…Because the Escaflowne movie is so boring that it’ll knock you out cold, amiright?

Actually, that’s being a bit unfair. Having eight years of distance from my last rewatch of the TV show, as opposed to eight minutes like the last time I watched the movie, rather did wonders for my appreciation. After the TV show, where most episodes end on some kind of cliffhanger or high-point, the movie is simply uneventful. Taken on it’s own, it still has it’s share of issues with pacing and underdeveloped character arcs, but it’s still a very pretty looking movie with some really neat action sequences.

Colorful has been out for a while now (though not exactly for a decade like Escaflowne), so it’s not really worth me going into in any kind of depth given that far, far more intelligent folks than myself have undoubtedly pulled it apart already. It’s mostly an interesting movie in terms of how peculiar it is – it’s a Sunrise production, but aside from having a very Sunrise colouring style to the characters you probably wouldn’t know it (in terms of what part of Sunrise, which seems to be todays hot-topic, Japanese Wikipedia has it credited to Ascension). Honestly, it’s one of those movies which would likely have actually have been cheaper to make as a live action piece, not really doing much particular to it’s own medium.

As a brief synopsis, the soul of a dying person who has committed a terrible, unspecified sin of some kind is given the opportunity to reform and reclaim his place on the circle to reincarnation. To this end, his soul is placed into the body of a young boy, Makoto, who was hospitalised after a suicide attempt, and is told by his heavenly guide PuraPura that his reformation is to lead a good life as this person. Of course, our protagonist has no idea what kind of person Makoto actually was, nor why Makoto tried to top himself, and therein lies the conflict.

It’s a slow, thoughtful movie, with kind of odd subtitles that had that peculiar Japanese habit of omitting the subject (lots of “would like to…”s in place of “I would like to…”s). The production work is rather a mixed bag, with some sporadically awkward character animation. The background art is generally nice, but there’s an extended sequence which runs with a peculiar habit of using processed photographic elements (though not flat-out photographs) in the background art, which looks a little odd.

The last movie of the Glasgow wing of Scotland Loves Anime 2011 (and, if I’m remembering correctly, the first film of the Edinburgh weekend starting on Friday) was the 2012 movie A Letter For Momo. I say 2012, because it’s not actually due out in Japan until next year, as the movies own copyright notices denote. It’s a new production from Production IG, directed by Jin-Roh director Hiroyuki Okiura.

Also, it was kind of great.

The basic story is that Momo and her mother, shortly after the death of her researcher father, move to from Tokyo to a remote island town. Momo, however, is still angsting over not having had the opportunity to apologize to her father after having a storming argument prior to his death, clutching onto an uncompleted letter from her father (simply reading “To Momo”) as emotional support. Still, Upon arrival at the new home, Momo finds herself stalked by mysterious figures.

I’d kind of resolved myself to try and write about Momo without raising the spectre of The Big G, but it’s a little hard not to. Frankly, this movie is nothing like anything Gainax has ever made. It does feel a lot like a Ghibli movie, however, even though there’s not an obvious direct comparison. I guess it’s something of a combination of the more grounded settings of some of the Takahata (or maybe the other non-Miyazaki) works, but with slightly more Miyazaki-esque content. The buffoonish goblins that follow Momo around do feel fairly reminiscent of Miyazaki penchant for “nice” villains, like the Dola family or the sky pirates of Porco Rosso. Really, though, I think it’s just the meticulous attention to character animation that reminds one of Ghibli – it’s really quite staggering (especially after the occasionally wonky Colorful), and there’s a lot of the same kind of physical humour as Miyazaki likes to use – Momo is funny movie.

Actually, Momo is a very funny movie. Hilarious, even. Moreso than Tekken, which I referred to as the funniest movie movie I’d seen all year just a day ago. Of course, Momo is entirely genuine about it’s humour, which makes it all the movie impressive.

For all the Ghibli comparisons, though, I’d say it’s more like a Ghibli picture from the 80s or 90s, when Miyazaki still new when he had to edit himself (or at least would listen to those people who would tell he had to edit himself) – it’s not a baggy as his recent work, and doesn’t expect the audience to be patient as he gets a little too self-indulgent.

I mean, there are nits to be picked with the movie if you really want to get into it – whilst it’s hardly Return of the King, the movies triple-barrelled denouement is perhaps a little ill-advised, and there’s certain plenty about the movie that’s derivative (even taking Ghibli pictures out of the equation) – but these things are all minor complaints compared to the movies overwhelming positives. Whilst I did like Arrietty (ham-fisted environmental message sequence aside), it just feels like it’s been way, way too long since we’ve seen an anime movie of this ilk that’s been quite this well made. It reminds me of the anime movies I was watching ten or fifteen years ago, and that’s a good thing in my books.

Honestly, it kind of blew me away. It almost single-handedly validated my trip this weekend. Absolutely fabulous.

(Saying that, they really need to stop releasing pictures of girls running downhill as promotional images for movies. Seriously. Makes everything look the same).