I was at Anime Expo 2013 and you get marvelous opportunities to see films…provided you could get in. This one presented itself and the line for it was short, so I grabbed it.

Now, the official title of this is “Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below” (although in some places, it is also known as “Journey to Agartha”. The ORIGINAL title is “Children Who Chase Stars”. For me, this is a sign of trouble. Can you pick a title?) This is brought to you by the same folks who did “5 Centimeters per Second”. This has been out for a while, but is just getting to us here.

Asuna Watase is a girl who is mostly by herself. Dad is dead and mom works long hours as a nurse, so she is left to her own devices. This includes spending a lot of time at her secret cave, listening to whatever radio signals she can get on her cat’s-whisker radio and hears a song she has never encountered before. At school, she hears tales of a bear being seen in the hills where her cave is. Defying the people, as she knows the mountains well, she goes up the hill and sees the ‘bear’, but it is some kind of horrible monster, bent on killing her. (more…)

Usually I get kind of coy in giving reviews, making you read through my whole marvelous article before I finally let you know whether you should watch something or not. I also do not do movie reviews either, so this is a double departure for me. I’ll get straight to the point…..

You should watch “Wolf Children”.

Now, it will be coming out in the theaters, but it is going to be a limited release, which means you will have to do some hunting for it, but it will be in English Dub (although the subtitles were not a problem at all). The only thing wrong with the film is the title, which gives away everything far too soon. It would have been nice to be able to be surprised as to what events were unfolding. I even chose this image over the wallpaper release, as that really spills the beans regarding key plot points. Even something like “Different Children” would have been better as a title. (more…)

Pretty 🙂

Air: An Overview

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Air, it’s the story of a homeless man, Yukito, and his journey as he stops in a quaint little town by the beach. He is searching for the Winged Maiden (sounds so pretty, doesn’t it?), a woman his mother would tell him about as a child who was cursed and bound to the sky. He meets a young girl named Misuzu when stopping in this town, and suddenly everything changes for him. So that’s the basic plot line. Now you don’t have to quickly google it before reading this article.

The Air Anime

Story: The anime first appealed to me because it was short at only 13 episodes and because the artwork is stunning. Where the story is concerned, it’s sloppy and all over the place. The Winged Goddess story line is choppy and poorly explained…well maybe it isn’t but I was just bored by the time they got down to specifics. A huge reason for this is the large and pointless cast of secondary characters who are tolerable at their best and horribly annoying at their worst.

Characters: Misuzu, Haruko (Misuzu’s foster mother), and Yukito are all fairly well-developed characters. The problem is the obnoxious bunch of secondary characters who are supposed to make this a more dramatic show but make it slow and all over the place. Misuzu goes beyond your typical cute girl. (more…)

While Naruto has been the bane of my existence recently (the annoying recap/flashback spanning multiple episodes), if the producers were simply working on this movie then it was definitely all worth it. Naruto movies have always been noted for bring pretty good (can’t say the same about the OVA’s) and this one was no different. This movie revolves around…. Hey! Instead of a boring synopsis, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so heres a video/trailer for ya! (Watch in HQ)

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As you can tell from the Trailer (assuming you watched it) Naruto gets accused of killing multiple people as well as for an assault on the Raikage resulting in him being sent to a shinobi prison. Now if you are an avid naruto fan throughout the the rest of this trailer your thoughts went something like this:

Of course poor goody goody Naruto couldn’t kill anyone so its clear he was framed but why? *pause* :O There seems so be something huge going on here *pause* :O Gamabunta (The Chief toad) was summonned which means there must be a really powerful enemy! *pause* :O Is that Killer Bee! *pause* OMG Sage Mode! *pause* ROARRRRR!!!! THIS IS GONNA BE EPIC! DOWNLOADD!! (or if you’re like me) WHERE CAN I STREAM THIS!!

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:O Is that PIKACHU!!

Here’s another question I often get from other bloggers as well as a few acquaintances, “What made you like anime?”. And while I could go on about how anime has a greater ability to captivate and excite the viewer than ordinary shows/cartoons my answer is quite simple, Hayao Miyazaki. For those who have never heard of him before, he is the guy behind Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, My neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howls Moving Castle among other works, all being brilliant anime masterpieces. When it comes to anime, this is the guy with the Midas Touch (everything he touches turns to gold). Now let’s get back to the question at hand, the first anime I had ever seen was Princess Mononoke, while flicking through channels (a very long time ago) I came across it and being used to the average run of the mill cartoons at the time I was hooked. The rush of emotion ranging from joy, sadness and anticipation had me enthralled from start to finish and from that moment I knew I had to find more movies like that, and so began my search that lead me to be the anime enthusiast I am today (Quite a long into huh?).

While I intend to review all Miyazaki’s movies, for today our target is Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic era where Industrial civilization has been destroyed by nature. And by nature I mean huge indestructible bugs pissed at humans after years of waging war and destroying the planet. And after those bugs are done wreaking havoc they simply lay there, die of exhaustion and from their body grows forth a forest, toxic to humans and practically every other animal that isn’t a “toxic-forest” insect. The remaining humans, slowly being wiped out by said forest gather in small communities, surviving by farming and possessing a mixture of ancient and modern technology. (more…)

Okay, so to start off here is my disclaimer. I’m not exactly the best out there at neither rating shows nor have I seen every anime movie out there (reason why I called it Façades to 10 anime list and not just ’The Top 10….”). What I have here is my personal list, if you disagree, leave a comment also if there’s a great movie that isn’t there please give your recommendation, I possibly just haven’t seen it and hey I’m always interested in looking at new shows J. Another note, this list consists of Anime Movies and not OVA’s so more than likely, if there is a corresponding series for a movie, it will not be considered. Okay enough stalling, here we go! (more…)

Perfection is the only word that comes to mind when I try to describe this movie, while it itself is relatively old (1998) the years have done nothing to diminish from the luster it presents. Although I have been hearing about it for many years now, I personally only saw it recently and I believe that would be a result of my first impression being that is was somewhat childlike and boring (probably due to seeing the big walking chicken feet castle in the trailer). I finally decided to watch it (had nothing left on my pc I had not seen) and to my pleasant surprise it is now hands down my favorite animated film, replacing Princess Mononoke for the number one spot, both directed by the prominent filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.

The movie is set in a pre World War I setting where magic and sorcery is incorporated in everyday life and revolves around a young 18 year old girl called Sophie who was transformed into a 90 year old lady due to a witches curse. Sophie ventures out in attempt to find someone to undo the curse and encounters a magic scarecrow who leads her to meet Howl, an extraordinarily powerful but infamous wizard who was rumored to eat the hearts of beautiful women, Calcifer, a powerful fire demon who powers the Castle and enables it to move and Markl, the young apprentice of who often creates potions and spells for Howls customers. (more…)

It seems that recently my ISP has taken a sudden dislike in me because they decided to be all slow and buggy and i am at the point where i can no longer stream my anime updates but i must download (via torrent or whatnot), sigh i need to remember to go to the main office and go all “Gear Second” on them (once piece fans know what im talking about ><. Well for now i’m taking this opportunity to watch various anime movies 😎 .  Ah yes, so a few days ago I had the pleasure of watching the anime ‘Sword of the Stranger‘ and what a show that was, being a single standalone movie (as in no, there isn’t a series) i honestly didn’t expect that much from it (as they tend to often lack character development and seem rushed) but i was never happier to be wrong. In fact i can that was the best full length anime movie ive seen since Princess Mononoke.

Okay, so when i initially pressed that Play Button the first thing i noticed was that the animation quality was remarkable, i actually stopped watching and looked up the year it was created, 2007 Awesome! It itself being one of the best years for anime (more…)