“Mobile Suit Gundam Wing” Review
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In the third episode, Motoko finds herself being drawn back into a dark organization just as she is starting to form her own law-abiding unit of cybercrimes. While her team investigates a conspiracy involving faulty cybernetic legs, she is caught between her love of a cybernetics designer and her allegiance to a secret society. Motoko has been given much more character than she has in other versions of Ghost in the Shell, but this episode gives her much more to work with. Her attempt at trying to form a romance and distance herself from her past life of violence really brought an extra dimension to the stoic woman.
The mystery of trying to unravel the conspiracy of murder and cybernetic materials is as engaging as it ever was, but boosted all the more by some astonishing moments of character. I also appreciate how the more-human-than-cybernetic Togusa is slowly brought into the fold of Section 9 as the family man cop. He’s always been a moral glue to this cold universe of cybercrime and there’s more a reason to root for him as she rushes to the aid of his pregnant wife.
The fourth episode is one of the most action-packed of the series thus far. It begins with a bang where an operation to find a terrorist during a press conference leads to a mass-hacking which leads to a mass-execution. Riot officers are manipulated into firing at a crowd of protesters and then at each other as the conferences quickly descends into violence amid the city streets gleaming with Christmas lights. Another conspiracy is uncovered involving international politics and the technological crime of “ghost dubbing.” The plot itself is pretty much par for the course of usual Ghost in the Shell cases, but there are some nice touches in the form of rampaging robot tanks and a unique cyber-vision of Wizard of Oz characters.
I can’t reiterate enough how much I love this OAV for actually feeling like an OAV series as opposed to a shameless excuse for animated beach episodes. The budget for these episodes were well spent with such vivid, detailed and lively animation. Just pause any exterior shot and look at all the little nuances in the backgrounds of a glowing metropolis. It’s one of the few anime series I enjoy getting lost in without feeling guilty for lack coherent writing. Given that this appears to be the last episodes of the series – being followed up by a movie – I’m pleased that this OAV went out looking so good. It didn’t end with a bang, but a consistently strong tone.
This latest release of Ghost in the Shell: Arise renews my faith in OAVs and reaffirms my love of the franchise. Though not as robustly dense as its various animated adaptations, this series is well-worth the time of any Ghost in the Shell fan, new or old. It’s more than worth a purchase for an anime series that has more intelligence, detail and thrilling action than any other anime currently on the market.
What I found most unique was how Katsuhiro Otomo – one of the most notable names of his anime for directing the landmark animation AKIRA – saddles himself with directing the opening and ending credit sequences. He transforms the title of the movie into a grand machine that roams the lands with an arsenal of robots and explosions. As one of his early animation directing projects, you see his style take shape that would lay the groundwork for his anime future animated features of epic carnage. A robot orchestra provides the soundtrack with musical instruments – the trumpets shooting exploding rockets. A gaggle of robotic ballerinas twirl and descend to the ground where they bow to the populace before exploding. It’s strangely detailed and hauntingly amusing as per Otomo’s trademark style for violence. And that’s just the bookend segments.
Koji Morimoto, an animator who would later work with Otomo as well, takes a stab at robotizing the classic monster story of Frankenstein with “Franken’s Gears”. Through the power of lightning, a mad scientist brings his robotic creation to life with a result both tragic and hilarious. Hidetoshi Omori directs “Deprive”, a heroic tale of one android trying to save his human counterpart from an alien invasion. It’s a decent tale of rescuing the girl with a Terminator-style twist, but it’s more admirable for boiling down its story into a few short minutes. It hits all the right beats for just long enough as not to bore those who have seen this story before.
One element I haven’t mentioned yet is that most of these shorts have zero dialogue. One of the first to actually have some speaking roles is “Presence”, a period romance of a man trying to build female robot to escape his wife and family. And even though there is some dialogue, director Yasuomi Umetsu thankfully doesn’t rely on it as he keeps the short more visual than expositional. This is also a blessing for the sake of the English dub script and voices which are surprisingly lackluster for being produced by Streamline Pictures way back in the early 90’s. You can see this at its worst in the most dialogue-heavy short “A Tale of Two Robots” which adds in too much for the English script. There might be some vindictiveness given how the short appears as World War 2 propaganda with the Japanese and English facing off in a 19th century setting with rickety giant robots. Despite the national leaning, it is rather hilarious for its limitations of technology, the amusing English dialogue recorded in Japanese and that this short is staged as third part of a trilogy that does not exist.
There are some more light and artistic additions as well in the form of “Cloud”, Mao Lambo’s segment about a robot walking through time to eventually become a real human. It’s beautifully rendered the way the rise and fall of humanity is portrayed through flowing clouds. This is a sweet and somber short that helps break up the frenetic energy of other shorts.
The most stereotypically 80’s of all the shorts would be “Star Light Angel” (even the title sounds very 80’s). A teenage girl after recently experiencing a breakup finds herself getting lost in an amusement park where a robot employee begins falling in love with her. Complete with laser-light shows and bright neon colors, I can’t think of any other Japanese animation that encapsulates the decade so perfectly with its bubblegum tone of a music video. There’s even a shameless plug for Coke included which could only be more 80’s if Max Headroom was drinking it.
Last and certainly not least is “Nightmare”, a post-apocalyptic vision of the future where robots rule and one drunken human finds himself escaping death. There’s a tremendous amount of inspiration from the likes of Fantasia and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It’s the most noteworthy of the batch not just for its stunningly intricate animation, but for touching on serious tones of robotization in a playful manner. This is perhaps one of the most defining aspects of anime that can achieve a thoughtfulness to darker subjects and find a way to transform them into unique works of art.
As far as anthology films go, Robot Carnival offers a lot of bang for the buck with a large number of shorts from tremendously talented artists. There are so many styles and tones present that there’s a little something for anyone seeking an animated sci-fi experience. With its operatic presentation and breathtaking animation, it’s the anime equal of Fantasia. And I’m aware that’s a lofty mantle to bestow, but it’s deservingly so as a unique experiment and a springboard for the talented anime directors of the 1990’s.
The online world of .hack//G.U. once again asks the viewer to put aside all semblance and rules of reality (literally). Pretend that the only way to solve an issue with video game users being thrown into comas with a video game is to actually go in the game and recruit players to solve this mystery. And by solve I mean wander around in the game and pretend to stir up drama. You can’t just shut down the game and debug this very serious issue. If the developers of the game did that, then we’d have no story.
The story is a-typical anime affair. Emotionally scarred hero befriends perky/shy girl. Girl is attacked by evil, emotionless man. Evil man and emotional hero fight for an extended period of time. I could make some ironic joke about how these fight sequences look like watching a video game instead of a movie, but I’ll keep it simple by just saying how blah the animation appeared. By 2007 standards, it’s not terrible CGI. In fact, it’s actually slightly higher on the scale of cel-shaded 3D animation. But it’s only used for moments of stilted dialogue and minimal-keyframe battles. It’s amazing how computer graphics can offer up something entirely different from hand-drawn animation, but this movie seems to be focused on replicating all of anime’s limitations – as if it were its own style to animating less.
There’s one big glaring problem with this whole setup and it’s that we never see the real world outside of this video game. It would really help sell the danger if we could actually see some of these players in reality being affected by the game and put into comas. Instead, the movie just expects you to take its word for it. For all we know, the characters we watch are not actually avatars of real people. They could all just be programs that are not aware of who they really are. We never see any of these characters not in the game so it’s entirely plausible.
As with all the .hack franchise productions, this title shares the same fundamental flaw of failing to take advantage of its own concept. You rarely feel as though you are witnessing a game world and more of a fantasy realm where sometimes an electronic display will pop up. In between all the dull-as-dishwater fights are some brief glimpses of creativity for the digital world. As a female avatar descends into a coma, she is confronted by ascending bubbles that burst with the snickers and gossip of those that judge the player in real life. There’s something here – something that could be capitalized upon to bring some character and world building to this anime. But the bubble bursts and it’s gone.
.hack//G.U. continues to expand the lore of its world and does nothing to bring outsiders into the fold. If you haven’t watched the previous anime series or played any of the .hack games, there isn’t anything to latch onto in this movie (or trilogy or whatever). On the basis for being so run of the mill with its design and story, I can’t find much of anything in this release to warrant even a rental.