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Best
Anime Scenes
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HUMOR OR SO |
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But my alibi is a bit objective, on the other hand; these scenes are really good, no matter where you glance at them from, discounting possibilities such as acute myopia and overdose of caffeine. Normally
I don't revel in agreements except with myself, yet please feel free
to agree with me. Peace. |
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| HISTORY OF MANGA & ANIME |
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Spike
Spiegel One of the best titles in Sunrise's winding list of animated watchables, this series that evolves around futuristic outer space-blasting bounty hunters centers on Spiegel's un-professionalism that got him unpalatable breakfast. Too humane to care for nothing but the bounty, the typical narrative of the hunter is told in a surprisingly successful experiment to wed '70's retro visualization to the usual SF effects, infused with the soul of American Wild West. I only wish they were minding Spiegel's hairdo. It can't be some deliberate self-mutilation of this otherwise almost perfect anime -- or can it?
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Spike
& Faye Playing upon one of the painter Edward Hopper's worldwidely known masterpieces, Nighthawks [1942, oil on canvas], this scene emits the hazy alienation of neo-urbanites -- something that also happens to citizens of the intergalactic travellers, as had fallen upon the lot of earlier generations of Northern America in 1960's and '70's. This anime could boast of some exacting standards of visualization; it has somehow found a way to escape the sterile atmosphere of technology-laden environments that virtually all other futurist movies have taken for granted, without being unconvincing -- a fate that still other humanizing science-fiction tomes have been yielding, when they fail to produce some believable future surrounding and credible humanity at once. [Edward Hopper: New Yorker, fine artist, 1882-1967]
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Ed
& Ein Good storyline, integrated visualization, mostly flawless character design and above all else the fun this anime's creators had been having during the process shows all through the series -- regardless of the fact that no one in the animation industry ever said making it is fun, unless there's a microphone and loads of camera lighting forced on them for PR reasons. Script
by Nobumoto Keiko, Yokote Michiko, Yamaguchi Ryote, Murai Sadayuki &
Sato Dai, designers Kawamoto Toshihiro & Yamano Kimitoshi, animator
Ogami Yoichi, music by Kanno Yoko, director Watanabe Shinichiro.
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A Disneyesque storyline with a major twist: it really does tackle the difficult and boring issue of environmentalism. It takes tons of guts to even try to produce anything entertaining when the idea in your mind is to give this ecology-laden planet a lesson on anti-pollution measures. Nausicaã somehow succeeded in this; it is a family entertainment, it also is a lecture on ecologically-correct behaviors, it still is visually good, too. I really think you should have checked this out ages ago. Script
by Miyazaki Hayao, designer Miyazaki Hayao, animators Komatsubara Kazuo,
Nakamura Takashi, Katayama Kazuyoshi, Anno Hideaki & Watanabe Takashi,
music by Joe Hisaishi, director Miyazaki Hayao.
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Jan,
April,
Feb
& June The usual stuff of spacecrafts, 'good' pirates, 'bad' rich guys, shapely typical mix-n-match of heroines, and some futuristic aura of mystery that lends further exoticism in the Spanish colors used lavishly in this anime make it a good waste of time. A revamp and complete overhaul of the Sol Bianca of 1990, this tome is one of the first anime movies being assembled with the latest technology available at the time. Digitalisation yields some beautiful scenes that later becomes typical already in the first pages of 21st-century. Reviewers usually said that the reason why this series flopped was because it was, visually, 'too Western'. Oh, boy. Script
by Sekijima Mayori & Mitsui Hideki, designers Onda Naoyuki, Takeuchi
Atsushi, Watanabe Koji, Teraoka Kenji & Shimura Satoshi, animators
Konishi Katzuhiro, Onda Naoyuki, Arai Koichi & Takeuchi Takashi,
music by Hirano Toru, Kenjo Kosei & Nagaoka Seiko, directors Akiyama
Katsuhito, Hayashi Hiroki & Ochi Hiroyuki.
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Omi,
Ken,
Aya
& Yohji Fighting crimes in this anime is taken into a secret society's hands, which truly satisfy the virtuous beasts inside us: every criminal in this anime dies a violent, albeit very clean and neat, death. The 4 young men of the underground organisation might look like good candidates for sons in-law, but nightfall would dispel the facade of approachability and transform them into killing-machines in distinctively Japanese effectiveness and efficiency -- the trademark of ninja in the past and some said also of the Yakuza at present. Sometimes you could drag the entire city of New York through the holes in the story, and details come to be minded minutely in a scene while absolutely dismissed in another; but the total score for this anime reportedly created for just an upstart pop band's promo is some Friday night watchability if you have no plan to spend time elsewhere. Script by Shizuoka Isao, Yanagawa Shigeru & Tomita Sukehiro, animator Yanasawa Tetsuya, music by Weiss, directors Egami Kiyoshi & Obari Masami.
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Gate
of the unthinkable Superb realism and inimitable surrealism are at once at play in this other work of Miyazaki Hayao. Released after the surprising splash of Princess Mononoke in the U.S., Spirited Away doesn't let expectant newly-gained worldwide audience down. The simple plot about an ordinary girl who by accident got transported into the other dimension where ghosts and demons rule, comes out to be still having some hidden agenda of employing the element of surprise when time is right. And time is mostly right for Miyazaki there.
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Sen Script & design by Miyazaki Hayao, animator Ando Masashi, music by Joe Hisaishi, director Miyazaki Hayao.
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Feast
of ghosts Sen's day-by-day survival in the eerie and slimy-yucky world doesn't seem like a ferocious struggle -- it is as if she is having an unusual sort of summer vacation, that's all, even though it involves scrubbing a gigantic bathtub for a demon that never washed for thousands of years until that day. Miyazaki makes the most disgusting creatures denizen of this movie, yet they are, besides being repulsive, also other things. The encounter between Sen and the formless ghost could wake your weepiest self. If you call that 'entertainment', you get a feast here.
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Shotgun
musing The original title is Kino no Tabi (Kino's Journey is the literal anglicized version of it), alternate title A Beautiful World A deviant among the newer robot-infested anime movies and the so-called cutting-edge-avant-garde incoherent personal ramblings of those aiming at what reviewers easily dub 'art', this Nakamura tome is fascinatingly silent and laid-back, despite the everpresence of shotguns and flashes of naked blades. How would you call a story evolving around a meandering journey of a dubiously-gendered underaged gunslinger (Kino), within whose baggage philosophy is prominent? This anime isn't for kids, though promotional images would, not only might, mislead. This entire anime is hard to describe, but one thing is for sure: you ain't seen nothin' if you haven't seen it. |
Hermes Script by Murai Sadayuki, character design & animation by Saga Shigeyuki & Kuroboshi Kohaku, based on the novel by Shiguresawa Keiichi, director Nakamura Ryutaro All scenes are perfectly done in mature colors, all landscapes are beautifully constructed and all sequences are seamless. It is even pardonable that the only companion Kino has, a bike, not only has its own name but also its own mind and an assertive personality: Hermes loves to discuss philosophy. |
Melody
of silence Life, as Kino discovered, is not beautiful; but as he said later on, that is in itself a kind of beauty. He knows silence best, and he knows when to disappear. Kino's horizontal (crossing borders) and vertical (diving into himself) journeys reflect what a sane human should have done if he isn't so pinned down and caged within the mundane business of 'living' -- which only means salary and mortgage and lumber that in truth have nothing whatever to do with Life. |
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