Tag Archives: Japanese

Capsules

CAPSULE: EVANGELION 2.22: YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno

FEATURING: , Allison Keith-Shipp (English dub)

PLOT:  Following the events of Evangelion 1.11, the Angel incursions against Tokyo-3 increase in intensity, and two new teenage Evangelion pilots are integrated into the NERV defense team.  Also, the world ends, I think.

Still from Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance (2009)


WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: What to do with Evangelion?  A combo teen soap opera/end-of-the-world saga starring giant robots, the series is weird, but in a way that’s actually sort of conventional (in anime terms). Even worse, there are now four movies (and a long running TV series) telling essentially the same story—with two more on the way. Should all the movies make the List? None? Only the weirdest one? Whatever the case, I don’t think this installment is capable of being counted among the best weird movies ever made; but I’m also thankful we get to defer the issue until we’ve checked out the series’ entire run.

COMMENTS: Here’s a typical battle between an Angel (periodically appearing bad guy) and an Evangelion (giant robot that can only be piloted by a teenager). Battleships fire pink and yellow shells at the Angel, a wire-frame robot with a pendulum hanging between its legs, as it marches towards them, instantly freezing the blood red sea with every stride and leaving a huge snowflake as a footstep. It shoots laser beams from a globe and blows the battleships, causing the scarlet water to erupt into cross-shaped spouts. A warplane drops a giant robot (hereafter “Eva”); it evades the green-tipped black lines the Angel fires at it as it falls. The Eva blows up the Angel with a gun, but it immediately reconstitutes itself. The Eva next stomps on the Angel’s laser-firing spike, which causes translucent pink and yellow auras to fill up the sky. Eventually the Eva’s foot forces the spike all the way into its command globe, and the Angel explodes into a pink cross. Each melee shot lasts for a second or less, increasing the confusion as to what the hell is supposed to be going on. In Evangelion Angels can take any form, including scuttling robots with dinosaur-skull heads and 1970s-era Pink Floyd laser light shows, and they operate according to rules that are never explained.  (I’m fairly sure the Angels have no actual protocols Continue reading CAPSULE: EVANGELION 2.22: YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE (2001) [BLU-RAY]

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AKA Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door

DIRECTED BY: Shinichirô Watanabe

FEATURING: Voices of , Unshô Ishizuka, , Aoi Tada (Japanese version); Steve Blum, Beau Billingslea, Wendee Lee, Melissa Fahn (English dub)

PLOT: Based on the popular anime series, the film brings the core bounty hunting teamtogether for another mission, while adding a few new characters involved in an experimental super soldier program and a deadly virus outbreak on Mars.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: For the most part, Cowboy Bebop is straight sci-fi, notable for its stellar animation, eclectic soundtrack, and fascinating characterization.  It’s got a few strange bits—especially the character of “Ed”, an androgynous child hacker who speaks in nonsense—but nothing especially out of the ordinary, especially in the world of anime.

COMMENTS: As a television series, Cowboy Bebop was a mix between comedy and drama, action and mystery, single-story episodes and an overarching plot.  Released after the initial 26-episode run, the film takes place sometime before the end of the show, and can stand on its own as a film for anyone unfamiliar with the series.  The titular “Bebop” is a spaceship that serves as home and headquarters to a bounty hunting crew.  Spike Spiegel is a laid back but highly skilled fighter with a shady past; Jet Black is a gruff and sometimes fatherly former cop; Faye Valentine is a wily, scantily-clad con artist with a gambling addiction; Ed is a brilliant and fanciful young hacker.  Of course there’s also Ein, their fluffy “data dog.”  While chasing after a low-level bounty on Mars, the crew stumbles upon a sociopathic killer and his massive plot to infect the planet with a new kind of virus.

The dynamics of the group (always shaky as it is) are explored as each goes off on his or her own mission at various points, chasing down personal leads and hunches.  Spike and Faye are content to be on their own, while Jet and Ed hope for a more familial camaraderie.  New characters Vincent—the soliloquizing killer with a tragic past–and Electra—a government agent with impressive martial arts skills and questionable motivations—further the film’s investigation of isolation and outcasts  The city they explore (the capital of Mars) is packed with crowds preparing for a big Halloween festival, but our protagonists wander alone through the throngs with the weight of the world on their shoulders, adding occasional philosophical and mystical mutterings.  Well, all except for Ed, who seems content to hop around dressed as a pumpkin.

The story is solid, combining mystery and crime drama with thrilling action sequences and a dash of comedic relief.  The animation is gorgeous and incredibly fluid, with exciting fight scenes and high-speed chases (usually involving a space vessel) packed with R-rated violence . The colors vary from soft to bold, with hazy backgrounds and intricate settings that include fun futuristic details and references to antique technology.  The sharp HD upgrade is a welcome sight after the TV-quality Cartoon Network reruns that introduced Cowboy Bebop to many American fans.  Aside from the luscious visuals, the film features a truly kickin’ soundtrack from inimitable composer Yoko Kanno.  The combination of syncopated jazz, kooky soul, and thumping rock perfectly suits the story’s changeable tone and offbeat pacing.

So it’s not weird, especially not by sci-fi anime standards, but Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (also known as Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door) is a fun and involving film for longtime fans and curious newcomers alike.  It’s a little overlong but never boring, and the impressive action, set pieces, and ultracool characterizations are enough to keep everyone entertained!

BLU-RAY INFO: Unfortunately there are no special features for the US Blu-ray release. It’s a beautiful high-def transfer (1080p/AVC- encoded image), with Linear PCM 2.0 stereo sound. There’s a Japanese and English track (the English dub uses the same voice actors from the series, which I always liked).  Honestly, I think the visual upgrade is enough of a reason for fans to check this out on Blu.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This switched-on futuristic anime noir is visually stunning — and it makes a lot more sense than ‘Spirited Away’!” –Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD LEAVES (2004)

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DIRECTED BY: Hiroyuki Imaishi

FEATURING: (voice), Jason Lee (voice)

PLOT:  A man with a television for a head and a woman with mismatched eyes wake up with amnesia, are imprisoned on what’s left of the moon, lead a revolt, have a baby, and kill lots and lots of people.

Still from Dead Leaves (2004)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:  Dead Leaves moves so fast and makes so little sense that it’s almost the equivalent of putting an ultraviolent manga in a high-speed blender and trying to read it while the pieces swirl around.  The plot is nearly incomprehensible, but somehow involves mutant clones and a psychedelic caterpillar.  Weird?  Hell yes.  Recommended?  Well, definitely not to epileptics.  Even for older folks with a healthy neurobiology, the breakneck pacing is as likely to induce a headache as an adrenaline rush.  It’s definitely one-of-a-kind, though, and as an experiment in compressing as much berserk and illogical anime flavor as possible into as short a running time as possible, it’s worth a look, and maybe even an eventual spot on the List.

COMMENTS: Dead Leaves really is something to behold.  It seems to have been conceived, and composed, under the influence of an entirely new drug: amphetashrooms.  The film is essentially one fifty-minute long chase fight/scene, with a very few timeouts to catch your breath.  The female pink-eyed Pandy and TV-headed male Retro wake up, rob a bank, are imprisoned, break out, fire thousands of rounds of ammunition from weapons that conveniently appear when needed, and fight an ever-mutating horde of bad guys; Retro loses his head both literally and figuratively during the journey.  The violence and gore are extreme, but so ridiculous—with characters spontaneously transforming into human arsenals and showers of spent yellow bullet casings flying so thick that they sometimes obscure the carnage—that it becomes almost non-representational.  Animation styles change every few seconds (and sometimes even several times within a second), as the artists involved employ a variety of abstractions, split screens, shaky pans, replicate comic book panels complete Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD LEAVES (2004) →

Saturday Short, Shorts

SATURDAY SHORT: FROM BEHIND (2005)

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“From Behind” is the first episode in what is supposed to be a series of animated shorts titled WORKU. So far there has only been a trailer made for the second segment. The creators insist, though, that they have not given up on the project.

In this first episode, a drifter searches for an environment that suits him. Alas, the one he finds turns out to be less than satisfactory.

Canonically Weird (The List)

91. TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (1989)

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“One of the most memorable screenings in the early years of Midnight Madness, Tetsuo so stunned the attending crowd that few noticed the print had no subtitles.”–Toronto International Film Festival

RecommendedWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Shinya Tsukamoto,

PLOT: A man who collects scrap metal (identified as “fetishist” in the credits) slices his leg open with a knife and inserts a metal pipe beside his thigh bone, then runs into the street when he notices maggots in the wound, where he is struck by a car driven by a salaryman and his girlfriend.  The salaryman leaves the scene of the accident, and later finds a piece of sharp metal growing out of his cheek; as the days go by, his entire body begins to transform into a machine.  Many hallucinations later, the fetishist, still-alive and also half made of metal, returns to do battle with the now almost completely mechanized salaryman.

Still from Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

BACKGROUND:

  • Director Shinya Tsukamoto honed his craft working in an experimental underground theater group, and Tetsuo originated as a play.
  • Tsukamoto is also an actor.  Besides playing the fetishist in Tetsuo, the IMDB lists thirty-six acting credits for him, including a major role in Takashi Miike‘s Ichi the Killer (2001).
  • The Iron Man was followed by two sequels: the less surreal, more action-oriented reworking Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) and the just-released-on-DVD as of this writing Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009).
  • While Tetsuo has become a cult favorite over the years, it was not well-received on release, perhaps simply because it was too strange and underfunded to find its way onto many screens.  It won only one major award, “Best Film” at the Fantafestival in Rome (an event that has since disappeared).

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Shinya Tsukamoto must have spent hours creating elaborate landscapes full of battered scrap metal and wire, and painstakingly animating sequences where the fetishist zooms through urban streets at the speed of amphetamine-enhanced thought; but no matter how much work the director put in to any effect, it’s the simple picture of the salaryman sporting an unbalanced, rotating drill bit penis that no one can forget.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD:  Tetsuo is a carefully patterned, but effectively nonsensical, barrage


Short clip from Tetsuo: The Iron Man

of images of industrial dehumanization.  Men and women extrude cables, wires, gears, drills, threaded pipes, and miscellaneous machine parts from their skin, in glorious showers of blood.  Nightmare visions in grainy black and white flow at a breakneck pace to the pulsing beat of an industrial soundtrack.  It’s a square plug of a movie forced into the round connector of our cinematic expectations, and it emits dangerous sparks.

COMMENTS: Attempts to describe Tetsuo: The Iron Man to the uninitiated run up against a Continue reading 91. TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (1989) →