Well, that’s another weekend of heavy-duty cartoon watching done with, and while I’m, at time of writing, enduring a 4-5 hour train ride into London to see Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (which I keep wanting to type as Children Who Chase Deep Voices from Lost Below, which makes marginally less sense), I’m not all that inclined to give you the tl;dr version of events even if it would be a handy time-killer. So, I’m going to mostly be bullet-pointing this, because bullet points are the best kinds of points.

• Ryousuke Takahashi is a bit of a legend – extremely charismatic and witty, and certainly likes his golf (how else do you think they managed to get him to Scotland?)
• Ryousuke Takahashi apparently doesn’t like Robots that much. Who’da thunk it?
• Saying that, Pailsen Files isn’t particularly a great movie. I can see how’d it have made a pretty entertaining (and very 80’s – loved the music) OAV series, but as a movie edit it was an absolute mess.
• Actually, the episode of Flag they showed at the extended Takahashi Q&A the following day was far more interesting. Did that ever get a reasonably priced release?
• Enjoyed Colorful more the second time around, largely because it was way better projected this weekend. Not really sure what was up with it in Glasgow, but the video had a lot of interlacing artefacts which, thankfully, weren’t present in Edinburgh. However, the protagonist is still an insufferable prick.
• Given that some of Tekken:Blood Vengeance was visually incomprehensible in 2D, I really have to wonder who thought it’d be a great idea to release a 3D version of that movie.
• Tekken is still hilarious. Whilst the rest of the audience seemed initially disappointed, I’m almost glad that they didn’t get the subtitled materials and had to play the movie in Dub. That just makes it funnier.
• Speaking of Tekken, it’s playing in a bunch of places across the UK next month alongside Mardock Scramble 1&2. I may hit up the Newcastle screening if I’m not doing anything else that weekend.
• Hello to Hanners.
• As with in Glasgow, people thought that it was hilarious that the poor girl in Hotarubi no Mori E kept getting hit over the head. What heartless people.
• The FUSHIGI MYSTERY movie turned out to be Oblivion Island (Haruka and the Magic Mirror). I’ve been wanting to see that for a good whilst now, so I was quite pleased about that.
• Given that Otsu-Ichi was involved in the script, I was kind of surprised that the twist I was expecting to happen for most of the movie didn’t end up happening.
• Oblivion Island is a really interesting film to look at, particularly once Haruka actually reaches Oblivion Island itself. It’s actually kind of visually overwhelming at times with all the little background details that are on display.
• The character animation was pretty stiff, though I’ve a hard time deciding how much of that was intentional, as it was fine when it needed to be.
• The mixture of 2D backgrounds with 3D characters is a little distracting initially, but fits better with the other-worldly nature of Oblivion Island (though, admittedly, they started using more 3D backgrounds there as well).
• The writing maybe skews a little younger that I’d like for the most part, at least up until the final act. There’s plenty going on at that point, though I figure it coasts along a little leisurely until then.
• There’s a Mikan Box in Harukas shed – can someone get me a screen cap of that so I can do a post on it?
• I enjoyed Towanoquon (Part 1) more that I thought I would. Quite possibly just a result of lowered expectations, given what the general reaction towards it seemed to be. It was probably just the slickly animated opening battle setting it off on a good foot with me.
• Saying that, Insania is a name with unfortunate connotations for those of us in the UK.
• Coicent did a surprisingly convincing job of pretending it’s 3D-modelled characters were actually 2D, though from a certain point of view the fact that I spent most of the film thinking that means it failed in a sense. Fun little comedic piece, but it does smack of proof-of-concept animation.
• Five Numbers was considerably less convincing with it’s 3D-2D-fakery. Kind of interesting story, though I don’t think I ever need to see this or Coicent again.
• I have no idea why Letter to Momo didn’t win the Judges award.
• Need to keep an eye out for the Glasgow Youth Film Festival line-up in February to see if anything of interest turns up there…
• Fiery Irn Bru is kind of foul, though both Glasgow and Edinburgh are saturated with advertisements.