ANI-MOVIES, *Short Peace

It's been a dog's age since the last authentic anime anthology motion picture. Sunrise helmed this scrumptious broth of talent featuring four different segments, each by its own director, including Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo. This literal animated omnibus picked up where other classic anthology films like Robot Carnival left off, even though there is no consistent theme to it. The movie opens with a fantastic sequence by Studio 4C founder Koji Morimoto where a little girl plays hide-and-seek with a mischievous rabbit that leads her into a Wonderland-like multiverse where her appearance changes like going through characters choices in a video game.

The first part is Possessions by Tokyo Ghoul director Shuhei Morita about a wandering craftsman who gets caught in a storm while journeying through the woods. He seeks refuge in a vacated shrine which happens to be overrun by tsukumogami that are a kind of yokai but of old objects. The spirits each put on a small show for the traveller and he quickly starts to mend and repair each one including umbrellas and rows of silk. The remaining objects assemble into a huge jumbled dragon made of junk which the craftsman does a brief prayer for freeing them from the earthly realm. This entire short was CGI-animated similar to the some of the Baki anime, yet it does stand well enough on its own creative merit making you see it as a flowing puppet show.

Combustible is the second installment was done by Katsuhiro Otomo based on a manga he created in the mid-90s. It's starts out with the pull out of a long woodcut of a city during the Edo period. A young girl named Okawa carries out a friendship with her neighbor Matsukichi who aspires to be a firefighter. As time goes on, Matsukichi gets tossed out by his family for getting tattoos while Okawa is raised to be married off to a rich lord. She accidently sets fire to her wedding gifts and spreads further that Matsukichi gets called in and tries to rescue her, even though she climbs to her supposed death up a burning tower which could be seen as a metaphor for social segregation.

Next is Gambo directed by Hiroaki Ando that seems more condensed that it should be. The altogether story has a red oni marauding through the mountains with samurai hunting for the lumbering monster. However, of all things a polar bear is apparently sent by the gods to finally end the oni's rampage. The last remaining girl of the nearby village befriends the bear who gets into an epic fight to the death with the oni. It ends on a slightly sad note, but you come to realize that this is how the story was destined to fold out.

The finale is A Farewell To Weapons directed by Gundam animator Hajime Katoki. Like Combustible, it was also based on an Otomo manga. Happening during a new world war where humans fight against machines, a special team of soldiers are in an apocalyptic Tokyo where an abandoned warhead lies for them to retrieve. The soldiers are systematically taken out by an all-terrain robot called a Gronk leaving only one remaining soldier who is left in nothing but his birthday suit when the machine leaves him a pamphlet on how futile mankind's efforts are in fighting back. The short ends with the surviving soldier running after the Gronk with the actual warhead making you wonder he managed to get some final revenge against the cold calculating machine.

Short Peace brings back nostalgic visions of other anthology anime films like Memories and Neo Tokyo that makes you long for future endeavors to carry in this honored tradition. This was a multimedia project as well as a side-scrolling video game that was unrelated to any of the four chapters in the film, so it's almost like it could have just been its own entity with no connection to the movie at all. For non-anime fans, Short Peace is an enticing gateway drug for future otaku as the compressed status of segment makes them like an assortment of candies that you can't just eat one of.