. I don't even mean that in an inherently negative way, though in this instance it left me lukewarm. Watchable but not something I'd dwell on. Garden of Sinners - My experiences with both Type Moon stuff and the urban fantasy genre in general have typically been negative as all hell, but some folks I trust told me that the Garden of Sinners movie series would be worth my time. It's a rough undertaking and for someone like me who isn't on board with what Type Moon does it required a leap of faith, but I'm glad I watched them since the highs made it worth sitting through the lows. Having a different director for each movie was a mixed bag but at least when it worked it really worked. The fifth movie in particular will definitely be the one I remember the most (it helps that it was one of the longer ones such that it had plenty of time to build the conflict of that movie up, as many of the shorter movies would usually leave me feeling cold). Ultimately I felt it wasn't a waste of my time and considering my biases going in, that's definitely a pleasant surprise. I'm not getting into too much detail because if I get a single fact wrong then I'll be kidnapped by a Type Moon fan and be forced to read the Type Moon wiki at gunpoint. That was a joke (or was it?). Arion - Yas is a fantastic artist and animator but many of the works he directs tend to leave me feeling a bit cold. Fortunately Arion manages to float above that standard by being a decent spin on Greek mythology. Something I find prevalent in his works is that he frequently has just a few too many underdeveloped characters, but that works to his advantage when he's doing his interpretation of Greek gods. Dagger of Kamui - It's a movie that's over 2 hours long so of course, it's directed by Rintaro. Finishing any of his movies feels like a real accomplishment. They tend to be long as hell and even when it's obsensibly an action movie the pacing isn't all that quick. I don't mean that as a mark against him! Just that one could get blindsided by his pacing. What I'm gonna remember most about Dagger of Kamui is the way the music was integrated into the action scenes. Wikipedia describes the soundtrack as "combining rock music instrumentation with Balinese kecak vocals" and I've never heard anything quite like it in anime, it's worth checking out just for that. And if that's not enough to make it unique there sure aren't a lot of anime featuring Ainu protagonists. Is this the superior Kamui anime? I don't know enough to answer that question but I can tell you that there's no CG bears in this movie, friend. Lupin: Dragon of Doom - Over the course of many years I've gradually been watching every single movie-length Lupin entry so it was inevitable that I'd watch a few this year. Unfortunately like many of the tv movies this one wound up being rather forgettable. It is unfortunate that a lame villain and a boring heroine (who, might I add, has a character design that makes her look like she came from an entirely different anime) damages what should have been a decent Goemon-centric movie. The movie winds up being a buildup to that classic bit from the Part 2 OP where Goemon cuts a plane in half. Like most of the Lupin tv movies it's watchable enough but the bulk of it is just outright unmemorable. Major Movie - I love Major and when I saw that the sequel series was getting adapted this year I decided to finally hit up the movie. An adaption of a spinoff manga that exists to fill the timeskip between the first and second seasons, it manages to do a decent job rapidly going through the usual beats in a Major story arc. However the most memorable scenes in the movie were shown in the tv show and that's just the movie's problem in a nutshell, it's trying to fill a gap that didn't need filling and the new characters don't get enough focus to make a lasting impact. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters - I think this might be the second worst anime movie I've ever seen? Urobuchi wrote a script that's almost nothing but infodumping and technobabble and much like basically anime they've done the Polygon Pictures aesthetic is a terrible fit for this, with Godzilla looking like a gigantic turd. The characterization is completely flat. An overview of the movie's plot feels like they stretched a first act into its own film. The only reason I'm not calling it the worst anime movie I've seen is because it's only about 90 minutes long. Touch trilogy - Touch is incredible, one of the best sports anime out there bar none. So a recap movie series (albeit one with 100% new animation) would have to really drop the ball to be a bad experience. And fortunately it mostly holds steady. The first movie is the best of them by far and it's no coincidence that it's the one that makes the most changes. It perfectly keeps that sense of ennui that gives a lot of Adachi's works their identity while making some different choices to match the pacing of a film. It makes sense to me because in the original series it takes 30-something episodes before the protagonist joins the baseball team, but the movie decides to push him into that role earlier than in the series. The other two recap movies are fine, but they cut corners. Touch is a slow burn, not something to be rushed through, and the narrow focus of the other two movies hurts it by diminishing or straight up cutting out much of the supporting cast. But the core of the story is so strong that it's still very much worthwhile. An inferior take on one of the greatest anime is still a very solid watch. Mary and the Witch's Flower - Studio Ponoc's debut film has an aesthetic that really wants viewers to think about Ghibli, but sadly while it looks nice enough it just lacks that extra care that gets put into the characters in most Ghibli works. It's very watchable but there's just not a whole lot to say about it. Touch Sequel movies - Touch is one of the greatest anime ever made. It doesn't need one sequel, nevermind two. And it definitely didn't need those sequels coming more than 10 years after the original anime wrapped up. The bar is set so high that even a sequel that's merely good would be seen as unneccesary. And unfortunately they don't even reach that level of quality. The first of the two sequel movies brings back the cast in their college years but they retread some of the exact same plot points from the tv series in the exact same way. Tatsuya has to be convinced to get the motivation to play baseball again. Minami begins to struggle with her performance in rhythmic gymnastics, and just like in the tv show it gets to a point where she makes just one mistake during a big competition. There's a new character who simultaneously adds little but takes up lots of screentime. Everyone is striped of most of their charm from the tv show, and the few that keep it in a "Hey, remember this guy?" sorta way that reminds you of a better anime. There's no reason to watch this, it takes The second of the two winds up being incredibly average; a story that hits some real generic beats that nonetheless manages to carry itself with the novelty of Tatsuya having moved to America, slumming around as part of a minor league team. Not something you see too often in baseball anime. Unfortunately there's not a lot to say about it that the end of the tv series didn't say. I don't feel it's worth going out of your way to watch but on the other hand you can skip the first sequel movie and if you've watched all 101 episodes of the tv series then hell, what's 90 more minutes. Well over a decade ago at this point, Justin Sevakis used to do a column at ANN on old/obscure anime and when he covered Touch he piled praise after praise upon the series but as for those sequel movies, well, he hit the nail on the head on why they're lacking: quote:Anime-wise, there are three movies (that are easily skipped, as they're only recaps of the series), as well as two TV movies made years later. Neither gets anywhere near the wit or insightfulness of the original; the first, 1996's "Miss Lonely Yesterday" attempts to substitute romance anime histrionics of the most cliché variety, while the second, 2004's "Cross Roads" relies entirely on the gimmick of Tatsuya joining a small town American minor league team in order to rediscover baseball without the burden of his brother's legacy. While the latter is actually watchable (as opposed to Miss Lonely Yesterday, which reeks of bad "reunion specials" in a way that made me want to yell profanity at the TV), both specials commit the sin of forgetting who their characters are. Tatsuya loses his trademark sense of humor and becomes the milquetoast, moderately depressed male romantic lead of countless, far lesser anime. Worse, Minami is reduced to the role of insecure melodramatic doormat in "Miss Lonely Yesterday." There's no chemistry between the two (and when they talk, the dialogue is stilted and unnatural), and in this way the two specials do a disservice to the memory of the far superior series. The sharp edges of more modern anime (and updated character designs) seem jarring in contrast to the softer, faded-photo look of the series, and aren't conducive to the sort of nostalgia the original conveys effortlessly. They're better off forgotten. Lupin - Pursuit of Harimao's Treasure - Osamu Dezaki is an incredible director so I have no idea why his Lupin tv movies usually wind up being real mediocre. Seriously the dude did fantastic work on Cobra and his personality isn't too far removed from Lupin! Anyways this was such a nothing of a movie that the only thing I'll remember about it a year from now is that it had a nazi named Herr Maphrodite. Which, granted, is more than I remember about most Lupin tv movies. They tend to be very forgettable, unfortunately! Urusei Yatsura 1-6 - That's a lot of Lum so I'll just tackle them all real quick here. Movie 1 was more or less a movie-length episode of the show with better production values. And that's great! Those better production values went towards packing way more detail into many of the jokes and considering how rote a "heroine gets kidnapped by movie villain for a forced marriage" plot is, it's nice to see it happen to the guy for once. Movie 2 is a masterpiece. It's the only film I've rewatched during this challenge and for good reason. Everyone and their mother knows that Beautiful Dreamer is not only the best Urusei Yatsura movie but it's also up there as one of if not the best Oshii film. It's the Castle of Cagliostro for Urusei Yatsura in terms of it being a great entry point that doesn't completely reflect what's in the series proper but that's okay because it's an incredible movie. Movie 3 is underwhelming. I complimented movie 1 on having a forced marriage plot with Ataru instead of Lum. And as if mocking me, movie 3 deals with Lum getting kidnapped by someone who wants to marry her. There are some decent jokes in it but the first two movies are so good that it's hard to not notice the immense drop in quality going from the first two to the third. Movie 4 is an oddity. It's not particularly funny but it frequently gets strange for the sake of being strange so you know what, it's alright by me. Movie 5 takes the final chapters of the manga and puts them in a movie. The secret truth of UY as a series is that while the manga is good in its own ways, I always found the anime to be the superior option. It takes a lot of liberties in how it delivers jokes, makes some one-off characters part of the cast in such great ways that you can't imagine them not being regulars, etc. So something that's a more direct adaption like movie 5 just comes off as underwhelming in comparison. It's not terrible but it's nothing to write home about either. And obviously since it's a Rumiko Takahashi ending, you wouldn't even know this was an adaption of the manga's ending since the end gag is a return to the status quo. Movie 6 exists. It's basically a reunion special so it doesn't even try to break new ground. No reason not to watch it if you've gotten that far, but no reason to specifically set out to watch it either. I had only ever watched the movies directed by Oshii (1 and 2) and I was definitely not surprised to find out that they were the best ones by a significant margin. Venus Wars - I didn't even intend to watch another Yas movie, it just happened. Anyhow the first two acts of this movie work quite well! Goofy hoverbikes aside it's able to effectively communicate this sense of dread at not knowing what tomorrow will bring as a city is invaded and taken over. Underneath that particular kind of 80s sci-fi cheese it carries some real emotion at its core...until the third act comes along and everything gets resolved in some incredibly rote action, including the commander of the occupying forces getting into a duel with the protag (whom he has never seen before) for no good reason other than to be a face for the final battle. A pity that such a strong start ends with a fart. Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take on Me - I enjoyed the first season of the tv series. The second was generally terrible outside of a few episodes, focusing too much on the relationship between the two leads while taking many steps backwards with them. It's no coincidence that the few good episodes focused on the supporting cast. Anyways the movie has similar problems, there are a few funny scenes with the supporting cast but as the movie goes on they're seen less and less as the primary focus is on the two leads and their relationship and this time there's some sex-negativity added to the mix. It's an encapsulation of a lot of the issues I had with the second season but now in movie form. I'll be real I wasn't expecting much out of this movie but there was a brief period of time where I dug Kyoani's stuff and the first season aired during that time, but I guess you really can't go back. Steamboy - I don't actually know why it took me so long to finally watch Steamboy. Ages ago when I was first getting into anime I remember people being hyped for Steamboy and posting every trailer that came out. And hell, who wouldn't have been excited for the next big budget entry from the creator of Akira. I remember the hype but I don't remember a lot about the reaction afterwards and watching this explained why. It's certainly not a bad movie, just one that doesn't manage to come close to Akira's pedigree. Were it a movie with no expectations it'd be remembered as a solid action movie with a ton of detail to its animation, and I say that's a good enough reason to check it out. Maquia - There's a heck of a lot of stuff about fantasy that I'm not big on and hey Mari Okada managed to make something lacking a lot of those elements in her directorial debut. And it's a great entry in the single mom anime genre to boot, spinning a strong coming of age story for both the mother and the child. Earlier this year I read Okada's autobiography and in it she mentions that she writes a lot of her teenage characters in a way similar to how she acted as a teen. Her autobiography didn't go into too much detail about her personal life once her career was firmly established, but I'd like to believe that this is a grownup version of how she'd write similar characters. As an aside, I highly recommend her autobiography, legally available in English and short enough that you can finish it in an afternoon. Much of it would still be an interesting read even if she didn't enter the anime industry. After all, she describes how she'd test her boyfriends by leaving her bathroom door open while taking a dump. That's one of the highest level power moves imaginable. Anyways, this was hands down my favorite movie of the year and here's hoping that she gets to direct more. And hey if that does happen maybe they could screen them somewhere close to me this time? I swear, despite living near a large city the only anime movies that get showings around here are franchise films with the occasional average quality original movie thrown in. Never anything I desperately want to see on the big screen. Dr Slump Movie 2 - The Dr. Slump manga is great. It's an energetic, maniacal experience and almost every page has something to chuckle at. Unfortunately my experience with the anime hasn't come close to it; jokes get dragged out and the translation from comic to animation gets rough when they try to show everything, ruining a lot of the comedic timing in the process as single panel gags are single panel for a reason. And even though this movie is an original story, much of it shared that same issue. Jokes get a bit dragged out. It takes an uninspired premise (for real how many franchise films have a plot about the love interest getting kidnapped and forced to marry the villain against their will? At least Urusei Yatsura had a movie where that happened to a man!) and plays it way too safe. I don't even know what else to say, I feel like Dr. Slump was a manga that was far ahead of its time compared to how anime comedies were handled during its heyday. I'd love to see a new take on the material that didn't feel so restrained. Fireworks - Hey Shaft...you okay buddy? You guys made a movie that just sorta suddenly ends and also many of the side characters in it are defined entirely by where they stand on the contentious issue of: are firework explosions round or flat? It's a movie that I found more interesting than good. I love it when it works but the Shaft house style isn't a universally good fit and this movie is a good case of one where it's not! When Marnie Was There - The final Ghibli film until Miyazaki unretired, and it might as well be the prototype for Studio Ponoc considering it's their main director. Much like Mary and the Witch's Flower, it's an alright watch that doesn't leave me with a lot to say! Liz and the Blue Bird - When I realized that Liz and the Blue Bird was playing at a theater within reach, I figured, heck, maybe I'll go see it since 30 minutes away isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things and there are a lot of anime movies that just don't screen in my area. When I found out about it there were only two screenings left. One in the middle of the week (I think it was a Wednesday? Let's say that) and the other on the weekend. I had no idea what the movie was even about at the time so on that Wednesday I looked it up, saw it was related to Sound Euphonium, and anime that I have not watched, and decided maybe I wasn't gonna spend an extra hour of driving that day to see it since I was already having a fairly busy week. Save it for the weekend and such. Wound up being a good idea since I had a mild case of food poisoning or something. Really dodged a bullet there, suffering at home instead of at a theater 30 minutes away from home. As for the weekend screening it happened to overlap with a date I had, and since I didn't check the showtime when scheduling the date, and I'd feel like a total rube if I rescheduled on short notice just for a movie. The date was okay.. we just didn't have much common ground to talk about so while she was nice enough we went our separate ways afterwards. The date was at a pretty good Mexican restaurant that I hadn't visited before so hey as far as I'm concerned it wasn't a total wash. And then some time later it occured to me to just check for a version I could watch at home. I'm telling this shaggy dog story because while I get why some love Liz and the Blue Bird it is the exact sort of movie that leaves me, the sort of person that doesn't, with basically nothing to say about it. It is precisely that kind of movie. Just like what I talked about with the Chunibyou movie, the era of Kyoani making stuff that speaks to me is over and I can live with that. Nine Trilogy - I've been scrambling to meet my goal before the end of the year and so I hit up Orphan fansubs for the first time in a little while since they frequently sub obscure stuff that if nothing else tends to be interesting. And what great timing because I happened to check their site when they had released this series of movies based on Mitsuru Adachi's very first manga. It's rough around the edges; the designs feel just a tiny bit off compared to how his style would later evolve, and it's paced haphazardly. But as a big fan of Touch it was fascinating to see his very first work as he very much took a lot of ideas from Nine and incorporated them into Touch. But the double-edged sword with this is, that those ideas were more fleshed out for the better in Touch. It's unfortunate that the main love interest in Nine feels like an afterthought with little agency or personality to her, a stark contrast from how Touch would handle such things. Despite that roughness it's something worth checking out if you have experience with any of Adachi's works to see how much he has grown, but if you haven't then hit up Touch or Cross Game instead. Best to check out a completed work rather than something that feels like a first draft. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas - I had some pretty low expectations for this one. And heck why wouldn't I, it's based on a web novel and my primary concern would be that it would try to be too emotionally manipulative. Fortunately that wasn't the case! I'd liken it to the sort of YA book/movie wherein one of the two leads is dealing with an incurable, fatal illness and they both learn to make the most of their lives. Is what I assume happens in those sorts of things, I'm not much for YA stuff! But hey it happens here and unlike most of the time I've seen such things in anime they aren't hopelessly melodramatic over the illness. What can I say, I found that to be a refreshing surprise even though it's usually not the sort of story I go for. Hells - In a lot of ways Hells reminds me of Kill la Kill insomuch as you have this really stylish, freakish highschool setting with a lot of experimentation in its animation. And like KLK it winds up getting too bogged down by being way into its own uninteresting lore. Fortunately it doesn't sting as much when it's over the course of a single movie. But for real when you consider some of the religious deep cuts that anime has made over the decades, treating the story of Cain and Abel as mindblowing is incredibly basic! Kindaichi Movie 1 - I've checked out a little bit of both Kindaichi and Detective Conan and frankly if that doesn't make me an expert on mystery anime then I don't know what does. This first movie, which happens to be the very first Kindaichi anime produced, couldn't be a more conventional beginning. You got your trip to an isolated island, the phone lines get cut, murders happen, you know the drill (amusingly enough I wound up watching this not too long after I bounced off of Umineko so it was impossible for me to not be incredibly aware of the shared DNA in play here). It's a decent enough murder mystery but what stands out about Kindaichi in general to me is that it tends to handle murders with more gravity than what you normally see, and the murderers are given enough depth too. Which uh is a real huge contrast from the Conan movie I watched haha (the villain there was practically a comic book villain). Not much else to say, it's a convential murder mystery but there's value in a solid execution of that. Conan Movie 1 - If I had to pick between the two big murder mystery manga out there, I gotta be honest I'd usually pick Kindaichi. I'm usually not into the gamified sort of murder mysteries that Conan dwells in. Don't get me wrong I do respect what it's doing and there's a good time to be had with the series. But it's the sort of series where a little bit goes a long way for me. And heck maybe going forward that little bit will be the movies since this was a pretty serviceable one. I don't have a whole lot to say about the main plot of the movie itself but a nice touch was that the intro scene was like tuning into the last few minutes of a random episode, with Conan in the process of solving a murder. Good way to show viewers what they're in for. Bremen 4: Angels in Hell - Tezuka did a lot of tv movies and this was another one of them. I've watched a fair amount of them at this point and if it wasn't for the Tezuka connection only Marine Express would be worth it. There's not a lot to say about this one, it swings between being childish and violent in a way that never quite meshed well for me. But heck at least it wasn't forgetable; in most of the Tezuka tv movies the best parts have been seeing how he used his existing characters in new contexts and in this case I'm always gonna remember this as the movie where Black Jack shows up at the end and melts the villain's face off. Yeah! Ghost Sweeper Mikami: The Movie - This movie is from a peculiar era, in which practically any anime that ran on tv could get its shot at its own movie. Ghost Sweeper Mikami got good ratings when it was new but has been mostly forgotten today. And hell, why wouldn't it. As a comedic action series the action was nothing special compared to its contemporaries and its comedy frequently makes use of that particular 90s kind of loud overreaction to everything that usually doesn't age well! It's a perfectly adequate show, the sort where watching a few episodes is interesting enough to get a glimpse of the anime landscape in 1993 but unless you're on a mission to watch everything with yokai in it you're probably not watching the whole thing. I'm mostly talking about the series here because the movie is such a generic by the numbers kind of franchise movie there's really nothing novel to say about it. I'm trying and the only unique point I can bring up is that they had Goro Naya, the old voice of Zenigata, voice the villain (Vampire Oda Nobunaga, which isn't as exciting as it sounds) is just a terrible fit and I'm sad of it. He uses his Zenigata voice on a typical shounen movie villain and that sure took me out of it! Tales of a Street Corner - Old Tezuka stuff is cool as hell and since Dororo has a new adaption out, it's the best time to be watching his old works. Tezuka loved to experiment with a lot of his classic stuff and here he made a short film that's entirely without dialogue. It's exactly the sort of animation that I could see being made today since the concepts being used are timeless. But unlike this film it'd be 5 minutes long instead of 40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2vDgtsaWOw and since it doesn't need to be subbed to be enjoyed I can just link this here in the hopes that at least one person clicks it! Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat In Space - I knew that New Year's Eve was gonna be hell for me. I also knew that I wanted to finish reading The Crying of Lot 49 before watching this, as the creators of Tamala 2010 specifically cited it as a huge influence on the movie (And I'm glad I did because it made me appreciate a character going insane over repeated iconography that much more). So I wound up finishing both on the day before NYE and that sure took its toll on me! Tamala is a strange movie from top to bottom, from its mixing of old and new aesthetics, to its narrative, to its heroine that swears a lot but has a heavily sedated, monotone voice. I'm not sure if it entirely succeeds at its anti-merchandising message (best as I can figure it tries to be a rebuttal to Hello Kitty specifically?) but of all the movies I watched this year it's the one that's gonna stick with me the most. Definitely a movie I'll rewatch some day. Final list: 1. Short Peace 2. Book Girl 3. One-Million Year Trip: Bander Book 4. Crayon Shin-chan Movie 01: Action Kamen vs. Haigure Maou 5. Princess Arete 6. Dragonball Resurrection F 7. Napping Princess 8-16. Garden of Sinners movies (I guess I'm counting the 2 OVAs at the end as one movie??) 17. Arion 18. Dagger of Kamui 19. Lupin: Dragon of Doom 20. Major movie 21. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters 22-24. Touch trilogy 25. Mary and the Witch's Flower 26-27. Touch sequels 28. Lupin: Pursuit of Harimao's Treasure 29-34. Urusei Yatsura movies 35. Venus Wars 36. Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take on Me 37. Steamboy 38. Maquia 39. Dr Slump Movie 2 40. Fireworks 41. Liz and the Blue Bird 42-44. Nine trilogy 45. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas 46. Hells 47. Kindaichi Movie 1 48. Detective Conan Movie 1 49. Bremen 4: Angels in Hell 50. Ghost Sweeper Mikami: The Movie 51. Tales of a Street Corner 52. Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space With the new year's resolution thread being active I'm not sure if I'll make a 2019 thread since folks can always piggyback on that, but I'm also fine with making a new thread if there's enough demand for it.
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Jan 10, 2019 12:08
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GorfZaplen posted:Dagger of Kamui has some of the most original, resonant and striking imagery I've ever seen in a film but I will never be able to watch it again because it's just too drat long. Also what's up with that part where they go to the American Wild West for a half hour? Wild stuff, but the duel against the gunslingers was breathtaking I don't know why they took that detour but I'm glad of it. Not just for that duel but also the fact that they chill with Mark Twain (complete with using his real name, kudos to that) to learn where to go next is just a straight up fascinating choice to me and definitely made it better than if it was just some random dude dropping exposition instead.
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Jan 13, 2019 02:28
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