Special Announcement

Hello there fellow readers

Well I figure that I would make an announcement about this. Well around the start of the year, I parted ways with Animation Revelation after being involved there for a year and a half, due to creative differences between me and one of the writers there. I won't go into details but what this person did in response to a comment I made and current things they have said.....well I don't want to talk about it further and to be perfectly honest I'm over it anyway.

Fortunately, around that time, fellow aniblogger and Caribbean pen pal of yours truly Ramo Zemog, of YuriNation and OG's Anime Island, came to me with a proposal, to be a co-writer for his blogs. At first I thought 'ehhh....' but after thinking about it, I was like 'ok sign me up sir'. Of course, I had to make an account with WordPress, as that is what Ramo's blogs are built on.

So that lead to me to a decision-to move over my blogging to WordPress. For one thing it looks nicer and most anime reviewers seem to use it or custom sites.

So on May 3rd I will posting up the link for the new Wordpress site on the social media along with an introduction post on the new site. This site will remain as an archive of sorts. I will be following up on my reviews for the month then on my May 3rd post on the new site.

See you all there, dear readers!

Review No. 100

So, yeah back around in 2003-04, when I was first watching the first few episodes of Evangelion from the local Blockbuster (remember those?) I had come across another anime that was in the same section. This section being ‘Foreign Language’ because they didn’t have a separate section for anime itself but that’s besides the point. Anyway, near where the Evangelion VHSs were, there was a movie that looking back, caught my initial attention I got from Eva and seized upon that for me in cementing my love for anime. That movie is…
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Princess Mononoke (1997 film)
Studio: Ghibli
Director and Script: Hayao Miyazaki

Prince Ashitaka is the noble hero of a small village of the remnants of an ancient tribe. When trying to save his village from a cursed boar, he ends up with a curse infecting one of his arms and has to leave his village because tradition is a bitch sometimes. But he takes it all in stride and undergoes a grueling and harrowing journey through Medieval Japan but with giant creatures and mythical mysteries.In the process meeting up with a cunning monk, Lady Eboshi and her Iron Town and a mysterious girl who lives with giants foxes, and get embroiled in a battle between mankind and the natural world.

Now this is my favorite Ghibli movie, probably the best of that entire studio’s catalog and I have seen about most of them, exceptions being Pom Poko and most of their movies post-Howl’s Moving Castle. The Ghibli catalog is essential viewing for any enthusiast (yours truly included) of Japanese animation, even if you only seen one or a couple thats fine. But here’s why I consider Princess Mononoke to be one of if not the best out of the whole catalog.

For one thing, this is a grand fantasy epic in the traditional Joseph Campbell core and a lot of my favorite anime are in this vein (Magic Knight Rayearth, El Hazard, FMA, etc). If you read my review on Campione, I expound upon that in detail. Though here is perhaps the most straightforward iteration of it in an anime that I have seen. Granted, it is much more than that.

Princess Mononoke couches within this familiar framework a man vs. nature conflict. Although it is a bit nuanced here in that there’s not a clear good vs evil and the morality spectrum waivers around more than well any politician but it fits in with the movie’s core message: There is never a right answer to your problems much less a solution that will satisfy everyone without some shortcomings or compromise. I have to say that it is a very powerful message to have. Of course it is applied to a strong environmental stance that Miyazaki has built upon in previous works (Nausicaa and Laputa for instance).

Princess Mononoke-pivotal moment

Princess Mononoke is also surprisingly more dark and violent even more so than some of their films. Explosions, heads rolling and lots of blood abound so young ones should watch this with a parent. It is so also quite mature and by that I mean in the way I reference in my Madoka review, mature as in it treats the audience as adults and allows us to make our own minds/opinions about what we are watching. That alone makes watching this movie a very visceral but moving experience.

This is complemented by an amazing production, as expected from Studio Ghibli for the most part. Miyazaki shows with this and all his other films, that this is the work of a true master. It is beautifully shot hand-drawn animation (with some few instances of integrated CG work). This has some of the best direction and cinematography in an animated feature I have ever seen, even if on only a budget of roughly 23$ million.

The music is done by Joe Hisashi the main composer for Studio Ghibli. It’s a great OST with lots of great music and the theme tune for the movie easily one of the most recognizable and great tunes in anime music ever.

Princess Mononoke Main Theme

Now for the English dub, it is easily one of the better for Ghibli movies, if not one of the best dub efforts for anime out there. Now while this was picked up by Disney, it was released by one of their affiliates Miramax. They decided to tap ADR Director:Jack Fletcher who worked on Animaze (90s LA dubbing company) dubs back in the day along with an adapted screenplay by Neil Gaiman (yes that one). What that ends up with is a great dub filled a cast of very good and solid character actors. Billy Crudup and Claire Danes are a bit rough in bits but they hold well enough. The standouts for me has to be Minnie Driver playing the ambitious Lady Eboshi to a tee and Billy Bob Thornton as the cunning monk is a hoot given the slight comedic bent for that character. Well-known VO actors John DiMaggio and Keith David are also in this and some Animaze actors can be heard in additional voices if you hear close enough.

Overall Princess Mononoke is a very great movie and a masterpiece of anime cinema in my book at least. It is essential viewing because of how great it is, in terms of story, setting, production, music and a great english dub for the ages. I wholeheartedly recommend this movie.

So that’s my 100th review. I do appreciate that have come this far with me or join in my writings along the way. Here's to another 100 reviews, perhaps. I will be posting a special announcement this coming week that its a very important move for me.

Til next time dear readers…..

Anime Review No. 99 (From the New World)

‘A Bloody History’

From the New World (2012-13 TV Series)

Studio: A-1 Pictures

Director: Masashi Ishihama

Script: Masashi Sogo

So the core of speculative fiction, of which science fiction rests in, is centered around a rather simple question: What if? Of course, if one takes a look at any story in sci-fi or fantasy it is never simply What if but includes more information certainly, be it Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, etc. That is part of the appeal, to make us wonder about other worlds and places that reside in the imagination. Today I will discuss From the New World, an amazing anime piece of speculative fiction.

These poor children.....

From the New World, or Shin Sekai Yori, is an anime based on a novel of the same name by Yusuke Kishi released back in 2008. It tells the story of Saki and her friends that reside in a quiet village Kamisu 66 about 1000 years in the future. Oh but that’s not all, for she and her friends (Satoru, Maria, Shun and Mamoru) and in fact the whole village have psychic (PK) powers, of sorts. But that’s the least of their problems, besides dealing with that they also have to deal with enemies both out in the wider world and within their own secluded communal village.

Given the context this shot is very striking

I won’t go any further than that, because I am of the opinion that this is a show that must be seen and experienced first hand. That is the best way to describe SSY, as an experiential story. The speculative question at the core for this story is this: “What if human society as we know it went backwards?’ Part of the show is exploring the why and how of this question and a lot of the implications that stem from that. It is the future as reflected from the distant past and informed by the present. The future presented is so compelling in part due to how very possible it could be, and that is a scary and terrifying fact. It also dwells on the iterative nature of history and make approaches to the conceptual notion of infinity, but doesn’t quite get there due to the inherent limitations of humanity.

Opening Scene of Shin Sekai Yori

The opening scene is in fact one of the most striking and sudden moment in anime history ever. Slowly and surely this future Earth is presented to us and also the deep and dark secrets of humanity of this future. I like the slow burn pacing and the nice use of gradual world building. Small events have big ripples, as things that occur in first few episodes end up being very important down the road. Now there is a reason I am not talking about the characters and that’s aside from really two characters that have a story arc (Saki and Squealer) over of the course of the 25 episodes, the rest of the cast is developed just enough for the story itself but nothing beyond that, which does make them come across as slightly under-developed. But at the end of the day it is all about the experience, which is helped by a great sense of mood and atmosphere, which definitely enhances the experience.

Ohhh...pretty background 

Of course, what doesn’t help this story is the animation production, which is spotty at best and inconsistent at the worst. A-1 Pictures handled the production and they clearly only gave the minimum of budget for the show and it shows painfully at points: off-model moments, obvious CG, sketchy art, etc. This isn’t helped by the fact that A-1 Pictures was working on SAO at around the same time and that show has slightly better production values despite it being not too good. Granted at times, it works well but the show is barely functional given the somewhat low production values. There are also times when it does become visually impressive.

Wow, Saki, u be having some fecked up dreams 

That being said, the soundtrack is quite great, one of the best I have listened to. It is full of ambient sounds and noises which enhances the mood and atmosphere of the piece. Most of it is soft strings and woodwinds mixed with ancient tribal chanting-like music and musical silence. The titular theme is something familiar to me even before I heard of this show. It is the opening bars and initial theme from the Largo (second movement) of Antonin Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, which subtitle has the same name as the novel. This theme has a special place for me as that symphony was the first one I purchased back in my youth and introduced to other symphonic classical music. It fits the themes, mood and feel of the show to a tee and becomes more poignant with every repetition. On a side-note, the sound design is quite exceptional.

SSY OST1 SSY OST2 From the New World Theme

Now onto the english dub. Now I did watch this initially subbed back in summer of 2013 and the acting in the original Japanese is well done. But then I heard that Sentai Filmworks had picked up the show for release and were giving it a dub, which I was excited about. Christopher Ayres helms this dub, and its my second favorite dub of his that I like right behind the Ef series, if not greater than that dub. He assembles a great main cast consisting of Emily Neves, Monica Rial, Greg Ayres, Clint Bickham and Blake Shepard. Bickham also wrote the dub script and proves that he is capable of writing both comedic and serious shows, complementing the nice and well-done direction by C. Ayres. The dub is good to great overall in terms of performances, but there are 2 standouts in my mind. First is Emily Neves as Saki, who gives a full sincere performance throughout and does a good job on the narration as well. The other is John Kaiser as Squealer, the other main character of sorts. He is a little known character actor who has popped up here and there in a few ADV and Sentai Filmworks dubs. Here he gives one of the more interesting character acting I have seen in a dub in a while. There are some highlights in the dub that are exceptional, be it the near theatrical duo between Neves and Bickham in one episode or a particular moving monologue by Rial in one of the more heartbreaking episodes in the series. There are some amazing supporting cast performances by David Wald, Carli Mosier, John Swasey, David Matranga, Allison Sumrall, to name a few. In fact the last 8 episodes offer some of the best dub work out here and makes this an exceptional dub.

My reaction face when finishing this up. No joke I just about choked up at the finale

Overall From the New World is an unique, visceral and thought provoking experience of speculative fiction. Its a show that grips you from the first moment and never lets up until the very end. The answer that the story poses to the initial speculative fiction question is an interesting one, that despite all adversity (from within and with-out) and struggles humanity will endure, as we have in the past, as we do now and as we will in the future. As part of my own experience as an anime enthusiast, this is the anime that helped me reignited my interest in more new and recent anime, without it I might not have seen Kill la Kill or Yuki Yuna among others. For that I am eternally grateful.

So remember when I’ve said that Evangelion and Read or Die were the anime that solidify myself as an enthusiast? Well the 100th review is for another anime feature that I saw around that time as well, and that will be Review No. 100, it’ll be really special.

Til next time dear readers