… and I wasted valuable Q&A time asking the director about it. It kind of makes me wonder if there’s anywhere else I can take this blog from this point onwards. I kind of feel like I’ve now peaked, and it’s all going to be downhill from here.

That said, I’m not sure that I bought his answer – that such things are so common in Japan that most households will have at least one, which is why he likes to include them in his works. I think he’s trying to cover up some grander conspiracy that the anime industry is maintaining.

As for the film, it was pretty fantastic, though I’m loathe to talk about things too much since it’s likely to be another year before most people get to see it. What I will say is that the movies final act could really have done with losing about fifteen minutes – everything leading up to that point was gold, featuring a lot of the kind of irreverent humour you’d expect from something written by Hideyuki Kurata, but the climax drags on a little. It’s hard to complain too much about it, though, as it’s such a visually stunning movie. There’s an amazing density to the look of the movie – like those scenes in Kamichu where Yurie visited the land of the gods, only on a movie-level budget. Honestly, I also think having seen Evangelion 2.0 the previous evening may have elevated my expectations for how a movie should be paced, as that really is insane.