Hey everyone! Welcome to yet another weekly installment of my anime blog! This week we are talking about one of my favorite anime movies of all time, Perfect Blue.
Considering that this is a Satoshi Kon film, we already know this it is strife with issues surrounding reality vs. fantasy, identity, and technology. That means we have a LOT to talk about, so lets just get right into it.
Perfect Blue is a psychological thriller...with emphasis on the PSYCHO. Not even kidding though, it really messes with your mind.
Mima, the main character, is an ex-pop idol getting ready to reinvent herself as an actress. However, this new life proves to be trying on her mental stability. She is forced to play more mature roles and take on more mature themes, such as rape and murder. Of course, all of the fanboys and girls Mima "The Pop Idol" are vehemently opposed to this new Mima, so she has that burden as well. In addition, one of these fanboys, an especially creepy fanboy, has created a fan site for Mima fans, supposedly updated by Mima herself. Of course this is not actually her, but Me-Mania, the creepy fanboy, seems to know all of the details of her daily endeavors, and also adds extra details.
Me-Mania in all of his creepyness.....
Basically, the website is what Me-Mania and all the rest of the Mima fandom WANT Mima to be, and this is where the question of reality vs. fantasy comes in, because Mima lets all of this get to her, and she begins to get confused about what is reality and what is not. The website also confuses her about her identity, for the Mima on the website seems just like her. She begins seeing hallucinations of her as her pop-idol self, and the latter torments Mima throughout the entire film.
Might I also add that I am absolutely FASCINATED with the film's soundtrack. One song in particular that pops up numerous times is called "Virtua Mima." It is absolutely creepy and most definitely adds another layer of depth to the scenes in which it accompanies.
I feel like I also should add in a tribute to Satoshi Kon and all of his most famous works. RIP
Welcome again everybody to my blog! This week I'm going take a break from all the rape and gore from previous weeks and take a turn towards something a little more light-hearted.
Just a little.
I speak of School Days and Botchan of course. Both of these anime deal with school life in Japan...and none of it is pretty.
School Days deals with a young man named Kenkichi who is trying to get into college. It is a tough, competitive, and stressful process in which everyone must study and take a test. Of course, though, there are distractions, such as stupid siblings and stupid love. Long story short, while Kenkichi was studying, he meets the love of his life, or so he thinks. His little brother comes along to study for the same test, although he does not take it as seriously. He also steals Kenkichi's girl while he's at it. Kenkichi plans to marry the girl once he passes the test, except he doesn't really pass the test. And to add insult to injury, his little brother passes it AND gets the girl. So Kenkichi goes and kills himself.
SEPPUKU!!!!
I told you it was a little more lighthearted, didn't I?
Botchan is a little better.
Botchan is a school teacher who transfers from Tokyo to some hole in the road elsewhere in Japan. He is ridiculed by his students, and taken advantage of by some of his colleagues. The students play many different hi-jinks on him, provoked by the vice-principal unbeknownst to Botchan. After his colleagues get fired one by one, Botchan teams up with them to scare the you-know-what out of the bad colleagues. He then leaves afterwards. YOU GO BOTCHAN.
Considering that I went to a pretty bourgeois high school , I can't really relate to most of the stuff that goes on in both of these films, even in my freshman year, where my entire class was eleven people. I repeat--ELEVEN FRICKIN PEOPLE. However, we didn't really play tricks on the teachers or anything like that. And later on, after I changed schools, nothing really changed. I was just around more people.
Yeah, I had a pretty dull four years...
Hey everybody! Have yall recovered from the gory, action-packed, confusing-as-hell Akira? Whether you did or not, it really doesn't matter, because this week I'm going to be talking about Ninja Scroll, which, while certainly less confusing, is certainly action-packed and filled with lots of gory, limb ripping, and blood-gushing goodness.
image taken from bloodsprayer.com
There are also sexy nude women.
Well, technically, only one of them is nude the whole time she is on screen, but that's not really what I came here to talk about. Rather, I'd prefer to talk about one of these women, Kagero.
She is the heroine of the film, and the only female ninja of the Koga clan (to my knowledge). Why, in ancient Japan, does she have such high, or rather unusual, rank in society? The truth is that she is poisonous....literally. Any one that she sleeps with....well, to put it simply, just dies. While possessing this ability, she however remains a noble, loyal character, and it is this that makes her the most tragic character in this film.
This poison that lives in her is both a curse and a blessing; she cannot have any sort of intimate relationship with any other person...without that person dying of course. However, this poison also prevents others from raping her, or at least exacts some unpleasant revenge on those who try. For example, there is a scene where an oni made of rock, named Tessai, has captured her and proceeded to rape her, but he only gets so far before Jubei, the hero of the film, interrupts.
image taken from 4.bp.blogspot.com
Jubei and Tessai proceed to fight, during which Tessai's rocky exoskeleton begins to crumble. While Jubei thinks that this is his own doing, he does not realize that the effects of Kagero's poison are starting to take. This ability is especially important considering the time period in which this movie takes place, the Tokugawa shogunate, in which women were not valued much, and men were free to do with them whatever they wanted. And in this time of increasing immorality, she was a sort of gem, or so to speak, because of her poison.
However, throughout the course of the film, she and Jubei grow close. Really close. The same ability that protects her, actually hurts and limits her in this case. She cannot get physically intimate with him, or else, as we all know already, he will die. Here is the thing though: he is already poisoned, and her poison would actually save him. She soon figures this out, but then, of course, in a peak moment of tragic-ness,- she is killed. She does share one kiss with him before passing away, and this proves to be a bittersweet ending to her character.
Hey everyone! I want to welcome you to the first REAL post of my blog. Yayyyyyy!
Every week I'm going to review a classic anime film and then go through some of the themes, elements, and issues that present themselves in the film. While I won't give a summary or so to speak, I will warn you though that there WILL be spoilers for most, if not all of the movies I feature on this blog. I repeat: There WILL BE SPOILERS.
Now that we've got that out of the way....
This week I'm going to talk about one of the most groundbreaking, mind boggling, and visually captivating anime films of all time: Akira.
Akira Movie Poster
If you're like me, the first time you saw this movie, you may have been slightly confused, to say the least. Or this movie may have scarred you instead, and you probably sat down afterwards for an hour or so and just tries to put together what the hell you just watched.
It was probably the latter.
The truth is, that this movie is filled with many different issues such as free will, adolescence, and social injustice, just to name a few. However, for the rest of this post to make any bit of sense at all, I think that I will start by explaining the titular character, Akira. While he is not the main character, and does not make many appearances in the movie, he is one of the most important characters. He was once a boy used as a guinea pig in an experiment in which he was given psychic powers. He is quickly able to harness his powers and they increase exponentially as a result, but soon, he loses control of these powers and destroys Tokyo along with himself in a nuclear explosion. Fast forward forty years later to the year of 2019, and in post-apocalyptic Japan, Akira is now more of an abstract idea, a god-like figure with a cult following. It is even said that Akira lives in everybody.
Now lets look at life in this post-apocalyptic 2019 Japan. As I mentioned before, there are many issues and social injustices. Towards the beginning of the movie, there are scenes of student protests being beat down and killed by police forces. The city is dominated by rival biker gangs and corruption is everywhere and so are the surveillance cameras. Overall, it is not a stretch to call it an Orwellian society. Adult presence also seems to be very limited, and as a result, the youth run the city. These biker gangs that are ever-so-present are constantly fighting one another for control and power over the city, and this is what I'll focus on for this post.
Tetsuo, a member of one of the bike gangs and one of the main characters, is particularly interested in gaining power. All his life he had been bullied and picked on and then saved by Kanneda, the other main character. As a result he develops a serious inferiority complex and a desire to try to stand out and rid himself of his black sheep image. One scene in particular that comes to mind is the first big bike scene where Tetsuo breaks out of the hospital, and steals Kanneda's bike, the most powerful bike of the gang. He initially is able to work it, but soon afterwards the bike slowly begins to stop, and stops working for him. This scene is very symbolic of Tetsuo's fate later on in the movie. Once Tetsuo figures out his powers given to him, he thoroughly enjoys them, because he had never had such power before. But soon he loses control of this power, and exactly like Akira, destroys himself and the city.
Before I leave, here is a Pioneer's 2001 re-dub, Tetsuo's mutation scene:
Hello ladies and gentleman, and welcome to my anime blog. Before we get to all of that delicious anime goodness though, I'm going to introduce myself a little bit. Just bear with me a little, please.
I'm a freshman at Loyola University New Orleans, my favorite colors are pink and green, and I like just about any food, as long as it doesn't include mayonnaise, beets, radishes, cauliflower, and long list of other ingredients. Okay, so I'm just a tad bit picky, don't judge. I'm a music addict, and I listen to EVERYTHING but country. I had a stint a few years back where the ONLY thing I listened to was J-Pop, J-Rock, J-Everything Else, and K-Pop, so I'm kinda familiar with some of those bands like GIRUGAMESH! Sakura-Con 2009 anybody?
Yeah........anyway.......
Did I mention that I like anime?
Yeah, well my anime tastes cover a really broad range. I like anything from Elfen Lied to Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokoro-chan, to Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, to Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, to Paranoia Agent, to Perfect Blue.
Okay, so all of those are pretty messed up in terms of subject matter, to say the least.
Well on a lighter note I also like Ouran High School Host Club, Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh, and Naruto (which feels like it's NEVER going to end).
Here's a picture of me, because I AM a real person, believe it or not.
Swaggin.
Well this is all for now.
Happy Blogging everybody!!!
