Masterpiece
Jin Roh - The Wolf Brigade was stunning animation experience. The movie tells story of Fuse, a traumatized member of elite para-military police. One day when chasing dangerous rebels, he encounters a young girl, a courier of the rebels. He fails to shoot her and she commits suicide in front of him, detonating the bomb she was supposed to deliver.Failing to execute his orders and allowing the bomb to go off, Fuse loses his job in elite force and has to go back to training. Soon, he meets her sister who looks just like her and falls for her. But everything isn't what it seems.
Some say that old fashion animations like these isn't so cool because it isn't cutting edge 3-D and all. But myself I prefer this kind of human touch. And what Jin Roh loses in the cutting-edge visual effects, it gets back thousand times in spirit of the hand drawn, carefully considered compositions and characters that feel real.
This movie really moved me because of the characters and the story was mature and serious. Mamoru Oshii writes with his typical slow fashion. Fuse is a loner, a hero that world seems to have forgotten. There is utter detachment about the characters, all of them have their own reasons for their decisions in life. And nobody is innocent.
You get the sense that you are enjoying a well written novel. This isn't entertainment, but purely well written and directed art. There is sense of profoundness which is rare in any anime of movie production. I was really surprised that I can still get so excited about a movie this much!
The poetic referrals to the story of Little Red Riding Hood was brilliant idea, and made the story to touch everyone. I just couldn't stop tears when watching the beautiful animation.
Maybe I'm old fashioned and I can't get so excited about the computer generated animation films. I think Disney's Cars was nice, and Incredibles wasn't a bad film. But I can't get past the feeling that they are more or less just entertainment. I can't simply compare them to Mamoru Oshii's films, like Ghost in The Shell, Patlabor or Avalon.
The Osaka director Hiroyuki Okiura truly did his job well with Jin Roh. He also directed Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis (Which did indeed introduce some cool 3D) and Ghost in the Shell 2. His latest film is Innocence (2004). I truly hope to see more collaborations with him and Mamoru Oshii.
I was also very impressed with JIN-ROH, one of the first anime films that I saw after AKIRA. I was interested in the mature storyline and subtle references (to Red Riding Hood). The end of the film was inevitable but still very shocking.
But I had a problem understanding what was going on in RED SPECTACLES. I was confused who the characters were, and how it all related to JIN-ROH.
My current favourite anime film is still INNOCENCE. I’m angry it hasn’t been hailed as a masterpiece in more places. It’s so richly detailed and intricately plotted, I can easily watch it repeatedly,
I’m very pleased to find someone blogging in English about Japanese TV and cinema. There are very few websites about Japanese cinema in English or Japanese that I can find. I spend a lot of time trying to find information about new releases, or how to find older Japanese films. If you look at my website, you can see I’m trying to understand certain popular characters like KINDAICHI and GEGEGE NO KITAROU, and have talked about what I’ve found, to try and encourage them to be discovered by a new audience in the west.
Mark Hodgson (Email) (URL) - 04 07 07 - 02:28