20/09/2020: Gritty Anime Movies for Recess Week!

Wow! Recess week is finally here! I’m not sure about you, but I found this semester really tough so far. While a good student would be focusing on catching up on their studies, I’ll be catching up on all the fun I didn’t have! Well, I suppose I can’t really be so single-minded in my enjoyment because I do have a number of midterms due VERY soon. In that case, I think I’ll share a list of anime movies that I want to watch over the week! After all, anime movies are usually over and done with within 1.5-2 hours so they’re much more economical in terms of time compared to a ridiculously long TV series but they’re still a lot of fun to watch and can hit you really hard so they last longer than their runtime.

The rules are that you’ve got to be able to enjoy the movie on its own without watching other shows, so no follow-ups like Pokemon movies or Evangelion movies etc. They should be standalone movies! (With one exception.) I also won’t include Ghibli movies since they’re kind of different.

1) Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade

First up, we have my favorite anime movie ever. We’re set in an alternate history where Japan never got out of the edgy fascist stage of its life and is kind of like a Germany 2.0 with similar black-leather-yes-sir-no-sir imagery. We follow the police’s “SWAT” team which gets cool power armor and machine guns who tackle anti-establishment rebel activity, so we get to see stuff like them smashing through walls and blowing away bomb-toting freedom fighters with streams of bullets and it’s pretty cool. Our main character is a sensitive member of the team who doesn’t seem as dangerous or “hard” as the rest and he makes friends with a mysterious girl, and he’s dragged into a dangerous conspiracy.

The rotoscope animation is so eerily lifelike and the muted colors are really beautiful, especially scenes in the snow. The story itself is exciting, as you’d expect, and the themes of deciding who you are and deep shit like that stuck with me since I saw it at age 19. The ending was really hard to watch and it made me feel physically ill, but sort of like in a Schindler’s List way. I highly recommend it!

The action is seriously good.

2) Perfect Blue

Duh… This might be the anime movie with the most mainstream critical acclaim of all time? I’d rank it up there with other blockbuster psychological thrillers like Silence of the Lambs or Jacob’s Ladder.

Anyway, we follow a recently-retired pop idol who wants to do more serious stuff by herself like being an actress. Her decision is met with a lot of opposition from her fellows in the pop group, her fans, and the rest of the industry. She also hits lots of setbacks, which makes her doubt herself and then weird shit starts going on – like really weird stalker shit, which is when the thriller stuff happens.

Well, obviously, the movie is very thrilling and there’s not much I can say about it than that without giving the story away. It is really thrilling. Anyway, Satoshi Kon’s animation is really good. The lines are the same, but the way they move is what makes it different. At least, that’s BTC No Pico’s theory of animation art. I don’t know how to analyze it but everything moves in a sort of electric way, like it’s not particularly fast but there’s an energy to it. Lastly, I think there’s a pretty good message about being happy with yourself and self-confidence and it gets through quite well by the end of the show.

3) Resident Evil: Damnation and Resident Evil: Vendetta

Duh. Both of them are zombie attack movies. You don’t really have to know the story since they’re so simple. Damnation is set in some European place during a coup and the freedom fighters start using zombies and shit goes wrong. Vendetta is really weird and the story is really dumb but the action is really over-the-top and fun to watch.

For the gun nuts, there's a lot of cool equipment and fighting techniques - apparently they use proper gunfighting postures and stuff like John Wick but I couldn't say since I'm not an expert.

4) Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack

Junji Ito (the famous horror mangaka) wrote the comic for this. It’s about a whole bunch of weird fish metal monsters that come out and start attacking people. Our central characters are a young couple, Tadashi and Kaori, who try to survive the whole ordeal. In the comic, Tadashi’s our protagonist whereas it’s Kaori in the OVA. I liked Tadashi as the lead more since I felt that the character arc made more sense like that, but Kaori’s OK too.

It’s very unnerving, but that’s also the fun of it. It’s a body horror – especially the manga – so it’s a bit like watching a David Cronenberg movie. My skin always crawls when I see someone’s body get messed up so creepily! I think apocalypse-disaster shows are usually quite fun because it lets you imagine yourself in the scenario and question if you would have what it takes to make it out alive.

5) Ghost in the Shell

DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

This is THE definitive dystopian future sci-fi anime! It’s basically like a special police team that hunts down criminals and this is a case about a bad guy who hacks into people’s cybernetics. There’s a lot of investigating and cool sci-fi imagery and outstanding action with martial arts and gunfighting.

Besides the investigation and action (of which there is plenty and of a very high quality), there’s a very heartfelt discussion of ideas like one’s concept of humanity and self. I won’t say it’s very profound though. I think it’s better than a Christopher Nolan movie. I’d rank it maybe at the same level as the guy in the bar who can say enough about a niche topic that makes a layperson think that he’s cool.

The net is vast and infinite!

6) Blood: The Last Vampire

A classic vampire-hunter-girl anime. It spawned two anime series – Blood+ and Blood-C – both are not bad but I like Blood-C so you can check it out if you like. Those series aren’t related besides the idea of a girl fighting vampires with a katana.

Anyway, we follow Saya, a girl who hunts vampire-monsters with a katana and she’s got super strength and agility and stuff, and an American government agent who helps her out. The story and animation aren’t anything to write home about but it’s a lot of fun.

Here are clips of the other series.

I think it's funny how the 3 versions of Saya have different hair lengths and visual ability so each of them has 2/3 in common with the other...

7) Akira

One of the most famous classic sci-fi anime movies. We follow a group of street kids in a dystopian future with towering skyscrapers and cool cars. One of them develops ridiculously powerful telekinetic powers and goes nuts and then the government gets involved and it goes crazy from then on out.

Personally, I only like the animation of this one because the movement is so good and it’s really, really, really detailed. I like the sci-fi imagery, especially the cool gadgets like a fancy laser rifle and some medical scenes. (I’m a sucker for things like that.) Actually, I’m going to be a hipster and say I like the comic more because it’s longer. I feel like the movie ended a bit abruptly and oddly and I don’t like what happens to some of the characters. It’s still worth the watch since the part getting to the end is really exciting.

8) Genocidal Organ

A sci-fi conspiracy theory anime that follows a special futuristic soldier team as they investigate a spate of genocides that break out across South America. The story is quite complicated and revolves around some kind of strange sleeper-agent thing that sets off a panic that sends the world into a crazy surveillance-state vibe.

(This one splices over the audio from the video game Halo, which I personally don't play. It sounds cool, though.)

The mystery is quite compelling – I personally didn’t see it coming – and the sci-fi action is really cool. I like this battle scene where these soldiers drop down in battle pods which have machine guns on their legs so it’s like a spider bot that takes out the bad guys in the landing zone so the soldiers have an easier time getting out, and then they have loads of cool gadgets like special optical devices to see enemies behind walls and stuff.