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You know these really good athletes, performers or artists? And how they make what they do, whether it’s sports, acting, acrobatics, painting or whatever, look so incredibly easy? Well, that’s this movie. I mean seriously, I can wind a long story around it, but it’s just a brilliant movie. In fact, the Uchuu-hen and Houou-hen have a very good chance of becoming my favourite movies of the seventies and eighties!

It was a real eye-opener: to see how good the story of a movie can be if it’s small enough to fit into such a small time-frame without being rushed. This is exactly the example of how you should tell a story in a movie right, and I’ve only seen a select other movies that had such a solid storyline as the Hi no Tori movies.

The Uchuu-chapter of Hi no Tori takes, like its title makes you suspect, place in space. Where the Houou-hen focused on folklore, the Yamato-hen focused on romance, the Uchuu-hen is a full fledged mystery story. There’s a lot of emphasis on the past and backgrounds, with the eventual answers turning out very imaginative, like you’d expect from Osamu Tezuka. Again, Rintaro did an awesome job in building up the tension, and slowly revealing this backstory. It’s an excellent example of mystery done right.

This movie has the same elements that made me such a big fan of the Hi no tori franchise in the first place: lots of emphasis on character-development, characters with huge flaws, themes of betrayals and punishments and the celebration of life and progression also is prevalent in this movie. The creators yet again manage to weave them into a gripping science-fiction story. Even though it doesn’t exactly have a big budget to work with, it’s a terrific example of how to correctly write a movie.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Truly excellent mystery and build-up.
Characters:	9/10 – Lots of terrific character-development.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Good animation; awesome soundtrack.
Setting:	9/10 – Tons of nice ideas and details thrown into the setting.

Anyway, this concludes my movie spree, and it’s probably going to be the last one I’ll be having in a long time. It’s been a great way to close off the decade and start a new one, especially considering how I’m getting less and less confident to find eight bloggable shows for the new season.

The Yamato-hen is a bit of a step back from the Houou-hen, but really: who cares. With such a brilliant franchise as Hi no Tori, it’s still a very good and enjoyable movie!

I think that the biggest flaw for this one is that it becomes a bit too preachy in the end, the morals and values it tries to push on in the end are a bit too obvious, and the love story between the lead male and female just doesn’t live up to some of the other stories of Hi no Tori. It just misses something.

However, it has plenty of good stuff to boast. Like all of the Hi no Tori stories: it’s a great celebration of human evolution and progression. It tells of conflicting ideals, difficult choices that have to be made, betrayal and tragedy. It again puts a huge emphasis on character-development (something that a whole lot more movies should do!), which is powerful and creative.

I have a lot of respect for Osamu Tezuka, but that’s mostly because of his creativity, and his will to go with things that nobody else would think of. With Hi no Tori, however, he established himself as a truly brilliant storyteller, and Rintaro again did justice to this story, even though it’s not as good as the Houou chapter.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Tons of creative twists, despite the simple story.
Characters:	8/10 – Well developed, but some of them are a bit preachy at times.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Good art, animation and music.
Setting:	8/10 – One of the very few stories that tells about Japan’s tribal age.

One thing that I’ve noticed with movies is that they’re often too short: they just don’t have the luxury of TV-series, which can take their time in building up their story. It’s much harder to create an awesome movie than an awesome TV-series because of this. I think that Movies tend to be a bit too ambitious for their own good at times. They should be excellent mediums to adapt short stories, but instead I’ve seen tons of them that try stuff much larger stories into their airtime than what’s good for them.

Now, this may just be me who has a bias for folklore, but holy crap, this movie is really amazing. The Houou chapter of Hi no Tori is THE example of how a movie can be done right.

This movie doesn’t exactly have the best animation (though it’s pretty good nonetheless), and even the setting isn’t that big, the action also isn’t why you should watch this, but on the other hand: it really is storytelling at its finest. Osamu Tezuka wrote a brilliant original story, and Rintaro did an awesome attempt in putting the story into an hour-long movie.

It basically follows two men, with completely different backgrounds, around the 7th century AD. What makes their stories awesome is the way its told, and the excellent characterization of these two. It plays around with tons of morals and values, and both these lead characters go through some very powerful developments. They’re complete anti-heroes, and yet you can see the reasons for their actions and their development.

The pacing is slow, but through one of the best soundtracks I have heard of any movie from the 70s and 80s it really gets the best out of the characters. It’s one of those rare movies that just “works”, thanks to its excellent source material. You also don’t have to worry about overlap with the TV-series of Hi no Tori, which was produced in 2004: apparently Osamu Tezuka wrote so many awesome stories for his Hi no Tori manga that there was plenty to choose from from the anime creators. And here I thought that there couldn’t possibly anymore brilliant stories aside from the ones that the TV-series adapted!

Storytelling:	10/10 – Clever, powerful, excellent pacing. Just about everything went right here.
Characters:	9/10 – For a movie they’re really impressive, and shine in their character-development.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Beautiful art, good animation, fantastic soundtrack.
Setting:	8/10 – In what other anime do you get to see the rise of Buddhism in Japan?

Black Jack is a medical thriller, and one of the most popular characters that Osamu Tezuka created. For this movie, one of his stories was adapted by Osamu Dezaki. The combination of these two makes it into quite a unique movie, which is actually pretty good.

This movie can boast well-drawn surgical operations (and quite disturbing ones at that!) that really show a significant amount of medical knowledge. It’s also got great characterizations for every character involved. Even the smallest side-characters stand out with their own character-designs, role and personality, which really is typical of Osamu Tezuka. The lead villain’s story is also well explored, and she feels complete at the end of only 90 minutes.

The story itself has quite a few interesting ideas thrown into it. The concept of super-humans was fascinating, and it’s well developed throughout the movie. My biggest complaint is that it doesn’t always flow too well. Some events in the movie feel forced, and just there to keep the story going. One particular plot twist involving wine is just downright stupid.

Overall, I like this movie a bit more than the Two Doctors of Darkness, but the difference isn’t large. This one just has a better direction (courtesy of Osamu Dezaki), but they’re both pretty interesting movies. The one thing that I’m not sure about is whether Black Jack really needed this many adaptations. I mean, he’s gotten three movies, 14 OVA episodes and 78 TV-episodes. Isn’t that a bit overdoing it?

Storytelling:	7/10 – Good direction, though a tad forced at times.
Characters:	8/10 – Good characterization.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Great art and visual effects.
Setting:	8/10 – Very nice amount of medical knowledge for the creators to work with.

Many of the criticisms and praises I had for the Clannad Movie also go for the Toei version of air: their big disadvantage lies only in their length. They’re short, and therefore not as engaging as the Kyoani-versions. But they’re still excellent movies that did a great job of cutting up their stories in only ninety minutes. If Osamu Dezaki would have gotten the same amount of episodes as with the Kyoani series, then I’m sure that the end result would not have been inferior to them. Both Air and Clannad have wonderful story-lines, and both Toei and Kyoani did a wonderful job in adapting them.

The visuals: also pretty much the same story. In technical terms, Kyoani did a more fluid and consistent job, but on the other hand the Toei version loves to play with different camera angles, visual direction, filters and interesting screenplay, that makes it a visual feast in its own way, and yet it doesn’t get in the way of the storyline unlike some of Shaft’s productions.

The characters? The same can be said again: the side-characters are still wonderful, and the lead female is actually much more strong-headed than she was in the Kyoani-version, which gives a completely different dimension to her. In exchange, the male lead again just isn’t as interesting as he was in the Kyoani version: again, instead of the male lead helping the female lead amidst his own problems, this movie shows the female lead as she helps the male lead amidst her own problems. It actually works really well.

Air again cuts away all of the side-stories, to focus completely on the main storyline of Air. It’s much more of a straightforward romance story this way, instead of a strange pseudo-harem, and it works pretty well. But yeah, the climaxes just aren’t as emotional due to the small airtime. In any case though, Key really was lucky that its works were adopted twice, by people with great but completely different talents. At this point, I hope that Genji Monogatari wasn’t the last we’ve seen from Osamu Dezaki, because this guy is a truly unique director, and he shows it in this movie yet again.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Great cut and paste job to fit the story into 90 minutes.
Characters:	8/10 – Needed more time to flesh out characters, otherwise excellent in a different way from the TV-series.
Production-Values:	9/10 – A visual feast thanks to Osamu Dezaki’s visual direction.
Setting:	8/10 – Pretty nice, but not the main focus.

I’m not exactly sure what’s up with Kyoani and Toei’s key rivalry (when one of them adapts a key work, the other one does at well and vice versa), but the Clannad movie premiered about a month before the start of the TV-series. It took me this long to watch it due to the spoilers, but I’m glad that I did in the end, because Osamu Dezaki did the story a surprising amount of justice, considering how he managed to stuff such a huge story that took Kyoani 50 episodes, into just 90 minutes.

When you look at the big picture, this movie is obviously inferior to the TV-series, because it has far less time to flesh out its characters. Nevertheless, when you look at the individual details, there’s quite a lot to like about it. In fact, even though the movie and the TV-series have the same story, the execution, focuses, themes and characters are so completely different that they’re both worth watching in their own ways.

First of all, the graphics. The TV-series actually has better animation, but the screenplay of the movie, with typical Osamu Dezaki effects, camera-angles and filters is far more interesting to watch. The visual direction may be less consistent, the budget of the movie is actually smaller than Kyoani’s version, but it’s much more interesting to look at.

As for the characters, the movie dumps most of the side-stories and instead gives its full focus on the main characters (while not forgetting to spend about a minute of background on the major side-characters, in order to make them more than just one-dimensional paper bags). I was especially surprised by Nagisa and Sunohara, who are actually more interesting to watch than their versions of the TV-series. Nagisa is a much stronger character here in this movie, so much actually that she reverses the entire role of her Tomoya: where it was Tomoya who looked after Nagisa in the TV-series, here Nagisa looks after Tomoya. Sunohara is actually much more of an extreme character here, but the visual comedy around him makes him actually quite charming.

The after story also has quite a different approach to it. While not as impressive as in the TV-series, I liked it, as well as the role that the side-characters played in it. Overall, these people were really enjoyable to watch, even though the movie had very little time to really explore them individually. They do a great job in supporting the main storyline without overtaking it.

Where this movie drops points, however, is with Tomoya himself, especially his angst. He’s just too gloomy throughout nearly the entire part of the movie, and doesn’t really feel like the dynamic character he should be, for the role that was given to him. And that’s a bloody shame, because he’s the main character!

The thing with Osamu Dezaki is that his works are either brilliant and imaginative, or they flop gigantically. The Clannad movie belongs to his better side, and he showed that the Clannad Story even works in movie format with the right amount of cutting. This is really what recap movies should realize: you can’t tell a story just by cutting things randomly, you have to create a good standalone story as well.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Well paced, creative and actually puts 50 episodes into 90 minutes while standing on its own as a solid story.
Characters:	8/10 – Tomoya is too angsty, but all the other characters have their charms.
Production-Values:	9/10 – The animation quality itself isn’t special, but the visual direction makes more than up for it.
Setting:	8/10 – Simplified, but it works.

What a tear-jerker of a movie. I don’t exactly know how this movie compared to the original TV series of the seventies, but damn, it was so worth it. An excellent recommendation if you’re looking for a sad and depressing movie that’s full of emotions.

This is just one of those recap movies that just works: the creators successfully stuffed the story it’s based on in 90 minutes, and they more than gave the lead character of Marco credit. When a recap movie can get such a huge emotional response out of me like with this movie, I really don’t have any complaints.

The story of Marco is an endearing one, as he travels from the middle of Italy to the middle of Argentine in order to see his mother again. The reason why this movie works is his fantastic characterization throughout his journey. He’ such a lovable character and yet he has to go through so many ordeals in order to get to his destination. And it’s not like this is a stereotypical world in which everyone is against him either: some people are nice, others are just tired of street-kids and treat him roughly. Like most of Nippon Animation’s literary adaptations, the setting is very realistic.

As for the flaws… it does make use of the “useless mother”-cliche, but heck: for once it’s central to the plot, so it’s not that big of a deal. At heart, this movie doesn’t just show the ordeals of a small kid, but also tries to show us who he is, what drives him and what he wants to be when he grows up. It’s a movie that has lots of the charms of a regular World Masterpiece Theatre series, cropped up into just an hour and a half. I’m still amazed at how well and complete the result turned out.

In any case, this is the last thing you’ll see of me this decade. Have a happy end of the year, everyone!

Storytelling:	9/10 – Realistic, heart-wrenching and yet not overdoing the drama.
Characters:	9/10 – Marco is such an engaging character.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Simple graphics, but the animation is fluid and the music is powerful.
Setting:	9/10 – Ah, the realism!