Favorite Anime Films
2020-02-19 1747
Escaflowne - the film version of Escaflowne explains the myth of the white
dragon armor better. But I still prefer the television series. The relationship
between the characters is a bit mixed up from the series. His name is not said
but the voice of the villian from the series (Dornkirk) is the voice of the
father of the main hero (Van) in the film. I do think Millerna looks better as
a red-head than blond.
Princess Mononoke - I actually really liked this one, but I also like Wolves.
And this film has three rather large ones. There are several familiar voices,
Gillian Anderson is Moro (the Wolf God), Also Claire Danes, Mimi Driver and
Billy Bob Thorton (Jigo looks the way I always pictured some one named Billy
Bob). A town built from mining iron conflicts with the emporer and the forest
spirits. A prince cursed by a demon (a god that has been corrupted) fights to
save them and himself. A sort of Man vs. Beast and Old vs. New type of movie.
. Hack//Liminality - the OVA shipped with each of the four dot Hack games. It
is the real-life problems mentioned in the E-Mail and Message Boards of the game
'the World'. The video game, OVA and manga overlap their storylines. The game
and OVA happen at the same time and the manga four years later with some of the
same characters.
Spirited Away - it's a kids movie but I liked it. Good art and music. A young
girl and her parents is moving to a new city. On the way they get lost and end
up in what looks like an abandoned theme park. The parents pig out on food left
out for the parks 'evening' quests. It's actually a resort for spirits, so the
parents are turned into pigs and the girl works in the resort to change them
back. Made by the same guy as Princess Mononoke.
Akira - Classic film of a young man that develops psychic abilities. He
is a member of a motrocycle gang and starts to have a nervous break down as his
mental powers develops. Later he finds the the group that has been experimenting
on kids and he goes a little ballistic in repsonse. Part of the backstory is
another boy (Akira, the film is named after) is worshipped by the city as a form
of god and the main character in the film is sometimes treated like a
reincarnation. There is a riot in the city during the finale as the character
makes his way to an abandoned stadium for a showdown with Akira.
Ghost in the Shell - Another classic film of a cyborg officer investigating
the hacking of a government official and an assassination attempt. Later discovers
that the mastermind of the plot is an Artificial Intelligence program developed
for anti-terrorism activities. As mankind becomes more integrated with technology,
it questions the meaning of humanity and eventually the main character uploads
the AI program into herself before either of them dies and creates a new being that
lives in the network.
This film also has a sequel (Innocence) and sparked a great TV series (Stand Alone
Complex).
Appleseed - A film based on the works as the manga author who wrote Ghost
in the Shell, takes place in much the same universe. A soldier is fighting some
enemy (unidentified) in the ruins of the city before being caught and taken to
what appears to be a utopian society. The city has built living machines called
bioroids to act as facilitators and go-betweens to reduce aggression between
humans and end wars. Later terrorists attack the facility that makes the
bioroids and threatens their existence. Meanwhile the two sentry cannons that
guard the city are reprogrammed and turned to attack the computer mainframe that
controls the city and the bioroids. It's a bit of a coup, the terrorists want to
end the bioroids but the council who made them are using the sentries to destroy
the humans. Eventually the sentries are stopped and the biorids are given the
biological functions to breed for themselves, creating a new sentient race.
Blood - A vampire (chiopterian) is left to sleep during the vietnam war
and awakens in modern day Japan. There has been a few different films, including
live action ones, for the vampire's time during the war and after. These vampires
are more scientific than the standard horror breed and are creatures that can
take human form and require our blood due to chemicals we possess that their
blood cannot produce. Saya is a vampire that has been assisting US forces in
the war and defends Japan against other "chiopterians" who what to use humans as
cattle.
Favorite Anime Series - in no order.
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Escaflowne - Girl from Earth, who reads others fortunes as a hobby, is taken to
another world. Getting caught up in a global war, an ancient mystery, and
stopping a madman (also from earth). Escaflowne has it's fair share of rather
insane villians (particularly Dilandau). Also the disappearance of Atlantis is
important to the story.
Gasaraki - Somewhat modern, takes place about 10 years in the future. 2014 or
so, according to the photo in the opening sequence. Follows the exploits of a
group of military test pilots. A powerful family builds Mecha combat machines
(Tactical Armors) to regain their former glory. They once ruled from the
shadows several hundred years ago. The youngest son is used as a pawn in order
to control the government. Some good Mecha combat and the Kugai's (ancient mecha)
would be frightening on the battle field. The Mecha are well-built and could
probably be made, not exotic and futuristic like other series' *cough* Gundam
*cough* .
Gundam Wing - best Gundam of the bunch in my opinion. Five mecha were built in
secret to stop Earth from taking over the space colonies. At first none of the
pilots trust each other but eventually they work together to first stop earth
and then OZ (a spec ops group). Some of the mecha are a bit exotic, a dragon,
a water dragon, two that transform (the dragon and one thats a cross of a plane
and bird).
Spice and Wolf - Anime version of the manga, had only two seasons and
they don't reach the end of the story.
A merchant finds the goddess of the harvest, the Wise Wolf Holo, in his wagon
after a harvest festival and he agrees to help her get to her ancestral home in
the far north. Loaded with a bit of financial info and merchant trades it isn't
too heavy on the politics of money and makes for intriguing plots of kingdoms
trying to destroy one another without raising a sword.
Gunslinger Girl - Anime version of the manga, had only two seasons and
they don't reach the end of the story. Lot of differences between the anime and
the manga (which is common). Girls that have died or were seriously injured, have
been turned into cyborgs and placed in the Social Welfare Agency. It is a front
by the Italian government for an Anti-terrorist task force. The girls aren't
expected to have a long life die to the conversion process and must take regular
doses of a drug to stop rejection of the cybernetic organs. Their bones are steel
and their skin made to be resistant to most hand weapons. The only to kill them
is to take them out through an eye. This is a plot point in an episode, when one
girl shoots her handler and then herself; because he didn't love her. Each girl
because of the psychological conditioning loves her handler in a different way
(sister, partner, daughter, lover, etc ...). Slowly the agency falls apart as
information leaks out and they engage in more public actions (because the
terrorists act more publically). Several handlers are killed and one is
"disappeared" for revealing the agency to a reporter friend. His girl is kept
at the Agency for long-term study.
The whole shebang comes to a close when they raid a terrorist cell and several
agents die and in one case she takes out her handler and herself. The remaining
girls are kept on a floating ship till their bodies run out. There is an OVA film
but I missed it, it was never released by itself and I already had the series
otherwise. I think it takes place between the two seasons.
Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex - Great tv adaption of the films.
Includes two seasons and an OVA. The first season has them investigate a number
of hackings, by someone called the Laughing Man (he uses a logo similar to a
smiley face), and the eventual discovery of a plot at a hospital to use patients
minds for their own ends. They are hiding deaths caused by a medication for a disease.
The second season involves the past of the main character (Motoko Kusanagi,
i.e. "the Major") and investigate a group called the "Individual Eleven".
The group takes its name from a book of philosophy making its way across
the internet where it can only be found. Turns out the leader of the group
is a boy that was in the same hospital as the Major when she first got her
cybernetic body. The group believes that the integrated society is sacrificing
the individual over the group and the want to crash a telecommunications satellite
into the network hub of the city. The team loses their "Tachikoma" AI robots in the
attempt to divert the satellite to a safer descent.
The OVA film Solid State Society, (the name of the third Manga), has the team
investigate the disappearance of children. Only to discover a secret society has
been kidnapping them and letting old couples adopt them. When the old couples
die, the kids inherited their wealth and estate. The kids are educated and raised
to believe in the society and get jobs in positions of the governemtn and major
corporations to further the society's cause. One of the kids they try to kidnap
is the daughter of one of the cops on the team.
Magic Knight Rayearth - Three teenage girls are trapped in another world
where life seems a bit like an RPG. It is an ongoing joke in the series as they
describe their weapons and armor changing as a "level up" in their power (they
make of a few other tropes like using blood types to ascertain compatibility
like we use zodiac signs). The three are told that they have to rescue a woman
called "the Pillar" who supports the world through her force of will and prayer.
Without her it will all fall apart. In a massive plot twist we find out that the
villain who kidnapped her is her lover and wnted to save her from being
"the Pillar" and the whole plot was a gigantic suicide by hero move to die
together. In the most depressing ending I have since Neon Genesis Evangelion,
the heroines end up killing both the villain and the Pillar.
In the second season, they end up back in this other world as several nations
fight for the right to be the next Pillar and reshape the world for themselves.
The girls fight to save the original world and the main character keeps running
into some dark clone of herself. Eventually she reunites with her clone and is
willing to become the next Pillar to keep the world from collapsing. Her friends
don't want her to and have a repeat of the first battle (as she fell in love with
the brother of the first villain). Instead they manage to save everyone by sharing
"the Pillar"'s duties and power with the whole world instead of one person.
Neon Genesis Evangelion - Now this was a depressing series. You have to
watch the film End of Evanglion to understand what is happening (well maybe not
it is still confusing). The world is suffering from a disastor after an experiment
with what is called the First Angel. Later we find out the angels have the same
DNA as humans. In the past, Angels ate from the Fruit of Power and Humans ate
from the Fruit of Knowledge. Now the two fight for dominance and inheritance of
the Earth. A secret group wants to use the Angels for a project in which all
humanity would join as one collective being (and supposedly ascend in some way).
Each main character pilots an EVA which is built from the same DNA as angels and
is a mechanical equivalent. Each pilot has lost their mother in some fashion and
personally suffer some kind of pain. Everything comes to a head in the film that
rewrote the series ending (the ending of the TV series was awful and it just came
to a stop). They find out the new pilot was the Last Angel and one of the other
pilots was an artificial recreation of an angel. She ends up killing everyone
and merging them into herself for the groups secret project. While the other
angel tries to kill everyone and take the Earth for the Angels.
In the end everyone in the world but the two main pilots die and even then they
rather kill each other.
The creator of the series wrote it while he was being treated for clinical
depression and it shows. The whole series questions the purpose of life and the
fear of dying or being alone. It has since become a classic and popular series.
Old Classics from childhood - always my favorites.
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By childhood I mean up to but not necassarily includes high school. In a rural
area most anime won't be on TV and until high school, or the internet, it is
hard to find any to watch. Most of these are from younger years.
Transformers - who will forget transforming cars and planes into robots fighting
on earth, in space and alien worlds. Not to mention the planet sized Unicron
(and that's only his head).
Voltron - Five (popular number I noticed) pilots and robot lions protect various
planets from planet Doom. A CG version was made one time but it sucked *ROYALY* .
I still laugh at how when ever they *run* it's like they're on ice, they're
moving but not getting anywhere. And ducking consisted of hunching your shoulders.
The original was much better.
Ronin Warriors - Five warriors with mystic armor fight to defeat an evil warlord
from the netherworld. An old classic from the 70's, I was a little upset with DVD
release. Someone had changed the voicetrack, a character made a reference to the
X-files, when this series (and the english dub) was made long before that.
Dragon Ball Z - many adventures of a group of warriors protecting the Earth from
several groups of aliens, androids, a geneticly created creature, an ancient
monster, etc... Has lots of action and funny characters (Mr. Satan). A long
series, about 300 episodes.
Robotech - an old classic, personally my favorite over other sci-fi mecha. The
entire series is about 30 years long or so. Starts with the invasion of Earth
from aliens (Zentradi) to the defeat of a second group aliens who conquered us
(Invid). Has plenty of mecha you would recognize, particularly the VF-1A
Valkyrie.
