If you love anime, and Japanese films, may I suggest the movie Casshern to you...vigorously, while hopping up and down wearing a chicken hat. You might guess that I really loved this film. And no I don't have a chicken hat...but it I could convince you to watch this film I'd wear one. The website for the film is linked above...watch the trailer. You'll see what I mean :)
Casshern is a beautiful film set in the future, after 50 years of war...It's a difficult movie to explain, but I stumbled across a trailer years ago and have been aching to see it ever since. It is like an anime film, only it is*real*...and stunningly filmed and artistically rendered. It was shot entirely on a digital backlot, giving the director unlimited ability to create the world in which the story takes place. It's based on a 1973 anime film called Neo-Human Casshern, which I haven't seen.
*ahem*
Plot summary (kindly avert your eyes if you are the anti-spoiler type...please skip the next paragraph if you are)
The future, where robot armies have fought and devistated society, brings about a terrible challenge for a medical scientist, Dr. Azuma. In his quest to cure disease and ultimately cure his dying wife, an object that falls from the sky accelerates his Neocell research into curing injury and disease. He finds that he can heal with it...that it can even bring the dead back to life...with superior strength. He designs a suit able to harness the strength of a reborn superhuman, to keep them from tearing themselves apart with their untrained, unchecked new strength...just in case...you know. After some of the war dead are accidentally brought back to life, the government tries to irradicate them all out of fear. The surviving reborn superhumans escape and retreat. They find unused war supplies and decide to use them to fight back at the inferior humans that try to irradicate them. The scientist's son, Tetsuya, who has is brought back to life after dying in battle, relives the horrible futility of war, and tries to stop the advancing cyborg menaces as the only one who can possibly stop them, to save his family, and his love. In his final efforts, he takes on the name of the mythical godess Casshern, to try and make things right again.
This film is incredible visually, and although I'm sure something is lost in translation, if you are a lover of Japanese animated films and anime films, I really must recommend this film to you. I *loved* it. It took years to make it to a rental house here, but I highly recommend it. It was beautiful and a somewhat steampunk in style.
Check it out.
Or don't.
Y'know...
5 comments:
"...vigorously, while hopping up and down wearing a chicken hat."
I demand video evidence of this alleged form of recommendation.
"And no I don't have a chicken hat..."
Curses, foiled a mere two sentences later.
"...and a somewhat steampunk in style."
Having skipped the 'spoiler' paragraph, I'm met with the above. A stumbling block of sorts as, while I am familiar with both steam and punk and the various concepts to which those words apply, I am sadly, unfamiliar with the compound "steampunk". However, your enthusiasm for the film to which your post speaks has won me over. I will, even without knowledge of this wonder you call steampunk, endeavor to watch Casshern.
(too formal?)
I've been wanting to see this for a couple years but finding it in Tumbler Ridge is...well, you know.
Rimmer: Steampunk is a sub-genre of cyberpunk. Or maybe not a subgenre, but a different genre that borrows heavily from it. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
My Dad's step-daughter is a HUGE animae fan, so I'll ask her about this one.
Ever seen the animae Metropolis? See it, but skip the chicken hat.
Steampunk = Gibson's and Sterling's The Difference Engine in my mind.
I loved Casshern, but I've only watched it the once. It was a bit intense for me. Almost operatic, in a way.
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