I’ve been thinking about anime lately, and what makes it so special. And what I’ve decided is this: anime gets away with showing us stuff that live action could never get away with. I was watching the series “Now and Then, Here and There” a while back. The star is a young boy who, at times, gets beaten horribly. A young girl gets raped several times and finally murders her attacker. In “Grave of the Fireflies” [SPOILER INCOMING] we watch a very young girl slowly, painfully, starve to death while her older brother does everything he can think of to prevent it. When we see him put her in a coffin and light the pyre…man, its devastating.

Live action could show this stuff, but not so bluntly. And in having to soften it, the imagery loses some of the impact. So that’s part of it of what makes it special. It pulls certain subject matter out of the realm of taboo. But that’s not all…

At the same time anime is showing you these horiffic visuals…they are animated, and that triggers some kind of release in the brain. When Shu is getting horribly beaten by King Mondo, his neck actually stretches, cartoon style, as his head snaps back and forth. Now don’t misunderstand…this doesn’t make the scene funny. Instead, it both intensifies the action and makes it less real at the same time. And I really think that ‘less real’ bit gives us a mental escape valve.

For me anyway, this lets me walk away from “Now and Then…” thinking about the story, but not…scarred. I mean, seeing that kind of violence done to a young boy in live action would just be horrific. I’d feel guilty about watching it as ‘entertainment’ and just deeply disturbed by seeing it at all. That lizard part of my brain the doesn’t understand the difference between fact and fiction would just curl up into a ball.

Contrast “Now and Then…” with “Grave,” which never used any cartoon exaggeration of any sort. Days later, I’m still thinking about the movie and choking up. Since the misery here isn’t due, directly, to violence, the filmmaker didn’t feel the need to give us that kind of escape, I suppose. You won’t wake up screaming from a nightmare after seeing “Grave” and you might have if you saw a version of “Now and Then” where the violence hadn’t been ‘cartoonized’ a little.

Oh, and by the way, if you don’t watch anime, please don’t take this little brain-dump of mine out of context. Yes, there are scenes of great violence and sadness in anime, but there are also scenes of great happiness and love. It’s a medium of extreme emotions, I suppose. But no one needs an escape from too much happiness.

I’d heard about this anime movie for a long time and tonight, I finally watched it. Whew. If you’re someone who thinks that anime is all about giant robots and is just for kids, Grave of the Fireflies will set you straight.

It’s the story of a boy and his young sister struggling to get by in Japan in the waning days of World War II. Their mother has been killed in an air raid and, well, the world is a hard place for them. Everyone is hungry, most of all two children out on their own.

Make no mistake, its a powerful, sad movie. And very much worth watching.

I’ve got a new guilty pleasure that I want to share with you all. TechTV is not showing “Robot Wars”, which is the original British version of what was copied and aired as BattleBots on Comedy Central in the US.

Except…it’s much better! I can put my finger on it, really. The host if Craig Charles, who was Lister on Red Dwarf. The “robots” are really remote controlled vehicles, as was the case with BattleBots. But…I guess they just take it more seriously on this show. YOU don’t have to, but they do. Sorta like, and I cringe to make this association, but sort of like WWF.

What gets fascinating, though, is the emergence of robot themes as things go on. First they were all about buzz saws and hammers, then came the flippers, which just slide an arm under their opponent and flip ’em on their backs. To combat the flippers, bots were built with lower and lower ground clearance, but the flippers just got lower and lower. Then came bots that had no ‘top’ so if they got flipped, they land on a second set of wheels and keep going. And so on.

What I’m amazed at is I find myself really rooting for one team in a good match. Seeing two ‘bots circling each other, trying to get in a killer move, starts to get really engrossing.

FWIW, I thought Battle Bots was just silly. But Robot Wars is actually pretty interesting. Check it out.

Got my first shipment from NetFlix yesterday. Nice to know it takes 1 day to get the films! The packaging is alarmingly flimsy (just a paper envelope) and disks themselves were very scuffed up, but the one I watched (Tomb Raider…which turned out to be a reasonably fun ‘turn off your brain and watch the imagery’ flick) worked fine. I sent it back today, so now its a matter of seeing how fast their turn-around time is. I’m thinking, though, that they’re going to be able to feed me movies a lot faster than I can devour them. So, all in all, pretty pleased so far.

Normally I’m one to hold a grudge forever, but just this once I’ve decided to put the past behind me. I detested NetFlix for a LONG time because of their very intrusive pop-up ads (they’d open a full-screen sized browser window to spam you with their ad) and never wanted to support them.

But after trying out the game rental place I saw how cool and convenient this system could be. I checked with a co-worker who has only good things to say about the service, and the last straw was seeing that they have a decent amount of anime.

So I signed up. It’s $20/month and you can have 3 discs out at a time. Keep them for a day or forever, as long as you’re paying that $20. My first 3 discs should ship to me today. I’ll let you know how well the service works. I do already have one gripe, though. When they say 3 discs, them mean 3 discs. So if there’s a special edition of a movie with a bonus disc of material, you have to order the bonus disc separately.

Went to see the new X-Men movie last night. Some nice eye-candy, but unless you’re a special effects fan, definitely NOT worth the cost of admission. Go see it at a matinee or wait to see it on DVD.

It was all so sloppy. Granted this is a comic book license, but when you transition to live action you have to make it somewhat believable. Stuff like people running around in a frigid arctic setting and showing no signs of cold. You don’t see their breath, they don’t ‘act’ cold. Um, jets winding in and out of tornadoes like they have the turn radius of a Volkswagon Bug. The whole movie just screamed “Filmed on a sound stage!”

I must say that Nightcrawler almost makes the whole thing worth seeing, though. He is both a neat character and has some very cool fx. But between the sloppy filmography and the gaping holes in the story (which I won’t go into for spoiler reasons), it just isn’t worth paying $10 to see.

Just heard about this new(?) show on PBS, Warrior Challenge. It’s a mix of documentary and ‘reality show’ *cringe* that puts current day warriors (mostly from the armed forces) in the shoes of gladiators, romans, vikings, and the like. Haven’t seen it yet, so no idea if its any good, but it sounds kind of interesting.

I watched Spirited Away and ever since I’ve been wanting to do a blog entry about it but I just freeze up whenever I try. I’m not good at ‘reviewing’ films and I’m scared to death I won’t do the film justice. Because this is a wonderful movie that will appeal to all dreamers, be they young or old.

Spirited Away is directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who also did the fabulous Princess Mononoke as well as Kiki’s Delivery Service, among many others. Some of the richly organic imagery that made Mononoke “pop” is also in Spirited, but this later film is much safer viewing for American audiences. Disney imported it, but happily they didn’t destroy it in the process.

Anyway, its the story of a little girl who gets caught up in a world of spirits, trying to save her mother and father. She grows remarkably in a few short days as she struggles to come to terms with this strange world, and in so doing she changes the world around her as well. There are some eerie moments that will probably give the little ones a good fright, some wonderfully “EWWWW!” moments, and some real “all choked up” spots as well. And at the end of the ride, you’ll be left pondering what just happened. If you’re new to anime this may seem strange…unlike Hollywood films, anime often opts not to tie up all the loose ends, leaving you both entertained and stimulated.

Bottom line: this is a wonderful movie. Watch it.

Have I rambled about The Dead Zone yet? If not, I’ve done this show a great disservice. It’s on USA on Sunday nights at 10 pm et, currently. USA has a pretty nice website for it complete with the kind of ‘extras’ you’d get on a DVD. Very cool concept.

The show itself is based on the Stephen King book of the same name. The first few episodes followed the book pretty closely, and then things diverged. The protagonist is a guy that was in a coma for 6 years, and when he comes out, he has visions of people’s past and futures. It’s a concept that they could easily go cheese with, but they don’t…they keep it rather understated, really. The episode I watched tonight, Zion, was a kind of “It’s a Wonderful Life” kind of treatment that actually followed the book more closely than the series has done. Kinda clever, showing us both paths this way. Another episode put the protagonist in a place where he felt he had to choose between the lives of two of his friends. The episode title was Playing God and, well, it didn’t turn out like it would’ve on most TV shows.

Really a first rate show, and sadly not widely watched, at least among people I know. Do yourself a favor and Tivo a couple of eps. It’ll take 2-3 to get a feel of who is who since you haven’t seen it from the start, but its time well spent, trust me.

Disclaimer: I’m a newbie when it comes to anime, so all you old hands can snort all you want.

I just saw “Perfect Blue,” a complete anime movie (in contrast to so much anime that is episodic in nature) by Satoshi Kon, based on a book by Yoshikazu Takeuchi.

For anyone who thinks Anime is all about giant robots and blue-haired sci-fi girls, Perfect Blue will change your mind.

It’s about Mima, a young girl who is part of a pop band, and decides to leave it to become an actress. Some of her fans aren’t happy with her decision, and eventually she stumbles upon a website, “Mima’s Room” which is like a diary of everything she did and everywhere she went. Except that she isn’t writing it. Or is she? She keeps having halucinations whereupon her old, pop-star self pops up and starts scolding her for leaving her former life.

When the show she is filming has her in a rape scene, things get ugly as her alter ego becomes somewhat enraged at her ‘filthy’ behavior. Soon after, the bodies start showing up…

Creepy stuff, with an ending that took me totally by surprise. Well worth watching, imo.

Again, not for the kids though. The rape scene, even though it is a scene being filmed, is still very much mature content.