Star Crossed Anime

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.