Tag: studio ghibli

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind anime review

I watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind shortly before watching Ocean Waves. I’ve been going on a Ghibli kick lately, ever since I woke up and realized I’d only ever watched two Ghibili movies: Spirited Away and Ponyo on a Cliff. Both were pretty good, so I’ve always meant to watch more stuff from the same studio, so I’m watching them all in order.

I started with Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro, but I’m not going to write about it because it didn’t make much of an impression on me. Nausicaa though, Nausicaa was good. It started out a bit slow, but once it took off it just never stopped. Air battles, land battles, plane crashes, random acts of violence, all sorts of crazy monsters, etc. I’m also watching Chrome-Shelled Regios right now, and I can tell it was inspired by Nausicaa. Just look at those crawling bugs and tell me they aren’t Ohmus.

Great soundtrack, fluid action, tons of twists and turns in the story, a lead character who is a borderline Mary Sue yet somehow manages not to be annoying, memorable side characters, a happy ending…what more do you want? This is a real classic.

Ocean Waves anime review

Originally known as Umi ga Kikoeru, Ocean Waves is a Studio Ghibli made-for-TV movie from 1993.  It’s fairly mediocre, as love triangle shows are wont to be.

 A girl named Rikako moves from Tokyo to Kochi because her parents gets divorced, but she has difficulties adjusting to her new life. The story is told through the eyes of one of her new classmates, whose name I have totally forgotten. Let’s call him Billy Bob.
Anyway, Billy Bob’s best friend Yutaka likes Rikako, but somehow Billy Bob is the one who ends up hanging out with her, until Billy Bob and Rikako have a bitter argument and stop talking. And then Billy Bob has a fight with Yutaka as well.
Fast forward to a year after graduation. Billy Bob meets Yutaka again and they make up. And there it is suddenly revealed that Billy Bob liked Rikako too! Except I totally didn’t see that at all in their interactions right until the end. You might say it’s subtle, but this is way beyond subtle and well into virtually-nonexistent territory. They basically just bitched at each other for 1 hour and that meant they were in love?
Well anyway, the ending has Billy Bob and Rikako meeting again at a train station. It’s stated that Rikako has finally gotten the stick out of her *** and stopped being a giant *****, so maybe things will work out between them. I didn’t know what to feel about all that because I just didn’t see the mutual attraction, but whatever. Good luck with that, guys.

Ponyo on the Cliff

I had a bit of time on my hands over the weeked, so I finally got round to watching that cam of Ponyo on the Cliff I uh, obtained a while ago. As expected, someone in the cinema got up and walked across the screen halfway through the show (I think it’s obligatory, really), but apart from that it was an excellent-quality cam.

The movie itself was okay. Very childish, but I’m obviously not the intended audience. My adult brain wouldn’t stop screaming at me that while it was very pretty to see a whale swimming across a road, a tsunami huge enough to turn a cliff into an island would be extremely disastrous and would result in an extremely large amount of extremely dead people. Not to mention all the stranded, dead and rotten fish in people’s houses once the waters finally receded. And just think about all the destroyed goods and boats and personal effects and books and money and clothes. They’d better have been insured or they’re in for a world of financial hurt.

Still, even if I was the intended audience, I don’t think this is one movie I would watch more than once. Growing up, the favorite movies in my house were those with lots of tension and nail-biting moments in them. Disney’s Aladdin was one of those. And Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which we watched until the tape tore, then patched together with sellotape and kept on watching. Ponyo on the Cliff has very lovely animation and stirring music (Wagner called, he wants his royalties), but there’s never any doubt that everything was going to come right in the end. You can tell by the way the characters take the time to chow down on ramen and ham then snuggle down on the couch while the world goes to hell around them.

Did it help my Japanese ability any? Not really. The script was written for 5-year-old kids = very easy to understand. And the art and actions are expressive enough that they needed even have bothered with any dialogue at all. It was fun though, definitely worth at least one watch. Next on my to-watch list is Laputa: Castle in the Sky. And that’s all for today.

I can’t go on watching Last Friends

Ummmmm… about Last Friends… I, err, got to thinking eh, and I realized that err, maybe I’m not quite thaaaat desperate to learn Japanese just yet? Like, it’s not supposed to be torture, right? There’s a glimmer of a good idea behind the how, but the actors just can’t get the job done. I’m talking the main two, the Michiru actress and the Sousuke guy. That Nagasawa girl has only 3 expressions: happy bunny, sad bunny and confused bunny. Pathetic. As for Sousuke, he’d be okay if he’d just keep his bloody mouth shut. He makes a decent creepy-abuser guy (though story-wise it was stupid to have his character come out in full-swing right at the start but whatever) but as soon as he opens his mouth he just blows it all way.

So, I’m not going to suffer through any more of this show. 3 episodes is more than enough. For now I’m just going to rip the audio from each episode – waste not, want not – and listen to it or something. And I’ll skip over all the domestic violence bits because they’re dumb and unnecessarily overwrought. The writers should have watched more Lifetime TV or something, they’ll show you how it’s really done (just kidding). At least then they would have had the decency to attempt to explain why Michiru puts up with Sousuke’s nonsense, and no, “her father was a drunk” doesn’t cut it. I mean, the two of them are already dating when the show starts so we have no idea how they met, or what she sees in him or anything. BS. It’s like the writers opened up a manual which said “abusers behave like this” “abused people behave like this” and so they went with it and expect the watchers to play along.

Alright then, so Michiru is stupid (she certainly looks it), fine, but is her stupidity infectious or something? I mean, why would Ruka and Takeru of all people cover up for Sousuke as well? “Oh it’s nothing, nothing happened here,” when both of them are lying on the floor with Takeru standing over them with a chair? They only just met him that day, why make up lies to cover for him? BULLSHIT. Thanks for reminding me why I avoid j-dramas, Last Friends!

Next up… I need a cleansing break. I managed to get a fairly decent cam of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. It’s been a while since I watched a cam anyway, lol. I’m almost hoping someone will get up and walk across the screen halfway through, hehe.