ANI-MOVIES, *Ghost Cat Anzu

What if My Neighbor Totoro was changed to have the father be a deadbeat and the mother was already dead? That's what you get when you watch Ghost Cat Anzu. Based on a one-shot manga by Takashi Imashiro, this was directed by Yoko Kuno with Nobuhiro Yamashita who has already adapted other manga into live-action films such as Confession and Let's Go Kareoke. The majority of animation done for it was provided by Shin-Ei Animation which had already done similar productions in Doraemon, and they went back to the well of early animators by first shooting the movie in live-action and rotoscoped it. Similar to several anime films of the Reiwa era in Japan, this borrows quite a few elements from Studio Ghibli where modern day spirits are seen an ordinary part of life, and going to the Land of the Dead is like to something out of Beetlejuice, so the movie starts out like Totoro and then eventually makes a sharp turn into Spirited Away for the final act. This is a self-contained story that has a lot of world-building and is a deep dive into Japanese folklore.

Young Karin is taken to a country temple by her father Tetsuya who leaves her there with his father who runs the temple while he goes to pay off a huge debt to the yakuza. Karin is stunned to find there is a giant talking anthropomorphic cat named Anzu who is a ghost cat that's been helping her grandfather at the temple for decades. Anzu tries to make Karin feel welcome, but she blows him off wanting to make it back Tokyo to visit her mother's grave. Anzu eventually takes her to Tokyo, but they can't enter because Tetsuya didn't keep up his payments, so Anzu gets help from the God of Poverty who takes them to the afterlife to see Karin's mother who is stuck working in maintenance for the oni running the place. Karin makes a break with her mother and Anzu back to the world of the living where none other than Enma himself who runs the underworld on a merry chase on scooters, limos, and sports cars. Karin's mother decides to go back the afterlife and leaves her under Anzu's protection. Tetsuya shows up at the end having paid off his debt but agrees to let Karin stay at the temple with Anzu and her grandfather while he goes on to be insolvent.

Ghost Cat Anzu might on the surface seem like an all-ages film, although it delves into murkier territory. Karin is a fleshed-out character for being the young protagonist, while Anzu is more like someone's happy-go-lucky uncle that usually helps them out. The behind the scenes of this movie are fascinating as its one of the most polished rotoscope anime films ever made. This style can be rough at times with strange looking humans who are sometimes hard to differentiate from the other yokai shown in the movie, but Anzu himself blends in well to the picture with all the regular and supernatural characters believably blend together. It's a charming family comedy that isn't afraid to get a little dark.

Cheers to our friend, C. Martin Croker, 10 years later.

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Lonely Castle In The Mirror

Lonely Castle In The Mirror started out as a novel by Mizuki Tsujimura which was later adapted into a manga, and then into an anime movie in 2022 from A-1 Pictures directed by Keiichi Hara who also did Miss Hokusai and The Wonderland. Even at 116 minutes, the movie cuts a few things from the original source material, so a decent deal of pacing, sub-plots, world-building, and character conflicts are trimmed to fit the run time. The book is a modern-day fantasy set in Japan and centers around the victims of bullying and how their lives are shaken up from the experience. This isn't a fairy tale as it does bring up some mature situations involving sexual assault and home invasion, so don't think of the title of the film trying to be another Ghibli-wannabe.

A group of seven middle schoolers each appear in a magic castle on top of a mountain in the middle of a sea set in an otherworldly realm. Four boys and three girls are introduced to the master of the castle, a small girl called the Wolf Queen who wears a wolf mask who tells them they have nearly a year to come to the castle from 9-5 PM any day through their own mirrors where they live, but if they don't leave the castle before 5 they will each be eaten by a giant wolf. Every one of them don't regularly go to school as they are all traumatized by bullies, so they spend their time hanging out getting to know each other and what they have in common. The Wolf Queen informs the kids that there is a key hidden in the castle which opens a secret door and whoever gets it first will be granted a single wish. The main character is Kokoro who has been mistreated by girls at her school who even tried to break into her house to terrorize her, but she is the one who comes closest to figuring out the secret of the castle and what ties them all together.

Lonely Castle In The Mirror is full of surprise plot twists and revelations, so to keep the mystery of the story, it's best to say that that is a faithful adaptation to the book and has a satisfying conclusion. There's a divide between the movie's initial reviews and how others looked at it when it was put on streaming and Blu-Ray, so it's best to ignore the Rotten Tomatoes score. The film does get dark but not to the point of being morbid, although it's got a fair enough rating at PG-13, although it does show how anxiety from bullying can plague a young person's life and how it affects them in the future. The story is a slow boil, but the animation is in a league of its own with great blending of 2D production with CGI. This is a noteworthy anime movie with a dub that outsells the original Japanese language edition.

ANI-MOVIES, *Mind Game

If your movie was so creative that it went on to influence the spastic Everything Everywhere All At Once, then you know it's about as spastic as it gets. Mind Game was a 2004 anime film based on a manga by Robin Nishi that was the directing debut by Masaaki Yuasa who started out as an animator on Crayon Shin-chan before going on to direct other hits such as Devilman Crybaby and Riding Your Wave. This film is an experimental production that switches from multiple forms of animation including some live-action and the best possible outside source to compare it to is Run Lola Run, even though there's only a single shown case of a change in the timeline. Many confuse Mind Game for being an anthology film like Robot Carnival, but instead it shows a singular story told from multiple perspectives similar to the classic Rashomon samurai flick. Yauasa used his eclectic approach to create an anime that was specifically unpolished which worked in his favor as the movie blends genres in a spectacular melting pot.

Nishi is a clueless college student who wants to be a manga creator who runs into his old girlfriend Myon and follows her back to her father's restaurant which her younger sister Yan works at the grill. A pair of yakuza come looking for Myon's father who cheated on the younger one's girlfriend causing him to eventually shoot Nishi right up his shaft and he dies. Nishi ends up in an afterlife of sorts and challenges the ever-changing god there to let him go back, so he gets sent back just before he was shot and turns the tables and plugs his original shooter. Nishi then runs off into the night with Myon and Yan who steal the yakuza's car, so now there's an entire fleet of gangsters chasing after them. Once they go off a bridge, the three escapees are immediately swallowed by a gigantic whale where they spend the remainder of the film along with an old castaway who has been trapped in the whale for decades. After a great deal of trippy dream sequences and self-reflecting, Nishi and the others manage to eventually get out of the whale. The story then goes back in time to where Nishi first runs into Myon and we see different flash forwards of what the characters' lives might be like in this new timeline.

Mind Game is a particular pastiche of an anime movie which you need to put your expectation on hold to watch because its unconventional storytelling will completely baffle most non-otaku or fans of auteur cinema. Its offbeat plot is one of most intriguing of all time for an animated film, especially since its title is so pretentious. It is a schizophrenic experience that bombed on its original release but has gone to get 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, but Masaaki Yuasa managed craft a nonsensical story that makes crazy anime like Dead Leaves seem tame by comparison.

ANI-MOVIES, *Children Who Chase Lost Voices

For Makoto Shinkai's third full-length anime movie, the future director of Your Name wrote an original story for it, although you will notice a great deal is borrowed from the works of Studio Ghibli. Children Who Chase Lost Voices is technically Shinkai's only isekai motion picture, and a large portion of it reflects Ghibli movies like Castle In The Sky, Princess Mononoke, and particularly Goro Miyazaki's Tales From Earthsea which is strange as most hardcore otaku were turned off by it. This was Shinkai's first fantasy movie as most of the prior ones had sci-fi elements, and his production company of Comix Wave Films brought its A-game with the jaw-dropping landscapes and striking sky backdrops. Unlike most of Shinkai's other movies, there is superb detail given to some of the film's action sequences which makes you with the director would eventually head up a shonen project. The major theme of the story is learning to let go of those who have passed on and how this compulsive need can drive people to cross entire worlds to make the pain stop.

Asuna is a responsible girl who learned to take care of herself since her father died and her mother is a full-time nurse. Whenever she's not at school, Asuna has her own little sanctuary in the mountains, but one day she encounters a mysterious beast on a bridge, although she is saved by a young boy named Shun who claims to be from the country of Agartha. Asuna later learns Shun's corpse was found in the woods, while at the same time a substitute teacher Morisaki takes over her class and starts mentions the fictional land of Agartha which is supposed to by underneath the surface that is connected to the Hollow Earth belief. Asuna then runs into a lad named Shin who is Shun's younger brother who came to collect a crystal Shun left behind. The two of them are attacked by a military organization labeled Arch Angel which Morisaki is an agent of and is bent on finding Agartha. Shun and Asuna make it to the hidden door to Agartha where Morisaki follows them leaving the other Arch Angel soldiers behind as he came to this magical realm to find a way to resurrect his deceased wife. Shun parts ways from them as he returns the crystal, but it turns out Aauna had a similar crystal of her own left behind by her father, so know he has to track them down while avoiding other hunters sent to capture the topsiders. Asuna and Morisaki now journey to a place called the Gate of Life and Death where wishes can be granted, and Asuna wants to find a way to be reunited with Shin, despite the endless army of shadow monsters that pursue them.

Children Who Chase Lost Voices shows why Makoto Shinkai has often been called the "next Miyazaki", even though for this film its more Goro Miyazaki than his father Hayao. The film lacks slightly from pacing issues and not having a definitive direction as you don't always know where the plot is going with a new story element is added every few minutes. The inner world of Agartha is something out of an RPG daydream which could have used a few more random encounters or the occasional boss battle to liven things up a little. Asuna is an interesting protagonist who in the end isn't as determined as she thinks she is in her quest, although her mentor figure of Morisaki is seriously in this for himself but with some moments of care for Asuna. This was the longest of Shinkai's films to date when it's clear it could have been trimmed by at least ten minutes. If you've seen any fantasy anime, then you'll find something familiar here, but its major draw is Shinkai's unparalleled cinematic perspective.

ANI-MOVIES, *Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko

Based on Kanako Nishi's novel, Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko was directed by Witch Hat Atelier's Ayumu Watanabe with animation crafted by Studio 4C whose resume goes all the way back to Katsuhiro Otomo's classic Memories. This was a comedic slice-of-life story between a girl and her mostly clueless mother and how her bad life decisions led to the dire straits they're currently in. It's not so much of a full-length story but comedic segments strung out with a several flashbacks to fit a singular plot, similar to like that in My Neighbors The Yamadas.

Kikuko lives in a houseboat in a harbor town with her overweight mother Nikuko who has a long history of continuously getting hornswoggled out of her money by bloodsucking bachelors. Nikuko now works as a waitress at a bar and grill, but Kikuko is more the more responsible one even though she's still in elementary school. She makes friends with a boy student who makes funny faces when he thinks nobody is looking, who is one of the few sensible people she knows with her classmates arguing about who plays on whose team in basketball. Nikuko has recently been gaining more weight, and her carefree behavior causes Kikuko to feel embarrassed even though most of the locals find her eccentricities charming. We learn that Nikuko is not Kikuko biological mother but her former best friend's who couldn't accept the responsibility of being a parent, even though she later marries a rich man and has two children with him. Despite hearing this painful truth, Kikuko still considers Nikuko her real mother and lovers her with all her faults.

The film spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on Nikuko's weird perspective, like constantly making bad puns from Japanese kanji, which is one of the reasons that this movie wasn't given an English dub. This lackadaisy storytelling also makes it difficult to keep up with the wobbly narrative. Studio 4C on the other hand does pump the film with gorgeous visuals to keep the viewer's mind engaged for a brief 97-minute anime production.

ANI-MOVIES: *The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

The first unofficial movie released by Studio Chizu was 2006's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Based on the 1967 novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui who also wrote the book Paprika that Satoshi Kon turned into his own anime film, this story has been adapted multiple times in different formats including live-action motion pictures and a TV series. The anime movie was produced by Belle writer Mamoru Hosoda with a screenplay by Satoko Okudera who also wrote the script for Summer Wars. The film is a stand-alone story which acts as a pseudo-sequel to the original 1967 book with the niece of the book's main character. In the book, a girl named Kazuko discovers she can leap back in time to a few days thanks to coming into contact with a man from the future, although in the book she ends up having her memory erased of the whole event, but in the anime movie Kazuko seems to somehow maintain her memories. The dubbing was provided by the Viz Entertainment regulars from Ocean Studios and was first released in English by Bandai, and later on by Funimation. Even though this was eventually redistributed under Studio Chizu, it was initially produced by the geniuses at Madhouse to many accolades.

Makoto is a typical Japanese high school student, not excelling with high grades and somewhat klutzy, but she has two platonic boy schoolmates, Chiaki and Kosuke. Her aunt Kazuko usually referred to as a witch works at restoring paintings at a museum, and Makoto comes to her when she has a strange encounter where she literally leaps through time after nearly hitting a train with her malfunctioning bike. Turns out Kazuko had a similar experience when she was younger which only briefly gets referenced to in the movie, but this makes her think that time leaping is a common thing for some people in her family. Makoto uses her newfound ability to go back to the past reliving similar experiences but exiting whenever she wants, plus she doesn't seem to have to deal with any pesky paradoxes like running into an alternate version of herself as each leap sets up a totally separate timeline for her just slip into. This has a serious caveat to it as it effects the lives of the people around her, this bringing the strange message she first saw when she gained her power which states the "time waits for no one". Makoto learns that a girl has deep feelings for Kosuke, so she tries to set the two of them up, while at the same time Chiaki tries to ask Makoto out. There is a major twist that lays out the entirety of the final act which plays outside of Makoto's control as her supply of time leaps begins to run out, and the giveaway is very convoluted with lots of dangling plot threads and unanswered questions. Ultimately though, the focus of the story is more character-based and how people's relationships can be shaken by even the most minimal changes.

The finale does spread a large emotional doubt on how to interpret the original intentions of this adaptation of a 40-year-old book which just resolved everything by giving all the characters involved with amnesia. However, this remake doesn't make people forget and instead Makoto has to deal with the consequences of her actions in both the present and altered present, even as she comes to terms about how she feels about her friends and what kind of future she wants to walk into. Mamoru Hosadu made this a visually stunning film with many scenes just taking in the beauty of the mundane world in the background which is something he'd utilize in future productions like Wolf Children and Mirai, although Mirai seemed to have a better grasp on the concept of time travel than this film did. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is more of a character study than a fully realized story and borderlines being episodic as it's broken down into to the 3-act structure, especially at its conclusion. The anime movie is at best a loose adaptation of the source material, and the film is charming most of the time, while simultaneously leaving a hard impact with some of the revelations we learn about upon the way. This delivers as a solid quality animated production, but the time tripping can leave the viewer wanting to know more about the true history of some of these characters which this film doesn't deliver on.