19/06/2020: Random anime movies to watch!

Before the article begins proper, a site update:

Shiota Nagisa here! I've been busy with a killer work-from-home internship, so I've not been able to keep up with the blog for a while. All the editors have been pretty busy (some have been held up by internships and others by laziness and procrastination), so we've not really been in close contact either. We'll try to bring you articles as and when we can, to hopefully help you find things to make the summer more enjoyable.

Random anime movies to watch:

I really like movies because it can be hard to commit the energy and time to watch a full anime series, whereas you can get through a movie within 90-120 minutes.

To keep the list nice and trim, I've excluded Studio Ghibli movies (there'd be too many) and TV tie-ins that require you to watch the show (so no End of Evangelion, Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi or the Pokemon movies). The key feature is that you've got to be able to enjoy the movie ON ITS OWN! Another thing, I'm not very up-to-date, so I'll focus on older movies that I'm familiar with, and I'll leave the newer movies for another editor to write about in another article. Also, I won't bother recommending famous movies like Perfect Blue, Ghost in the Shell or Your Name since they're obvious must-watches - this list is for stuff that you might have missed!

1) Appleseed (2004) & Appleseed Saga Ex Machina

This was based on a manga, from around the time that cyberpunk was in its hey-day (i.e. around the same time as GITS). In the far future where civilization has been drastically affected by a global conflict, a young woman, a soldier, is rescued and brought to one of the last cities. She meets bioroids (androids) and a cyborg (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend after a crippling injury) and joins a special police squad. The manga was more of a police slice-of-life but the movie follows a crisis where a facility critical to the bioroids (who make up a vital component of society) is sabotaged so our heroine has to save the day. It's very, very, very well animated for the time (and it still holds up) and the action is really exciting, even if the story is somewhat cliched. It's an epic sci-fi tale which is pretty fun. The second movie has even better animation and follows another crisis involving cyborgs and cybernetic implants.

2) King of Thorn

A group of people are cryogenically frozen to hide from a deadly virus that turns people to stone and they wake up to find their facility in disrepair and dangerous dinosaur-like creatures running amok. The survival aspect of the show is pretty strong, but what really attracted my attention was the mystery of finding out the events that transpired regarding the outbreak, the creatures and the state of the facility. The characters are the same kinds you'll find in most survival thriller manga, but they're alright. A fairly entertaining watch.

3) The Fake

If you watch korean dramas, you might recognise the story being really similar to OCN's "Save Me" season 2. There're two main characters: a priest come to town to perform miracles and a town troublemaker. The troublemaker suspects that the priest is up to no good (i.e. running a scam) but nobody believes him. It's a depressing but gripping story by the director of The King of Pigs (extremely depressing) that harshly critiques organised religion and it makes you feel really, really bad for everyone involved. In that sense, it was a little hard to get through, but in a good way (like how Schindler's List is).

4) Oishinbo

The Oishinbo movies are adapted from the long-running manga featuring a newspaper food critic who learns about all kinds of food from many different cuisines. Each movie covers the equivalent of a volume of the comic (at least, the ones that I watched) and can be enjoyed on its own. The star of the show is obviously the presentation of interesting cuisines, but it's elevated by the interesting characters, particularly the relationships surrounding our headstrong, passionate main character.