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Got that Healing Feeling▲▼
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| Aishiteruze Baby (TV) |
Excellent |
This one starts ugly and clumsy, and then grows on you very quickly: before you notice, it's asking out for the car keys. This very good-natured tale (with a slightly mysterious target demographic) is dedicated to the spread of a simple truth: the sweetest surprise in a man's life is that, after years of chasing after the tall blondes, the love of your life will turn out to be 2 feet 2 with big brown eyes. The Katakuras must be the most functional family in the Archipelago, and make very convincing human healing salves. |
| Barefoot Gen (movie) |
Very good |
The "other" Curtis LeMay memorial film is a very different creature than "Fireflies." The heart-wrenching, unbearable losses suffered by the characters are incongrously paired with their persistent optimism. While "Fireflies" is a dirge for the dead and a kaddish for the sorrow of yesteryear, "Gen" is a hopeful ballad of rebirth. Madhouse does a tremendous job recreating the horrific imagery found in survivor drawings. |
| Elfen Lied (TV) |
Excellent |
A light romantic comedy format, the ol’ split-personality serial killer, and the harshest of plots: you can almost hear the pitch: “Take ‘Chobits’, but substitute Takashi Miike for CLAMP”… Yes, this is a bloodbath: from the eye-popping first sequence forward, gore and brutality flow in a veritable torrent. However, the physical violence is not the dramatic core of this show: this is a story about abuse so cruel, scars so deep, and destinies so tragic that the faint glimmers of hope that occasionally pierce the darkness shine as brightly as polished seashells. You have to marvel at a show where the main romantic story requires you to sympathize with a savage mass murderer, and succeeds in making you do so. |
| Elfen Lied (OAV) |
Good |
Not particularly necessary extra episode, but it is useful in giving a little extra backstory and depth to both Lucy and Nana, including the explanation to one of the most debated mysteries of the series. |
| Fruits Basket (TV 1/2001) |
Excellent |
Remarkable elan, and oodles and oodles of empathy make this story of healing irresistible. It takes a tassle of the coolest, fullest characters possible -and in a coup of graceful writing, the coolest of them all is *dead* before the series even begins- and treats them with moving respect, down to the thinnest of comic foils. Add in the steadiest melodramatic hand imaginable, nigh-perfect comedic timing and superb voice acting. Did I mention it has the best character theme music? |
| Gauche the Cellist (movie) |
Very good |
Yeah, Takahata Isao doing Miyazawa Kenji. It makes *so* much sense. This movie is a good mix of those two engaged, optimist worldviews, with a simple story of kindling one’s own creative fire with the help of others. The “Tiger Hunt” sequence is just perfect. |
| Gunslinger Girl (TV) |
Excellent |
While it is easy to focus on the young-girls-packing-heat angle (and Dragunovs and Steyrs are admittedly serious heat), this is in essence a story about the many shapes of human affection. Madhouse outdoes itself both in its rendering of Italian backgrounds, and in its exceptionally effective character design: the beauty of the girls is so sad, so gracefully ephemeral that it makes their tragic pasts and unfair destinies all the more unbearable, and their handlers’ dilemmas all the more stinging. |
| Key the Metal Idol (OAV) |
Very good |
Little puppet made of pine, awake, the gift of life is thine. No blue fairies, happy to say, but rather a well-realized tale where the symbolism and the obscurities actually kinda make sense. Key's maladroit efforts to gain her humanity, and Sakura's ambiguous affection and conflicted devotion are paragons of the "love shall make you free" format. I'm so singing "Lullaby" to my child, too. |
| Kodocha (TV) |
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| Koi Kaze (TV) |
Masterpiece |
Today on Montel, Siblings Who Love Too Much: a chance to feign moral outrage, sound self-righteous and spout psychobabble. Or alternatively, watch this exquisitely written series for a truly nuanced, morally subtle study of insoluble dilemmas and impossible choices. Tristan's and Is... I mean, Koushirou's and Nanoka's struggle is portrayed surprisingly free of easy outs or gratuitous frisson. Feel free to stick in any disclaimer you want, but think carefully as to why this story would need any. |
| Momo: The Girl God of Death (TV) |
Good |
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| My Neighbor Totoro (movie) |
Masterpiece |
I try, I really try, and I still well up. Every time I watch this I feel a couple of decades younger, and 95% less cynical. |
| Now and Then, Here and There (TV) |
Excellent |
A shounen adventure format and the darkest story this side of an event horizon. Cool. Shuu's ordeal must be the most hopeless ever endured by a redemptor hero: he's tossed into the depths of Gehenna and is expected to preserve his trust in the basic goodness of mankind. The "Hitler-in-the-Bunker" schtick grates after a while, though. |
| Popotan (TV) |
Decent |
This is a tale about the implacable flow of time, the hopeless search for a place to belong, the sweet sorrow of separation. And about boobs. Lots and lots of boobs. And then more boobs. The reasonably meaty substance of the sisters’ Flying Dutchman life is bookmarked by fanservice of such enthusiastic blantantness that you can but tip your hat at their cheek. Or cheeks, as it may be. |
| Porco Rosso (movie) |
Masterpiece |
My favorite Miyazaki not involving public baths. Miyazaki's secret, as always, is his intense -and infectious- affection for his characters. Not to mention his identification therewith. Porco's middle-aged melancholy betrays a sadness bordering existential pessimism, which in Miyazaki's other films is hidden behind the youthful drive of his characters. |
| Princess Arete (movie) |
Very good |
Human hands are certainly endowed with something like magic. 4°C goes out to prove it in this beautifully rendered feminist fable. 4°C deploys its peerless sense of landscape and ambiance in the service of a story about the value of creation and of the freedom to create. Males of the species should not panic at the word "feminist" and persevere. Anyway, the story's undertones are in fact more Marxist than feminist (okay, so maybe panic). |
| Princess Mononoke (movie) |
Very good |
When I watched this I thought that Miyazaki's career was winding down in Kurosawa style, and this was his "Ran." While the overly ponderous tone and pace has some of the blame for the sub-par feel, the main problem is the relatively unappealing stable of characters, at least by Ghibli's lofty standards. |
| Serial Experiments Lain (TV) |
Excellent |
It is not that difficult to follow, people, give it a go. What Cronenberg should have done instead of eXistenZ. Like Saikano, Lain's appeal hinges on its sympathetic portrayal of a force of nature struggling to stop the dissolution of her humanity. |
| She, The Ultimate Weapon (TV) |
Excellent |
Gonzo goes all meaningful on us, painting this little fable (inasmuch as the friggin' apocalypse can be a little fable) with rich and layered characterizations on a canvass of relentless destruction. Commendable how they are willing to let their characters suffer without dignity and die in complete despair. The tear-jerking can get excessive at points, though. |
| Someday's Dreamers (TV) |
Good |
There is such a thing as too low-key, and this series tethers very dangerously close to subterranean. A sense of soft-cored, soft-edged, soft-focus, hm, softness pervades everything, from the writing to the artwork, to the characters, to the pacing. This narrative tofuness totally ruins several emotional setpieces, which fall very flat indeed. However, it also gives surprising impact to a highly successful dramatic climax. It ends up a little of a (soft) wash, which is not too bad, after all. |
| Spirited Away (movie) |
Masterpiece |
Miyazaki's magic touch reaches its apex. I watched it with a ten year old who, for the first time in her short life, did not move a muscle for three hours. |
| WATAMOTE (TV) |
Masterpiece |
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| Welcome to the NHK (TV) |
Very good |
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| Wolf Children (movie) |
Very good |
A sustained paean to motherhood. Hana is such a superlative example of determined supermom, it is hard to not to feel pangs of regret, and envy. The set pieces are excellently executed -meeting cute, tragedy, adorable morphin' babies, the pain of letting go- Unluckily, the whole is less than its parts, with the overall reverential tone of the movie actually dampening its emotional impact. |
