The animated films thread
A thread for, what else, animated films! Which ones do you love? Which ones do you hate? Which ones gave you nightmares and caused long-lasting damage to your mind?
I'll go for the broadest definition of "animated" here. From the traditional animation of Disney's Fantasia to cutout animated documentary Waltz with Bashir to the stop-motion weirdness of Švankmajer's Alice.
I'll go for the broadest definition of "animated" here. From the traditional animation of Disney's Fantasia to cutout animated documentary Waltz with Bashir to the stop-motion weirdness of Švankmajer's Alice.
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Which ones do you hate? Which ones gave you nightmares and caused long-lasting damage to your mind?
Grave of the Fireflies
Waltz with Bashir comes pretty close to Grave of the fireflies, though I still like to watch it now and then. Those two are the best movies I've ever seen about war and its consequences.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083951/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Ya, it's cheesey as all hell, and the main character's voiced by John Ritter, but interesting because they actually try to offer some grounded scientific basis for dragons, their behavior, flight/fire breathing and so on. The animation's similar to the old Hobbit cartoon, so not bad for 1982.
I'll second Fantasia, and also give a shout out to the original Disney Alice In Wonderland. Also, if you've never seen Destino, the Salvador Dali inspired Disney short film, you owe it to your self, it's very pretty animation.
Paprika's another super trippy one, "It's like computer graphics!" The whole dream hopping thing with the barrier between the real world and the dream world breaking down.
I think there was a time in my life when the scariest things in the world to me were the rats from Nimh and Large Marge from Peewee's Big Adventure.
I do have this strange love for really trippy and/or dark animated films. Like the classic Akira, which is also beautifully animated. Or Felidae, if you feel like you need more crime horror films with self-torturing cat sects in your life.
* Record of Lodoss War
* Legend of Crystania (and LoC: The Chaos Ring)
* Rune Soldier
* Akira
* Ghost in the Shell
* Bastard!
* Pokemon (yup, a thirty-years-old Navy soldier badass likes to watch it until today)
Lodoss war was so hit and miss, especially when you get into the second season. They retconned like half the first season. The whole story arc with the black knight forming his own party and recruiting the war priest was awesome. Unfortunately, just when the main character, Parn stops being a whiny wuss and starts to grow up, they jump forward to a new group led by an even whinier wuss. Then there's the Lodoss Island segments... Still worth watching if you're a fan of fantasy.
The first is the dark horse of the animated films. It is hugely unapprecaited and not really well known, but the story and characters are good. Also, the setting is very interesting.
"Wolf Children" despite strange premise is a really beautiful film about hardships of motherhood and the development of the titular children. I hugely appreciate it, because I'm not fan of films like this, usually, but this one is an exception to that.
And "The Place Promised in Our Early Days" is interesting, yet strange film. It is also kind of an animaiton you (probably) want to watch at least twice. Don't know about the others, but I find something new (and undestand more) afer each viewing.
I adore nearly all of the Disney and Dreamworks films, and the two Lego films are my latest favorites just because they come with a surprising amount of heart. And Lego Batman is so quotable. XD
Higurashi is some seriously dark stuff. It starts out with one of the main characters beating 2 of the others to death with a baseball bat, and then flashes back to cutesy anime and that character moving to this small Japanese village in the early 80s. It's a series of contrasts. There's this crazy time loop going on, as well, so after a 4 episode arc, it'll reset and things will play out entirely different, but somebody else will go crazy and murder everyone. Then they eventually get to answer arcs, where they'll do a few episodes from a previous time loop, but show it from a completely different perspective and blow your mind. It's super creepy, because it makes you sympathize with serial killers, and understand how they did all that they could and felt like they were backed into a corner. It's very much psychological thriller/horror.
Baccano is an anime about 20s gangsters with some black magic immortality thrown in. Since it's American 1920s, It's one of the few animes I'd say you should watch the dubbed version, not too mention the voice acting is actually well done in the dubs. The first episode's a little tough, since it mainly focuses on the comic relief characters, but there's a huge cast of characters, all well developed over the story. There's also 2 different time periods everything is happening in, an arc explaining how all the black magic immortal stuff got into 20s gangsters, and another with a couple factions murdering their way through a train, with a horror angle since there's a crazy monster murdering them both. I love that the magic in it is has a dark subtlety to it. Nobody throws fireballs or anything like that.
I could go on and on about cartoons and would probably name like half of adult swim's stuff, as well as the 90s stuff that led to it, like Duckman and Dr. Katz. To this day, when I get a text message, it's Duckman yelling "What the hell are you staring at?!"
JoJo's Bizarre adventure is kind of my perfect show. It dabbles in basically everything. Starting as a period drama, moving into gothic horror, and then an Indiana Jones style adventure, etc. Its a multi-generational story with an absolutely massive cast of characters that rotate out depending on time period/location. Its a bizarre yet fascinating blend of action, melodrama, comedy, horror, and just straight up WEIRD. Its one of the most creative works I have ever experienced and the long waits between releases is straight up torture.
My second favorite is much more standard: YuYu Hakusho. It doesn't do anything really fancy, but what it does, it does to perfection. It follows a lot of the standard action anime tropes, but does them so well, while also playing with them and subverting a few as the series goes on. It has good action, but isn't afraid to take the time to develop its characters when needed. This is what I think is its strongest point. Every single main character and most of the supporting ones, even several villains, has a very clear and believable character arc.
I think it goes without saying, but the Bones stuff is awesome, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and most recently Space Dandy. Space Dandy had my dying of laughter a few times, especially the clone episode, "Hello, Sexy!" I normally say that nobody has anything unique to say about zombies and world war 2, but I gotta admit, the zombie episode was brilliant, it seems like a trope for the first half then throws a hilarious twist on it.
How about this, my favorite web series, Dr Tran. (probably nsfw so won't link to it). You can find it all on youtube. As an "actual asian male", I about died of laughter watching it the first time. I've got a Dr. Tran button on my bag, and had somebody stop me on the street the other day, because of it.
Another that I like in the category "dark and weird" is the Russian short film The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, based on the short story by Dostoyevsky. They've used paint-on-glass animation! Isn't that just awesome?
My girlfriend is a huge weeaboo. She hates it when I call her that, but it's the truth. I don't mean it as an insult, it's just part of her personality. Me? My knowledge of Anime was pretty much zero, apart from a couple series and movies... Evangelion and Dragon Ball will always have a very special place in my heart, and the studio ghibli movies are, for the most part, nothing short of art pure and simple.
Very recently we watched a couple movies together, and the reason I told you this "story" like this is so you can all understand that what I'm about to say isn't coming from someone who usually loves anime, but quite the opposite in fact.
These two movies right here.
Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice)
Kimi no Na wa (Your Name)
These two damn movies are, quite honestly, life changing.
Please watch them.
And, just to finish up this story, I've actually started paying more attention to anime since watching those two movies. I now have a somewhat decent watched-list of animes, mostly of the Mecha and Cyberpunk kind (which is something I already loved before). I'd even go so far as to call myself an anime fan. Go figure, eh?
A Country Doctor - it's the only good film adaptation of Franz Kafka's work that I've seen.
Feelings of Mountain and Water - basically a chinese ink painting with motion and a story
As far as series goes, my favorite has to be Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (even if it is entry-level) just because no other anime has ever replicated the same feeling of hype and hope that I got from watching it. It took like 2 years for this Spiral Power induced high to finally cool off!
Gen Urobuchi also wrote Saya No Uta which is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most intense and disturbing visual novels ever written.
When I was first diagnosed with severe mental illness someone suggested it to me and I can attest it perfectly captures what it feels like to descend into madness. The impotence of doctors and psychiatrists. The feeling of isolation from society. Of being trapped in your own horrifying rendition of reality to which others can't even begin to understand.
Urobuchi's work really prepared me for surviving a life of mental illness. My fears and anxieties were made manifest on screen. My struggle was acknowledged and I was presented with a version of events so horrifying that no matter how bad things got I could be thankful that they were not much... much worse.
I'm not even sure I could say I enjoy his work. But I have certainly been profoundly touched by it.
As for animation.
I am currently digging on Claymore.
It came out in 2007 but I only discovered it last year thanks to Hulu's deals with Funimation. I have enjoyed the anime so much I plunked down the cash to get the 27 book boxset and the bluray today.
Claymore is essentially a gender reversed Berserk with fantastic characterization and a heavy existentialist focus on what it means to be human and the trappings of prejudice within our society. It hits its story beats well and does an amazing job of making you care for it's main characters and their struggle while placing them in horrifying circumstance at every available opportunity.
Absolutely. It's also one of the best tragic love stories I've seen/read so far.
I have somewhat mixed feeling about this, it was the first anime I distinctly didn't get into, but then I accidentally stumbled upon it on Youtube last summer and somehow it pulled me in this time. Maybe growing older by a decade had something to do with that? Who knows.
When I found Claymore I was looking for body horror with a decent plot and it hit both of those requirements so it was a lot easier to loose myself in it and then be deeply saddened at the lack of an ending the anime suffered.
But I can see it very much not being that thing someone wants to watch at the given moment. You really have to be in the right mood and mindset otherwise Claymore could easily come off as melodramatic and
a bit slow.