In my readings around the anime blogosphere I came across a review for this movie and reading how this was Gainax’s first work – I figured it was worth a watch, if only to see how far Gainax has come in it’s 20+ year history.

Final Series Score: 2/12 F
Rewatchablity: 0/5 – None
Ending: 1/5 – Profoundly Deficient
Animation: 2.5/5 – Average; The quality of animation is pretty good, even 20+ years later, but the styles used for the characters is very off-putting
Pros: High class animation quality which impresses even more when one realizes there’s no CG used
Cons: Poor characters and very weak characterization make it difficult to care about what happens, the fictional world this takes place in is not fleshed out well so it never feels like a real place which removes the importance to the character’s actions, weak storytelling leaves the show feeling disarrayed and unfocused

Story

The Wings of Honneamise follows the life of a guy who joins the Space Force when he’s not good enough to get into the military, looks for love in all the wrong places, and musters enough courage to volunteer to be his country’s first astronaut shot into space.

Thoughts and impressions

This movie should have been right up my alley – I deeply love a somewhat similar movie: Apollo 13 and SF in general and I like Gainax – but I was surprised to find out that I really did not like this movie.

After watching the whole thing, there was one scene that really bothered me and is responsible for this show getting a 2/12 F but the scene occurs well into the second half of the movie and by that point my opinion of the movie had pretty much crystallized. Without that scene, I probably would have given Wings of Honneamise a higher grade of 4/12 C but I would still have mentioned all the same problems of this movie.

Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to be spoiled about the scene in question. … The astronaut guy has been visiting the home of a woman who spends her days on the street trying to convert people to her religion. She’s happy that someone is interested in her religion but in reality, he’s interested in her and continues to try to move their relationship into a romantic direction which she resists. On one of these visits it had been raining and so the religious woman is soaked and has to take off the outer layer of her clothes which leaves her in a knee-length skirt and blouse. This allows the guy to look at her ankles and legs from the knee down which drives him into a frenzy and he tries to have his way with her and is only stopped when she knocks him out with some blunt force trauma to his brain. When he wakes up the next day, she apologizes for hurting him and he leaves. My jaw just dropped after this scene; I’d really like to know just what the hell Gainax was thinking by putting this scene in. I can’t figure out any other motive then they wanted to show some explicit fan service to sell tapes.

Anyways, like I said, that scene pushed it down to but the whole thing had problems. A couple of characters that were likeable and had some actual character development might have gone a long way to making this show decent. A well-plotted story would have also helped immensely. And for the most part the show lacks the trademark trappings of a Gainax production; being the first thing they did I guess that makes sense but if it at least had some of the style of their future productions like Gurren Lagann or FLCL then there’d be something to pay attention to. The one small Gainax thing that this show does feature is interesting vehicle/machine design but that’s hardly any reason to watch The Wings of Honneamise.

That’s about all I feel like writing about The Wings of Honneamise, I wished it would have been a better movie but hindsight being what it is – I’m glad the movie was made because without it Gainax might not have ever existed and we’d have lost all their other good stuff.

Essential Information

• genre: Sci-fi, Action
• animation studio: Gainax
• director: Hiroyuki Yamaga

As promised the second Madhouse review for today. Summer Wars in the most recent directorial offering of Mamoru Hosoda who is known for his The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I loved to death so I was really excited to see this.

Final Series Score: 12/12 Perfect
Rewatchablity: 5/5 – Very High; Everything about this movie makes one want to watch it over and over and over again
Ending: 4.5/5 – High; Very satisfying from the character standpoint and the plot standpoint and leaves the viewer feeling that happy buzz that good endings give
Animation: 4.5/5 – Sublime; Madhouse just doesn’t get enough credit for their animation and Summer Wars is another brilliant example of how beautiful and fluid Madhouse can animate
Pros: Excellent balance and integration between the slice-of-life family reunion story and the cutting-edge SF save-the-world story; the large cast of characters were nicely differentiated, very likeable, and felt like real people; gorgeous animation; director displays the acumen in storytelling akin to the greats like Miyuzaki and Satashi Kon
Cons: A couple very small things that are so small they couldn’t even be considered nit-picks

Story

Kenji is your typical brilliant, but unlucky, high school student. He readily admits being only good at math which is the truth – he’s brilliant and would have earned as a spot representing Japan in a Math Olympiad competition except for a screw-up during the prelims. His luck changes when his sempai, Natsuki, known as the most beautiful girl in school offers him a part-time job that requires him to go with her to her family reunion.

Thoughts and impressions

Between watching Summer Wars 3 times over the course of 5 days and writing this review, I’ve read several reviews written by other people because I wanted to see if others thought the same way as I and to figure out what they say to fill up space other than repeating – “It’s a perfect movie that cements Mamoru Hosoda as the next great anime film-maker” – over and over again. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that a couple thoughts seem to getting a lot of air-play and so I thought I’d first give my thoughts about these.

The first idea that I keep seeing is that Summer Wars is Studio Ghibli-esque. I do think there’s some truth to that but also I think that comparison sells this movie short by making it sound like it’s some sort of knock-off. It’s entirely able to stand on it’s own merits. The way that it does reminds me of a Miyazaki movie is how Summer Wars seeks to provide a bit of balance. For example, in Princess Mononoke the leader of iron town could have been portrayed as a fully evil villain who wanted to destroy nature to further her plans, instead we also see her taking in lepers and buying the freedom of women from brothels and giving all these people a nice place to live and work. This balancing is a consistent feature of Miyazaki movies.

In the case of Summer Wars, at one point it started to feel like the movie would have an anti-technology message but by the end of the movie we saw how the horrors that technology could bring is balanced with it’s ability to weave people together from across the globe in a unifying way that’s impossible without technology. Another example is shown in the bad guy character that left for America and has returned; it would have been easy to make him evil but that’s not what was done, he was shown to be human. So that’s how I think the show was Ghibli-esque but this aspect is really small compared to the all the other things Summer Wars gets right and that’s why I think making it sound like Mamoru Hosoda can make a Ghibli-esque movie sells it short.

The other idea that I keep seeing is how Summer Wars is a summer blockbuster type movie. Once again I think there’s some truth to that comparison but it also sells the movie short. At least in America, a summer blockbuster movie has the connotation of being a dumb but entertaining movie, something that goes done easy without much thinking on the part of the audience. People love these movies, I’m no exception, but these movies are never taken seriously and to cover up how much we love these movies we call them guilty pleasures. One can’t say, for example, “Armageddon is one of greatest movies ever made” and be taken seriously. Transferring that over to Summer Wars, if it’s a summer blockbuster anime movie, it could never be taken as seriously as say a Miyazaki movie or a Satashi Kon movie. Therefore, I think it’s more apt to call it a summer movie. Meaning, Summer Wars, displays some of the exuberance that is reminiscent of summer but it’s not just a dumb, brainless movie.

I have this urge to learn and play Hanafuda now.

Moving on, one of the things that I really liked about this movie was it’s attention to detail. This isn’t a make-it or break-it item for movies or anime series but definitely helps make a show more enjoyable and it makes apparent how much effort went into making a show. One of my favorite little things was when a character stayed up from the middle-of-the-night to early morning and we see the potted morning-glory flower buds going from being unopened to opened. It’s a very small thing but it’s such a simple way to communicate to the viewer that many hours have passed. This helps push it’s rewatchiblity up because even watching it three times, I’m sure there are things that I’ve missed.

And now, I’ve pretty much run out of things I want to mention about the show that will not spoil the plot. I could repeat again how Summer Wars is a fun movie, told expertly by Mamoru Hosoda that balances a touching slice-of-life family story with an exciting SF cutting-edge story about the potential dangers of over reliance on technology without sufficient safeguards a few times but I think that’s overkill. Or I could say that this is the type of anime movie that can bring new fans into the anime fold or at least is the type of movie that one can show non-anime fans to prove that anime isn’t just for kids and/or overly violent cartoons. Instead, I’ll close by saying that this is a movie not to be missed by anyone, regardless of age or normal interest in anime.

Essential Information

• genre: Slice-of-life, Sci-fi, Action
• animation studio: Madhouse
• director: Mamoru Hosoda
• Seiyuus of note: Ryounosuke Kamiki, Nanami Sakuraba

I finally had the opportunity to catch Pixar’s latest work – Up. As a fan of Pixar from their very first movie, Toy Story, I had every intention of catching this in the movie theaters but various reasons prevented me at first. When I was ready to go, it had been playing for well over a month and I figured at this point, I should just wait till it hit the cheap movies. So I started waiting and as summer wore on, I continued to wait; sure that if I gave in, it would move to the cheap movies the next week and I’d be out the extra six dollars I would pay to see it in the first run theater. My patience was rewarded and this past weekend Up showed up at the local cheap movies.

Final Series Score: 12/12 – Perfect
Rewatchablity: 5/5 – Very High; After watching Up, I had to restrain myself from buying tickets to the next showing
Ending: 4.5/5 – Sublime; Everything you want in an ending, it had
Animation: 5/5 – Epic; Pixar continues to show why they’re the best American animators
Pros: Epic character development, more epic character development, even more epic character development, engaging storyline, sweet likeable characters, a real bad guy, was able to balance the serious with the funny and not have either feel wrong, a fulfilling ending
Cons: none

Story

As a young kid, Carl Fredricksen fell in love with the idea of being an explorer and going to the far corners of the Earth to discover the unknown that still existed. This love never diminished and lead him to finding the love of his life, Elie, who shared the same passion. They swore that one day they’d go to Angel Falls in South America but life got in way (as it always does) and before Carl realizes it, he’s a widowed and lonely old man. Before his sorrow and old age totally crush him, he decides to go on the trip that Elie and he could never get to and so starts a wonderful and exciting adventure full of surprises.

Thoughts and impressions

I remember reading an interview that John Lasseter of Pixar gave about the success of their movies back many years ago. At the time, CG animated movies where new and Pixar were pretty much the only people that made them in America. In the interview he disagreed with the idea that it was the CG that made Pixar’s movie great – it was their attention to developing memorable characters and the telling of a compelling story with these characters that made them successful.

Every Pixar movie displays this philosophy to a varying degree and I can’t help but notice that the better I like the movie, the better it showcases this philosophy. A movie like Cars ranks at the bottom because of my ambivalence towards the main character and his problems. On the other end of the scale, my favorites, Toy Story (1,2) and The Incredibles, have the memorable characters and compelling story. In the case of Up, I almost immediately got vibes that it could become one of my favorite Pixar movies because the subject matter is so different from the standard that it just had to have something interesting to tell. So, against this stiff competition and big expectations I have of what it means to be a Pixar film, I sat down in the movie theater hoping for a winner.

By the 20 minute mark of Up, I’d witnessed what has to be one of the greatest feats of character development in cinema history. It should not be possible to condense a person’s life into so short a time and leave the viewer with such a deep understanding of that person that when Carl suffered a trying hardship, the viewer cried tears as if it was us that experienced this hardship. If pressed to compare this to some other show, I’d say take all the feelings that one would have over episodes 11-21 of Clannad ~After Story~ and condense them down into 20 minutes. The result wouldn’t be a perfect match but it would give you an idea of the experience.

From there the movie moves onto Carl going on his adventure and I don’t want to spoil what happens but I want to mention that I disagree with some of the critics that would like to dismiss this part of the movie as being poor. They say it’s childish, implausible, shallow, etc. and I say they miss the point. The child-like desire to explore no matter the consequences, to thrill in the sheer wonder of seeing something new and to revel in knowing your alive and being able to appreciate the little things is exactly what Carl needs at this point. The concerns of being an adult have nearly crushed him and it’s only when being around a kid and letting it rub off on him can he return to being human and can find some happiness again.

One of the things that I generally hold against 3D CG animation is that almost no one seems to be able to make it look stylized like hand drawn 2D animation. Pixar, at times, seems like the only one willing to but some style into their animation and change up this style to match the material. Up continues this by stylizing it’s people but at the same time working this stylization into the show so that the viewer has to actually look for it. For example, Carl is drawn as if he’s made of stone, a very square stone with all his corners being perfect 90 degree angles. You’d expect him to say, “It’s clobbering time.” Or they wanted to convey the idea of the lawyers being soulless machines in one scene so they were given a body shape that looked like a 1950’s movie robot that was made up to look streamlined and they didn’t draw the mouths. Their where touches like this all throughout the movie and I’m sure I missed some because Pixar did a good job of getting everything to feel like a cohesive whole.

I’m trying to think of something else to talk about without spoiling things and I think I’m about tapped. If I was in the spoiling mood, I’d talk about how I really enjoyed the plot twist that forced Carl to pick between two options as to what was most important to him or why it’s a good idea not to meet certain people. Instead, I’ll close by saying that if for some reason you haven’t watched Up yet, your missing a truly great movie – easily, one of the best movies of 2009.