This blog is not actually dead, it has just been hibernating.

This year has been pretty mental for me, on a personal level. Work life has been hectic, and a series of real life tragedies have left me and my better half exhausted. Add to that the fact that I’ve been trying to get some other projects off the ground (more of that to come soon) and it has sadly meant that this site has been neglected. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been completely static.

I’m sure most of you are aware of the tragic news earlier this year of the passing of anime director Satoshi Kon. I was hugely honored to be asked to contribute to Anime News Network’s week-long retrospective of his works, for which I wrote this piece on his darkly comedic classic Tokyo Godfathers. It was a tough but fun article to write, and something I’m very proud of, and the fact it was published on the day my partner lost her father to the same cancer that took Kon’s life made it a strangely poignant event for me.

Also over the past months ANN have published my reviews of Welcome to the Space Show and Mamoru Oshii’s Musashi: Dream of the Last Samurai, both flawed but still interesting movies that are worth checking out.

Words not enough for you? Then thanks to the magical nature of the internets you can hear my voice too. Back in August Scott Spaziani was kind enough to invite me back onto his podcast “Otaku in Review” along with my good friend Ed Sizemore of Manga Worth Reading. The topic was genre, and the result of putting me and Ed together is that we will ramble on about our love of science fiction until someone stops us. like the two old geezers we truly are. Actually, It was a pretty fascinating discussion, covering more than just manga and anime, and well worth a listen. For something a bit briefer and more lighthearted check out my “20 Questions” interview with Sean Russell over at Anime 3000. Warning: my contain the most offensive curse word known to science.

And finally, something a little different. After a break of about 12 years I’ve got back into one of my old obsessions: DJing. Check out some of my mixes over on Soundcloud under my Shinohara Heavy Industries moniker.

So that’s what has been happening over the last few months of apparent inactivity – but keep an eye on this site, as hopefully it should be springing back into life on a more regular basis – I’ve got some interesting anime and manga reviews lined up for the next few weeks, so don’t go far.

No, I haven’t completely forgotten about this site – I’ve just been busy elsewhere. For a start, Anime News Network have just published my review of new Madhouse movie Redline. I suggest you get over there and check it out – I wasn’t exaggerating when I said it is one of the most exhilarating and exciting anime works I’ve seen in a very long time. As of writing Redline hasn’t had a public screening in Japan as far as I know, so I was very lucky to catch it in London at the beginning of the month. However a new teaser trailer dropped today, promising it would be out in ‘Fall 2010′. But out where? Interestingly an identical trailer was put out, with the same release date but in French. Is this a hint at a simultaneous worldwide release?

For even more on Redline, check out this weeks ANNcast, where you can also hear me chatting away about the state and history of anime fandom here and the UK, as well as my experiences using Twitter. I must say a huge thanks to Zac and Justin for having me on – it was a blast – as well as to everyone that sent in questions.

Also a blast was the Anime 3000 podcast recorded earlier in the month that focused on one of my biggest obsessions: Mamoru Oshii. Not only great fun but highly informative for me, as I was alongside two great Oshii experts and good friends of mine; Brian Ruh (author of the fantastic book Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii) and Fernando Ramos (Japan based operative that wrote the review of Oshii’s Assault Girls for this site last year). It’s another great and essential listen, essential whether you’re a die-hard fan or just discovering the great man’s works for the first time.

Links:

• ANN Redline Review
• ANNcast – Manic Maughan-day
• Anime 3000 Panel – S03E04 – The Wonderful World of Mamoru Oshii

Bradley Meek has more interests than he has time. He likes reading about science and politics, playing PC games and discovering new music, reading novels and comic books, playing complex board games and obsessively checking his Twitter feed. But what he always has more time for is his primary love, animation, and for the last three years he has been a staff reviewer on THEM Anime, and has also recently joined the staff of Anime 3000. Old or new, cute or manly, he has no fear and is willing to tackle any anime. Though, as he details below, this one was a “whoozy.”

There is one completely safe kind of anime: the movie adaptation of popular franchises. Part promotion, and part glorious fan service, these movies are made under a long list of restrictions to keep them from taking the steam out from long running series. The main characters can’t see any kind of development, none of the ongoing plot threads can be tied up, and every character who placed high in the new popularity poll has to show up. You’ve seen the kind before, usually coming from big Shounen Jump series like Bleach, InuYasha or Prince of Tennis. These movies are essentially glorified filler episodes, where nothing is at stake or feels like it really matters in the grand scheme of things. At best, these movies can only aspire to an entertaining time waster that can’t quite replicate why we love the properties they’re based on. Sadly, the norm is closer to the worst case scenario: a flashy waste of time and celluloid.

That was the kind of movie Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer was supposed to be. But Momaru Oshii thought otherwise.

To be fair, Urusei Yatsura was hardly your average popular franchise. In fact, the series is a landmark of anime that rivals even the biggest names. It was the first series to successfully make the jump from a “kid’s cartoon” to a favorite of old and young viewers alike. It made a superstar out of the manga-ka, Rumiko Takahasi, who wrote the comic the series was based on. The main character, the cute, ditzy alien Lum, became an animated idol, with an unprecedented glut of merchandising and toys that was revolutionary at the time. It was the training ground for many directors and animators, including Katsuhiko Nishijima (Project A-Ko franchise), Kazuo Yamazaki (Maison Ikkoku, A Wind Named Amnesia, and the underappreciated Yume Tsukai), Kazuhiro Furuhashi (Rurouni Kenshin), and Junji Nishimura (Ranma 1/2). And probably most importantly, it was pretty damn funny.

The series already had a lot to work with, putting colorful characters from Takahashi’s fertile imagination in increasingly strange situations. And once they ran out of manga to adapt, the series got even better- yes, Urusei Yatsura is the exception to the rule, where the filler was better than most of the canonical material. Under the guidance of Oshii, the series riffed on Japanese culture, politics, and social issues before truly going into the stratosphere, with some episodes that even shed their comedic shell for more experimental fare.

For the uninitiated, the story of Urusei Yatsura goes something like this: Ataru is the biggest high school lecher alive. He indiscriminately chases one skirt after another, much to the shame of his frazzled mother and spaced out father. And he isn’t suave or subtle about it; his pick up lines stop just short of “let’s do it on the street like animals.” And unfortunately, when aliens invade, the fate of the Earth rests on his shoulders.

Oni (a traditional Japanese monster similar to trolls) from space with vastly superior weapons and technology have landed in Tokyo, intent making this planet another addition to their long line of conquests. But these aliens have a strange tradition- before they can start burning national landmarks and enslaving the human race, they have to first play a game of tag against their would-be victims. The Earthlings pick one person to represent them, and that person has seven days to catch the oni‘s representative. If the Earthlings win, the oni go home and life continues as normal. If the oni win, the raping and pillaging will commence immediately. And because of a national lottery, Ataru is humanity’s only hope for salvation. Initially resistant, he comes around when he sees who is opponent is: the luscious oni princess Lum. And dude, for the chance to just touch a hot chick like that, what wouldn’t he do?

Through an ingenious last minute idea worthy of anime’s biggest perv, Ataru wins the game. But, of course, his troubles have only begun. When he let loose a howl to celebrate his victory, the princess Lum mistook that for a marriage proposal… which she happily accepted. And what do you know, at the age of sixteen Ataru suddenly has a wife who has moved in with him, a surrogate kid in the form of Lum’s little cousin, two frazzled parents, weird in-laws, and a whole lot of jealous classmates. But does that stop him from groping other women? In Ataru’s reasoning, “I don’t want just Lum. I want every woman in the world!”

That’s the gist of the first episode, but from there, anything goes. The series doesn’t have a plot so much as a giant canvas for far out comedy with little consequence from episode to episode. One day it can rain oil, then the next day sexy aliens fall from the sky. The town will be destroyed and magically rebuilt in time for the next episode several times over in the first season alone. Weathering the constant abuse is a core cast of rivals for Lum’s affection (though any chance that those relationships will ever go anywhere is all in Ataru’s mind) and several classmates who regularly get caught up in the wackiness. There’s Mendou, the heir to a conglomerate’s fortunes that was probably the origination of the “rich brat” stereotype we see in anime. There’s Lum’s Stormtroopers, a trio of “Lum otaku” who adore her who like a certain Police song. They don’t need Lum merchandise, because they create their own. Poor Shinobu is a girl who has been the object of Ataru’s affections since they were children, which helped her develop a lot of muscle to fight him or anyone else off. Ryuunosuke is a girl who has been forced by her crazy father to dress and act like a man for all her life, though she still dreams of wearing a sailor fuku to school. When these kids are in school, it’s up to poor Onsen-Mark to teach them, and he seems to age with every episode from the stress. Sakura is the school nurse who is also a talented priestess, and looks killer in her red-white miko habit. Her midget monk uncle Cherry, on the other hand, looks like a walking turd. The series ran for a 195 episodes, so this is hardly a complete list, but it should be enough to get you through the movie. But if you want a more detailed look, AnimEigo has posted their liner notes for the DVD release online.

Oshii directed the first half of the series, though you’d have to check the credits to figure that out. All the traits that made him one of animations biggest auteurs hadn’t shown up- no striking visuals, no hound dogs, no endlessly rambling characters talking well above their pay grade, and it’s not even very pretentious. It’s just pure, well executed fun. Oshii made a couple of major changes from the manga, though. Lum’s Stormtroopers were originally a throwaway gag, but presumably Oshii saw some potential in them that Takahashi didn’t, and made them regular members of the cast. Ataru’s best friend and partner in crime from the manga never shows up at all. Oshii also tweaked Lum’s character a bit to make her less bitchy, and more of an affectionate ditz. These are comparatively small changes, though; nothing compared to the liberties he would take when making the second movie.

Oshii wasn’t happy with the first Urusei Yatsura movie, which, while a great movie in its own way, was exactly the kind of safe, simple exercise in fanservice I described above. He wanted to do something different, something daring. Inspired by a chapter of the manga where a rogue god of dreams plays a prank on the characters, he wrote the script to what would become Beautiful Dreamer. Takahashi didn’t like it, and Oshii barely got the approval he needed to start the project. And when the movie came out it tanked hard. Fans were incensed- Oshii had essentially kidnapped their beloved characters for his own story, a story that didn’t represent Urusei Yatsura as they knew it at all. It looked like an exercise in egotism. Critics slammed it. The movie lost money, and Oshii lost his job.

It’s a lovely story: the tortured, visionary artist is exiled from the cold world of commerce where they don’t understand his great art. They don’t understand, man! Those ingrates, those ijits, those fools! They don’t understand art, man, they don’t understand his greatness! I like to imagine that Oshii left the building of Toei Studios with his fist in air, cursing the capitalist system and the greedy CEOs and whatever else came to his mind. They don’t understand!

It’s the kind of story we tell ourselves to feed a misplaced sense of superiority- something to tell ourselves as artists or as an audience to a small art that we just get something the rest of the world doesn’t, or can’t. There is some truth to that- what a world it would be if visionaries like Oshii could take risks with a lot of money and not worry about the consequences. But there’s truth on the other side of the coin, too. Urusei Yatsura had a huge built in fan base, and these fans went into the movie expecting something very different. And when they didn’t get it- well, you know the feeling. And no matter how great your art is, it’s pointless without an audience. This is a movie that has benefited from growing old and moving out of the context it was released in; years later, we can fully appreciate watching Oshii’s budding growth as an artist onscreen. This was the movie where he seemed to fully realize what it was he wanted to do as a director.

I’ve only seen a small number of Oshii films, and to be honest, most of them were a turn off. Ghost in the Shell is simply overrated- the pretentious, stuffy dialogue and ponderous pace drags down the movie despite the incredible visuals and mind opening themes. Innocence was even worse- I tried to watch the movie twice, and fell asleep at both viewings, even when I thought I wasn’t tired. Dreamwork’s botched release certainly didn’t help things. I thought I was done with Oshii- until I fell in love with the Urusei Yatsura franchise and was surprised by Beautiful Dreamer. Here was an Oshii movie that engaged me- accessible yet profound, thoughtful but suspenseful, funny and awe inspiring, daring but not intimidating.

The school is preparing for the big spring festival, and the building is stuffed with students in costume who clog up the stairs, strange machines are being built outside, and there’s even a Nazi-themed tea room. The latter, of course, belongs to our heroes’ class. “Think we should have gone with Ataru’s suggestion of a naked ladies cafe?” asks one of the Lum Stormtroopers, now a Nazi-Lum-Stormtrooper hammering Nazi paraphernalia over the door. Perm, also a Nazi-Lum-Stormtrooper, is pretty sure that anything Ataru suggests is sure to end in disaster. So instead, let’s decorate a tea room celebrating those cool looking Nazis, and Mendou can even bring a WWII tank that he can put in our small classroom. It’ll be a hit!

Naturally, the day before the festival starts, the whole thing blows up in their faces, in a series of events that involve Ataru sleeping in places he shouldn’t be, groping women in his sleep he shouldn’t grope, and pissing off a certain alien you never want to piss off. The tank falls through the floor and several others below it. Over stressed teacher Onsen-Mark now has a disaster on his hands, and he really can’t do much about, since as his students constantly remind him- “the school festival is about student self governance!” The festival starts tomorrow. Maybe they can put it back together by then.

The next day, the tank is back in place, the Nazi paraphernalia is up, and the gang is almost ready for the festival. But Onsen-Mark has been sent home- the recent events have simply been too much for him. Realizing that she made a serious mix-up in the medication she gave him- a giant jar of laxatives instead of a giant jar of sedatives; really, it was a mistake anyone could have made- school nurse Sakura races to Onsen-Mark’s house. In the first of many surreal scenes that also serve as biting satire, she finds him in an apartments so covered in mold the floor is as slick as ice. The ceiling, the windows, the closet- everything is covered in a sick-green coating. Only the TV escaped untouched. Onsen-Mark is sitting in the filth, watching a soap opera with a glazed look in his eyes. The only way to save him, Sakura realizes, is to physically throw him out of the window and several streets down the block, mold and all.

When Sakura finally sits Onsen-Mark down to talk to him, it seems that the teacher’s mind has finally snapped. He starts rambling about reality and dreams and turtles and old Japanese legends and why are people always saying the festival will be the next day it will always be the next he can’t even remember what day it is. “I feel like I’ve been repeating the same events over and over again,” he says. An hour later, in a certain classroom, a tank has fallen through the flimsy wooden floor because a certain student was sleeping in places he shouldn’t be, groping women in his sleep he shouldn’t grope, and pissing off a certain alien you never want to piss off.

Shortly after his dazed discussion with Sakura, Onsen-Mark disappears.

Sakura realizes that something is wrong, and tries to find her uncle Cherry, who should know what to do. But he’s gone as well, his hobo tent gone to waste, and his cooking pot broken and rusting from disuse. Sakura tries to send the students home. But whether they were going by bus or taxi or limo or train, they all find the city eerily empty, and none of them could find their homes. Well, except for one- everyone ends up crashing at Ataru’s place.

Later, over breakfast, Sakura tries to explain what is happening to the city. There is an old Japanese legend of a man named Urashima Taro who once helped a turtle god, and to thank Taro for his assistance, the turtle god carried Taro on his back to the pleasure palaces of the dragons. The pleasure palace was filled with everything a man could want, and Taro reveled in his reward. But when he returns home, he finds centuries have passed and his village is gone.

Now say a man has a dream about being a butterfly, then wakes up to go to work. Who’s to say it wasn’t the butterfly’s dream of a working man? And have you ever noticed how time flies by when you’re having fun, or slows to a crawl when you’re miserable? Keep following me here- what if, instead of one man, the entire city was riding on the back of the turtle god? What if the events of the last few days have been repeating over and over again, and we never noticed because we were too tired or too busy? What if all of our reality is simply someone’s dream? Are you following me, Ataru? Ataru? ATARU?!

Naturally, only the diligent Mendou understands what Sakura is saying. The rest are happily oblivious.

That’s only the first thirty minutes of the movie. There’s many more memorable scenes, including the founding of a great socialist utopia, roller skating in the strangest post-apocalypse you’ve possibly ever seen where the atom bomb was the steady march of time, and the gang exploring a schoolhouse haunted not by ghosts, but by weird twists in reality and perception.

Watching Beautiful Dreamer is like looking at a photo album of a good friend’s childhood. You recognize maybe their hair and eyes, and that rogue grin, but the album can only hint at the features of your friend’s adult life. The movie is prototypical Oshii; you can see him developing the themes and ideas that would later make him famous. The movie asks ponderous questions and is filled with striking visuals. It does strange things with our sense of time, space and reality. There is still no hound dog, though. But interestingly enough, what makes the movie successful may not be what we would recognize as an Oshii film today.

Oshii may have tried to make something deeper than the light comedy that made Urusei Yatsura and the movie Only You such hits, but in Beautiful Dreamer, comedy is one of its best assets. Oshii and his staff were dealing with characters they knew very well, and because of that, they had the comedic timing and reactions down to a “T.” It’s a perfect way to offset the gravity of the plot, and it makes the entire movie much more entertaining. Obviously, latter Oshii movies would be missing any kind of comedy entirely. The movie is also very sentimental, though how that comes about is something of a spoiler. That makes the movie more heartfelt and humane; contrast that with the cynical philosophical ramblings in Innocence. These traits might have simply been carry-overs from a clever low brow series, and they may take they movie “down” a notch from high art, but it makes the whole thing work very well. It may have seemed to fans that Oshii had taken characters they knew and loved and inserted them into a strange artsy film where they acted in strange ways, but without the traits of the original series, the movie would have been less successful as a memorable piece of art.

Before the glorious days of the Internet, before certain fans would selflessly sweat over a three thousand word synopsis of a sprawling franchise simply so that a near stranger can have content for his blog, some people would see Beautiful Dreamer cold.  The Sci-Fi Channel ran the movie back in 1998, when only those who dared to endure small dark rooms with sweaty old men knew who any of these characters were. Many of them still fell in love with it, and claim that it’s the best introduction to the franchise. While I’m not so sure about that, the options as I see it are this: if you watch the movie without seeing the series, you will see one of the great works of anime, but miss out on all the subtleties that only a fan of the series will pick up on. But watching the series is a huge investment of time, and not all of us have that. So I suggest this: if you’ve never seen the movie or the series, pick up copies of Only You and Beautiful Dreamer. Only You is a good introduction to the series and the characters, and will make your viewing of the next movie all the more rewarding. Or don’t. Either way, in my mind, this is one of the canonical series and movies of anime, and any fan who hasn’t seen these are doing themselves a disservice.

Fernando Ramos is Editor-in-Chief of Anime3000.com. Hailing from beautiful San Diego, California, his incurable addiction to cartoons has led him to his current residence of Saitama, Japan, where staying up late winter nights editing articles only reminds him that SD would never get this cold. An avid photography and video fan, he also produces occasional videos and he also writes the photography/rant column Japan Jumble for the site. Find him as Saitamarama on Flickr and HelloNavi on Twitter.

Anticipation for Assault Girls has been mixed, to say the least. While it has Mamoru Oshii on the marquee line and implications of being a follow-up to 2001’s brain-teaser Avalon, most fans (like myself) were skeptical about just how utterly mainstream everything looked. Dune “inspired” sandworms and gals with fetish-tastic outfits packing heavy firepower to blow them up are fun and all, but it just lacks the depth and psychology by way of sociopolitics that drenches Oshii’s work and makes it stand out from the glut of countless Japanese-girls-with-guns pieces. It didn’t help matters that the previous two shorts that form the basis of Assault Girls were little more than flashy (and hilarious) action set-pieces with, you guessed it, hot girls.

However, the aforementioned shorts were virtually devoid of any context. We barely knew who our characters were or what they were after besides one last bite of KFC. It was boom-boom-bang-bang night after day and roll credits. This left Oshii open to take the characters in virtually any direction he so wished; and boy did he ever.

Simply put, he shoehorns all the chaos of the shorts into the timeline of his previous live-action film, Avalon. A lengthy voice-over prologue explains (in many big words) to us in no uncertain terms what that goulash was all about: capitalism had reached it’s brink due to our technological advances and society has been pushed to its logical limit. Now we are in the age of Pax Technologica: in short, a world-wide Neo-Communism. Having settled fanboy arguments over just what parts of Avalon actually did happen, we find that the Avalon game has also gotten itself some upgrades since the days of Polish MMORPGers, now seeming to run on Windows Vista instead of Commie-DOS.

Also of note is that, where Avalon was constantly jumping between and blurring the line between the real world and the online one, here we are firmly in the virtual. Outside of a few select throwaway lines and a single scene lasting less than a minute, there is little suggestion of there being a world outside the game. When Avalon was first released in 2001, World of Warcraft was in its infancy, Google was just a search engine and Wikipedia had just begun to be noticed. Humanity was still able to exist disconnected. Things have changed. “We are wired and there’s no getting out now,” is what Oshii seems to be saying. Furthermore, instead of the overexposed yellow slosh over everything in the previous film, Assault Girls opts to merely mute all but the loudest colors if to acknowledge that that the binary may well be just as just tangible as the physical.

Similarly, the tone of the film is much more colorful than the somber Avalon, at times having more in common with Takashi Miike or Quentin Tarantino than with the man who brought us Ghost in the Shell. Characters are introduced with campy still-frame title cards and the furious fun of the action screams for a wild saxophone score instead of the Kenji Kawai mood-synth that does. As icing on the cake, the film is separated into pretentiously titled chapters, Kill Bill-style.

In fact, despite writing the script himself in lieu of his frequent collaborator Kazunori Ito, this is probably Oshii’s least “Oshii” work since Beautiful Dreamer. Basset hounds are nowhere in sight (we do get dogs, but more on that later), the fisheye lenses are put in storage and, prologue notwithstanding, the movie is, much like the trailer promised, mostly concerned with hot chicks blowing shit up real good, visually if not thematically. The three leads jump, run and gun with beauty and grace. While Meisa Kuroki makes for a foxy heroine in her skin-tight rear-accentuating battle gear, it is Babel beauty Rinko Kikuchi as the cute mute mage Lucifer who steals the show for this reviewer. She gets no dialogue beyond a few dubbed-over crow calls (don’t ask), her Harajuku-influenced attire and playful ethereal dancing had my and my equally silent fellow theatre-goers’ full attention.

Yet beyond the absurdity lies a subversive shadow. Oshii has never been beyond playing with the audience. This is the man who threw Hitler and Christ into Urusei Yatsura for crying out loud. The most noticeable of these subversions lies with the fact that we have an all-Japanese cast speaking English. It is well-written modern English peppered with slang, but the performances are stilted and frequently garbled by a Sky Crawlers-esque static filter. However, unlike that film, it is not a mere atmospheric flourish. Here, it is made apparent that this is a rule imposed by the game: only English is permitted with “local languages” being verboten.

It doesn’t take a political science major to see the subtext of political subjugation via linguistics. Sealing the deal is the abundance of Japanese symbology in the landscape of Avalon(f): a statue of Ninomiya Sontoku (a fixture at Japanese schools but historically noteworthy for his economic and humanistic philosophies) and, instead of the infamous basset hound, a shiba inu, one of the domestic breeds of Japan, sniffing around at it. Also, randomly, a character takes out an antagonist in a direct visual quote of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon. It’s not subtle symbolism or commentary, but it stands out in the parade of explosions and live-action fanservice. It’s Oshii throwing yet another middle finger to the Establishment, much like the undertones of cultural warfare in the Patlabor movies.

This is all well and good, but the film does have infuriating aspects that keep it from being an instant classic. Like Oshii’s earlier live-action work in the Keroberos Panzer Corps universe, it feels more like a salad bowl of ideas than an actual good movie in its own right. The lack of actors and no major sets adds to the feeling that this was just a side project Oshii wanted to bang out in a few months than his next opus. Perhaps the most infuriating thing is the absence of an ending. This is not an exaggeration. We tune into this world for 80-some minutes and then, just when things are looking to really get heated up, we’re thrown into the credits. As the ending theme by otaku favorite KOTOKO starts cranking up and the audience around me starts getting cranky, we are reminded of a possible rationale:

“GENEON UNIVERSAL PRESENTS: A FILM BY MAMORU OSHII”

Figures.

More information on Mamoru Oshii’s upcoming live-action flick Assault Girls have emerged, this time via the film’s official Japanese language website. Finally we have a clue to what is going on in that crazy trailer showing girls-with-guns fighting sand-whales, and it’s pretty damn exciting. Based on Google Translate and my most trusted of Japan based operatives Fernando Ramos it seems that the film is set in the same world as Oshii’s sublime live-action movie Avalon – that is to say it appears to be set around another massively multiplayer, virtual reality video game. In fact, the text seems to be suggesting it’s a new, or different, version of the game from the earlier film, known as ‘Avalon (f)’.

This is the google translation of the first few paragraphs of the story page on the site:
Virtual space “Avalon (f)> already there, that mimics the desert wilderness after thermonuclear war =” Desert 22 “monsters that haunt the” Sunakujira “aims to show his players —— Gray , Lucifer, kernel, and Yeager. Three men and one woman, in their arms “Sunakujira” a flock of whale. Next we had the players and make a kill during the war, Yeager is possessed for a chance to pet one of them was gobbled up, stuck in the kill. That time, three other people before the end of the target is very big in this field = “Madarasunakujira” that was on the scene. That, prior to its overwhelming strength, they are forced to retreat …

Return to base in the crater of a volcano, Gray settle the battle outcome. Terminating target “Madarasunakujira” but missed, Gray is not a bad score. And such for her master had said the game cold. “You can knock down levels of the target can not be terminated,” “Look at other players and formed a party if” and.

Well, make of that what you will. If you have elite Japanese skills and can provide a better translation then PLEASE give me a shout. I was already pretty excited about Assault Girls based on what I’d seen already, but the idea that it may be a continuation of one of my favourite sci-fi movies of the last decade is just thrilling. As always, more info when I get it.

UPDATE: See below for the first two Assault Girl shorts – the first taken from Oshii’s own Shin-Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden, and the second from Kiru ~ Kill – a movie made from climatic fight scenes from non-exist films by various directors – of which Oshii was one. Plus get this: Twitch are reporting that during a press conference in Shibuya today to promote the release of the full-length film that Oshii announced that Hollywood had already approached him about a US remake. Wow. Lets hope the his head doesn’t get too big for that dope hipster hat of his.

Special thanks to Brian Ruh, author of the excellent book Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, for the tip off on this one.

There’s been a lot of bad news and vibes around the US anime industry recently – with some rather major players taking a hit – but for once here in the UK things seem to be ticking over quite happily. Sure we might be a few months behind our American cousins, but judging by the amount of screeners and press releases that have been jamming up my mailbox over the last month it looks like the UK distributor’s schedules show no easing up at the moment. It’s certainly more than I can review in detail before they hit shops, so in the first of what will be a regular feature here’s a run down of stuff that’s due to drop next month – keep an eye on the site over the next few weeks for more in-depth analysis of the pick of the crop.

Ghost in the Shell 2.0

UK release date: 26th October

The big one next month – the UK finally gets it’s hands on the controversial visually over-hauled version of Oshii’s 1995 cyberpunk classic. The DVD screener I was sent had no extras on it, so I’ll hold off until I get my Bluray copy before commenting on the UK release any further – but I will say that the transfer looked great, though I’m still not sure it is enough to dispel my reservations about the changes I raised when reviewing the Japanese Bluray back in January. Stay tuned though, as well as for my imminent look at the Innocence Bluray release. Now, where’s Sky Crawlers?

X The Series – Volume 1

UK release date: 5th October

The other big UK release this October, and long-overdue, is the 2001 TV series based on CLAMP’s legendary demographic defying manga X. It’s been years since I watched the 1996 anime movie based on the same franchise, but i might have to go and grab the DVD of the shelf again, as from first glance the series seems to outstrip that production in terms of visual brilliance – a rare and unusual achievement for a TV show. It certainly captures the manga’s unique (at the time, at least) blend of ornate shōjo visuals and seinen violence, and as such will be one I’ll be examining in much more detail over the coming weeks when I’ve had time to sit down and spend some quality time with it.

Devil May Cry – Complete Series

UK release date: 19th October

My only previous encounter with the Devil May Cry franchise was the first game on the PlayStation 2 several years ago – the stylish, violent, gothic brawler now spawning an anime series that seems to be…erm, a stylish, violent, gothic brawler. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – at first glance Madhouse seem to have hit the nail on the head when it comes to catching the spirit of the game – this is over-stylised, action-packed slightly emo looking exploitation anime at it’s most colourful. I’m interested in how it’ll look on Bluray, and hopefully I’ll it will be fun for the same reasons I enjoyed the game – just minus the occasionally tedious jumping puzzles. Check back next week for a full review.

Claymore – Volumes 5 & 6

UK release date: 12th October

I have to admit, Claymore is one of those shows I probably should have seen but never got round to it. Another Madhouse production, like Devil May Cry it’s yet more stylised violence and demon slaying, but clearly with a little more going on under the hood plot-wise. Certainly coming in at Volume 5 made it a bit hard to follow, but that’s probably a good sign, and the frenetic, over the top sword fights seem like fun. I particularly enjoyed the deep, washed out palette and the soundtrack that seemed to mix up metal riffs, drum and bass breaks and, erm, free-form jazz drumming. Yeah, really.

Bleach – Series 4, Part 1
Naruto Unleashed – Series 7, Part 2

UK release date: 26th October

Ahh, Bleach and Naruto, with your hyperactive but angst-ridden, teen samurai’s and bratty ninjas, will your stories never end? Will your protagonists ever finally come-of age? I’m no fan of either colossal franchise, but then I’m hardly the target demographic – and if you are a fan, then you’ve probably got both these new collections marked in your school planner already. So enjoy. Who the hell am I – some miserable old geezer – telling you what you should be watching anyway? Yeah, like, whatever.

Last month we had the first details of Mamoru Oshii’s new live-action flick Assault Girls – today we have a teaser trailer, courtesy of Nippon Cinema. The site also has some more details about the plot:
In the aftermath of global thermonuclear war, the Earth’s surface has been turned into a desert battlefield. Three beautiful female hunters: Gray (Meisa Kuroki), Lucifer (Rinko Kikuchi), and Colonel (Hinako Saeki) traverse the barren landscape armed with powerful assault rifles to fight a group of deadly sand-dwelling monsters called “sunakujira” (sand whales). When the the epic battle eventually seems to be coming to an end, the sparkle of muzzle flash dies down and assault ship flies overhead. Suddenly, a gigantic super mutation called “Madara Sunakujira” attacks.

To me it looks like Oshii might be letting off some steam here, and making a balls out, low budget action movie – but that might just be editing and the clips that have been used here. Hopefully we’ll also get some of the moody, down-tempo stuff he did so well in Avalon. Wither way, the Dune influences still seem pretty strong. So what do you think? Hit the comments below and let me know.

Regular readers will know about my fanatical love for the animated works of Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Sky Crawlers), but they might not realize how much I also bug-out for his live action films. His last feature length work Avalon came out in 2001, and became an instant favourite in my household, the film getting played so much by me and my better half that we nearly wore out the DVD. Which is a good thing, considering how much I paid to import it from Japan. Anyway, with that in mind you can imagine how excited I got today when the first details were announced about his latest work, due to hit Japanese cinemas in December.

Assault Girls is a sci-fi action film about three female hunters battling huge ‘sand whales’ in a desert setting, the costume design and themes obviously referencing another great love of mine; Frank Herbert’s Dune. Anime News Network has some more details:

Elsewhere, as part of promotion for both the Sky Crawlers Blu-ray/DVD release and the cinema release of his latest project, Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai, the usually shy and quiet Oshii has been making far more media media appearances then normal. Akibanana sat down with him and talked about the new release:

Check out the full interview here, and keep an eye on this site – as always I’ll be bringing you news and details on all Oshii’s projects as soon as I get them.

A must read for all Mamoru Oshii and Production IG fans – IG have just posted up a report – in English – from their recent press conference on the forthcoming Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai movie. Oshii isn’t directing this time – he just wrote the script – handing over the helm to Mizuho Nishikubo – a long time assistant of his on projects such as Patlabor 2, Ghost in the Shell and The Sky Crawlers. Both were at the press event, along with IG head Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, and on hand to answer questions:

Ishikawa-san, can you tell us more about how this project was started?

Ishikawa: I think it was about two years ago. Oshii-san and I were at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch for The Sky Crawlers sound recording sessions. I recall that Oshii-san kept me awake all night talking about his dream to make a big budget movie with huge box office returns. At that time, he did not mention Miyamoto Musashi at all.

But on the next day, as we where heading for Skywalker Ranch on a car, he suddenly told me, “I want to make a movie about Musashi.” I think that was the point where everything started. That made me reflect on the fact that you can spend 10 hours just talking, but good projects need just a 10-second chat on a car.

This movie could be described as a mix of Oshii’s deep philosophical insight and cool samurai action. I’m sure this is something no-one has ever tried or seen before, so I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Oshii: I must confess that this movie has come up very different from the image I had in mind when I wrote the script. But I wouldn’t say it’s a negative thing. I knew that Nishikubo could do a good job, and to this extent, he just confirmed my expectations.

The film is set to hit Japanese theaters this summer, and while there’s no indication of when we’ll see it in the west, the fact that IG are bothering to translate events like this shows they still take us foreign fans very seriously.

Stay tuned for more news as I get it.

A couple of quick news updates for you: this Sunday (May 3rd) sees the annual Sci-Fi London Film Festival’s annual Anime All Nighter swing into action – highlights this year being a showing of the controversial Ghost in the Shell 2.0, and – most interestingly – a very rare screening of a little film from 1972 called Panda! Go, Panda!

And why is that interesting? Well, the film was written by Hayao Miyazaki, and directed by Isao Takahata – over a decade before the two friends would go on to create the legendary Studio Ghibli. It was made at the height of ‘Panda madness’ in Japan, when China had started lending the cuddly beasts to Japanese zoos so they could assist in breeding programs. The film is a real treat for Ghibli fans though, as both the pandas themselves and the films little red-haired protagonist were clearly the inspiration for Miyazaki’s subsequent character designs for the Totoros and Mei. If you’re in London and free on Sunday then get yourself down there – but hurry up and book some tickets, as they look like they’re selling out fast.

While we’re talking about the greatest animation studio in the world – I must remind you all to check out Daniel Thomas’ ever brilliant Ghibli Blog – Conversations on Ghibli. He’s been digging out some real treats recently – most notably this mind-blowing piece on a never-to-be-released home brew Porco Rosso game for the Nintendo DS. Looks amazing but will never see the light of day due to, amongst a million licensing problems, Miyazaki’s dislike of video games based on his creations. Never the less: do want.

Keep up the good work Dan.