Starting the second day with the now twenty eight year old anime film Venus Wars is still a little baffling to me. Perhaps there’s a hidden theme hiding somewhere in its staff. Perhaps Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s (Dirty Pair et. al.) designs… Maybe animation director Toshihiro Kawamoto who also worked on Cowboy Bebop… Or maybe it’s like Jonathan Clements mentioned in his opening notes about Joe Hisaishi who went on to score for Studio Ghibli… Whatever the connection with the rest of the festival, the cinema was full and evidently ready for a dose of lovingly animated 80’s science fiction.
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A review of the Lu Over The Wall movie
Gyo, Tokyo Fish Attack was not the film I thought that would spring to mind while watching Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over The Wall. This is a family friendly film after all about a small mermaid who befriends a sullen boy in a sunless town, bringing joy and music to all she meets.
Hinashi (lit. sunless), the setting for the film, has a literal shadow cast over it by an imposing cliff that separates the town’s waters from the bay, populated by mermen and ship wrecks alike. From these waters springs the titular Lu who is attracted by the music that flows from an unlikely trio, one lost in his own malaise, another struggling with the responsibility of inheriting an empire, and another who just wants to go with the flow.
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