Reviews

• 

  4rt

  Feb 15, 2022

  It's amazing. But I fell asleep. I thought this is good for 30 days. Ripped. T_T
• 

  Eschaton

  May 21, 2022

  This is much closer to what anime used to be like in the 90s and early aughts; excellent art with questionable direction and more than a hint of japanese worldview suffused throughout. Spoilers may be found below! There are four stories - a samurai tailor's stay at a haunted shrine, the tragedy of an (edo period?) fireman's unrequited love, the story of an ancient Japanese village beset by an interstellar demon, and finally the story of a next-century post-apocalyptic scavenger hunt taking place across the barren desert of what appears to have once been mainland Japan - Mt. Fuji featuring prominent and unchanged above a blasted desert landscape. Indeed, while I'm not going back to watch this again just yet, it seems to me the sacred mountain appears near the end of each piece, rising above the action as a meditation, at least to me, on the connection of the tale to the broader Japanese culture in which it exists. The first tale is a twist on traditional Japanese archetypes, in that it inverts the stereotype of the ronin or samurai as a destroyer or killer. The main character resolves conflict primarily through tailoring and prayer, but exhibits a warrior's spirit in doing so, even when confronted with the terrifying ghosts of the shrine's unresolved past. Other than that, this story preaches mindfulness and courtesy as a means of conquering adversity - a thoroughly Japanese conception that ends up reintegrating the Samurai's inversion within the broader cultural conception of what traits are admirable in a person. This makes it easily the most positive and hopeful of the four shorts, and it ends up feeling very strongly like a call to reimagine traditional values. Too bad this one has a fairly modern CGI animation style that makes it look sillier than it talks. The second tale of the fireman and his childhood love is perhaps the most visually stunning of the four. The short literally unrolls from a Japanese prayer scroll at the start, and takes its visual cues from wood block engraving pictures you may have seen in history books - a very traditional art style perhaps most well-known in that magnificent work of art "Hokusai - the Wave." To further make the viewer feel like they are watching scenes unroll on a long scroll, the short is shot in an ultra-wide format that leaves the top and bottom of the frame unused - except that here it IS used; beautiful Japanese patterns flit back and forth, simulating the eye's transit across a wide page. Very neat. Unfortunately the story doesn't rise to the ambition of the animation - it's a simple thing, though I won't try to claim I really attempted to dig deep for allegory. It felt like it might have been there, saying something about the fiery passions of the young and their danger, but the story didn't convince me it was worth the effort of trying to figure it out. The third tale is what makes this set of shorts really not appropriate for younger viewers. It's a bloody, messy tale involving a christian ronin, a possessed white bear, and their ersatz alliance in the face of a hellish alien that's been terrorizing the countryside, snatching up women and impregnating them with its spawn back in the ruins of its crashed spaceship. There's some truly brutal stuff here - one might even say METAL AS F*CK - but at its heart this is a story about keeping faith that good and purity will prevail over evil and corruption if one sets their mind to it. Most intriguing to think on here is the obvious Christianity of the ronin, teaching a young girl to pray, and the very Shinto-esque bear spirit, who answers that prayer by slaying the demon (with a little help from the ronin and a few musketeers). Allegorical? I hope so, because otherwise this is really just a set piece for some interesting violence. The last short involves the fateful mission of half a dozen talky, brazen government-sponsored scavengers on a mission into the desert wasteland of what appears to have once been Honshu, the main island of Japan. Dead cities dot the dusty pan, each harboring loot and potential danger for these scavengers - but as we learn soon enough, these men are also there to clear up old weapons left behind by some kind of apocalyptic war - robot tanks (a perennial Japanese favorite at least since GiTS) and automated missile launchers. These soldier-scavengers use ingenious small-unit technologies and tactics, illustrated in truly amazing detail and fidelity, to fight heroically against the demons of the old war - but in the end it seems like perhaps it was their presumption of a violent resolution that dooms the mission. This one is philosophically the richest of the pieces, and it's a shame that the point is almost lost in the brilliance of the animation, the solid direction, and the really pretty decent dialog.
• 

  BronzyIsland

  Apr 3, 2022

  its beautiful but i dont understand why the film is on steam but without the game