Instead, what fans were treated to was perhaps one of the most fatalistic, avant garde, and oddly enough, life-affirming endings to an anime series ever produced. The young man, Godo, sets off with his crew to capture and kill the Phoenix, but as with any quest for immortality, they are doomed before they even begin. ), and the animation is shockingly fluid for the time. flat chest 174323? Set in Croatia in the years immediately following World War I, the film revolves around the the titular character, an ex-WWI flying ace who has been turned into a human-sized pig through a mysterious curse (which is never really explained, only alluded to). All Rights Reserved. With spectacular aforementioned fantasy backdrops commissioned by artist Naohisa Inoue and the memorable inclusion of Olivia Newton-John’s rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Whisper of the Heart is a beautiful movie and a bittersweet farewell effort from Yoshifumi Kondo who, at age forty-seven, passed away from heart complications. Television expanded the medium during the 1960s, birthing many of the essential genres and subgenres that we know today and forming the impetus for the anime industry’s inextricable relationship to advertising and merchandising from the 1970s onward. Chalk it up to Miyazaki’s nascent efforts as a director, Castle of Cagliostro suffers from a plodding middle-half and a disappointingly simplistic antagonist while still somehow managing to sparkle with his signature charm peeking through the baggage of a preexisting work. In the wake of today’s popular fantasy seinen/shonen titles, Ah! For this film version, several shots from the OVA were retouched, and there are some mild adjustments to the original animation. There’s a lot of ways to go about describing Cat Soup to someone who’s never seen it before. All the familiar tropes are present: the mirrorshades, the kung fu acrobatics, the pulsing rain of digital kanji. After the tragic passing of her father, 11-year-old Momo Miyaura and her mother Ikuko move from Tokyo to the family home on Seto Island to start over. Back in 2003, Daft Punk were on top of the world. Char’s Counterattack attempts this as well, yet it’s mostly concerned with wrapping up the rivalry between Amuro and Char—and on that note, it succeeds wildly. Roujin-Z was dubbed in English by Manga Entertainment and released in the United States in 1994, and is still fairly easy to grab subbed or dubbed on DVD. Buyers beware—like much ’80s/’90s anime, there is a pointless “almost rape” scene that serves no essential purpose, and story-wise, Macross Plus lacks the narrative push of the original’s “alien invasion” plotline. If you’re a Ghost in the Shell devotee, Innocence is definitely recommended: a dense excavation into a wellspring of ideas and questions that don’t often come to the forefront of contemporary cyberpunk stories. The sum total of Imaishi’s aesthetic legacy can be traced back to Dead Leaves, whether it be his affinity for drill imagery that would later take center stage in Gurren Lagann or the frenzied hyperactive gunfights that would pop up in his work on FLCL. Becoming state-appointed alchemists, they search for the mythical philosopher’s stone as a means of restoring their bodies to their original state. Keiji Nakazawa’s 1973 semi-autobiographical manga Barefoot Gen is a testament to this event, depicting one young boy’s struggle to survive in the wake of witnessing his friends and family gruesomely disintegrated by the indiscriminate force of a nuclear impact. Where Vampire Hunter D excels is in its design, by the legendary Yoshitaka Amano, and direction, by Toyoo Ashida (Fist of the North Star). If they sink their claws in a bit, they can easily tear me up. Director: Shoji Kawamori, Noboru Ishiguro. Inspired by the likes of Gulliver’s Travels and Judeo-Christian folklore, the floating city of Laputa is just one of the countless iconic locations that Miyazaki has conjured into the collective imagination throughout his near-fifty-year-long career. Mirai, the director’s seventh film, is not inspired from Hosoda’s own experience, but through the experiences of his first-born son meeting his baby sibling for the first time. Produced during the boom of anime’s foreign markets, Ninja Scroll was one of the first titles released by Manga Entertainment in the West. Adapted from the autobiographical story of Akiyuki Nosaka, the film follows Seita, a young Japanese boy forced to care for his younger sister Setsuko in the wake of a devastating Allied attack that leaves his hometown in ruins. The two embark on a journey across the heartland of America in search of answers not only to the question of what caused humanity’s downfall, but what it means to be a human being at all. ''...Coming to love someone is like creating a part of yourself with the softest and the thinnest skin. Howl’s Moving Castle was the Miyazaki film that almost didn’t happen. The film is, all in all, a human story of resilience and stubborn hope in the face of annihilation, and hopefully can be looked back upon as a sobering reminder of the costs of unremitting warfare and what we all still have to lose if we were to forget the lessons of the past. Originally set up as a series, Tomino recruited a “greatest hits” of his former collaborators for the project, including Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Kunio Ookawara. Malone and Perry are just one part of The Pokemon Company's big plans for the 25th anniversary of the original Pokemon games' release. A Silent Voice is a film of tremendous emotional depth, an affecting portrait of adolescent abuse, reconciliation, and forgiveness for the harm perpetrated by others and ourselves. The anime became a world-wide success and allowed the franchise to gain much more depth by highlighting facts that the manga did or could not do. for iOS and Android, which was developed by CraftEgg and published by Bushiroad. That was the task set to Hiromasa Yonebayashi for his directorial debut. Gisaburo Sugii’s adaptation is a treasure of Japanese animation, a film that can aesthetically captivate a child while provoking philosophical and religious contemplation on the part of an adult. Whatever the case, there is nothing quite like watching Spirited Away for the first time. introduced the trope of a lovable and mischievous sidekick character that would later become a constant throughout some of the studio’s best known works. Miyazaki’s affinity for depicting flight shines through every scene of Kiki wrestling against the air current to steady her broom mid-flight, her dress billowing in the wind as she jets off in the film’s spectacular finale. By Christian Hoffer Go, Panda! The film ponders the question of whether anything exists at all, on whether ideas of the past that haunt the collective consciousness of humanity can reify themselves in the present tense, of whether belief in the perception of anything is worthwhile or reliable. They resolve to find the child’s parents and bring her safely home, embarking on a journey that takes them to every far corner of the city and inevitably face-to-face with lives they had each abandoned. Most of the film covers the story of Porco’s rivalry with a brash American pilot, Curtis, and their competition to win the hand of Gina, Porco’s longtime friend and the love of his life. Hiroyuki Okiura’s sophomore effort is quite the departure from the paramilitary fatalism of his 1999 debut Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. With Beautiful Dreamer, Oshii stopped playing to the gratifications of his audience and instead made a film that was, for better or for worse depending on who you ask, entirely his own. Mind Game is like witnessing a seven-hour Ayahuasca trip encapsulated into a feature-length film. A story about what it means to craft one’s self in the digital age, a time where the concept of truth feels as mercurial as the net is vast and infinite. Running at two hours and forty-two minutes, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is the second longest anime film ever produced, and the series’ capstone. Rintaro’s “Labyrinth Labyrinthos” draws inspiration from German Expressionism and the works of Salvador Dali, depicting the story of a mischievous young girl named Sachi as she and her pet cat Cicerone are drawn into a dark dimension of hallucinatory oddities through the looking glass of her mother’s dresser. With a script penned by Keiko Nobumoto, a score by the inimitable Yoko Kanno, action scenes framed and choreographed by Yutaka Nakamura, and series’ director Shinichiro Watanabe returning at the helm, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is the anime equivalent of a seminal band getting back together for one last farewell tour after ending off on a high-note and a bang. Keiichi Hara’s 2010 film Colorful is a stark and beautiful about-face when compared to the director’s previous work as a storyboard animator for such shows as Doraemon and Crayon Shin-Chan. Only Yesterday was a rarity when it was first released in 1991: an animated drama tailored for adult audiences near-entirely absent of the gloss of magical realism that defined the majority of Studio Ghibli’s (and most of the anime industry’s) work up to that point. While the series’ first film, Only You, is a fairly typical fantasy romance-romp that plays close to the formulaic familiarity of the series, Beautiful Dreamer was a far more experimental and ultimately divisive film among the series’ fanbase and set Oshii on the path to become the director we know him as today. Like the show, the film centers around the crew of a giant space fortress, Macross, as they attempt to evade an alien race, the Zentradi, and discover that the key to their victory just might be the effect that Earth-made pop music has on their enemy. The collection’s first segment, “Magnetic Rose,” is unanimously praised as the anthology’s best and for good reason. That reputation is owed in no small part to him being touted as the heir apparent to the cinematic legacy of Hayao Miyazaki, who formally retired from directing following the release of his then-final film The Wind Rises in 2013. Based on Taiyo Matsumoto’s cult-classic manga, Tekkonkinkreet is a landmark in Japanese animation not only for its extensive hybrid 3D-meets-2D animation but also for being the first major anime feature to be helmed by a non-Japanese director. A story of how a creator cannot control what their work becomes, only the dedication and craft to which they pour into the work itself. When Motoko and her team are assigned to apprehend the mysterious Puppet Master, an elusive hacker thought to be one of the most dangerous criminals on the planet, they are set chasing after a series of crimes perpetrated by the Puppet Master’s unwitting pawns before the seemingly unrelated events coalesce into a pattern that circles back to one person: the Major herself. Metropolis, scene 12, cut no. The film’s aesthetic is straight of out of child’s picture books, with thick solid shapes framed by beautiful bright primary colors. An excellent film about history, family, language, and hope. It only gets weirder from there. There she meets Marnie, a mysterious young girl whose friendship helps Anna to grow and open up and whose troubled story may in fact be inextricably linked with Anna’s own. The set-pieces are sweeping, and the action is entertaining, but there’s something missing. Mary Norton’s 1952 classic The Borrowers is one of the most oft-adapted children’s books of the 20th century, with feature-length renditions from the likes of such directors as Walter C. Miller, Peter Hewitt and Richard Carpenter. The arrival of home video catapulted anime to its commercial and aesthetic apex, fanning outward from island nation of Nippon to the far shores of North America and back, before again being revolutionized by the unprecedented accessibility of the world wide web throughout the nineties and early aughts. Based on Yuki Midorikawa’s 2002 manga of the same name, Into the Forest of Fireflies’ Light tells the story of Hotaru, a six-year-old girl who befriends a forest spirit named Gin while vacationing at her grandfather’s home in the mountains. Everything about Ghost in the Shell shouts polish and depth, from the ramshackle markets and claustrophobic corridors inspired by the likeness of Kowloon Walled City to the sound design, evident from Kenji Kawai’s sorrowful score to the sheer concussive punch of every bullet firing across the screen. Filled with haunting music, lots of disembodied voice-over and vibrantly rendered yet horrifying scenes of rape, nudity, murder and madness, it’s no surprise Belladonna of Sadness was banned in many countries for decades. Taking place on, you guessed, the second planet in the solar system nearly seventy following a terraforming event, Venus Wars follows a group of teenage monobike racers-turned-freedom fighters after their home of Aphrodia is occupied by the forces of Ishtar, their neighboring rival to the North. The couple lead a high-speed getaway in one of the Yakuza member’s cars before diving into the ocean and being swallowed into the belly of a … see what I mean? Blood: The Last Vampire is significant for many reasons. Dario Argento’s 1977 giallo classic Suspiria is also cited by fans and critics as a possible spiritual inspiration, though Kon himself denied having seen any of Argento’s films before hearing these comparisons. Trust me on this. Nausicaä was the film that introduced the world to motifs and themes by which Miyazaki would become universally known for: a courageous female protagonist unconscious of and undeterred by gender norms, the surmounting power of compassion, environmental advocacy, and an unwavering love and fascination with the phenomenon of flight. The film’s violence is a sharp divergence from Miyazaki’s relatively goreless body of work, with limbs being severed with callous abandon and wild boar gods weeping blood as they trudge on a death march through the forest. The film overall looks more like an OVA than a high-budget feature, but the designs are memorable and based in hard science (again, this is Otomo), and the characters are vibrant and goofy enough to soften the proceedings. A modern reinterpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 The Little Mermaid, Ponyo couldn’t be further from an attempt to compete, let alone eclipse Disney’s award-winning 1989 adaptation. While clashing against a rival bike gang during a turf feud, Tetsuo crashes into a strange child and is the promptly whisked away by a clandestine military outfit while Kaneda and his friends look on, helplessly. A Silent Voice, adapted from Yoshitoki Oima’s manga of the same name, is a prime example of all these sensibilities at play. Go, Panda! With the help of Adult Swim's Jason DeMarco, Paste presents the 100 Best Anime Movies of All Time. The film is replete with the intricate details and expressive character animations that are synonymous with Otomo’s reputation as a master of the craft. Grave of the Fireflies is a chilling portrait of the fragility of human life when confronted by the indifferent brutality of an uncaring world, a film utterly unlike anything Studio Ghibli had produced before or since. Castle in the Sky is a tremendous film powered by pure propulsive momentum, each setting filled with back-to-back hilarious and harrowing moments that would give Indiana Jones a run for its money in terms of action and spectacle. A flawed Miyazaki film is a triumph all the same. Of Hayao Miyazaki’s eclectic and universally renowned body of work, Ponyo is arguably his strangest. One of the most prolific Japanese children’s fiction authors of the 20th century, Miyazawa’s work is transcendent, and Night on the Galactic Railroad is without a doubt his opus. 2015’s The Boy and the Beast was completed just after the birth of Hosoda’s first child, the product of his own questions as to what role a father should play in the life of his son. The reasons for, and meaning behind, the attempted rape scene and what it’s supposed to say about Shirotsugh are sound, but the reaction of Riquinni makes no sense in context of the story, and very much smacks of ’80s Japanese cultural misogyny. It deserves to be seen, examined and cherished for years to come. —J.D. The series is a prime example of postmodernism, with self-referentiality, existential crises, and a non-linear continuity that has captivated and infuriated fans since it first aired. Named after Robert Ford’s 1948 western take on the christian nativity story, Tokyo Godfathers is Christmas story in the purest sense—a redemptive fable about fallible people and the extraordinary extent through which they go to set one piece of the world, however small, right. What then begins as frivolous dalliances of youthful indiscretion soon enough cascades into an unforeseen series of chain reactions that threaten to shake her life to the core and force her to commit to the consequences of her actions. More grounded than a fantasy about a pig man would suggest, Porco Rosso nevertheless reaches heights that will leave any anime fan breathless—and does it in style. The Animatrix is, without a doubt, the best thing to come out of the Matrix franchise since the original movie. Euphonium Wiki! Makoto Konno is by all appearances an average high school girl with a habit of clumsiness and oversleeping. However, The Boy and the Beast is hamstrung by an over reliance on supporting characters narrating the emotional arcs of the protagonists instead of letting them speak for themselves, and a weak grasp of story structure and character motivations exemplified by a ponderously sporadic middle-half. Over seven years in the making, A Letter to Momo is testament to not only Okiura’s dogged creative persistence, but also his considerable talents as an animator and director. With great visuals, solid action, an infectious techno soundtrack courtesy of Japanese electronic duo Boom Boom Satellites, and a serviceable if clichéd plot, Appleseed remains a significant touchstone in the history of early-aught animation and, on top of that, a pretty entertaining watch to boot. —J.D. However, their relationship is burdened by the fact that Gin’s body will disappear the moment it comes in contact with the touch of a human being. Unfortunately, Okamoto would pass away that year from liver cancer and the film was later finished by his close friend and fellow animator Kihachiro Kawamoto. All in all, Genius Party is a stunning collection of shorts produced by one of the most eclectic production studios operating today and should not be missed. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is, quite simply, the film responsible for the creation of Studio Ghibli. Conqueror of Shamballa picks up from the conclusion of the 2003 anime series, with Alphonse’s body fully restored though his memory erased and Edward stranded on the other side of a portal leading to a strange yet familiar world teetering on the cusp of a world war. The unifying concept barely hangs together, but each of the tales are so singular and stunningly rendered, this is a minor concern. A sequel to a five-part OVA from 1993, based on a popular manga, Ah! One Thousand and One Night would later be dubbed and receive an American release, predating the adult animated film phenomenon sparked by Ralph Bakshi’s 1972 Fritz the Cat, only to flop and receive a limited release. Only Yesterday follows Taeko Okajima, a 27-year-old unmarried office worker who takes a holiday to visit her extended family in the rural farmlands of Yamagata where she helps to harvest safflowers. The background work is simple but clean. Silent animated shorts set to dramatic orchestral music, commonly known as Silly Symphonies, were all the rage in America throughout the 1920s and ’30s. One persistent theme across all of Studio Ghibli’s work, in particular Miyazaki’s, is that there rarely are any true villains. fingerless gloves 136056? With an intriguing alternative history story that intermingles key figures such as Karl Haushofer and Fritz Lang and events such as the infamous Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, as well as an impressive series of destructive final fight scenes storyboarded by Yutaka Nakamura, Conqueror of Shamballa is a satisfying if irresolute capstone to the original anime and far and away the best Fullmetal Alchemist film to date. If you’re a bit burnt out over Christmas cheer, do yourself a favor and put this one on around the holidays. The first Gundam theatrical and final chapter in the original saga begun in 1979 with the “Universal Century Timeline” of the Mobile Suit Gundam TV series, Char’s Counterattack has the weight of three seasons of TV behind it. Tokyo Godfathers is something of an outlier, not only among Satoshi Kon’s films, but across the medium of anime as a whole. Obviously, watching these scenes with today’s sensitivities in place will make them seem even more pointlessly barbaric. The franchise also released a mobile rhythm game, titled BanG Dream!Girls Band Party! This adolescent quest soon escalates into a dramatic international conflict involving parallel dimensions, false realities and experimental technology. Directed by Koji Morimoto and scripted by Satoshi Kon, “Magnetic Rose” is emblematic of the themes of perception, identity and uncertainty, which exemplify Kon’s work at its best, depicting the terrifying story of a deep space salvage cruise’s ensnarement in the siren wiles of an aristocratic opera singer. With exquisitely inventive editing, thoughtful color direction, and a gripping plot, Kon delivered a strong first outing as a director that would set the bar for his tremendous decade-spanning career. The film garnered the praise of directors such as James Cameron and the Wachowski siblings (whose late-century cyberpunk classic The Matrix is philosophically indebted to the trail blazed by Oshii’s precedent). Reportedly costing $4 million to produce, Interstella 5555 transformed an album that many thought to be absent of any hint of story and transformed into a grandiose EDM space opera rock odyssey centered on the perilous kidnapping and subsequent rescue of a blue-skinned alien rock band from the nefarious clutches of a label executive bent on galactic domination. Of particular note here are the sleek Gundam designs—Tomino wanted much smaller Gundams for this entry that felt more like “Mobile suits” and less like giant robots—and some of the most brutal fight sequences in any Gundam project. You can choose a folder with images of any kind, and a random (or sequential) image will be picked and cropped automatically to fit the clock background, and the background image can be set to change at regular interval. Trying to pin down Masaaki Yuasa’s 2004 breakout debut with a summary is no easy task, as the now-storied director behind such modern anime classics as Kick-Heart, Ping Pong and The Tatami Galaxy revels in defying expectations with his maximalist anything-goes approach to animation. As with all of the best Gundam tales, Tomino approaches the story from a hard sci-fi point of view, clearly laying out the science behind things like giant mobile suits and “newtypes” (humans that have evolved to acquire psychic abilities). As an OVA converted into a theatrical, it’s not as beautiful as Do You Remember Love?, but the battle scenes in particular are incredibly detailed, and the mecha designs are (as always with the Macross series) top-notch. This is a hard one to track down, as it’s mostly out of print in the United States, but if you can clap eyes on a copy, you won’t be disappointed. Without question, Takeshi Koike is one of the greatest animators alive and working today. These are themes that Oshii would go on to further explore, particularly through his work on Ghost in the Shell, but nowhere near on this level of abstraction. In spite of these shortcomings, The Boy and the Beast remains a visually impressive and entertaining film to watch that puts all of Hosoda’s abilities and indulgences as a director on display, for better or worse. See more ideas about anime, manga anime, kawaii anime. Where in his previous films, Oshii only flirted with political commentary that was otherwise relegated to the margins of more standard pop-action plotlines, Patlabor 2 is a full-on political thriller that’s low on giant robot showdowns and heavy on ambiance, emotion and careful pacing. What is it about Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away that makes it one of his greatest—if not the greatest—films he has ever made? Perfect Blue is a precious rarity in the genre-saturation of contemporary anime: an honest-to-god psychological horror thriller brimming with malice, menace and cinematic sophistication. The story, which, as with most other DBZ movies, is simply an excuse to gather the Z fighters together to combat a new threat to the universe. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Kon was not satisfied to look only toward the insular vacuum of genre anime for inspiration, but instead looked to such works as George Roy Hill’s 1972 adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five, a film whose use of scene cuts and transitions play a huge role in distinguishing Millennium Actress among other films of its time. Spiritually faithful to that of its source material, Arrietty’s story is focused on 12-year-old Shawn’s chance discovery of a nymph-like creature while staying at his mother’s childhood home and the evolving friendship. The final two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion are notorious among fans of the series.Titled “Do you love me?” and “Take Care of Yourself,” the two-part finale infamously sidelined the climactic finale to the series’ central conflict, instead opting to take place entirely away from the action within the subconscious of the show’s protagonist, Shinji Ikari, as he wrestled to resolve the self-loathing and hatred which plagued him throughout the story’s duration. At the height of the series’ popularity between production of the Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions, the Wachowskis recruited the talents of seven of the most preeminent directors working in the field of anime to co-create an anthology of nine short films set within and around the continuity of the Matrix universe. Director: Tatsuya Ishihara, Yasuhiro Takemoto. Comprising five animated shorts originally released as a part of Grasshoppa! Where the Gundam Wing TV series had a plot that tended to meander, and sometimes used cheap animation or repeated cels, Endless Waltz is a feast for the eyes—filled with gorgeous, fluid battle scenes that any fan of giant robots will appreciate. The film qualifies as a time capsule for one of anime’s heyday periods, with exquisite production values married to impeccably crafted set pieces. That’s what makes The Place Promised in Our Early Days so exemplary. Based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1967 novel, Hosoda’s film is a spiritual successor of sorts to the original.