Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Escaflowne – “the movie”

Escaflowne is one of my favourite TV series; its blend of fantasy, SF, romance and tarot made for an intriguing story. The series had an excellent (if controversial) conclusion, and so this is an “alternate telling”. Fear the worst, find something better than that, I say: in this incarnation of Escaflowne, I found a beautiful, semi-coherent film that did not try to resemble its origins in any way whatsoever.
Continue reading Escaflowne – “the movie”…

Play Ball – episode 2

“Play Ball for Tomorrow”

New group! Play Ball for the Love of the Game! Assorted other baseball clichés!
Continue reading Play Ball – episode 2…

The Snow Queen – episode 4

“Departure”

I never thought I’d say this, but some of the matte utilised in this episode was not strictly necessary. Still, a good episode that focused on the emotional underpinnings of the story. Good news: this is likely the final appearance of the poorly designed Matilde.
Continue reading The Snow Queen – episode 4…

Appleseed

As an anime fan, and one not disposed to any one genre, I have had many opportunities over the years to consider the morality of robots and their place in society. Appleseed based upon Shirow Masamune’s manga, gave me a chance to consider just about every robotic moral dilemma ever conceived in the space of just 100 minutes.
Despite its many convolutions, Appleseed is a quite pretty if frequently clichéd film.
Continue reading Appleseed…

Monster – episode 65

“Johan’s footprints”

What an episode! Tenma, Eva and Nina! It’s like Monster Heaven!
Continue reading Monster – episode 65…

Tide-Line Blue – episode 11

“Battle of Metasequoia”

Penultimate! This episode is a bridge between the previous and this one, in which the “intermediary” party comes to their final decision.
This was a good episode, but I won’t say much because of its continuation of the previous episode and because … it’s been more than a week since I watched it.
Continue reading Tide-Line Blue – episode 11…

WETA Workshop: Richard Taylor talks about Evangelion movie

Richard Taylor, co-owner of the WETA Workshop, announced tonight at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo that pre-production has resumed on the Evangelion film.

In May 2003 John Ledford, CEO of ADV Films, approached WETA and asked them to start development work for a Neon Genesis Evangelion film. Taylor was glad to accept, and work progressed for six months.
At that time, in Taylor’s words, the project “fell off the face of the planet”. With no word of production, WETA was forced to cease work.

About four months ago, at ComicCon in San Diego, the producer who had been working on the Evangelion film was flagged down by Taylor at the WETA booth. They went out to drink. Someone at the bar recognised Taylor, and posed the question “What’s happening with the Evangelion movie?”
Taylor agreed, and asked the producer the same question; for every one Lord of the Rings or Kong email WETA receives, they receive 25 about Evangelion.

A short while later, Taylor and Ledford made their way to Tokyo, to visit Studio GAINAX. Taylor said that GAINAX is known for being fiercely protective of their properties, and they were somewhat nervous. The work that had been done on Lord of the Rings and the “filmic phenomena” that ensued counted in their favour, and Taylor had prepared a six minute example of the design work that they had done for the film. As it turns out, WETA had continued to work on Evangelion “in their spare time”.

GAINAX were quite impressed with the pitch that had been made, and thusly Evangelion was put back on track. Taylor added to the story that on his way out of GAINAX, he saw Anno Hideaki, Evangelion’s director, eating his lunch and watching dailies.
They got to talking, and it turned out that they have a shared passion: steam trains. This sense of camaraderie bodes well for the project; short of The Hobbit, tangled in its legal rights, Taylor says that this is the project that he is most excited to work on.

Ledford and Taylor spent the remainder of their trip pitching to financiers. Matt Greenfield, co-founder of ADV Films, is presently in Oceania on holiday and reportedly to meet with WETA.

Taylor says that WETA’s full scale role in Evangelion production should follow soon after work on Halo is complete.

Monster – episode 64

“The Baby’s Depression”

This episode was named for The Baby, but it should have been named for Capek. The amount of animation they spent on Capek’s horror weighed the episode more in the ambiguous man’s favour, despite the first half “belonging” to The Baby.

In writing it up, I realised that the true strength of this episode – an episode that focuses on a triangle of villains – is its precise examination of humanity, something present even in scum.
Continue reading Monster – episode 64…

Honey and Clover – episode 24

“… I’m here”

I’m not sure that I could have been more satisfied with this ending. So much was so right; this series was an excellent way to spend six months. This episode featured many profound images and a purely fitting conclusion; that’s right, conclusion.

If you’ve made any head way into Honey & Clover, don’t come here …
Continue reading Honey and Clover – episode 24…

Monster – episode 63

“An Irrelevant Homicide”

You may have noticed that this is my first entry for the Monster series. This is going to make the work much harder for me. While I work something out, I recommend visiting Memento for backstory detail.
Continue reading Monster – episode 63…