Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Director: Mamoru Oshii
Writer: Kazunori Itō

Studio: Production IG, Bandai Visual, Manga Entertainment

Watched on 13/06/20

***SPOILERS***

OVERALL	NB: These are not weighted equally (if at all)	Plot	Storytelling	Animation	Characters
7		5	7	8	4

Absolutely scrumptious animation.

I seem to say this a lot about 90s anime but Ghost in the Shell isn't so much a story as it is a hollow vessel used to carry the audience through passage after passage of gorgeous animation. Where this is truest is in the film's fight scenes. Action sequences are pretty inconsequential and often involve unimportant characters but they are so damn fun to watch. They're also great examples of how great 'animation' can simply just be great directing and choreography. Fights are really well framed, the camera cuts keep you perfectly orientated and the actual combat itself is equal parts beautiful, brutal and believable. I'd call this great action directing but would struggle to give more than a 7 for 'storytelling' overall because, again, there isn't much of a story. But just coupling that great staging and great articulation with the film's fantastic traditional animation and there's no wondering why GitS became the anime classic that it is.

Has to be said that shortcuts were taken when it came to animating dialogue. You get a lot of the still-body-moving-jaw approach to speech, instead of full on Milt Kahl style character acting. It's disappointing but definitely forgivable when every other detail is so good, like the machinery and guns, which were all hand-drawn (or at least kept the hand-drawn look). The art itself underpins all of this. Very few examples of off-the-shelf symbols for facial features - most of them are unique and suit the faces of the characters they're on. Although characters are a definite weak point of the film.

So the main character is female, which is pretty cool, I guess. But there are literally zero other female characters. That's just poor. To add to that, the characters are all quite boring, single-dimensional cliches. There would honestly be nothing good to say about them if they weren't so bloody cool. There's definitely next to no character development as well. Character design is meh. Just a last point on women in this film (no need for a Bechdel test), there was far too much time spent with unnecessary shots of naked breasts on screen. Kusanagi even leads into so many motions with her chest just to make the 'fan service' as unmissable as possible. I'd even say it's done to such an extent it geneuinely detracts from the viewing experience.

Overall, the film is cool as hell and most viewers would enjoy it just for that. Again, the plot is pretty weak (and a bit confusing even) but you get enough of everything else for that not to matter. It's an absolute disgrace that they remade this film in live action because that essentially takes away everything that's good about it.

The Little Mermaid (1989)

Directors: Ron Clements & John Musker
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Feature Animation

Watched on 13/06/20

***SPOILERS***

OVERALL	NB: These are not weighted equally (if at all)	Plot	Storytelling	Animation	Characters
5		5	5	6	6

This film is considered a classic. I can appreciate that but I would argue that it shouldn't be. It feels a lot more like a stepping stone to me - Disney and its directors were still tweaking the formula with The Little Mermaid and only got it right a few films after.

The place where this is most obvious is with the story and the storytelling. The premise of the whole thing is that Ariel wants to be part of the human world. That's fine and the story plays out as such (nothing wrong there) but really, it isn't clear enough why she wants to be part of it. Literally because she finds shiny things on the ocean floor? The other side of this is that she has a really great home life and is even the star of the show in Sebastian's concerts - why wouldn't she want to be part of her own world? Compare this to Beauty and the Beast, where everybody in the town very vocally communicates how much they dislike Belle. She has a very clear driver for why should wants to seek something new. (Also Beauty and the Beast was about Belle's intelligence, not outward appearance, yet the Little Mermaid literally removes Ariel's voice a to try and make her 'win' a man with her looks. Yuck.). Another thing that wasn't really driven home enough was why King Triton is so against mixing with the humans. Having something like an opening sequence where the audience actually sees a tragedy occur while a young Triton watches on would not only make the divide between the two species more clear, it would also make the audience understand Triton's perspective a lot more. Last point on this, they should really have focused a lot more on Ariel's voice; it being the reason she's the star of the show, it being what makes Eric so fascinated with her and it truly being something special to and about her. When Ursula asks for it as part of the deal, it doesn't really hold much weight.

Another thing that definitely was a learning experience was the music (and its use). You can hear that the composition is great but the songs aren't as powerful as they are in films like Mulan. Also, they don't always add a lot to the story. For example, 'Under the Sea' is a bop, straight up, but if you were to give a synopsis of the story, you probably wouldn't even mention Sebastian trying to convince Ariel how good the sea is. Also it sounds like it laid the foundation for some of the songs in the Lion King. Similarly, the very French chef's song was obviously later adapted into 'Be Our Guest'. See? Stepping stone.

We see the same thing with the characters. As mentioned, Triton is just a straight up abusive and unlikeable parent. They got it really wrong with him so that they could make Mufasa the incredible parent character he is. Conversely, Ursula is pretty damn brilliant. They did really well with her and from what I can tell, carried all of her appealing qualities as a villain and poured them into Scar. She would have been even better though if we'd understood more about her plot and why she wants what she wants. Her song was also great. Character design was actually really good across the board. Colours were all bold and distinct and you could really infer a lot about the characters just off how they looked. Although I found Ariel a bit hard to connect with, her design is unquestionably iconic. Her introduction to the film with that bright red hair shows exactly why. Character design is probably one thing they didn't have to fine tune too much.

Lastly, art and animation. Having seen so many first passes and pencil tests for this film, I was really expecting a Glen Keane masterclass from the first second 'til the last. That really wasn't the case though. The animation itself is definitely great but there are as many seemingly low effort parts as there are parts that really amaze you. I'm also starting to realise that I really dislike animation without shading; there's lots of it in this film. Worst of all though, I would even blaspheme and say there were some parts where they seemed to break character models/show inconsistent volumes. I also found the art style really weird. Could just be a personal thing but I found the colours in the early underwater scenes really gloomy and depressing and even disliked some of the background art. Similarly, the art styles of the characters were a bit strange. In particular, Triton looked a bit like something out of Ralph Bakshi's bizarre LotR film. Again, I appreciate that absolute masters of the craft animated this film but I don't think they'd call this their masterpiece.

Like with a lot of these reviews, I'm really glad I've seen the film now but have to say it wasn't that amazing. 'Kiss the Girl' is pretty problematic too.

Superman (1941)

Studio: Fleischer Studios, Famous Studios

Completed viewing* on 06/06/20

***SPOILERS***

OVERALL	NB: These are not weighted equally (if at all)	Plot	Storytelling	Animation	Characters
5		5	5	7	6

Really quickly, I didn't watch this series in its entirety. Writing a review for something without at least completing a full viewing is bad practice but the second half of this series (produced by a different studio than the first) was mostly genuine war propaganda. That's interesting but I don't have the energy for it, so didn't watch it. I only wanted to watch the Fleischer Studios episodes anyway.

All I wanted to get out of this series was to see some sweet hand-drawn animation. I absolutely got that. Some of the sequences are genuinely beautiful (even just visually - it's a great style). Character are expressive and almost always talk while moving, twisting or turning. The animators were also clearly very dedicated to making sure dramatic lighting (like hanging spotlights or flying sparks) played with characters and objects believably and it really pays off. There are also a lot of sequences that are just shadows/silhouettes, which worked really well in terms of keeping visual interest. Really well executed. This all made it really great-looking but at its core, the animation was admittedly a little bit stiff. (Won't lie, I got sold a bit of a dream by KaptainKristian's video essay - the only reason I'd even heard of the series). Obviously I'm comparing this cel animation from 80 (fucking hell) years ago to 1990s/2000s masterpieces but objectively, it isn't the best animation I've ever seen. Nice looking though.

The stories that are told in the series are... pleasant. This is an incredibly early iteration of Superman (Lex Luthor had only just debuted in print the year before) so the stories are short, really straightforward, really predictable and always end with Superman saving the day. Again, given the point in time these cartoons were made, that's understandable but honestly, it isn't really a problem. Episodes are only about 10 minutes each, so it's actually quite nice they don't try to do too much.

It's a similar situation with the characters. Superman is Superman. Whatever happens, he's strong enough to save everyone. It's boring but it works. It does have to be said that the only other major recurring character, Lois Lane, was pretty cool. Yeah, she's a bit of a damsel in distress that needs saving by Supes every episode but unlike a lot of characters even today, she's at least in trouble because she's really out here on the front lines. It's a pretty easy plot setup, have her get too close to the story and end up in danger but it surprised me how much agency she had as a female charater in every episode.

For anyone who's an animation fan, I'd recommed this. For something with such a potentially small time investment, you get a lot out of it. Anyone else however, I'd say that beyond nostalgia value or 'canon'-fodder for comic book fans, the series doesn't offer much. Pretty bland.

Treasure Planet (2002)

Directors: Ron Clements & John Musker
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Feature Animation

Watched on 09/05/20

Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Treasure Planet

OVERALL	NB: These are not weighted equally (if at all)	Plot	Storytelling	Animation	Characters
6		5	5	6	7

So much potential but completely misused. It would be difficult not to recommend this film, because it does (almost by default) still have all the warm, fuzzy goodness you'd expect from a Disney feature film. However, it gets so completely lost between the various identities it tries to have that it ends up being none all at once. It's a mess. The prevailing feeling you get is that it wasn't necessarily ahead of its time; it just caught Disney at a bad time.

The most obvious example of this is in its art and animation. I have to say right off the bat, where traditional animation was used, it was absolutely amazing. The character animators must have had so much fun working on this film, especially with the hundreds of varied character body types and unique ways of moving. If they had a) completely commited to this style and b) applied it everywhere, the film would have looked incredible. But they didn't. I say they didn't commit because the animation seems half-baked in terms of finishing and more importantly shadow and lighting. Characters and objects cast shadows but don't create any shading on their own faces, bodies and clothes. Line weight is inconsistent and characters overall just appear a bit flat (similar to Atlantis). This would be okay but they compound it by adding strange, gradiented ambient light to characters as a whole. Not to shaded areas, but to the characters' entire bodies. It looks bad.

Have a look at this. Where is the light supposed to be coming from? Why does it affect all 3 characters in shot in completely different ways? Also the colour and line weight on Jim and and Jim's Mum's outlines respectively genuinely make them so disparate that this looks like an edit of two characters from different films.

I believe the reason this was done was to try to create some kind of harmony between the character animation and the film's unquestionable weakest point - the 3D animation. Granted, the film was made in 2002, so probably early doors for CGI but the assets in Treasure Planet look raw, untextured and uncanny. They sometimes even get fused with paintings but I think this makes things worse. Maybe the effects looked great at the time and I imagine they're quite important in terms of development for the industry but they haven't aged well. Even worse, they look absolutely horrendous when mixed wth the 2D images. The best example is the scene with those weird as fuck space whales. There's also some level of modelling and rotoscoping that takes place with Silver's arm and BEN's body that comes out a little but clunky.

Seriously wtf it that???

Even Jim's hands on the ship don't look quite right.

The storytelling is another place where you can see this film getting its wires crossed. It comes just after the Disney 'Golden Age' and was likely part of the transition period into modern Disney. However it still has remnants of the old Disney methods. Those guys talk about how much inspiration they took from broadway/musicals - this film was crying out for songs, particularly an 'I want' song for Jim. Instead, we got montages set to strange rock/punk music instead, similar to Tarzan and Phil Collins. And going back to Jim's 'I want' song, not only do we not connect with him emotionally, we actually have no idea what he wants. The idea of him needing a father is lightly drizzled in in the beginning but only really introduced after he and Silver start to form a relationship. Similarly, we get very little information on who Silver is and what he wants. This makes the conclusion of the film pretty unsatisfying. Did Jim yearn for... a place in the military? A dad? Did Silver want to find a son? A family? Also certain things just didn't really work, e.g. not showing how Delbert and Jim get the crew together means there isn't really any setup for later plot points. We're just told Captain Amelia isn't happy about it.

Speaking of the plot, it was kinda weak. It did lack an underlying character story as mentioned above but also just didn't have many moving parts to it. There were also some things that were either very weak or completely pointless. For example, what was the point of having the map be left on the ship? The only thing that happens when Jim and BEN go back to get it is they kill the Spider Guy but that wasn't very significant and could easily have happened anywhere else. Also towards the end, the crew could easily have jumped Jim or even just shot him dead after he opened the map - there was absolutely no reason for the 3 captives to go with. Some things however did work. I really liked that Silver didn't make a complete face turn. He stays bad, which makes perfect sense, and Jim makes his peace with it. Great. Also, the main character doesn't have any romance storyline at all which is nice. The film's one romantic storyline is in fact done very well. No questionable power dynamics nor stereotypes. In fact, that was ahead of its time.

Lastly, characters. Glad to say that's one of the positives of the film. Silver is a great, believable anti-villain (if that's a word), BEN is an excellent example of how good it can be to introduce a character late on in a story and Morph is a little legend. Captain Amelia is also pretty much as good a female character as you could ask for given the time and target audience. Admittedly though,there are only 3 female characters in the whole thing, which ain't great. Character design is unbelievably good. Jim's design is undeniably cool and one of the few things in the film that did age well and as mentioned earlier, the dozens of different species were all designed so well. The crew for example are all designed thoughtfully and carefully, each fitting their purpose perfectly (Spider guy is creepy/scary, Flatula guy is funny/disgusting). Development is pretty good too. Sadly though, one last case of identity crisis is Silver's accent. It's part Scottish, part Irish, part Yorkshire. Sounds bad.

So yeah, I'm glad I've seen Treasure Planet now. Would maybe recommend it but probably not a must-watch. 6/10.

Paprika (2006)

Director: Satoshi Kon
Studio: Madhouse

Watched on 26/04/20

***SPOILERS***

OVERALL	NB: These are not weighted equally (if at all)	Plot	Storytelling	Animation	Characters
7		6	6	8	6

This film is fucking gorgeous. If I accept a world in which no film will ever again have the commitment nor the budget to be Akira, Satoshi Kon and Paprika are the next best thing. The art and animation are beautiful. Everything else about it is allllright but I'd still definitely recommend this film to people purely because of its brilliant hand-drawn animation

The art style of Paprika transcends the industry it comes from. It doesn't draw 'anime' faces, it draws its own symbols for eyes, noses and mouths, with each one being thoughtfully adapted to suit its character - as they should be. The animation is fluid and fast-paced, yet meticulous, detailed and evidently well-researched. It's incredibly realistic, despite dealing with some of the most trippy, wacky subject matter you can imagine. It does an amazing job of not losing the principles of good animation. The occasional shortcut is taken here and there, which is understandable. How the hell else would you animate someone pushing through a ciema screen with a film playing on it? The other disappointing thing was the way speech was animated. Here, there was a bit of falling back onto industry standard, with the still-head-moving-jaw approach, as opposed to full-body acting in most cases. Still really great though.

With the animation being such a clear focus for Kon and his team, to me it felt like the other aspects of the film were given way less importance. They were decent, nothing special. Definitely didn't detract from the experience but that's it. For example, the story isn't so much a story as it is a rough outline of a story to carry you from one visual experience to the next. It makes sense and is kinda interesting but it's neither very satisfying nor purposeful. Maybe I'm missing a bunch of hidden meaning and symbolism or whatever but pretty much all the plot points are low-stakes and quite uninspiring. What does this Mr. Chairman actually want? And how on earth does he achieve it? A good example of not necessarily needing the science explained but at least the mechanics.

Similarly, the characters are all sort of interesting but I didn't find myself connecting with any of them particularly. They aren't very compelling and I'd argue only one of them (the police officer) even has a personal journey. The rest were so surface-level that any of them could have made any decision at all and it probablt fit with their character. As for the story-telling, it's actually pretty good but as I've said before, there's only so much you can tell a non-story.

The part where Paprika rides the nimbus cloud was fucking cool too. That whole scene/sequence was amazing. Also loved Satoshi Kon giving his own movie 'Tokyo Godfathers' a shout out lmao. Good film. 7/10.