Animation in August: Princess Mononoke (1997)

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Like most kids, I suppose I grew up watching animation. I loved Disney films and the movies of Don Bluth. Every afternoon and Saturday morning I watched television series like G.I. Joe, Thundercats, The Smurfs, and Muppet Babies. Later I fell in love with the films from Pixar.

While these types of films told different stories and used somewhat different animation styles, they all held a certain familiarity. They were all distinctly American.

Princess Mononoke was the first Studio Ghibli film I’d ever seen. This was the late 1990s, maybe or possibly early 2000. I was just becoming a true cinephile. I’d heard rumblings about Studio Ghibli for a while but I think this was the first big breakout it had in the States. Or maybe just in my orbit. It definitely got a big American release because the English dub included folks like Billy Crudup, Billy Bob Thornton, Claire Danes, and Gillian Anderson.

Anyway, I sat down with Princess Mononoke with high hopes. All the critics loved it. Honestly, I was a little disappointed. No, disappointed isn’t really the right word. I just didn’t know what to make of it. It was like no movie I’d ever seen before.

The animation was strange. In the opening scene, a demon attacks a village. But it doesn’t look like any demon I’d ever seen before. It wasn’t full of fire and horns. It was an enormous boar covered in slithering black worms. Later we meet tree spirits with human bodies and rattle-like heads, and a Great Forest Spirit with a deer-like body and an almost human face.

The story wasn’t like typical American animation with clear-cut good and bad guys. The characters were murkier. Our hero sometimes brutally murdered his enemies. The villain, if you can even call her that, rescued young women from a life of prostitution.

I think on that first viewing I just didn’t know how to process what I was watching. It was so different than anything else I’d ever seen, I wasn’t sure of what to make of it.

I’ve seen it several more times since then (and many more Studio Ghibli films) and now I just love it. What was so strange on that first viewing is endearing to me now. I love that it is different from most animated films.

So, quickly, the story involves Ashitaka (Crudup) the last prince of a small village (the one that gets attacked by that demon). He kills the demon and in the process, his arm is infected by it. This gives him super strength, but also seems to possess him at times and ultimately will kill him. When he learns that an iron ball lodged inside its body is what turned the Boar God into a demon he sets off to find out how it got lodged there.

The iron ball was actually a bullet from the newly invented gun (the film is set vaguely in the time before modern warfare) and it came from Iron Town, which is run by Lady Iboshi (Minnie Driver). She’s ostensibly the villain. But she’s also the one I was talking about earlier who has rescued women from a life of prostitution and given them a certain amount of autonomy. She also uses old men, warn down by disease and injury in her town. In many ways, she’s a good person. But she also has no problem destroying nature (and the gods that protect it) to enrich herself.

Ashitaka is ostensibly our hero, and yet we see him cut the heads off of numerous soldiers (accidentally, sort of – his demon-possessed arm gives him super strength which does most of the brutal damage but he’s still out to kill them.)

It is a movie filled with morally ambiguous characters, people who aren’t fully good or fully evil. They are complex, just like real people. And those gods? They have no problem with destruction either. The Great Forest Spirit indiscriminately kills.

The titular Princess (Claire Danes) is a human girl, raised by a wolf goddess and she hates humans. She wants to destroy them.

I love that. It is a complex, beautifully drawn story. The animation, while strange to my American eyes at first is beautiful as well.

Hayao Miyazaki who founded Studio Ghibli, and wrote/directed this film is one of the greatest animators of all time. I won’t say Princess Mononoke is his greatest achievement, but I won’t deny it either.

Animation in August: Suzume (2022)

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Japan has a thriving animation industry. At a guess, I’d say it is much larger and more successful than American animation. Yet in the States, Japan’s output is mostly a cult phenomenon. That does seem to be changing. The comic book section at my local Barnes & Noble has almost been overcome by Mangas, and streaming services like Crunchyroll, which specializes in Japanese animation have become very popular. My daughter is a big fan.

I mostly know Japanese animation from Studio Ghibli. Oh, I’ve watched the odd film or series with my daughter, and I have fond memories of watching Robotech: The Macross Saga as a kid, but I’ve not really dug deep into the Anime waters.

I’m trying to change that and Suzume was a good start. Like a lot of Japanese animation (I think, again I haven’t seen that much) Suzume mixes intimate human drama with the fantastic.

In a small Japanese town, Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara in Japanese and Nichole Sakura in English) a 17-year-old girl lives a quiet life with her aunt. Her mother passed away when she was quite young.

On her way to school, she crosses paths with Souta (voiced by Hokuto Matsumura in Japanese, and Josh Keaton in English) a handsome young man who asks her if she knows of any abandoned towns nearby. He’s looking for a door, he says. She points him in the direction of a small spa resort that was destroyed in bad weather.

He thanks her and she continues on her way to school. But when a friend notices her face is flush from the encounter, she thinks twice and runs to that abandoned resort, hoping to find him. Instead, she finds a strange door standing all by itself. She opens it and sees a field full of stars. But when she passes through the door nothing happens. That magical land is seemingly off-limits to her. On one of her passings, she notices a stone cat statue on the ground. When she picks it up it turns into a real cat and runs away.

With nothing more to see she goes back to school. Later that day she noticed a huge column of smoke emanating from where the resort was. Strangely, none of her classmates can see it.

Once again she runs to the resort to find the smoke billowing out of that door. This time Souta is there and is desperately trying to close the door. With her help he does and with a magical key, he locks it.

He tells her that he is a Closer, and his job is to find these magical doors scattered across Japan in abandoned places and keep them shut. That black smoke he calls a worm and if it escapes it will cause massive Earthquakes.

That cat is a Keystone and they must get it to return to one of the doors to keep the worm in place forever. But the cat is mischievous and is enjoying its newfound freedom. It sets to scurrying around Japan. Also, it turns Souta into a three-legged chair.

Suzume and Souta then spend the rest of the film chasing after the cat and closing all the doors before the worm can cause too much damage.

The basics of that plot do nothing to explain just how wonderful this film is. The animation is simply gorgeous. The backgrounds reminded me of the less fantastical Ghibli films in that it is detailed and layered with just enough artistic flourishes to make them fantastical. The characters are drawn realistically and well. There are some wonderful shots where the camera pulls back to show the scope of the worm and the cities it is about to destroy that are just awesome. And the magical world beyond the doors is exquisite.

There is a lightness to its execution and a playfulness. When Souta becomes a chair it is joyful and very funny. But there is a soulfulness too. I believed in their developments, and in their plight.

It is perhaps just slightly too long, and there are a few moments that drag just a little bit. But mostly this is a wonderful film.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)

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Talk about a case of a sequel being better than the original. I watched Vampire Hunter D a few weeks ago and thought it was awful. There were interesting story ideas, cool characters, and deep mythology hidden within a terribly written and animated film. This sequel, made some fifteen years later improves upon everything in every way.

The basics of the story are essentially the same. This one opens up the mythology a little bit and adds some characters, but it is still Vampire Hunter D trying to rescue a beautiful maiden from a vampire.

In this version, set in the far future, vampires have essentially ruled the world for centuries, but they are slowly dying out. Or rather they are slowly being killed by vampire hunters. Most of these are humans, mercenaries looking for big paydays and a bit of danger. But D is a dhampir – half human half vampire.

The girl, Charlotte (Wendy Lee) is taken from her home by Meier Link (John Rafter Lee) a vampire of nobility. Her family pays D (Andy Philpot) a hefty downpayment (with promises of much more if he succeeds) for rescuing her.

They’ve also paid The Marcus Brothers, a motley crew of hunters to do the same. They mostly consist of the same type of characters you get in any film with mercenaries – rough-and-tumble dudes who are good with specific weapons and get smart-assed with their dialogue. There is one lady Leila (Pamela Segal) and a bedridden psychic who can psychically leave his body and do severe damage to his enemies with his mind.

Leila gets the most screen time and she is the most interesting. The rest of her crew immediately take a disliking to D as they see him as competition. But Leila forms a friendship of sorts with him. He rescues her then she rescues him and they form a bond.

There are monsters, including a shapeshifter and a werewolf, they must battle but those scenes are short, and the fights are finished fairly quickly. It is as if the film understands that the monsters might be fun to watch for a minute, but it is the characters that are going to create fans.

The story is mostly good, though it borrows heavily from other stories and periodically drags. It is still lightyears above what they did in the first film.

The animation is gorgeous. The film wanders from a desolate desert to a great forest and we spend the third act in an enormous gothic castle. All of it is rendered beautifully. The characters are well-drawn and the action flows like the best live-action movies do.

It is astonishing how much better this film is than the original. Highly recommended.

Animation in August: Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (2021)

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Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is a film that mixes live-action footage with stop-motion animation. It is based on a series of short films created by Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate. It is delightful, sweet, sometimes poignant and sad. It runs, perhaps, a little too long, but is mostly a joy to watch.

The story involves a young man named Dean (Dean Fleischer Camp) who buys a house after a messy divorce with the intent of turning it into an Airbnb. Upon arrival, he discovers Marcel (Jenny Slate) a one-inch tall shell, who in fact does have his shoes on (and has a face and can walk and talk). He lives in the house with his grandmother (Isabella Rossellini). They are both a little lost and sometimes sad.

There used to be an entire family of shells in the house, but when the couple of used to live there broke up, the man took all the other shells with him, leaving Marcel and his grandmother behind.

Dean is a documentary filmmaker and begins interviewing Marcel about his life. He turns these interviews into short YouTube videos and quickly Marcel becomes an Internet star. Before long people start showing up at the house and 60 Minutes comes calling. Marcel uses this attention to try and find his missing family.

Mostly the film follows Marcel as he goes about his daily life. He is whimsical, clever, and in awe of the wonders of the world. There is a jar of honey that has spilled. Marcel walks across it, using the honey’s stickiness to allow him to walk on walls and the ceiling. He connects a rope to a large mixer and the other end to a tree so that when turning the mixer on it shakes the tree, knocking its nuts to the ground. His grandmother befriends insects who help her garden.

It is in these moments that the film excels. Marcel is such a whimsical character – his mix of nativity and awe makes him adorable and beloved. I was less enthused with the bits that follow his ever-increasing social media presence and celebrity. The interview with 60 Minutes felt out of place. But mostly the film is a delight. Heartwarming and dear.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Demon City Shinjuku (1988)

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One of the things I love about doing these monthly movie themes is that it not only allows me to watch movies I might not otherwise watch, but it gives me a greater understanding of the history of cinema. I learn things I might not otherwise come to know.

For example for Animation in August I’ve watched several Japanese animated movies and this has brought to my knowledge banks the term OVA or Original Video Animation. That’s basically a Japanese version of straight-to-video applied specifically to animation.

Like straight-to-video releases OVAs had more freedom than their cinematic or televised productions had in terms of length and mature content. An OVA could be as long as it needed to be and they were allowed more freedom in the amount of violence, adult language, and sex/nudity they could use.

Demon City Shinjuku is an OVA adapted from a novel of the same name. It follows a reluctant hero’s journey into the heart of Tokyo which has been overrun by demons.

It has more than a passing similarity to Star Wars, with some terrific animation, and some pretty cool demon designs. But it suffers from some terrible writing (or possibly a very bad translation).

In a prologue, we learn that an evil dude called Rebi Ra has allowed himself to become possessed so that he can wreak evil havoc upon the world. A good dude called Genichirou tries to stop him but is killed in the process. A giant earthquake happens during their battle wrecking the Shinjuku part of Tokyo. Demons quickly take over this area.

Ten years later Genichirou’s son, Kyoya Izayoi is tasked with going into the city and destroying Rebi Ra. He is accompanied by Sayaka Rama the daughter of the World President who has just been kidnapped by Rebi Ra. If they fail Rebi Ra will unleash all the demons and conquer the world.

Along the way, they obtain help from a short rollerblader who is just out for himself but ultimately finds his soul and a Dracula-esque mysterious goth dude. There is also Aguni Rai an ancient mystic who periodically offers advice.

They come across several demons before ultimately fighting Rebi Ra. There is a crab-like creature with a human head and a giant mouth full of teeth in its torso and a sexy redhead with tentacle arms.

All of this is pretty good. I enjoyed it. But the dialogue is rotten. Generally speaking, I watch foreign language films in their original language. I much prefer hearing the original actors’ voices even if I don’t actually understand what they are saying. With animation, I am a little more lenient since there is a realization that all actors are dubbing in their lines (it helps that most of the foreign language animated films I’ve seen are dubbed by really good English-speaking actors).

I started watching this film in the original Japanese with English subtitles, but something was wrong with the audio causing none of the film’s score or non-verbal noises to be heard. So I had to switch to the English language dub. It was…not good. And strange at times. The male characters were all very horny and they dropped F-bombs on a regular basis. I’m not necessarily opposed to either of those things but they often seemed out of place in this film.

For example, one night Kyoya Izayoi and Sayaka Rama find themselves in the same bedroom for the night. After Syaka goes to sleep Kyoya begins to look at her longingly. The camera slowly pans down her body so clearly some of this is in the original script, but in English, he goes on and on about how he wants to sleep with her.

And his dialogue is loaded with F-bombs in the oddest of places. He’ll throw one in the middle of an otherwise innocuous sentence. So much of it felt like some American scriptwriter trying to make the script more edgy.

It was bad enough that I turned on the subtitles just to compare. Gone was the hard-core cursing, but also quite a bit of the dialogue was tweaked to give it different meanings. It wasn’t the case of just some minor word changes, but entire sentences would be different. I think the gist was still there but it was clear the dialogue was translated with some different intentions than the subtitles. I also noticed there were times when the character’s mouth wasn’t moving, the subtitles weren’t indicating anything was being said, but the voice actors were talking. At first, I thought it was an internal monologue but now I think it was just the English language track adding in additional dialogue. There is a scene at the end where our two heroes are looking at each other longingly and then they kiss. His mouth doesn’t move, and there is no subtitle, but the English track has him thinking something really cheesy about how beautiful she is.

That’s far too many paragraphs of me discussing this film’s audio track. I don’t know what it all means. I just found it weird and distracting.

So, I recommend the film, but definitely try and find the original Japanese audio.

Animation in August: A Scanner Darkly (2006)

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I am a fan of Richard Linklater. I love Slackers and Dazed and Confused. School of Rock is a great deal of fun. I’ve never read anything by Phillip K. Dick but I’ve dug some cinematic adaptations of his work such as Blade Runner and Minority Report. A Richard Linklater adaptation of a Phillip K. Dick story should be right up my alley.

And it is. When A Scanner Darkly came out in 2006 I was excited by it. Especially since it starred Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey, Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Winona Ryder – all actors I quite enjoy.

But I didn’t watch it in the theater. I made a copy of it from the library or a friend. Or maybe I taped it off the TV. Anyway, I’ve had a copy of it in my house for over a decade. Still, I only just now watched it.

I don’t know why exactly. Like I say it should be right up my alley. I think I even started it once or twice, but never got very far. Part of the problem is the animation style. It uses a technique called interpolated rotoscope which is where they shoot it live action, using real actors on real sets and animators trace over the footage frame by frame. The results are this weird mix of realistic with a wobbly psychedelia.

I don’t like it. My mind can’t seem to process it correctly. Like it thinks it is real, but then the wobbly animation throw it off and I don’t know how to comprehend what is happening. Or something. I find it difficult to watch.

So I kept turning it off. But this time I powered through and found a quite interesting story and an entertaining movie.

Set in the near future where America has essentially lost the drug war. Substance D, a powerful hallucinagen has addicted some twenty percent of the population. The govenrment has developed a high tech survelleince system and a large network of undercover agents to combat this.

Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover agent who has also become addicted to Substance D. At times he doesn’t even realize he is a police officer. He lives in a rundown house with a couple of drug buddies – James (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Ernie (Woody Harrelson). His sort-of girl friend Donna (Winona Ryder) often stops by.

A large part of the plot is basically a hang out movie where we just sit around with these four people as they talk, get high, drive around, and futz about. The conversations are rambling and conspiratorial. And quite funny. These scenes are very reminiscent of several Linklater films, but especially Slackers, where the camera just wandered around Austin, Texas jumping from one oddball character to the next without much sense of a plot.

Sometimes Arctor goes to police headquarters where he dons a scramble suit which constantly changes every aspect of his appearance and voice. This protects his identity from everybody. His bosses get the idea that Arctor (who they do not know is actually their agent) is one of the drug dealers in the area and as such they ask “Fred” (the name they know him by) to enhance his survellaince on Arctor.

The plot does ramp up a bit by the end and it concludes in a fascinating way. There is some interesting commentary on the drug way, and our ever growing surveillance stage. But mostly its just an entertaing film where some great actors hang out and act paranoid.

I still wish it used a differnt animation style.

Animation in August: Song of the Sea (2014)

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Song of the Sea is the second part of an Irish Folklore Trilogy from director Tomm Moore (the first being The Secret of Kells, and the last Wolfwalkers). I’ve seen The Secret of Kells and like it I found the animation in Song of the Sea to be gorgeous, and the folklore fascinating, but the actual story somewhat lacking. There is just some part of these films that I cannot connect to. I don’t know why.

Set in the early 1980s Song of the Sea follows a young boy, Ben (David Rawle), and his younger sister Saoirse (Lucy O’Connell). They live in a lighthouse on a small island off the coast of Ireland. Their mother died while giving birth so Saoirse and their Dad (Brendan Gleeson) still mourns for her. Deeply. So much so that he struggles to be a parent for his two children.

One night, on her birthday, Saoirse runs into the sea and swims with some seals. Though the family doesn’t know it, she is a selkie (a mythological creature that can shapeshift between human and seal). Her Granny (Fionnula Flanagan) finds Saoirse in the sea and thinks she’s about to drown. She nags Dad into letting her take the children to her place on the mainland.

Naturally, the two kids decide they must return home and sneak away in the night. But Saoirse is fully turning into a selkie and as such she needs her coat to survive. Her coat that her father took from her and threw into the sea.

The two have a mighty adventure getting home, running into fairies, the Great Seanachaí (an ancient storyteller with hair as long as the world), and a mean old owl witch.

The story is fine. It is a classic adventure. It is told well, but again there is something about it I don’t connect to. I don’t know if it is these kids, or maybe I have trouble with the mythology here. It definitely isn’t explained thoroughly, you are just sort of left to understand who these creatures are. But I’ve enjoyed other fantasy stories with deep myths. So I don’t know.

The animation is spectacular. It uses a mix of hand-drawn and computer-generated art. The backgrounds are super detailed but also look like sets on a stage. Nothing is realistic looking but drawn in a unique and imaginative way. Each frame is astonishingly beautiful.

I absolutely recommend it. I know many will connect to the story in a way that I don’t. Even though I didn’t it is still a lovely bit of animation.

Animation in August: Batman: Year One (2011)

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Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One comic from 1987 is one of the greatest comic book stories of all time. It traces Bruce Wayne’s transformation into the vigilante known as Batman while simultaneously tracing Jim Gordon’s first year policing in Gotham.

It partially inspired Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) and has influenced countless comics since it was published.

For well over a decade DC has been creating straight-to-video animated movies that are adapted from some of their best and well-known comics (or periodically are original creations). I’ve seen a few and I mostly like them. They often involve A-list actors and creators and exist somewhere between what you’d normally think of as a straight-to-video release and true made-for-the-theater cinematic experience.

It has been far too long since I read the comic, so I can’t say how closely this adaptation follows the story, but from what I’ve read online it does indeed follow it closely. Perhaps too closely. A good adaption needs to let go of the source material in some ways so that it can allow cinema’s strengths to shine through.

Bruce Wayne (Ben McKenzie) returns to Gotham City after a 12-year absence. He’s still mourning the loss of his parents and his one goal is to enact the type of justice the police force seems incapable of granting.

Police Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Bryan Cranston) has just transferred to Gotham. He left his last post because he dared to take down a corrupt cop and the rest of the police force shunned him for it. Gotham Police isn’t just a place with a few bad apples. It has a basket full of them. Hell, the entire tree is corrupt from top to bottom. Police Commissioner Loeb (Jon Polito) is openly corrupt.

The film follows Bruce Wayne as he becomes Batman and fights crime in Gotham, while Gordon battles corruption on the police force.

It is pretty good. Again my memory of the book is too fuzzy to really compare, but I do know I loved the book and I didn’t love this. It is a fine story told well. Cranston especially is good as Gordon. The animation is fine. The action sequences are well-developed. But it never wowed me. I’d never recommend this over the comic.

Animation in August: Vampire Hunter D (1985)

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This is one of those films I thought I had seen. I remember hearing about in college or thereabouts. It generated some buzz because it was a very adult animated film with lots of sex and violence. That seemed very unusual to me at the time. I have a vague memory of renting it and watching it, but no actual memories of what the film was about. Watching it yesterday brought back no memories whatsoever.

Which is good as had I remembered any part of it I would not have watched it again. Vampire Hunter D is a bad film. It is poorly animated, the writing is awful. It takes what could be a cool concept and absolutely does nothing with it.

A young woman, Doris Lang, is attacked by Count Mangus Lee, a 10,000-year-old vampire while taking a walk . He lets her go but within a few days, she will turn into a vampire and be forced to marry the Count.

She hires our titular vampire hunter to help kill Count Lee and thus be freed from his spell. D is a human/vampire hybrid (or a Dhampir if you will), his mother having been seduced by a powerful vampire many years ago. He’s also got a symbiote living in his hand. It has a mouth and is quite chatty. It reminded me of the silly animal sidekicks in Disney movies.

He’s super powerful. He agrees to help Doris. He goes on a quest to defeat the Count, encountering a number of grotesque magical creatures along the way. This includes the three sisters – siren-like creatures who turn into snakes and suck the life force out of anyone. There’s also the Count’s son and daughter who are conniving, scheming, and totally at odds with one another. He wants to usurp the Count, she thinks his desire to marry a commoner is ill-advised.

I love a good quest story and there are some interesting ideas here. It is based upon a series of books by Hideyuki Kikuchi and it has that feeling of containing a deep mythology, but the movie botches pretty much all of it.

The biggest failure of the movie lies in the animation. It looks cheap. It looks like those cartoons I used to watch on television after school. Think GI Joe or He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Some of the character concepts are interesting – especially that of D who is fitted with a good hat and long cape – but the animation looks sloppy. During action scenes the characters strike a pose while the background turns into a generic set of constantly moving lines. It is meant to denote movement and action, but really it just looks like an easy way for the animators to save a little time and money. Any sense of location and actual movement is lost.

In 2000 they released a sort-of sequel, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. From the trailers, the animation looks much improved. I dig vampires and vampire hunters/slayers so I might give it a shot. It surely will be an improvement over this garbage.

Animation in August

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As a kid, like all kids, I suppose I loved animated movies, or cartoons as we called them back then. I grew up in the 1980s so my memories are filled with the films of Rankin Bass and Disney, though I was slightly too old to have enjoyed the Disney renaissance of the 1990s as they came into theaters. Later I fell in love with Pixar and then Studio Ghibli. I am a fan of animation, though not a superfan. So I thought it would be fun this month to watch a bunch of animated films.

One of the great things about animation is that it is a type of filmmaking, not a genre. It comes in all shapes, sizes, and genres. There are animated films for kids and adults, there are funny films and sad films, scary films and exciting films. They can be hand drawn or computer-generated, and they come in all kinds of styles.

While I will no doubt watch some Disney films and Ghibli movies, my goal is to dig a little deeper into the well and find some lesser-known movies. I want to watch the films animated geeks go on and on about but that the general crowds don’t know about.

With that in mind if you have any recommendations I’d love to hear them.