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Jul. 30th, 2011 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaAKIRA
Genre: Surreal and Psychological
How much seen: the whole thing
What it's about: Hmm. Post-apocalyptic, motor-bikes, mutations...I actually went into watching it with pretty much no knowledge except the above, the knowledge that it was considered a classic, and the warning that it got brutal.
It does. When people get shot, they bleed, and not just a pool of blood underneath a body with no visible wound. I can understand the reason (this isn't a TV show, where things all too often get discreetly toned down: this is a movie), but it does make a difference in the viewer's reaction.
The movie is set 30 years post World War III: Neo-Tokyo has gone past rejuvenation into 'over-ripe,' the main characters are part of a biker gang, and there's a top-secret government experiment that awakens psychic powers, in an effort to re-create the powers that...well, nobody's clear on whether they caused World War III, or were the final blow of World War III. They were definitely responsible for wrecking Old Tokyo. But this time they'll get them right, they swear! The parallels to World War II and the A-bomb are not particularly subtle.
For all that, it's also a very 80s movie - not so much in animation style (it notably avoids the infamous huge-hair style that marks, say, Ranma 1/2) as in the paranoia that another apocalypse is coming, and the conviction that the government won't be able to stop it (or indeed, may be hastening its coming, deliberately or not). The female characters are mostly useless: the only one who isn't just a love interest is Kei, who is competent at her job until the plot needs to show that Kaneda is even more competent, or until they need emotional leverage on Kaneda.
Overall opinion: Actually another one where I could understand how it's a classic. I suspect it helped that I watched it in the Japanese, as I'm told the English dub is truly terrible - but there's a lot more depth to this than just 'shit blows up.' I might doubt why trained soldiers never stopped to think that gee, maybe shooting at a telekinetic isn't the brightest move ever, but for all its implausibilities, big and small, this is the kind of movie that sends a character up into space, and lets us watch him rip apart a satellite in utter silence, without either Star Wars style explosions or the need for the soundtrack to punctuate what we're seeing.
*
Blogging for the Nature Conservancy - if you donate, let me know so I can keep track. Two and a half hours down, twenty one and a half to go. :)
Genre: Surreal and Psychological
How much seen: the whole thing
What it's about: Hmm. Post-apocalyptic, motor-bikes, mutations...I actually went into watching it with pretty much no knowledge except the above, the knowledge that it was considered a classic, and the warning that it got brutal.
It does. When people get shot, they bleed, and not just a pool of blood underneath a body with no visible wound. I can understand the reason (this isn't a TV show, where things all too often get discreetly toned down: this is a movie), but it does make a difference in the viewer's reaction.
The movie is set 30 years post World War III: Neo-Tokyo has gone past rejuvenation into 'over-ripe,' the main characters are part of a biker gang, and there's a top-secret government experiment that awakens psychic powers, in an effort to re-create the powers that...well, nobody's clear on whether they caused World War III, or were the final blow of World War III. They were definitely responsible for wrecking Old Tokyo. But this time they'll get them right, they swear! The parallels to World War II and the A-bomb are not particularly subtle.
For all that, it's also a very 80s movie - not so much in animation style (it notably avoids the infamous huge-hair style that marks, say, Ranma 1/2) as in the paranoia that another apocalypse is coming, and the conviction that the government won't be able to stop it (or indeed, may be hastening its coming, deliberately or not). The female characters are mostly useless: the only one who isn't just a love interest is Kei, who is competent at her job until the plot needs to show that Kaneda is even more competent, or until they need emotional leverage on Kaneda.
Overall opinion: Actually another one where I could understand how it's a classic. I suspect it helped that I watched it in the Japanese, as I'm told the English dub is truly terrible - but there's a lot more depth to this than just 'shit blows up.' I might doubt why trained soldiers never stopped to think that gee, maybe shooting at a telekinetic isn't the brightest move ever, but for all its implausibilities, big and small, this is the kind of movie that sends a character up into space, and lets us watch him rip apart a satellite in utter silence, without either Star Wars style explosions or the need for the soundtrack to punctuate what we're seeing.
*
Blogging for the Nature Conservancy - if you donate, let me know so I can keep track. Two and a half hours down, twenty one and a half to go. :)