MEMORIES

Title:MEMORIES
Overall:Buy
Keywords: , , , , , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - Studio 4°C
KON Satoshi
Music - KANNO Yoko
OTOMO Katsuhiro
A collection of shorts by Katsuhiro Otomo. The first, Magnetic Rose, is about a group of space salvagers who respond to a distress call and find a lavish space mansion. The second, Stink Bomb, is about a young man who takes an experimental cold pill, and becomes a living disaster as his body exudes an odious green cloud. The last is "Cannon Fodder," about a boy who lives out his life in a vaguely Orwellian world, fighting a distant, invisible, enemy.

Movie (133 minutes)
Released in 1995
Produced by Studio 4°C
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 10 10 9 8 8 Ggultra2764 [series:306#1552]
This movie is really just a trio of animated shorts directed by Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo and animated by Studio 4C. For hand-made animation, the shorts in Memories were quite impressive with plenty of visual detail in all three shorts with Stink Bomb and Magnetic Rose having greatly detailed character designs and some very fluid animation. Now here are my thoughts of the shorts.

  1. Magnetic Rose- The best short in this collection featuring a suspenseful plot where the space salvagers find themselves unable to discern reality from illusion when receiving an SOS signal from a space mansion. This short does a good enough job of keeping you on your seat as you figure out whether or not something out of the ordinary is happening to these salvagers.
  2. Stink Bomb- The comedy short of this collection where the laughs come from the ridiculous insanity coming from Nobuo's stench and the Japanese military being incompetent in their attempts to kill him. Laughs in this short though tended to be hit-or-miss for me as some scenes had me laughing in regards to Nobuo being clueless of his own lethal stench yet the incompetence of the military wasn't getting me as giddy.
  3. Cannon Fodder- The weakest of the three shorts featuring an animation style different from the two earlier shorts. I couldn't really make sense of Cannon Fodder's moral. It appeared to take place in a militant government looking into the day of a family going through their regular day with the mother and father being in a factory that prepares roof-mounted air cannons to be fired and the son being taught the ways of his country. Still, I couldn't see any meaningful from this short.


Last updated Sunday, July 26 2009. Created Sunday, July 26 2009.
Buy 10 10 8 9 8 9 Greg Bread [series:306#763]
The animation here is second to none. If I had to show someone an example of what anime is, I'd show them this. The three shorts contained in memories are of the sci-fi genre. 2 of them taking place in the distant future. Each of the shorts are well paced and keeps you guessing until the end. Stink bomb would be my personal favourite.
This being Katsuhiro Otomos' work it's surprising it didn't get a wider release

Last updated Sunday, June 15 2003. Created Sunday, June 15 2003.
Buy 9 8 9 8 9 9 daSwede [series:306#279]
3 exellent short-stories told by Otomo through these 3 "episodes". They were all wierd in the "arty" way I like it. All beutifully animated and experimental without pushing it too far. I really enjoyed this DVD...
... Oyeah, you buy this baby from Hong Kong through ebay for 9.95$(!) so save your Yens skyknyt! *_*

Last updated Saturday, March 02 2002. Created Saturday, March 02 2002.
Buy 10 9 8 9 10 10 skyknyt [series:306#29]
This is an absolutely incredible movie, made better with the inclusion of captioning in english. Granted,the 10,000 yen price tag was a little painful, but for anime this good, its worth it. Otomo has gone out of his way creating a veritable masterpiece: he proves he can work in a variety of genres and styles effectively. Each one of these shorts would be nearly perfect on its own, but together they are absolutely amazing. This is a must own if you can find it.

Last updated Sunday, February 17 2002. Created Monday, July 23 2001.

Other Sites
NameURL
Sony Pictures Movie Web Site http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/memories/

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