Reaction & Review | Memories

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm covering an animated anthology film from 1995. That movie is "Memories".

Now, I do know a couple of things about this movie. I know that it's an animated anthology film from Japanese film director, Katsuhiro Otomo. For those who don't know, Otomo is the man responsible for creating the manga of "AKIRA", and it's film adaptation. Not only that, but he has made a couple of other animated anthology films that are similar to "Memories". Those movies being "Robot Carnival" and "Neo Tokyo". I've seen "Robot Carnival", and I thought it was a really fascinating film. In fact, I do own the very rare VHS copy that quickly went out of print. I haven't seen "Neo Tokyo", though, but I've always wanted to.

The other thing I know about this movie is that one of the people who had a hand in writing one of the short stories in this movie, which I believe is called "Magnetic Rose", is the late-great Satoshi Kon. If you have no idea who he is, he was the man who created fantastic films such as "Perfect Blue", "Tokyo Godfathers", "Millennium Actress", and "Paprika". I've seen all four of his animated films, and I loved every one of them. I have seen a little bit of a series he created known as "Paranoia Agent", and I do need to get around to finishing that. And I also have his book called "Opus", which I haven't gotten around to reading yet because I am that lazy.

Now the reason why I brought up Satoshi Kon's name is because this is one of the last things that he had a hand in that I've never seen. Which is one of the big reasons why I wanted to review this movie. But also because I've seen "Robot Carnival", I'm curious to see if this movie will be as good, if not better than that movie. But the only way I'll know how good this movie could possibly be, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm going to do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Memories".

15 minutes later

So wait, the entire outdoor space was just a hologram? I totally understand that they are inside some kind of ship, but still, it would've totally fooled me if I had seen just an outdoor area with a grassy field, a blue sky, and a woman all out there. I will say that it looked really cool. I'm really loving this first story, guys, and I hope it continues at this pace.

16 minutes later

I'm gonna tell you, guys, this first story has been really fascinating so far, but I just found a problem with one of the subtitles. So apparently, Heintz has just been contacted. And they've been trying to contact him for 30 minutes. The issue is that they mispronounced a subtitle for "reach" as "raise". It just doesn't really make much sense to say if you were trying to "raise" through radio contact as in "reach". I understand that it's a completely trivial nothing that doesn't affect the story in any way, but seeing as how I had just noticed a mispronounced subtitle, I kinda had to comment on it, you know?

14 minutes later

O...K. Well, that first story had a...strange ending. That certainly was...something. Certainly hoping for the other two stories to be really good.

4 minutes later

Hold a second here. So this guy has just swallowed a red pill. Mind you, the pills were in a blue bottle, and we don't know what the contents are beyond that, and neither does he. Don't you think the smart thing to do would be to ask someone who works there about what the contents of the pills are? I understand this guy's having a bit of a cold, but it just seems irresponsible to me to just swallow a capsule that you know nothing about. Just thought I'd share that with you, guys.

9 minutes later

You guys can't hear this for obvious reasons, but the score in this second story has been really catchy. In fact, the music in this entire movie has been really good so far. Hell yeah.

8 minutes later

So, let me see if I understand this. So the Japanese military, and I'm going to assume it is the Japanese military. They notice Nobuo in this gas that's killing everyone. Instead of noticing right from the word go that Nobuo is the only one unfazed by this gas, a few of them decide to go rescue him and they wind up dead because of their idiocy. I'm sorry, guys, but if I were the head of this military and I notice someone not being affected by this mysterious gas, I would order them to retreat NOW instead of risking a few soldiers lives to save someone not affected by this gas. But hey, maybe that's just common sense talking, you know?

8 minutes later

So you had damn near all of the Japanese military shooting at Nobuo. And not a single one of these missiles, bullets, and tons of other fire power can't successfully hit this guy, who's only mode of transportation, is a motorbike? I think it's safe to say that the Japanese militia really fucking suck, guys.

11 minutes later

OK, so the second episode is done. I will say that the ending of it was actually kind of funny. I wasn't really expecting that.

19 minutes later

You know, guys, I really like the look of this third story,  but I can't really feel myself getting into it much. I'm not totally sure why that is, but I think I'll explain later when the movie is done.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Memories". Let me shut the movie off...OK. Well, I think the first thing I need to say is that this movie was actually pretty good. Now I need to explain myself by talking about the writing.

I have to approach the writing in this movie a little differently. Because I'm talking about an anthology film, I need to start with, at least in my opinion, the weakest of the three stories, which would be "Cannon Fodder". Sure, I mentioned a number of logic issues during the reaction portion when watching "Stink Bomb", and believe me, I will talk about them later. But I need to start with "Cannon Fodder", because there really isn't much of a story here. We have this family, more so the parents, who are contributing to a war by firing cannons. And, unfortunately, the story doesn't really go beyond that with them. OK yes, I will say that we do get sort of an idea of this world that they live in where a bunch of cannons exist, and we do get a little bit of background through propaganda, and that's perfectly fine. However, our characters are really shallow and we don't get a whole lot of story about them. The best that we get is that we have their son, who wants to be a soldier who fires a cannon. And that's kinda it. You see, I think the biggest problem with this story is that, beyond not having much of a story, is that it feels unfinished. I really think that there was a lot here for a story that would benefit of getting it's own feature film. But because "Cannon Fodder" only gets about less than 30 minutes of film time, that sorta kills a lot of what we could've had here. If this didn't get saddled in with an incredibly short runtime, we could've potentially had an amazing story. I get the feeling that there was more here, but they had to condense it down to less than 30 minutes. And unfortunately, for a story like this, it isn't really enough. Now I will say that, even though the story itself is sorta lacking, the look and the animation style is amazing. But I'll save that for when I cover animation.

Now let's get to what I thought would end up being the weakest story for me, but surprisingly wasn't, is "Stink Bomb". Now, I already mentioned the logic issues that this story had and I'm going to address a couple of them here.

The first one is more minor than anything, but still worth mentioning. So in this story, we have our main character, Nobuo, who works at a science lab. One day, he gets the flu while going to work, and because I guess he never took any kind of medicine before leaving home, he stumbles across a random jar of capsules or pills, you can take your pick there. So instead of asking someone what the pills contain or what have you, he decides to swallow one because, according to his own words, it wouldn't hurt. Oh yes, it's perfectly fine to swallow a tablet with unknown side effects that may or may not cause the people around you to collapse and die. Well, "die" isn't really used here. They're just unconscious, at least according Nobuo. But that honestly is just a minor issue. Now we get to somewhat of a bigger logic issue.

Now earlier, I mentioned the scene involving the Japanese militia where they see Nobuo, and they think he's a survivor of this gas that's knocking everyone out. So rather than realize that something may be wrong the moment that you see someone standing perfectly fine within the gas and retreat from him then, they decide to rescue him, but because of it, they wound up getting knocked out. THEN they get the idea that they should retreat from Nobuo. Which leads me to ask, how come the head of this militia notices the gas, but early on, we saw a news copter flying down to try and rescue Nobuo, but they don't see it? It doesn't really make a ton of sense, because if the gas is suppose to be all around Nobuo, then how come nobody from the helicopter noticed it, yet the military is able to see it?

Another issue that just came to me is when the Japanese militia goes guns blazing at Nobuo, trying to kill him. How do they know that killing him will get rid of the gas? If Nobuo dies, then what happens to the gas? Does it just disappear on it's own or does it spread even further? Also, I like how, even though you have the entire militia firing all these missiles at Nobuo, not a single one is able to hit him. Either the gas is somehow causing them to intentionally miss Nobuo, or the Japanese militia just have really awful aim.

You see, guys, it's these logic issues that, if you think about it too hard, then it might ruin the story for you. If you are willing to turn your brain off, and see it for what it is, then you still have a really fun story. And trust me, the second story is still rather fascinating, again, provided you are able to turn your brain off and just view it as a mindless popcorn story. In fact, all three stories have their own strengths to go on. We have "Magnetic Rose" for it's amazing writing, "Stink Bomb" for it's mindless fun, and even though I didn't care for "Cannon Fodder", I will say that the visuals and the animation are some of the biggest highlights for that story. And who knows? You might something more out of that third story than I did.

Now, moving on to the acting. First of all, I need to mention that this movie does not include an English dub. All of it is subtitled. So if you're someone who prefers to watch their anime dubbed, then you might want to wait until this movie gets an English dub of it's own. I will say that the acting here is really good. Mind you, since I watched this movie with the Japanese voice acting, I have to go by what I got from this movie. And I've seen enough movies to sorta compare good Japanese acting to bad Japanese acting. And the voice acting here is really good. Now there is one thing I need to mention when it comes to the acting. Even though I was watching this movie with the Japanese audio, there were maybe about two lines that were spoken in English. Now I don't know if they got someone who was an English speaking voice actor or not, because one of the characters who is a part of this U.S. military is black, and the person they got to voice him sounds a little bit sketchy because it didn't sound like someone who natively spoke English. But honestly, that's just me trying to stretch it to find a negative in the acting, because even though the acting was a little bit suspect, it was only one line, so the voice acting is still really solid.

The animation in this movie is fantastic. And I have to give a special mention to "Cannon Fodder". Because with it's animation, a lot of the character designs in that segment have a ton of lines on their faces and clothing. And normally, whenever I see that kind of thing in hand drawn animation, I normally would have an issue with it. But "Cannon Fodder" uses it to it's advantage and, my god, does it ever use it well. Because, regardless of the quality of the story, the animation is what really makes it stand out along with the other two stories. And it fits the tone of the story really well. So I can definitely praise the animation on that end. As for the rest of the animation, it's really good. The characters are designed really well, the color palettes are done perfectly, and there is very little CG used in this movie. And that's mainly for things such as the outer designs of the Magnetic Rose station from the first story, or in a very small shot in "Cannon Fodder", when they are turning the cannon. That stuff is used really well. Mind you, it's done really well by 1995 standards. I would be foolish if I tried to compare it with the CG we see today.

Sound-mix is done really well. The music is also really solid. Because the first story, "Magnetic Rose", uses it to it's advantage, as the story involves a female character, who use to be an opera singer. And while I wouldn't call myself an opera fan, mainly because I don't listen to a lot of opera, the opera music here is fantastic. And the second story, "Stink Bomb" also uses a ton of different musical instruments. I think one of them I heard was an Australian horn, which is definitely something different, but still used really well. Guys, the score and the soundtrack for this movie are both great and they also make this entire anthology worth watching.

So yes, guys, I'm totally able to recommend "Memories". If you are a fan of anime and are a fan of anthology films, then you are going to have a blast with this. The only things I kinda have to caution you on is that there is no English dub for this movie, and the second story might hurt your brain, if you try and put logic into it. However, if you are able to look past all of that, then this movie is still definitely worth your time. As I made mentioned at the start of this, I've been wanting to watch this movie for a couple of years, especially hearing that this was one of the only films left that Satoshi Kon had a hand in. And after watching this, I feel damn proud of myself. And you know what? I think I'm gonna go back and finish "Paranoia Agent". Because I know it's on YouTube, I'm just gonna marathon the entire series, because it is that short.

Anyway, with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.