ANI-MOVIES, *Weathering With You

After the international gold mine that Your Name gained, creator Makoto Shinkai, followed this up with another modern day romantic fantasy. Weathering With You instead of using elements of time dialation like several of Shinkai's titles went for a film with magical elements mixed in with urban living. In fact, Weathering With You takes place during You Name as sort of a spinoff-midqual where it's two main characters make cameos, even though its hinted that both titles don't take place in the exact same universe and/or timeline.

Set in the far off future of 2021(?), teenager Hodaka runs away from his home on one of the remote Japanese islands to Tokyo, for which he was thoroughly financially prepared for, manages to get a job working for a small tabloid publisher named Keisuke, who also happened to save Hodaka's life on his boat rider over to the mainland. Among his reports for the magazine, Hadaka investigates the possiblity of a so called "sunshine girl" that can prey for the rain to temporarily depart, and this leads him to a girl named Hina who had previously offered him a free meal while he was still looking for work. Hina lives with her younger brother Nagisa(who is also a criminal mastermind!)after their mother passed away a year ago, but Hina somehow gained the ability to wish for the sun to appear during rainstorms after finding a secluded temple on the roof of an old building. Hadaka opens up a website for Hina to charge people for making it sunny during certain events. This has a negative effect on Hina though as each time she uses her power, it causes her to slowly be spirited away as a sacrifice to whatever divine force she is connected to. Police investigating Hodaka's running away soon catch up to him, and soon threaten to have Hina get removed from her apartment with her brother, so the three runaways try to avoid being detained. While on the run, the weather in Tokyo becomes worse going from flooding rain to snow in the middle of summer. Hina realizes the weather is going haywire because she needs to give herself over to the heavens, and is raptured away during the night. Hodaka now has to fight the police chasing him in order to reach the mysterious temple Hina first went to in an attempt to get her back.

There was a signifigant amount of "Shinkai-isms" in this movie, with several musical montages done to pad out the movie, each one seems like the opening titles of an ongoing anime series, so if you're not big into J-Pop you might want to fast forward these parts. Another trait borrowed Shinkai's niche for having the two protaginists having to overcome a monumental force which keeps the starcrossed lovers apart. The animation involved is profoundly exceptional, especially in the scenery with gratuitous amounts of "weather porn". A few of the slightly annoying problems though are in the plot, leaving out key details, like why Hodaka was so adament about running away from home, or why Hina wasn't willing to accept outside help after her mother's death. If these slight story complications won't hold you back from enjoying an otherwordly love story, then this is an urban fairy tale even non-otaku should be interested in.

ANI-MOVIES, *Promare

Following up Kill La Kill and Gurren Lagann, Studio Trigger combined alot of the story elements along with profoundly similar character designs from both shows into a full-length animated movie. Promare is a bizarre sci-fi shonen action film colliding numerous anime cliches in the spirit of bombastic movies like Redline. Directed by former Gainax alumni Hiroyuki Imaishi, and written by mecha anime genius Kazuki Nakashima, the movie became a huge success with fans on both sides of the Pacific.

Sometime in the mid-21st Century, different individuals around the world start self-combusting, killing off a good portion of the population. From the ashes of this, rise a small number of pyrokinetic mutants known as the Burnish. The remaining humans rebuild society with fire safety being the largest concern, with the Burning Rescue department using elaborate mechas to fight fires, while a special cyborg soldiers called Freeze Force handle the Burnish terrorists. One attack has the Burnish's leader Lio Fotia being foiled by hot blooded Burning Rescue firefighter Galo Thymos, leading to the Burnish all being sent to a little freeze prison, but it was all a part of their plan to break out their pyrokinetic brethren. However, the seemingly benevolent Governor Foresight has anticipated this move, and hiding his own agenda to lead an elite selection of mankind to another world as an exodus, because the Earth itself is set to be overrun with volcanic erruptions. Lio and Galo set their rivalry aside to recieve a literal "Deus ex machina" from Foresight's former partner to stop the deluded leader's ambition, which could lead to the either the complete eliminatiion of the Burnish who are the fuel for Foresight's space ark.

Lot's of shonen hero speeches and incredible giant robot action culminate into a largely satisfying viewing experience. The 3D computer animation merges well with quick as lightning fighting scenes. A few of the drawbacks though is that there seems to be a new opposing faction of characters introduced every twenty minutes, along with prolonged exposition and numerious plot twists. It's possible the story might have worked better as an OVA series instead of a nearly two hour movie. If your not into the tropes of your average anime titles, then Promare might just be a really fun acid trip of animation instead.

MISC. MANGA, *The Legend Of Mother Sarah

Katsuhiro Otomo(the creator of a little something called Akira)wrote an ongoing manga in the early 90, a post-apocalyptic drama given the English title, The Legend Of Mother Sarah. Takumi Nagayasu provided the artwork for a series that went on for 15 years, leading to a total of nine graphic novels, only one of which was actually translated into English. Dark Horse Comics released it as most manga in the U.S. from the 90s as a comic book mini-seriesl, which was eventually collected into a single volume called Tunnel Town.

In the future, nuclear wars caused the human race to abandon Earth to seek shelter in floating colonies. A plan to restart the planet's habitability would cause a good portion of the existing population still on Earth to die. This re-genesis leads to civil war between two factions wanting to save either save mankind or the Earth. In the aftermath, a lone survivor named Sarah searches the wastelands for her missing three children. Along the way, Sarah helps out the innocent where she kind from corrupt outcasts.

The manga continues with Sarah coming to the shocking disovery what happened to her children in the wake of Earth's 2nd armageddon(a rarity in most sci-fi stories). Because of the lengthy amount of time it took for the manga to be completed, its evidential that an anime adaptation never arised from it, especially for how long it was for Otomo to make the Steamboy film. Even though the complete saga is not available in English, it is a worthy trek through used comic bins to give this beginning chapter a look.

ANI-MOVIES, *Watership Down

Taking a hint from Animal Farm, Richard Adams showed the world from the point of view of rabbits in the British countryside in his novel Watership Down, named after an actual hill in England. Nepenthe Productions was tasked with not only doing a full-length animated version of Adams' book, The Plague Dogs, a few years later. Released in 1978, the movie was not some Disney-esque "funny animal" cartoon, but a gritty realistic perspective of how rabbits are constantly being on the bitter end of the circle of life. The popularity of this lead into a later animated TV series, plus an animated mini-series.

The movie begins with an opening narration showing how rabbits believe that the whole world was created by a god who punished the growing bunny populations by giving all the other animals with defensive or offensive gifts that would help curb the rabbits tendancy to multiply. The story then opens on the precognitive rabbit Fiver warning his brother Hazel that their warren is in danger of being destroyed. After warning the head rabbit to no avail, the brothers lead a group of runaways on an exodus, helped by the warren's former captain Bigwig. The surviving rabbits then set out to find a suitable place for a new home, all while avoiding other shifty bunnies, predators, and humans. They evantually find a perfect place at the top of a hill, but don't have any does to have any future children, so they scout out a nearby rabbit warren which is under the iron paw of General Woundwort. Hazel plans to liberate some of the female rabbits, leading to a great escape, and a bloody last stand between the warring warrens.

Watership Down is largely faithful to the original novel, with amazing music by Art Garfunkel. The cast is made of big names in British theatre like John Hurt and Michael Graham Cox, who also both provided voice overs the Ralph Bakshi's The Lord Of The Rings. This is by all intentions not meant to be watched by younger viewers, although it is a more honest approach to the way real animals cohabitate.

R.I.P., Christopher Plummer