After a Chinese Ghost Story, the logical next step is of course Wonderful Days; A Korean-made movie. This one comes with a dystopia, and quite an interesting one. The world has yet again been flooded, just like with Noah. One party managed to predict it, and retreated to a safe place. Now, years later, they’re still in control, and suppress everyone not of their kind, just like in a proper dystopia.
First of all, the CG in this movie is awesome. I can understand why the Japanese animation-companies outsource to Korea so much, because these guys definitely know what they’re doing. Especially the background-landscapes are just plain gorgeous and a definite highlight for this movie. At the moment, I honestly can’t think of any other movie with better-looking background-art than this one. The traditional animation looks fine too, and blends in with the other graphics pretty nicely during most of the times.
But yeah, the story and characters aren’t really that special. There is chemistry between the characters, but for most part this movie just follows a standard plot of beating the bad guys, and no attempts of originality are really made. It’s another one of those anime where the side-characters end up looking more interesting than the main ones, and especially as the story nears its climax you can start to recognize more and more elements that appear in 50% of the other movies.
Still, that doesn’t mean that the ending is a complete failure. There is one reason you should be watching till the end of this one: the music. While it’s fairly unimpressive overall, the best two tracks have been saved for last, and they’re perfectly timed. Even though the ending sucks in terms of storytelling, it’s a gorgeous feast for the senses, which in the end, managed to make it worthwhile.
The main characters are by no means bad. They’re just… too standard. This movie is a good recommendation if you need an hour and a half to burn. There are enough action-scenes to keep it from getting boring.]]>
Wonderful Days Review – 76/100
I found it fairly forgettable aside from the eye candy, but there was that wonderful, wonderful scene near the end where someone gets shot and music plays (It’s been a while; that’s all I can remember.) that I thought made the whole thing worth it.
I’ve heard the soundtrack before it is amazing, didn’t Yoko Kanno write most of the music?
Since you’re looking at short non-new series/movies may I suggest Key the Metal Idol, the Tenchi movies, and My Beautiful Girl Mari.
Have you watched the movies by Shinkai Makoto? The scenes are extremely beautiful and the story is simple but touching. I highly recommend his work. 😀
Thanks for the recommendations everyone 🙂
I can’t say that I’ll be able to check out all of them (depending on my interest, and how easy they are to find), but some of them definitely look interesting. Oh, and Hoshia: I’ve seen about half of his works. 5cm/s was quite nice, though the place promised in our early days disappointed a bit.