Ah, why not? Who cares, I’m just going to write a different review for each part of Genius Party. I’m also reviewing the individual episodes of Kara no Kyoukai, so why not Genius Party? It’ll be an interesting experiment, to see whether these compilation movies are best reviewed as a whole of by their individual parts. Robot Carnival, The Animatrix, The Cockpit and Memories have always been difficult to review, simply because the quality of the different parts can be so incredibly different. When I watched Memories, I ended up not writing a review about it, simply because I didn’t know exactly what to say about the combination of Cannon Fodder and Magnetic Rose, and my review about the Animatrix probably doesn’t do justice to the amazing Second Renaissance.
Anyway, enough blabbering, onto the review. This one’s more for completion’s sake, as it’s more of an introduction than an actual short movie. The honour of kicking off Genius Party goes to Atsuko Fukushima, which couldn’t have been a better choice, as she also did the opening and ending for Robot Carnival. The first movie is called Genius Party for a reason, as it basically serves as an introduction to the rest of the shorts. It’s probably the shortest of all the movies, and instead for a straight and concrete storyline, it goes for the abstract approach.
Genius Party was meant to be surreal, a piece of art in a way. It’s up to the viewer to give his own interpretation of what happened, and you may want to end up watching this several times in order to properly catch what the heck went on there. It’s a thought-provoking piece, that an have many different interpretations.
Obviously, there’s only so much you can do in just five minutes and apart from a great style and a cryptic story, this first movie hardly anything more than that. Alone this won’t leave much of a lasting impression, but as an introduction, it serves its purpose.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 |
| Characters: | 6/10 |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 |
| Setting: | 7/10 |
It had a story?
Though I fail to see it as being thought-provoking, it was weird, pretty and damn awesome fun to watch.
Awesome, I was hoping you would blog this, and in parts.
Anyways, per usual this episode made absolutely no sense whatsoever (there might have been some deeper meaning, but WHOOSH), but it was stunningly beautiful, as expected of a 4c production.
Part 5 reminds me a lot of Kaiba, which is nice. My favourite is probably Part 2, though.
oh, and I just noticed this statement:
“The honour of kicking off Genius Party goes to Atsuko Fukushima, which couldn’t have been a better choice, as she also did the opening and ending for Genius Party”
Did you mean to reference another show, here? (delete this comment if you want)
@Denizen: The fifth one? Isn’t that the psychology-philosophy babble one? Though I suppose we may be numbering them differently-sixth is Happy Machine, directed by Masaki Yuasa, who did in fact do Kaiba.
This first one may actually be my favorite so far, actually.
oh okay, I meant the 6th one then. And as I suspected, it was the same creator as Kaiba.
Thanks for the info.
the opening made the most impact on me amongst all the clips that i saw. I saw it as being a sort of quiet outcry from artists in Japan towards their commercial clients who often do not give them much respect for their individual freedom of expression. and then here’s genius party, a project where they can make their magic happen without a care about their sponsors or clients 😀
mulligan: yay you got it!
I think this clip serves well as an introduction if you are going to watch all of Genius Party in one setting (I prefer this).