Anime

[Jade Jaguar]

Having professed in an earlier thread that I don't care for most anime, the local Center For Japanese Film Series that I have attended for many years, and seen great works by Kurosawa, Misoguchi, Ozu, Kobayashi, and others, is putting me to the test. This fall's film series is all anime, some of it pre WW2! I plan on attending most, if not all of them. But, I'd bet that the anime fans here haven't heard or seen many of the films in this series! One from 1943 has Momotaro and his animal friends attacking Pearl Harbor, defended by a bumbling Olive Oyl and Brutus (Bluto)! I guess they were lucky Popeye wasn't there that day.

Well, here's a link to the films in the series. Has anyone seen any of these? Except for Final Fantasy, of course...
http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/events/film03f.html

 

[Lyta]

I am certainly no huge Anime fan but I haven't heard of any of those except for the FF movie. That seems like a strange combination with all those "history of Anime" flicks/movies. It's too bad there isn't any Miyazaki showing ...

 

[Jade Jaguar]

They have shown Miyazaki in the past, Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbor Totoro. Those I liked. The people who pick these films really know their stuff, and it is titled The OTHER Anime, so I expect I will enjoy at least some of them, possibly all. I AM sure they will be interesting.

 

[Jade Jaguar]

Well, Friday's batch of anime shorts was interesting. I liked the 1943 film The Spider and the Tulip best. The spider character was definitely western, kind of a cross between the French Maurice Chevalier, and Al Jolson in black face. The heroine was a very plucky Japanese bee. The animation was sharply detailed, and surreally beautiful, especially the almost abstract storm, and rain on water scenes. In most of the shorts, I could see definite influences from one American animation studio, or another. Most seemed influenced by Fleischer Studios (Betty Boop, Popeye), or Disney. But one was very definitely influenced by director/animator Tex Avery, of Warner Bros, and MGM.

This Friday's film, Band Of Ninja, by Japanese new wave director Oshima sounds promising, I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Lyta]

Cool, they all sounded quite interesting so let us know what you think of the rest.