Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show -The Other 100 Best Anime Movies of All Time, Part 1
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SaiyamanMS
Posts: 302 |
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I'm disappointed to see on Paste's list that out of all the Dragon Ball films there are, Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan is the one that made it onto the list. Not that Broly is necessarily a bad film, but if I was going to include a Dragon Ball film on such a list, it would hands down be Battle of Gods. (Or maybe The Path to Power.)
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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My lasting memory of all Harmageddon criticism is the tagline "Rintaro's epic disaster". As someone who hasn't seen any of the works in this article, Mike's contrast comes as a pleasant refresher. Much the same could be said of his contention that Time Stranger is a slightly wonky adventure, rather than the elegiac rumination over mortality as which it is usually presented. |
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uguu
Posts: 220 |
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I understand not thinking it's a great movie but the elements that make many claim it's some kind of legendarily bad abomination are just par for the course for a hippie-influenced 60s Japan manga and, as I said, are also present in other works from the time. The difference is that everyone in Japan knew what to expect, while western fans didn't even bother researching. From what I gather, many found it to be a rip-off of Akira - not a pre-Akira 80s OVA based on a novel which was itself based on a classic psychic shonen manga from '67, a manga that was actually an influence on Akira. The problem isn't that people were confused then but that viewers are still ignoring these things now in an age where it's very easy to look up info about what you're watching - just for the sake of joining a hate bandwagon. As I said earlier, most user reviewers on MAL and whatnot don't even know why they're supposed to be hating on it so they try to nitpick things like the """""horrible""""" animation. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4074 |
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[quote="classicalzawa"] For the record though, I think Colorful is one of the best anime movies I've ever seen, but I am more than willing to watch Coo and be proven wrong.[/quote
Looking over at my stack of "What am I supposed to do with this" of DVDs and BDs, there's this BD called Colorful, a film with a suicide plot and message that's so obvious that it's akin to getting hit on the head with a hammer. And this is the best one you've ever seen? Honestly, you weren't annoyed by the spoiler["Of course it's his old body and life. Get on with it!"] story and its ham fisted approach to a very real problem? Legend of the Overfiend is my favorite horror anime movie. My own take on the "OVA versus movie" debate is that the sex scenes were added to make the horror more palatable. You have to get to the likes of Clive Barker to find mainstream examples not of "body horror" or "sex versus body horror" but "sex using body horror". Or in short: spoiler["Did that guy just cut off his own penis in order to attach a demon's penis? Neat! Also, sick!! Also, also, Oww!!!"] If you fixate on the tentacles, you miss out on the metaphor and the message of the movie: Sex isn't just It, it also turns you into an It, some "thing" which makes you feel like either a god or a monster. Ultimately, I'm just not a big fan of anime movies... while I've certainly seen a hundred, I can't say I've liked even a quarter of them. It's the duality of "look at that" spectacle combined with a message or theme that's both single minded and inescapable that turns me off... which is, yeah, a good amount of Miyazaki. So if you're not in the mood for such gems like "War bad" or "environment good" or, ahem, "suicide bad", you're generally out of luck. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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See, here's the thing. There was a time when I would look at a list of shows, see names like "Bodacious Space Pirates", and think, "there's no way I'm ever going to watch a show with that title, moving on". I've moved past that point, and I'll even give the odd "Lesbian Bear Storm" a chance, but I draw the line at "Legend of the Demon Womb". |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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I didn't know whether Mike was being facetious in saying that Time Etranger was about "a bunch of ugly teens", when it was the "artsy" TV-tiein spinoff from GoShogun, an 80's series we remember...pretty much only for Time Etranger. (And whose existence was only recently mentioned in discussions over Discotek picking up the feature.) And yes, Harmageddon was "Rintaro's epic disaster" (you can almost hear Johnny Depp's Ed Wood saying "This is the one I'll be remembered for!"), although those who did see it early in their anime experience found satisfaction and closure from seeing the Project A-Ko parody. 
Not just so much for the animation, Street Fighter-cliche' characters or the derivative story, but I had to look up the specs to see how LONG the movie was--I remember it as three punishing hours to sit through, but it was probably shorter, and that was just my subjective view. Legend of the Overfiend is probably more of a classic by "hypnosis", from back in the early 90's Streamline days when there wasn't much anime licensed over here TO talk about, apart from the gore/ecchi OVA's that were the big non-TV thing in Japan at the time, and licensors were happy to get rid of for a cheap indie-company price. I remember, back in the turn of the 80's/90's days, when all anime was comic-con bootlegged or club-copied, getting a little fan-printout "Where to start?" list of the "essential" titles like UY, Windaria, Project A-Ko, etc...I know of Overfiend, Outlanders and Wicked City by reputation from being included on the list, and woe to the poor anime newbie who thought he had to pursue everything on his "reading list". |
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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Because Paste has bad taste? 
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bleachj0j
 Posts: 923 |
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Yep, I'll happily use this list as a reference. I've wanted to watch more anime movies. Its helped lately that some that aren't connected established franchises are coming out more and more. This helps a ton.
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4466 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Incidentally, I thought Project A-Ko was a very notable omission that wasn't anywhere to be seen on the Paste list. Yes, it really is just a send-up movie of popular mid-1980s-and-earlier anime tropes but it's still the greatest such send-up anime film I've ever seen, with some extremely well-animated segments from budding young animators like Atsuko Nakajima who later went on to do great things and I still enjoy listening to my CD of the ultra-1980s made-in-America soundtrack by Richie Zito and Joey Carbone. Project A-Ko may just be my favourite standalone anime film of all-time (even though it was initially conceived to be a Cream Lemon episode but they decided to tone the sexual elements down for a more mainstream audience). |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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I put Paste's omission (seriously?) to bad memory-- The movie was everywhere in the early days, because CPM couldn't pass up a marketing opportunity, but now that they're gone, a whole generation of fans either have to wait for Discotek or take older fans' word for it. (And aren't the sources supposedly missing?) Also, some of the "budding young animators" were also designers and episode directors for the insane middle-era Mamoru Oshii episodes of Urusei Yatsura, and the nonstop drive-by geek parody/ref gags probably come the closest to conjuring up the spirit of the show for those who can't get a look at that one, either. When it came out, we had to tell newbie fans "You probably won't get most of the jokes", and nowadays, you're that much cooler if you do. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5823 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Me too. Loved Asura, but pretty harsh movie. |
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Dr.N0
Posts: 149 |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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I though Asura was just ok. I loved Summer Days with Coo though. That's a great film and should be higher than 76. I put into into my top 40 an animated films list.
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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You said one thing in the column that I despise about many animated films from Japan...
The endurance test. I HATE most of the two-hour long films. They have horrible pacing issues, many of them, and what you experience onscreen shouldn't have been produced. Same as live-action, the problems can be traced to poor scripting and directing. The way animation is produced it has to be edited BEFOREHAND so there's really no excuse for bad "takes" and pacing issues. That said, I have a movie I changed my mind on as far as pacing goes. Rintaro's Metropolis (2001) isn't that bad. I just had to watch the film over 10 years later with newly gained perspectives. I don't change my mind a lot on movies but this one definitely deserved another look. I just watched the Eureka (UK) Blu ray release today (Tuesday; it's Wednesday as I post this). The video has its problems with banding (appears on and off through the film but is generally at its worst in scenes with yellow backgrounds) but from all indications is still the best home video presentation of the movie. The UK Blu ray is recommended over the domestic Sony Blu (North American) Blu ray release mainly because of the fact it's a pressed disc and NOT BD-R. Even the steelbook release costs the same as the domestic BD-R last time I checked (which makes a good case for getting the LE release while it's available). All the old extras from the original Sony DVD were ported over to the UK BD release and it has ALL the original audio options as well as remixed Japanese and English HD tracks for the Blu ray release. The UK BD has the great trait of being cross-compatible with Region A so no importation/player compatibility issues there for North America! The movie itself is beautiful. Very rich color and great retro character design (think every character you ever saw in Astro Boy and they're represented here) that works well with the CG graphics... The CG itself isn't bad for 2001. The English dub track is excellent with a lot of voices people will recognize from 1980s and 1990s vintage dubbed anime -- this is NOT to say the vocal performances were not excellent. I have to say that I think I liked watching the film better with the English audio this time. That's usually not the case... The movie is basically an anime adaptation of Fritz Lang's movie. Yes, it's based on 1940s manga by Osamu Tezuka but it stays close to the main plot points of the 1927 sci-fi classic. You don't have to read the manga or have seen the original film to appreciate the anime feature on its own merits. (I've read the manga and frankly the anime feature is a very LOOSE adaptation of the manga. I'm of the impression that it's closer to the 1927 film which I have seen but, again, it's not a literal remake of that movie, either.) It's a special film, IMHO, and very underappreciated... It's ten years later for me and there are new things I didn't appreciate from the first time I experienced it. There are tons of good anime features besides those by Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and the fellow who did Wolf Children and Summer Wars. The reason why THOSE guys get mentioned all the time is because they're consistent directors. The problem I see with most anime feature directors is that they're VERY inconsistent and you have MAYBE a 50/50 approval rate for anybody the likes of Rintaro, Otomo, Mamoru Oshii, or Shoji Kawamori. One last anime feature recommendation -- Space Cobra the Movie. Also Discotek but surprisingly good! It has a Barbarella feel to it but it's also MUCH better than the Jane Fonda movie. The Blu ray release of the film is beautiful... Very good remastering for high definition. This is the way you do it, folks! |
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Zin5ki
Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Goodness, you used to have quite a dislike for such a film! Perhaps I should finally get a Blu-ray player so as to watch my steelbook copy—for all I know, my views on it may have shifted also. Ying to your yang, if you will. |
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