Category: Anime

New York International Children’s Film Festival 2011

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The New York International Children’s Film Festival is one of the many things that makes me happy I live in NYC. Truth be told I’d probably see all the films if I had the means. Normally, I’d make sure to see all the anime on the list but I just couldn’t bring myself to watch Welcome to the Space Show again, sorry! So instead we opted for some more international flare.

This year our sampling of the New York International Children’s Film Festival is truly an international experience. While there was an outstanding anime in the lineup, two-thirds of our selections were from non-Japanese animated features. We took in a French film as well as one from China. While a single film is hardly a full representation of the animated output of their respective countries it is still a fun thought experiment to compare and contrast them.

Time of Eve, while not new to me, was still a high priority. Not only did I love the ONA but I wanted to support the title in the hopes of seeing more from its creators or more specifically a continuation to Time of Eve itself. It also helped that the movie has an extra 15-minutes of footage. Time of Eve explores the relationship between human and robot when the lines start to blur. Titles that tackle this subject are about realizing your own humanity and acknowledging it around you, in Time of Eve we explore it through two teens, Rikuo and Masaki. The series is just as engaging a second time around with thoughtful amounts of drama, comedy, and questions. The additions to film are learning just a bit more about a couple of characters, but both of these additions just make you wish the series would go on to tells us their stories further. Like any true movie go-er should, watch through the credits as the stills actually tell you a new story and there is a scene after as well.

We went into the Time of Eve having seen a majority of the movie and knowing it was very good. If you are curious about the ONA series you can check out our review of it or watch it yourself on Crunchyroll. The question on our minds was what was added when they turned the series into a movie. It turns out they added a few new scenes which are mainly used to stitch the 6 episodes together while providing some major insights into the characters and world of the Time of Eve. The major benefit is the Ethics Committee is always being prominently mentioned from the beginning of the movie so they don’t move to the forefront only in the last episode like in the original. The extremely mysterious Setoro also gets a good deal more fleshing out while still retaining his enigmatic nature. They also make the origins of Nagi and the cafe a bit more obvious with a completely new epilogue during the credits. The movie itself is worth a watch for original fans of the show just for those revelations alone. While the movie does make a few things clearer it does introduce some new characters and questions and in doing so is practically begging for a second season. I truly hope that this movie is able to raise the interest and capital to make more of this wonderful science fiction series.

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Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.

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I have said in the past that we can be drawn to characters who are similar to ourselves or have the qualities we admire. In contrast we are often most annoyed by the characters who have the same flaws we hate about ourselves. On that note Saori Chiba is a fascinating character to me and a highly personal character. In the Wandering Son anime other than a few flashback she comes off as an outright little monster up until very recently. I find her behavior detestable and pointless as it only hurts herself and those around her. That said I can’t say that I could not easily see myself doing the things she is doing in the show. In fact I have done some of the nonsense that she does so it makes it all the more pertinent, powerful, and painful.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #118

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I finally finished up Part 1 of Saint Seiya: Lost Canvas thanks to Crunchyroll. The destined for tragedy friendship between Tenma, Alone, and Sasha and the fate of not just the world of Gods but also man maintains its level of melodrama very well. And the violence and battles that the series is so well known for is here at an enjoyable rate. It doesn’t come off like Saint Seiya for the modern viewer, it is just another line in the Saint Seiya world which is fine by me. However, this doesn’t make it very new viewer friendly as the series is filled with the familiar faces of the Gold Saints with little explanation. New additions though get a good amount of screen time like the amusing Yato, totally cool Yuzuriha, and of course head strong Tenma. These three are a lot of fun as a team, though nearing the later half of the series we don’t see them as much. However, the final episode promises excellent moments to come. Part 1 ends at a turning point, but by no means has any closure. I’m looking forward to Part 2 which has recently started up.

One of the main purposes of Ongoing Investigations is to talk about things that might not warrant a whole article but show what Narutaki and I read and watch outside the articles we write. It is also where we talk about things we utterly hate. And so I talk about Vampire Cheerleaders which has to be one of the worst thing I have read in recent memory. It is actually two stories in one with the first part being the titular Vampire Cheerleaders who are a squad of catty blood sucking mean girls who take a shy goody two-shoes girl and turn her into an undead ho to fill a hole in their squad. For an OEL manga it is remarkably like its Japanese counterparts in the sad fact that it is one of those racy comedies that it is smutty enough that it feels it does not need a good plot but never quite racy enough to be good as pornography. So you are inundated with cheap fan service strung together with lame jokes that never goes all the way. One of the characters actually uses the phrase “riding the meal missile to Mars” as a euphemism for losing your virginity. Theoretically none of this has to be this bad. I always thought that Exploitation Now did this formula right but I found every one of the jokes in Vampire Cheerleaders fell flat due to annoying characters and tepid delivery. After the main feature and the threat of a sequel there is the bonus story called the Paranormal Mystery Squad. While this was not as bad as Vampire Cheerleaders it is still light years away from good. The Paranormal Mystery Squad starts of as all girl squad mostly so they can be the PMS girls which is a joke I thankfully missed at first but the comic helpfully beat me over the head with. The PMS is a monster slaying service that is hounded by a PETA analog (cleverly named PETM) with a nerdy overseer who wants them to capture monsters alive. One of the girls fails to heed the words of Friedrich Nietzsche and winds up becoming a werewolf. This causes conflict in the group and leads to the stories’ oh so charming title that I will not torture you with besides saying it is quite awful. In fact the whole thing is quite awful. The art in Paranormal Mystery Squad was slightly more detailed but the character designs were less attractive. It is very obviously try to sell itself as manga as it reads right to left despite its American origin. But in the end it does not really matter if it is a bad manga or a bad comic; all you have to know is that it is just bad.

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