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Overview: Cybercity, directed by the same guy who did the Marathon sequence in the Animatrix, is a pretty fun, but dated cyberpunk anime from 1990 that centers on 3 ultra-tough criminals who agree help the police kill the bad guys. They get these explosive collars installed (see above) and are given time limits for each mission - if they exceed the time limit - BOOM! There goes their head!

There are three stories on the DVD that I have - each centering on one of the three heroes. The stories aren’t that bad, and some of the animation is fairly decent considering the time. LOTS of shots have the US 80s cartoon look, but every now and then, you find some pretty cool cyberpunk visuals thrown in the mix. Here’s a sampling of some of the better visuals:

 

 

 

 

 

The Bottom Line: Again, nothing spectacularly breathtaking from either a visual, story, or philosophical standpoint, but this is clearly a decent low-budget attempt. Give it a try if you’ve got nothing better to watch. By the way, if someone knows where I can get the rest of the shows (assuming there were any), please let me know, as I’ve only seen the first three.

 

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Overview: More often than not, most of the best scifi movies are coming from other countries. Anime is no exception. Wonderful Days (Called Sky Blue in some US locations) is a visual masterpiece of 2D/3D blended animation. While movies like Sinbad, with its wonderful background, but completely stuck on 2D characters shows us the low-end of this spectrum, Wonderful Days is a terrific example of the best in 2D/3D blended animation. This futuristic cyberpunk tale is not the most original, but is done more than well enough to allow to you be totally “wowed” by the visuals and incredible 3D positional sound.

 

Wonderful Days takes place in a dystopic future in the year 2140. The world has been decimated and ravaged by war, reckless exploitation of the earth and over-pollution. Clouds have all but blocked out the sun and human civilization is on the brink of elimination. In this chaos, a group of elites have developed a method of using the pollution to create an energy source, and have used this to build a magnificent city called Ecoban.

 

Thousands of Refugees have flocked to the Marr, the outskirt wasteland of this Ecoban in the hopes of gaining entrance, but unfortunately this has become a society of the elite and the masses. Instead, the citizens of Ecoban use the Marr as their personal slave labor to work the machines which keep Ecoban running. Life is cheap for the Marr, and the Ecoban elite care far more about their power generation than they do the welfare of the Marr. Unfortunately for the citizens of Ecoban, it appears as if the earth is starting to recover, and the level of pollution is dropping. The governing council has decided to use any means possible to maintain pollution levels to keep their hold on power.

 

On a more personal level, this story revolves around three people, who knew each other as children living in Ecoban, but are now adults.

• Jay - a cute female captain of the Ecoban guard, who has begun to
  doubt the system she supports.
• Shua - who was cast out of Ecoban as a child under dubious circumstances, only wants to show his adopted kid brother of the streets, Woody, what a blue sky looks like. He saw this once as a child with Jay, and has spent his life trying to overthrow Ecoban in order to see it again.
• Cade - the security commander of Ecoban, who is deeply in love
  with Jay.

 

 

Shua, with the help of a aging Ecoban Engineer-turned resistance leader named Dr. Noah, who was involved in the creation of Ecoban’s power source, has infiltrated Ecoban’s key computer, the Delos System. There he hopes to get information to learn how to destabilize and destroy Ecoban. Unfortunately, he sets off alarms, and is forced to escape, and ends up facing off against his former best friend Jay. After he escapes, Jay seeks him out in the Marr, and they eventually re-establish their friendship, and eventually their love for one another. Meanwhile, Cade, with the help of the Malevolent Commander Locke will stop at nothing to protect the city he loves. When he finds out that his former rival Shua is involved, and that he is re-established contact with Jay, he only has one course to pursue - the total destruction of Shua and the resistance.

 

The Cinematography:While the story is by no means original, the cinematography is simply stunning on every level. Wonderful Days uses real film-like effects to increase the “realness,” believability and engagement far more than any animation I’ve seen. We get everything from the use of out of focus backgrounds, changing focal points, lens flares, jerky camera movements, and incredibly interesting perspective shots. On top of this, we get wonderfully rendered raindrops, rendered under-water explosions intermixed with hand drawn fire, and the most incredible array of deep and vibrant color effects in virtually every scene.

 

And while all this is astounding, what truly blows you away is the quality of the intermixing of 2D and 3D animation. Its almost hard to explain how well the 2D animation is blended, especially if you’ve seen something like Sinbad, which almost just layers the 2D on top of a background like velcro puppets on a background. Here we get blended effects that truly serve to tie the 2D with the 3D animation. Wonderful Days is simply the best out there at this type of animation.

 

Sound Effects: While the cinematography is the real crown of this movie, the sound effects aren’t far behind. Truly, this is the best use of positional surround sound I’ve heard in an anime. We have wonderful “swoop” sounds by the motorcycles that are as good as live action racing movies, realistic explosions complete with pieces flying at you, detailed gunfire and wind sounds, and more importantly, a clear level of care throughout that rarely is equaled. As an interesting effect, the selections in the score are almost disconcerting in how different they are. We have everything from rock music to a wonderful use of opera at the end for emotional building.

 

Is this Cyberpunk? You bet it is. While we don’t have the traditional merging of man and technology, all the other elements are here in spades. We get a glorious depiction of a the seedy underground, the powerful elite, impressive hacking, a wonderfully rendered dystopia, flawed heroes, and most importantly - style in abundant quantities!

]

 

The Bottom Line: If you’re interested in seeing the best in immersive scifi anime, Wonderful Days is a fine choice. While it doesn’t have close to the philosophical depth of Oshii’s movies, the story moves along and the immersive action is simply breathtaking. You truly do think you’re watching a continual piece of art go across the screen. And again, while the story is neither complex nor innovative, it is decently well done, especially if you dig cyberpunk-type themes. However, the quality of the cinematography and the intense care given to this film easily raises Wonderful Days up one of my favorite all-time cyberpunk movies.

Get this for the visuals and overall cyberpunk style. Wonderful Days truly deserves to be seen by all.

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Overview: Many consider Akira to be the start of modern Japanese anime. In comparing Akira with Appleseed (also from 1988), I tend to agree. Appleseed represents high quality earlier anime, whereas Akira is truly something different both in tone and style. Akira definitely strays to the “punk” side of cyberpunk, but has full clashes with the corporate control element and technology run amok.

 

Akira’s story centers around Tetsuo, a member of a biker gang in the year 2019. Along come a group of military scientist types who look to stretch the boundaries of human capability by engaging tetsuo in experiments. Unfortunately for them, the experiments prove far too successful to the point that the develop an all-powerful monster that rages out of control.

 

The Bottom Line: Akira has terrific adult visuals and a great sound track. As a personal preference though, I wasn’t as thrilled with the later half of the movie. Some love it, I didn’t nearly as much. There seems to be a debate where people either love this or Ghost in the Shell (guess which one I love?). It almost seemed DragonballZ-like, but again, this is also personal preference. Regardless, Akira is a true giant of anime and should be considered required watching for anyone who wants to learn more about cyberpunk or anime.

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Overview: Written by one of the most prolific anime writers, Chiaki Konaka (Who also wrote Lain, Malice@Doll, Hellsing, Bubblegum Crises, etc.), Technolyze is a virtual feast of visuals wrapped up in a Lain-style fragmented cyberpunk gangster story. Like Lain, the beginning is almost non-sensical, but creates the foundation for the mood of the rest of the story.

Texhnolyze is the name for the technology to make fully integrated cybernetic limbs like those above. The story follows Ichise, a former down-and-out boxer living in Luckass, a truly disturbed city with the elite rich side and the poor slums. Ichise inadvertently crosses the local mafia (called the Organo), and ends up getting an arm and leg chopped off. But luck would have it that he’s a perfect candidate for a hot chick Texhnolyze’s doctor’s experiments in the latest Texhnolyze research. Ichise carries around a capsule containing his dead mother’s body cells, which the doctor integrates into the limbs. Ichise spends many episodes figuring out how to get revenge for how he changed, but based on discussions with a girl who can see the future, his motivations change as the series moves forward.

This is NOT a kids story. Every episode has LOTS of gangster-like killings. We get lots of guns and a few cool sword fights. We also get some nice Texhnolyze deaths with fists going through faces. Truly, this might be described as Goodfellas meets Serial Experiments Lain. And while I haven’t gotten the last DVD set, I’m guessing this is is NOT going to be an uplifting story.

The Visuals: Unlike Lain, Texhnolyze is as Neo-noir as they come. The use of shadows is amazing. We get lots of stark white on blacks, interesting gray patterns, and lots of yellows and browns. Also, virtually every character is flawed and mysterious. While the anime is truly riveting, you won’t find yourself becoming attached to anyone. The characters simply aren’t sympathetic.

Texhnolyze is a virtual feast of visual textures and palettes. Whenever you look through a texhnolyzed person’s eyes in first person, you see almost a terminator-like display, only the screen is filled with noise. We also get the most incredibly detailed background sets. Truly, you feel like you know this city after watching a few DVDs worth of this. We also get great camera angles, with sweeping shots, extreme close-ups intermixed with psychedelic-like image merges. Top this with a terrific score and wonderful surround sound, and the WOW effect hits you in total.

The Bottom Line: Truly, its clear that the creators of Texhnolyze wanted to make something as overtly cyberpunk as possible. They truly have succeeded. Texhnolyze is not for everyone, as the story is violent, obscure, and cold. It is however, a truly awesome and totally original cyberpunk series!

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Overview: If you haven’t figured out by now that I have a soft spot for surrealist cyberpunk films, you will after this review. Malice doll is a terrific low-budget surrealist cyberpunk anime that takes place in an unspecified future, after all of mankind has been eradicated. This surrealist cyberpunk version of a pinocchio story focuses on a group of sex andriods called dolls (not unlike GITS2) living in their whore house who now simply drift through existence without any purpose. One Doll, Mallice, while exploring, encounters this strange tentacled beast who “rapes” her with about 40 tentacles (while one goes between her legs, the rest rip into her pretty much everywhere - this isn’t meant as an erotic scene, at least I don’t think so) and ends up transforming Mallice into a human. Malice then shares her “gift” by kissing all the other dolls and robots.

Malice@Doll is a very deep movie and traces some rather interesting notions. For instance, It challenges the notion that a doll made in man’s image, if given the chance, would choose to become a living organism that looked human - maybe they would choose something completely and utterly different. Simultaneasly, this anime also asks if you would be how you really see yourself, what would you really look like?

Malice@Doll virtually disappeared almost as soon as it opened for a couple of reasons. First off, it came right on the heels of Final Fantasy, a blockbuster anime. While its wonderfully shot, the animation quality simply doesn’t compare with the high budget 3D movies. Also, Malice@Doll is another one of those films that’s simply too wierd for most people, and ends up being categorized as everything from Hentai on down. Truly, this anime is two scenes removed from being a PG anime, and certainly wouldn’t qualify for anything past R. I happen to love it LOTS more than Final Fantasy though.

The DVD Extras: Another reason you want to buy this DVD is for its terrific extras. These include a college film class presentation on digital animation from Jonathan Clements - Co-Author of the Anime Encyclopedia. This is flat out terrific. In addition to tracing the change in Japan from cell animation to 3D animation (and the effects this had on the industry), Clements shows how Malice@Doll is one of those films that actually uses story elements to turn its technical weaknesses into strengths.

For instance, although their capalities for doing high quality stills are there, Motonaga didn’t have the equipment to do fluid movement. He solved this with a “story” solution - he made the movie about android dolls, who are SUPPOSED to be jerky in their movements. For the “human” scenes, they used cell animation as highlights - this makes for a striking difference in the animation (See shot above).

The Bottom Line: Truly, aside from the surrealist story, the reason to watch this is for the visuals. A lot of the visuals in Malice@Doll almost remind you of a Salvador Dali painting. The diversity is such that I could have taken about 40 completely different screencaps here. BTW, while Amazon sells this for 22 bucks, Deepdiscountdvd sells it for $14.

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Overview: If you’re looking for the best instance of awesome 2D-3D anime with an incredible philosophically laden story, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence is the hands down winner. While I still like Wonderful Days more on pure cinematography, it doesn’t hold a candle on either the story or the philosophy. Oshii is truly a master at providing an incredibly intricate, fully researched message about the direction of humanity in a wonderful anime package. Make no mistake - Oshii is fully up on co-evolution theory (the co-evolution of man and his tools) and has something very interesting to add to the discussion. And while it has all of this, GITS:2 does suffer overtly and purposefully from the absence of its star character - Motoko.

Major Motoko, the main character from the first Ghost in the Shell movie (which might still make an appearance here…) is no longer here, and the rest of the cast has to pick up the pieces and move on. Bateau (Ôtsuk), major motoko’s partner from the first movie, and a cyborg detective for the anti-terrorist unit Public Security Section 9, investigates the case of a female robot - one created solely for sexual pleasure - who slaughtered her owner. Togusa, the mostly human detective that Motoko found in Ghost 1 is assigned as Bateau’s partner. The plot thickens as the movie progresses, and the two are sent to a number of incredibly cyberpunk looking locations to uncover the truth.

Overall, this movie has the feeling of a cast trying to cope when the major star has left. Similar to the Borg Encounter when Picard is removed, or maybe some of the first star trek series when Captain Kirk is lost somewhere doing green chicks, Motoko’s disappearance dominates a most of the back story. We get to see almost a character study of Bateau, a mostly cyborg being who has suffered the loss of the closest person alive to him struggle to maintain meaning in his life
and Togusa failing to live up to Bateau’s expectations as a partner. While the characters are able to work fine within the plot, the movie suffers from the lack of both sex appeal and the lack of a truly dominant character.

Similar to other Oshii films, there are instances where the plot gets put on hold to allow the philosophy to explored. This is a different sort of pacing (again copied by the matrix) which some like and others find pretentious (I like it!). The philosophy breaks are interesting, but only get fully connected at the end. Additionally, the plot is twisting enough and only clarified in the end that a second viewing would aid in comprehension.

Even if you don’t like the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo or strange pacing, Ghost 2 should be seen as mandatory viewing for its truly mind blowing merging of computer imagery and hand drawn animation artistry. This is cyberpunk at its finest! Truly, Neuromancer’s William Gibson would be floored with the continually awe-inspiring scenery that’s intermixed with the grittiest of settings. I lost count of the number of sets I would have loved to freeze and place on my wall. From the creation of robots complete with fiber optic circuitry and positronic brains, to the dingy alleys of the underworld, the vast expanses of the futuristic building-scapes, this movie employs every color palette in the most effective manner imaginable. Often, you almost stop paying attention to the subtitles to just take in the scene in all its heavenly glory.

On top of this, we get trademark moments of Oshii pacing. Oshii is fully content to leave the dialogue aside for a while and let the mood develop from the visuals and sound. Very few movies do this effectively - Avalon and GITS:2 certainly come to the top of the list. In short, the pacing makes GITS:2 a fully immersive experience in a way that visuals alone couldn’t do.

GITS 2 Philosophy: In looking at the philosophy, the first Ghost was dominated by a discussion of what it means to be human and being alive. It culminated in the creation of a new species - the merging of a sentient program called the puppet master with Motoko, an alive human complete with a soul (ghost). Without knowing the details of Ghost 2, one would have expected in seeing the first movie that Oshii would have explored this vast new experience in Ghost 2, Yet this was not to be, as instead the story takes a very different perspective to the ideas covered in the first movie. Innocence is really tracing the idea that what we "see" isn’t at all real, and that reality as a concept needs significant revision. This is done in a variety of ways through mirror analogies, VR segments and discussions of whether there is a difference between artificial life and real life. In this sense, GITS2 is far more the philosophical sequel to Avalon.

Ghost 2 almost turns the perspective from Ghost one on its head and looks at what it means to be a sentient program and how even humans seeking to become fully cyborg struggle to attain this plateau of ever increasing sensory perception and understanding. Taking Decarte’s notion ("I think, therefore, I am") that sentient life does not require a ghost, Ghost 2 explores the notion that a sentient program or robot (called a "doll") might NOT want to have a ghost, and looks at what happens when ghosts are foisted on dolls. Ideas taken for granted in the real world, like the demarcation between life and death get blended and rendered almost meaningless.

On Dolls: Let’s go into a discussion of dolls for a moment: On one hand, dolls in our terms are purely fake, but in the eyes of a child, are actually "real" in the sense that they are assigned virtual persona and as an object and affect the behavior of the child. In effect, the notion of the child’s mind being constrained to her head is challenged - the child’s mind functions "virtually" in the doll. This notion of a doll is also examined in the sense that it contains our greatest fears - that all we are is a "shell" without something actually unique inside that makes us special. In making a cyborg "doll" that mimics a human - GITS2 poses that we are creating a human-looking shell that is sentient in the Descartes sense, but is not complete. Even worse, when given a facsimile of a ghost, we are doing real harm to the doll as the doll is now neither a stable sentient robot nor a human, but a bastardized thing in-between.

In total, there is this ongoing discussion of three types of "ultimate" life forms: God, Dolls, and animals. They all embody the notion of innocence. God (in this sense, almost synonymous with Major Motoko’s new form) is all knowing so basic human frailties no longer affect her. Needs and desires that humans have are non-existent for God. Dolls, and in cyborg version of dolls - sentient robots, are also perfect in that they can think but don’t fall prey to human inadequacies. Finally, Oshii argues animals such as dogs are innocent. Their joys in life are simple ones - Batou’s dog scenes also serve to demonstrate that which is still "human" about Batou - everything else in his life has been rendered meaningless. In this sense, interestingly the dog takes on the same roll as a doll does with a child - This shows Batou’s mind expressing its "virtual" humanity externally.

Throughout the movie are instances of humanity’s self-gratification, extreme self-importance and the consequences of over-indulgence. From the enormous cathedrals to the dingy alleyways, to the making of dolls in our own “perfect” shell of ourselves, Oshii’s message is that we are doing everything possible to hide ourselves from true humanity. The beautiful imagery of GITS 2 is the result. Freedom comes not through materialism, but through real “humanity.” However, one wonders whether Oshii thinks real humanity is in anyway restricted to humans. At some level Oshii is saying our bodies are now obsolete, and that what makes us human, our shell, may not be the purview of humans.

As for the details of the merging of traditional hand drawn animation, there are a few scenes where the Babylon 5-like ships or statues don’t quite fit, but for the most part, the expansive scenes have incredible depth, and the close-ups are as exquisite as a portrait. You are truly missing out on a feat of artistic beauty if pass this movie up. And overall, GITS:2 is clearly in of the best new cyberpunk movies out. Watch it - you won’t be disappointed.

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Overview: While the budget for the animation is better than the original Armitage, the story is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. The place where Armitage III shines (identification with the characters) is exactly where the sequel is most lacking. They ramp up the cool explosions and fights while substituting mannequins for the lead characters. This was a sequel without a story - the message had already been communicated in the first one, and now there’s nothing left to do but rehash it, only with more incoherently and with more explosions. And really, I find the animation style in the first one lots better, especially for Armitage.

However, the two hot Armitage replicants in wings and skin-tight clothes are pretty cool. In fact, they were definitely the highlight of the movie for me.

Also, as an unintended plus (or minus, really), if you check out the English track, you get to hear the voice of Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) reprise his famous role as a side-kick. Only this time he’s a cyborg doctor (but still sounds the same).