(no subject)

Going to bed soon (and yes, I'm still feeling miserable. I'm popping cough drops like nobody's business, and I missed both of my classes today...), but I just had to write about what I watched today.

For some reason (and this happens a fair amount) when I have a massive list of things I need to watch, I often get distracted by utterly arbitrary anime that I'll just stumble across. All the sudden something will have a nice character design and I'll marathon it solely because of that, or I'll hear one of the insert songs and watch it, or I'll see a ten second clip of something in an AMV and decide I'm curious about it, or other spur of the moment types of anime watching. Which is rather silly, especially because these series that I choose to watch right away on impulse are oftentimes not as good as the recommended list series. Oh well. XD

Today's theme was sad old anime! Thanks to Buried Treasure on ANN.

I watched Chirin no Suzu first. This movie was rather dated in a number of ways. The art and animation style were very old-looking and not entirely anime-styled (not saying that's a bad thing, just sayin'), as was the storytelling. It was an interesting movie to me, however, because it was fairly messed up for a kid's movie. I can't say it left a huge impact on me, but I certainly don't regret watching it either. It's from my favorite era of children's movies (roughly 1977-1985) and for some reason I always love movies and stories in general that start out innocent and become darker as they go. The story is about a lamb whose mother is killed by a wolf, so the lamb leaves the farm and goes up into the mountains to learn to be a wolf so he won't be weak and be killed himself. I almost wish I could go back in and create a new version of this story (and no, Arashi no Yoru ni doesn't count--they're not the same story at all!) because it's an interesting concept and I feel like the movie had bits of potential in it that weren't as well realized as they could have been because of it being a kids movie and because of how different storytelling was then. It was definitely interesting in parts. I couldn't find a subbed version of it anywhere, so I ended up watching it dubbed and the dub made it harder to take it seriously. Young Chirin's voice acting is cringe-worthy. :/ It was intriguing to me that such a silly-looking story at first didn't have a happy ending at all. Can't say a great many movies that start with tiny lambs eating grass with rabbits and playing around have somewhat horrible endings.

Then I watched The Dog of Flanders. I finally managed to find it subbed! Anyway, I was more impressed with this movie. It's one of those quiet, simple movies that nonetheless engages you emotionally for some reason. It looks very Ghibliesque and has a similar tone, I think, to the quieter moments of Ghibli movies, except this is much sadder and more brutal. (Though it's brutal in an...I don't know...unglorified way, I guess? It's not flashy at all, and you don't see any of the violence but the story is extremely cruel to its characters.) It's one of those movies where things just keep getting worse and worse and worse and you know the characters don't deserve it but nothing ever really gets better... I was wondering if I would cry, because I always wonder that in the anime that everyone seems to cry in, but as usual I didn't. The movie was quite sad, though. The last few scenes were very well done on an emotional level. I definitely recommend it, especially if you're an oddball like me and like sad movies. It's a simple story, but simultaneously sweet and cruel and worth watching in my opinion. It was mostly quiet and straightforward, and I appreciated that.

On a lighter note, I just realized that in the Pokémon episode Holy Matrimony, James was making a reference to this movie in his little reverie with Growly. XD

I got my huge Pokémon box, by the way! I sorted through most of it, and I'll probably do a sales post tomorrow.

Goddammit, I haven't done any homework at all. This is bad. D: I'm seriously not up for it, though... I tried earlier and my brain just couldn't cope with it. I'm going to have to do some serious homework over the weekend to make up for all this lost time...

(no subject)

Going to bed soon (and yes, I'm still feeling miserable. I'm popping cough drops like nobody's business, and I missed both of my classes today...), but I just had to write about what I watched today.

For some reason (and this happens a fair amount) when I have a massive list of things I need to watch, I often get distracted by utterly arbitrary anime that I'll just stumble across. All the sudden something will have a nice character design and I'll marathon it solely because of that, or I'll hear one of the insert songs and watch it, or I'll see a ten second clip of something in an AMV and decide I'm curious about it, or other spur of the moment types of anime watching. Which is rather silly, especially because these series that I choose to watch right away on impulse are oftentimes not as good as the recommended list series. Oh well. XD

Today's theme was sad old anime! Thanks to Buried Treasure on ANN.

I watched Chirin no Suzu first. This movie was rather dated in a number of ways. The art and animation style were very old-looking and not entirely anime-styled (not saying that's a bad thing, just sayin'), as was the storytelling. It was an interesting movie to me, however, because it was fairly messed up for a kid's movie. I can't say it left a huge impact on me, but I certainly don't regret watching it either. It's from my favorite era of children's movies (roughly 1977-1985) and for some reason I always love movies and stories in general that start out innocent and become darker as they go. The story is about a lamb whose mother is killed by a wolf, so the lamb leaves the farm and goes up into the mountains to learn to be a wolf so he won't be weak and be killed himself. I almost wish I could go back in and create a new version of this story (and no, Arashi no Yoru ni doesn't count--they're not the same story at all!) because it's an interesting concept and I feel like the movie had bits of potential in it that weren't as well realized as they could have been because of it being a kids movie and because of how different storytelling was then. It was definitely interesting in parts. I couldn't find a subbed version of it anywhere, so I ended up watching it dubbed and the dub made it harder to take it seriously. Young Chirin's voice acting is cringe-worthy. :/ It was intriguing to me that such a silly-looking story at first didn't have a happy ending at all. Can't say a great many movies that start with tiny lambs eating grass with rabbits and playing around have somewhat horrible endings.

Then I watched The Dog of Flanders. I finally managed to find it subbed! Anyway, I was more impressed with this movie. It's one of those quiet, simple movies that nonetheless engages you emotionally for some reason. It looks very Ghibliesque and has a similar tone, I think, to the quieter moments of Ghibli movies, except this is much sadder and more brutal. (Though it's brutal in an...I don't know...unglorified way, I guess? It's not flashy at all, and you don't see any of the violence but the story is extremely cruel to its characters.) It's one of those movies where things just keep getting worse and worse and worse and you know the characters don't deserve it but nothing ever really gets better... I was wondering if I would cry, because I always wonder that in the anime that everyone seems to cry in, but as usual I didn't. The movie was quite sad, though. The last few scenes were very well done on an emotional level. I definitely recommend it, especially if you're an oddball like me and like sad movies. It's a simple story, but simultaneously sweet and cruel and worth watching in my opinion. It was mostly quiet and straightforward, and I appreciated that.

On a lighter note, I just realized that in the Pokémon episode Holy Matrimony, James was making a reference to this movie in his little reverie with Growly. XD

I got my huge Pokémon box, by the way! I sorted through most of it, and I'll probably do a sales post tomorrow.

Goddammit, I haven't done any homework at all. This is bad. D: I'm seriously not up for it, though... I tried earlier and my brain just couldn't cope with it. I'm going to have to do some serious homework over the weekend to make up for all this lost time...