Yeah, don’t mind about the order of these posts. I found out a bit too late about the real order of the shorts, so I’ll just label them accordingly and review the individual movies alphabetically… for as far as it’s possible. Gala was done by Mahiro Maida, the guy who founded Gonzo. This guy is basically a jack of all trades in the anime business: he animates, directs, designs, produces, draws mecha, writes screenplay, he’s tried out all sorts of stuff. The series he directed are also have no similarities at all, and range from incredibly bad (Final Fantasy Unlimited) to incredibly good (Gankutsuou, The Second Renaissance).
Yeah, that’s pretty much Studio Gonzo in a nutshell. ^^;
Anyway, Gala again is a great little movie of fifteen minutes long. It’s about a strange village with all kinds of weird and uniquely designed people living in it, where suddenly a giant seed drops from nowhere. First they want to destroy it, but gradually their attempts to destroy it turn into something completely different. For what happens next is something that you’re going to have to find out by watching it, but I’ll just say that there is a lot of symbolism in it, and leads up to a very good conclusion.
Music also plays a very big part in these fifteen minutes, but my one complaint is that the soundtrack nearly totally overshadows the music that’s played by the characters themselves. And don’t get me wrong, it really is a wonderful soundtrack, but this is a pitfall very common for anime, as it simply isn’t able to properly synchronize such complex moves as playing an instrument. Even a movie budget doesn’t turn out to be enough to get it right.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
Yep, I tend to agree about the music to animation synching. It’s pity really because the animation was for the most part beautiful but the characters were all playing string instruments when the music was lead by the piano. The ending was thought-provoking if a little twee, but I can’t fault it for that.
Incidently the music is called the ‘Ritmica Ostinata for Piano and Orchestra’ by Akira Ifukube. It’s a very famous piece of Japanese music dating from the 60s/70s. The full piece is 23 minutes long and a pretty amazing listen if you like contemporary classical music.
I actually liked the musical overburst in the short movie actually. Just like how the visuals were building and building, so did the music. It really wasn’t about matching visuals to the music at all. That was sort of besides the point.
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