Posts with the “scotland loves animation” tag

Scotland Loves Anime 2017 - Day 3

Maulings, minds, monsters and megacities

The Sundays of prior Scotland Loves Anime events are typically slower paced affairs: the competition films have been aired, the jury has deliberated and now it’s time for films and shorts that may not always be premieres, but definitely warrant your attention.

a stronger than average showing with this now being the 8th SLA

Kicking off the day with the third and final instalment of Kizumonogatari certainly bucks that trend, excluded from competition for being a franchise film but no less visceral for it. Ostensibly Akiyuki Shinbo’s second film in the festival, Jonathan Clements’ introduction shed some light on the “Chief Director” position that many productions now have, effectively big names attached to a project, often without the onerous burden of working on it. Suffice it to say, a lot of the directorial duties may have fallen to Tatsuya Oishi, though you wouldn’t know it once Kizumonogatari Part 3: Reiketsu started. If you’ve made it to this last entry in the film series, you know what you’re getting yourself into: hard colour cuts, circuitous point making and slapstick dismemberments.

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Scotland Loves Anime 2017 - Day 2

Wars, water and walls

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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Under my umbrella

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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Kaleidoscope

A review of The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl movie

Watching a film with an audience, regardless of how big or small, changes that film from being consumed, to having it performed. Many films, anime or otherwise, stand well on their own but The Night Is Short, So Walk On Girl is likely at its best projected large in front of an audience.

whip smart humour, sudden outbursts of song and rapid turns of fortune that are at once charming

It is raucous and bawdy and funny and peculiar in all the ways you’ve come to expect from a Masaaki Yuasa production, but it has a verve and energy that can only be amplified in front of a crowd. This is, after all, a film about the long, involved, drunken night out of several university students.

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Surf's up

A review of the first Eureka Seven: Hi-Evolution movie

Everything is a remix, or so the saying goes. The first of the three movie series reboot of Eureka Seven, labelled Hi Evolution, seems to have taken this literally. Starting with a half hour or so of brand new footage, it then switches to retelling a meaty but largely irrelevant chunk of Renton’s escapades during the TV series.

Retelling is perhaps too kind a word for what is some cleaned up, original aspect-ratio footage from the landmark fifty episode TV series, chopped and screwed into the remainder of the film’s runtime.

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