Guaporense and Zotis Review Animation

A robotic doll made from a mystical tree embarked on a dangerous journey to save the world. There was an obvious nod to Pinocchio, but this was a very interesting take on it. The world that the story was set in combined fantasy and sci-fi elements to create a rich environment that stirred my imagination. It was like a combination between Dungeons & Dragons and Fantastic Planet.

Until a moment ago I didn't actually realise that this was a Japanese Anime. I thought to myself, "I'm going to start off with a non-Anime animation." I would have to say that I've never seen an Anime look so Western before. From the moment I picked it up off the shelf at the video store to 20 hours after I finished the movie, I thought it was European or something.


The story overall was quite strong. Fantastical and charming, I was quite captivated for most of the movie. Towards the end I started to get some strange vibes, and eventually I realised things weren't really adding up. The ending was a bit disappointing. It wasn't bad, it just didn't really deliver it's moral message. Palme was a character stricken by grief who despite having an extremely important mission would allow others to completely trample him and the things of utmost value to him. It was pretty heartbreaking, but also quite profound. Gradually he starts to find hope and love, but then things become a bit weird. Antagonists become protagonists and suddenly go from being complete scum to saintly. Likewise Palme, the obvious protagonists exhibits psychotic behaviour at one point. The morality is all over the place in the second half of the film. Characters with abusive, narcissistic, and violent tendencies, with deep emotional scars from their troubled pasts, went from bullying, abusing, and trying to sell Palme for profit, to eventually become his companions and friends and suddenly exhibit emotional stability, compassion, and tender loving kindness. There wasn't even resentment from people who were abused and held at knife point. Everyone was really a good person inside, everyone understood everyone else's pain, and the deepest scars were completely healed without so much as a shred of lingering resentment. But as much as this bothered me at the end of the movie, it was the only flaw.

The animation quality was excellent. The characters and backgrounds were very well drawn, and there was plenty of motion so that you're never really drawn to notice the animation itself. It was smooth and beautiful drawing you immersively in. The designs of the exotic creatures and costumes were very cool and interesting. The overall composition was excellent.


Overall I enjoyed the movie a lot, and I was only disappointed towards the end when I noticed the morality and personalities of the characters weren't really adding up. The ending was a bit flat in terms of the delivery of it's message, but other than that it was very well drawn and a very good film.

Rating:

10) My Little Pony Equestria Girls (2013)



This is the best American animated film I have watched over the past 5 years. Yes, it's really a good film, a great film for "adults" indeed. It's really cute and the characters are psychologically complex in a sense. And the jokes are actually funny unlike typical Disney/Pixar's films. It's a moe American movie in a sense. I am surprised there aren't any bronies in this forum, it's a big thing in the US actually.

This movie's plot is extremely simple and the film is very fast paced as usual for American animations, as result it's a quite short film running at 70 minutes only. However, it packs a lot of cuteness in those 70 minutes. It's basically an American version of a K-On! movie, made with American style animation and art (which is simpler in general).



It's no wonder I even remember a American video of a gathering of fans of K-On! comparing/juxtaposing the characters from My Little Pony Magic Friendship with those of the moeblob series. Indeed this movie is very moeish.

11) My Little Poney: Equestrian Girls - Rainbow Rocks (2014)



Yey! Another My Little Poney movie! It didn't feel as fresh as the first one because it's basic structure was the same as the first movie, or in other words, it felt more like a reharshed version of the first movie. And I didn't like the songs very much, it's now very much like a watered down copy of K-On! (I think that combined with the magical girl transformation sequences this certainly looks like a Western (because I found out it's also Canadian besides American) moe title), but with everything inferior, the art, the music, the direction, the writing and the comedy is much less subtle. Also the fact that while K-On! is technically adult (but some Japanese schoolgirls like it), while this is technically for North American schoolgirls (but some nerds, like me, like it).

K-On!


The band the girl's formed in this movie:


Even with a band now! But they had to have a epic clash (including beams of magical powers and everything) at the end? It didn't fit the movie at all. It was a bit of letdown but still competent film.

Also the characters in this franchise look cuter in poney form than in girl form. Only in the movies they made them into girls.

I do want to watch K-On! at some point.

12) Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker (2012)

Easily among the worst films ever made. It's really awful, really, I am sorry for the staff who made this movie but it's terrible. A terrible CGI movie, with terrible voice acting, character animation was really bad (I couldn't tell the emotions they were supposed to be feeling) script and overall one of the dullest movies I ever watched.



Anyway, what can I say? Well, it's certainly the most boring watch of this year (more boring than Kiarostami's 10 even) and it's also not something with any artistic value, hence, it's completely worthless as a movie.

Graphics are those of a badly rendered videogame custcene, in fact, this movie is a 90 minutes long videogame cutscene, but in those cases you have to do something more entertaining than random fighting. The plot is terribly executed.

You don't seriously watch this do you? Please, please tell me you don't - lol

But anyway lol - I don't watch much or any animated films (other than occasionally seeing a Pixar film like Toy Story 3) - but some video games with anime-ish cutscenes are pretty good, like the Metal Gear Solid games; the cutscenes alone are definitely action movie worthy stuff so to see that in a video game is pretty incredible, even though the plot ended up becoming way too convoluted in the end. Some of the older 90s' games with anime-style artwork looked pretty slick too (like Street Fighter, Streets of Rage, Mega Man X, etc).

I've heard of that one. Poor Guap.

__________________
You will find that if you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you look for the dark, that is all you will ever see.
Iroh

13) Starship Girl Yamamoto Yoko OVA 1 (1996)

Japanese version of The Last Star Fighter, it's a very well made OVA, it's nothing special though but it's a nice science fiction comedy to watch. I love the ludicrous sense of scale that they have there (a ship of 3,000 kilometers long!).



Nice to see where Shimbo started out.

14) Gunbuster (1988)



I first watched Gunbuster about a year ago, it was among the 100 Asian films I watched for the "Asian film challenge" and it was the best of that large set of films, good enough to make into my super selective top 50 films list. Re-watched it today and it was better than first time, a genuine masterpiece of animation.



It's classic Hideaki Anno storytelling style, similar in feel to the first episodes of Evangelion (before he wen't crazy with experimentation in the second half of the series). It's also the grand statement of love for nerd anime, in the sense of containing all the elements that characterize nerd's anime such as cute girls, plentiful science fiction elements, over the top mecha action inspired on these 70's kid's anime series (which also inspired Del Toro in Pacific Rim), however it mixes these "kiddie" elements with serious drama and a lot of nudity. The violence is not explicit however, considering most action occurs in space there is not much room for blood and corpses (ships explode and that's it).



Hideaki Anno is a really talented artist and he is capable of producing a very powerful atmosphere in all his work. It's a very characteristic feel which I find divine. His characters are also very memorable though he carried over archetypes from one of his works to the others, for instance, Jung Freud (yep, that's a character's name) serves as the basis for Asuka Langley's character in EVA.



Another interesting element of the series is the utilization of relativistic time dilation as a plot element. In this case the main character watches her high-school friend age from 17 to 42 while she aged less than one year. It's a metaphor for the social stigma animation fans in Japan suffered (at the time this was made it was specially strong because it was the beginning of the adult anime era) of watching their relatives and friends age while they felt as eternal teenagers due to their love for the art form o animation and it's association with being juvenile.



While being technically science fiction it is mostly character driven and not driven by the science fiction concepts. That's the usual difference between Japanese science fiction and western and one of the reasons why most good science fiction produced in the world in the last decades consists of anime (the other is the low cost of producing animation compared to special effects movies). I almost cried at the end overwhelmed with emotion. It's one of the reasons why I watch more animation than live action these days is to experience the emotions I experience while watching Gunbuster.



It's entertainment value is comparable to Star Wars.

Woah 5 stars? Man, I really need to finish Gunbuster.

Gunbuster is one of the best animations ever made. It's perhaps the textbook example of the use of animation as a medium for science fiction storytelling.

Persepolis (2007)

Okay, finally a non-Anime animation. So this was a French movie set in Iran. It was mostly character driven following the life of Marjane who began as a little girl, possibly around the age of ten. The course of the movie carried into her adulthood. It was a coming of age sort of story wich also dabbled with politics. I was really captivated by the artwork. At first glance it seemed kind of simple, but I noticed the fluidity of the character's movement and plenty of motion on screen. Little things like the angles of a character's hand and just everything as it moved about. Often animation has their characters set in limited movements, as if they can't draw from every angle. In this movie it felt as if they were able to draw from every single angle imaginable. There was a very interesting balance between cartoon feel and realism. The composition was superb. The film was based on Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel, and it defintely had documentary-esque vibes. Freedom was a predominant theme. On the one hand living in a country without freedom was very difficult. There was a lot of opression and fear. On the other hand living in a free country was also very difficult, and it's greatest hurdles were probably the many distractions that cause a person to loose sight of what's important in life. I think these contrasts were very well represented. Overall it was a very enjoyable watch for me. I could not find any fault or anything to criticise in the movie. The only thing that could have made me love the movie more would be content that appealed more to me, but that being said I would not actually want anything in this movie to be changed.

Rating:

always appreciate and look forward to both of your reviews on animated movies and always get something new to search out and enjoy.
THANKS

Serial Experiment Lain (1998)

I imagine that this show must have been pretty mind blowing in 1998 considering how young the internet was. I myself started getting pretty active in some online forums around 2001-2002. To me it didn't really seem like it was that "new," but when I was 16 a year was a very long time and high-school felt like most of my life. Being an adult seemed like it wouldn't occure to me for a little over a hundred years, and 1977 was an eternity ago. Looking back in retrospective the internet was a lot simpler than it is today, and what we can do with computers has advanced a lot in such a short period of time. I no longer think of a decade as a long time, let alone a year. When I consider all of this, and I think about Lain's story revolving around the hypothetical potential for the internet and computers, I think it's pretty incredible.

So basically Lain is about a girl who starts getting interested in computers and quickly becomes totally engrossed. Computers and the internet become her life, and in a very short time things start to get surreal. The plot is very psychological and deals with topics like the nature of reality and the potential of the internet and computers in light of some pretty wild notions about reality. It's so complex that it's really hard for me to wrap my mind around. This was my second time watching the series, and I still feel like I don't have a clue what was going on. I think it's a bit ambiguous too, and intentionally so. At least that's the vibe I get. I would like to talk more about it's plot, but maybe I'll just PM you Guap, because I don't want to spoil it too much. I will talk about a few things here though that aren't spoilers beyond the first few episodes.

Before Lain even goes online there are rumors of another version of her existing that people have seen. Once Lain does start going online she learns of this other version of herself. Some people try to convince her that it is her, and she wonders if they're true, but she keeps denying it and calling it lies when she's sober minded. There are weird occurences, like her appearing in the clouds and children raising their arms in "worship" of her. When she begins getting into computers she soon modifies her own set up to an insane amount of wires and other computers all over the place. Her room becomes a cyber dungeon, and even when she's at school she's always on her device browsing the web. There are things in the series like a man who uploads his memories into the code of the internet so that even after he dies he lives on the net. But they call the internet "the wired." The plot is really fascinating and made me think a lot about what could be going on and what was real versus what was just illusion and deception.

Besides the plot being so stimulating Lain is very well drawn and animated. At first I kind of thought some stuff could have been drawn better, like figures in the background. It's true, but at the same time they aren't poorly drawn. Maybe there isn't a lot of detail in every picture, but what I noticed is that the shapes were interesting and not typical of animation trends. What is drawn, even when it's a bit simplistic, is well drawn. Overall it was all very pleasing on my eyes.

The characters are charming. Their personalities are interesting. Even the stereotypes seem like deep psychological commentaries on those stereotypes and in no way are typical portrayals of those stereotypes. Even the most minor characters have a lot of depth and personality. The voice acting is excellent. The English dubbing was not good though, so I definitely recommend watching it subbed.

This series gives me goosbumps it's so good. Fortunately I have it on DVD and Blu-Ray. I look forward to watching it again and again and gleaning more every time I do. Definitely one of my favorite Series of all time!

So why only 9/10? If you consider it one of your favorites you should rate it 10/10.

I also love Lain (as well as pretty much everybody who is into animation), it's a classic.

15) Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko OVA 2 (1997)



Relatively obscure direct to video animation from 1997, it's a rather mediocre title that I watched because of it's ludicrous title. We have the same characters as before and it starts off as a slice of life type of thing in the sense of incorporating daily life in Japan of the 1990's while simultaneously being sci fi, because like in The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy, it's mostly set in a highly advanced interstellar civilization which happens to exist at the same time as current Earth.

Like the first OVA it's pretty average but I found this one more entertaining than the first one, +.

I've only ever given 10/10 to one movie in my whole entire life.

16) Steamboy (2004)



To call Steamboy visually impressive would be a severe understatement. The characters of this movie are not very memorable though their development is quite impressive given the short running time of the movie plus the film's relative lack of dialogue and extreme volume of scenes involving high volume of action and movement.



In terms of animation quality it's superior to Akira and comparable to the high end of Miyazaki's films. Among the most technically awesome animations ever made, specially given the insanely high level of detail of it's mechanical designs. In fact, this movie can be understood more as 2 hours of steampunk machinery/design porn. The plot is almost nonexistant and not interesting anyway (besides the insane fact that the main character's dad, grandfather and himself all happen to be engineering geniuses with the surname "Steam" ).



It took 10 years to produce and had a larger budget than Princess Mononoke. Indeed, it shows, it's insanely well made. In fact, the quality is so high that it makes one a bit spoiled and unable to enjoy normal TV budget animation.



Recreation of 19th century British cityscapes and landscapes is also amazing:



+

17) Haibane Renmei (2002)



Like Lain (1998), another ABe product, Haibane Renmei is an art film that is executed through the medium of the 13 episode long TV series so I think I can review it here. I am also putting it as my top favorite movie of all time.



Haibane Renmei is an extremely powerful and beautiful little piece. It was done on a minimal budget and indeed it shows that when its resolution is 480 points because it was made digitally at that low level of resolution. Hence its not eligible for an Oscar (), though I am not aware of any prizes for it in Japan as well though Lain won the excellence prize in medias arts festival.



Its plot is extremely simple though also very ambiguous in its significance, like Lain (1998) its full of symbolism and its much slower paced than the usual animations. I also loved the very subtle colors of the show, reminiscent of Tarkovsky's movies like The Mirror, which reminded me of the scene of the country house in The Mirror as transmitting the feel of rusticity and how powerful its atmosphere is, specially considering the powerful atmosphere partly the result of Ko Otani's majestic soundtrack, perhaps the best soundtrack of any series or movie I ever watched.

They don't make anime like this anymore. Anyway, animation is so small a field that a masterpiece such as Haibane Renmei must be cherished. Its one of the few anime series that can be understood as being serious art.

10/10