Anime feature-lengths
contraband
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I see D&D has an anime thread, but it pretty much has to do with series. I'm a lot more partial to movies--they're shorter and I have a better chance of finishing them, the animation tends to be higher quality, etc etc. I've recently enjoyed Paprika and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Does anyone have any recommendations with that same kind of feel?
I'd also like to know if there are any websites that announce these new releases. I'd heard about both those films through a friend, but he isn't the most reliable and I'm sure there are plenty of websites that cater to this. Help?
I'd also like to know if there are any websites that announce these new releases. I'd heard about both those films through a friend, but he isn't the most reliable and I'm sure there are plenty of websites that cater to this. Help?
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also, www.animenewsnetwork.com
I would recommend the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs (released by ADV in America as Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal) if you enjoy exquisite animation. Sadly, I don't think they are available in HD format like Paprika. A couple tips for watching this "movie": avoid the dubs at all costs, they are probably some of the worst dubs in the history of bad dubs; don't get the "Director's cut" re-release, they turn the movie from full-frame to wide-screen by clipping the top and bottom, so you get less art, not more.
Other popular movies are "The Grave of Fireflies" and "Appleseed 2004." And people in America seem to love the "Mononoke Hime" guy, which I'll never really understand.
If you really like good feature-length stuff, it’s best to go back and look at all the pre-Evangelion era stuff; after Eva it seems like the best stuff all went to series formats. Miyazaki is worth looking at, but I find that his stuff started melting down into barely comprehensible pastiche after Mononoke. And do yourself a favor, stay far away from the Miyazaki dubs, they’re kind of atrocious.
That said, almost any of his films are excellent choices in my opinion: Nausicca, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart.
For something darker, Ninja Scroll and either of the Vampire Hunter D films are good.
Also, Read or Die. Short, but good.
Ninja scroll is kind of cool as a historical relic, but as a film it falls incomprehensibly flat in many areas and misogyny is rampant. Also features a level of graphicness that I've rarely seen in anything besides porn, so be warned.
Appleseed was terrible.
Howls Moving Castle
Metropolis is really the last full length non episodic movie I saw that I liked a whole lot. It has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard... Ray Charles? Yes please.
I actually tend to like the 12-25 episode shows that still have a beginning middle and end, even if the endings always piss me off because I want more. If I understand, you want something like this... just not Dragon Ball Z where there are like 643 episodes and no end in sight?
Record of Lodoss War
Samurai Champloo
Cowboy Bebop
Samurai 7
Serial Experiments Lain
Full Metal Alchemist
All of the above with the exception of Full Metal Alchemist run 26 episodes or less. FMA however is epic amounts of awesome.
Final recommendation if you haven't seen it is Grave of the Fireflies... it was a work of pure art, that also depressed the shit out of me for like 4 days.
VHD : Bloodlost
Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaia
Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heavens Door
Spriggan
Metropolis
X: The Movie
Memories
Animatrix
(If anyone can think of other movies like these ones please post them. I'm in the market of good anime movies too.)
edit: I gotta give a shout out to FMA too. It's got almost perfect continuity. One ep picks up exactly where the last left off. It's the perfect pick for a weekend anime binge.
You just recommended Appleseed, which is probably one of the worst animated films I've ever seen, and then bashed Hayao Miyazaki, who is, in any educated person's opinion, an absolute master of the art form. Please tell me you're 12-years-old.
For the OP, the two Ghost in the Shell movies are good, particularly the first.
Phew, I thought I was going crazy
Yeah, Howl's Moving Castle wasn't fantastic, but Spirited Away is by far my favourite Miyazaki film, and I don't think people like it the best just because it happens to be one of his better-known ones.
BTW, Escaflowne and X are not bad movies, but if the OP watches and likes them I'd strongly recommend he watches the series.
RahXephon the movie was really good, although I watched it after the series and am not sure how much I would've enjoyed it otherwise. Definitely my favourite movie-based-on-condensing-a-series, though.
Read or Die's a very good suggestion - not a movie, but three episodes that together run to movie-length. Along the same lines Macross Plus and Macross Zero are very good four-episode OVAs. There's also a movie of Macross Plus.
I also enjoyed the Rurouni Kenshin movies (you do not need any knowledge of the series to appreciate them).
Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress are both very good movies; the studio behind those two are probably the best known for anime movies after Studio Ghibli. Those two are the only two I've seen but there's at least one more.
And yes, I, too, think Akira has aged well, and is still quite seminal.
vampire hunter d + vampire hunter d bloodlust
spirited away
princess mononoke
ninja scroll
golgo 13
decent:
naussica
howl's moving castle (after seeing miyazaki's other films it feels like he's repeating himself)
ghost in the shell
did not like:
spriggan
also, even though it isn't anime, both of the star wars clone wars DVDs are excellent, stylish and very cool animation.
Anything by Studio Ghibli is amazing too.
Actually, I didn't express an opinion about Appleseed. Saying that a movie is popular isn't the same as saying "I think this movie is good." As for Miyazaki, if you got the impression I was bashing him because I referred to him as the "Mononoke Hime guy," let me assure you I didn't phrase it that way out of disdain, but laziness -- I forgot his name and didn't want to bother looking it up. And yes, I personally was not a fan of that film, but I don't think expressing an unfavorable opinion is "bashing" in and of itself. Or am I not allowed to ever disagree with you?
I make a casual, non-inflammatory statement of my opinion and you respond with a personal insult. That doesn't seem conducive to intelligent discussion to me.
P.S. On topic --
I figured I should clarify my recommendation of RK a bit since the OP is probably not terribly familiar with the whole franchise. Aside from the OVAs I specifically mentioned (Trust and Betrayal), there is another OVA series released in the US as "Remembrance," as well as an actual feature-length movie, "Requiem for the Ishin Shishi," released in America as "Samurai X: The Motion Picture." "Remembrance" is done in the same style as "Trust and Betrayal," but is not nearly as well-done in story-telling or pacing. It is also likely to be confusing to people who haven't read the manga, as it tells parts of the storylines in the manga, without fully explaining them. The movie is completely non-canonical, and is done in the same cartoon-y style as the TV series. The movie is pretty meh.
Also, I could have sworn I mentioned Noir in my first post, but I guess I was just hallucinating that part. Anyway, Noir is a 26(?)-episode TV series. It has some of the most gorgeous, fluid animation I've ever seen in anime. You should watch an episode or two and see how you like it. As someone else mentioned, it is one of those self-contained stories that is more like a 12-hour movie than some random series of endless DBZ fight scenes. CLAMP and GONZO are two major anime studios that often put out critically-acclaimed series, like Chobits and Saikano (Saishuuheiki Kanojou), respectively. Saikano is only 13 episodes long, so you can think of it like a 6-hour movie (which is still shorter than the entire LotR trilogy ;-)). Lain is another one of those short, drama-y series that people talk about a lot, but I have to confess it was over my head.
I second all of that. Since the OP liked Paprika, he'd probably like Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers, which are all by Satoshi Kon. The Rurouni Kenshin movies are also amazing. I couldn't handle the manga or anime, but the films are really something else entirely.
So.. watch it.
Like some people here have said it gets a but more popularity then it deserves.
He's got a lot of movies out which are down right amazing.
I absolutely love Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke.
Gonna triple up on the Grave of the Fireflies recommendation here.
There's a really excellent anime about a guy who's in some insane spec-ops group and meets the sister of a woman he killed(I think). It involved the story of "Little Red Riding Hood," can anyone refresh me on the name of it? It had incredible animation.
Jin-Roh
For the record, that film broke box office records in Japan as well. It is probably beloved the world over.