Staying on the subject of Japanese media, I’ve always been a huge fan of Anime films and television series. I don’t know what it is about them but I personally have an extensive collection on DVD and VHS (yeah remember them?) and I periodically revisit them from time to time.

I think the first series I ever really got into was probably Fist of The North Star or Dangaioh, both of which were some of the first Manga titles to break into the Western market. Since then popular titles such as Akira, Ghost In The Shell and Legend of The Overfiend have crept into my collection. In addition to this, anime series have been shown on cable channels like Cartoon Network broadcast Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing and it seems almost necessary to show an anime classic as part of the Christmas films, most recently being Spirited Away.

Now  from watching all these films I have noticed one thing in common with the films, whether they’re set in the far future, post-apocalypse or a fantasy world, around the hour mark of the film, they do not make any sense at all! It’s a bit like in Matrix Reloaded when the Architect swallows a dictionary and spouts an epic chain of circumlocutory dribble to try and explain to Neo that he’s different. You sit there on the sofa looking at each other blankly mouthing “WTF?”. It’s the same in Anime films and you need to end up watching the film about four or five times just to gain a vague understanding on what on Earth is going on and try and pinpoint where you totally became disconnected from the plot.

I’ll try not to put any spoilers in here for those of you who haven’t seen the following titles and apologies in advance if this does ruin any future viewing.

**WARNING SPOILER ALERT**

Akira

Right I was following this film fine but when Tetsuo ended up in the hospital/military base and I was enjoying a nice futuristic drama, so what the fuck is up with the giant rampaging teddy bear and the tsunami of milk?! Then the world is enveloped in a giant blancmange and some face appears? Seriously what the hell is going on?? It’s not as if it explains it in the film and I had to watch this several times over, gave up and looked it up on the internet to have the ending explained, and in all fairness I still have no clue!

Urotsukidoji: Legend of The Overfiend

This film gained notoriety as having scenes of graphic sex, but lets not take it away from a decent film involving the integration of evil from a demon world merging into our world…or at least that’s what I think it was trying to say. With phallic tentacles flying about, severed demon cocks and a small school girl who has apparently the womb to house some kind of demonic messiah, I got rather confused. I was watching the film fine and then all of a sudden some kind of evil apocalypse occurred I can’t honestly say I knew what on earth was going on there. The sequel made more sense albeit I can’t see how it follows on from the end of the first one, so I’m assuming it must be an interim story, I assume.

Howl’s Moving Castle

Seriously this film makes no sense whatsoever! I saw it on TV a while back and I found myself scratching my head pretty much straight from the off. I can’t even begin to explain and which point I was following what was happening! Some poor girl gets transformed into an old woman, becomes a cleaner in a castle on legs, the wizard guy periodically turns into a blackbird, a door has a trivial pursuit piece which switches location and Billy Crystal is the voice of a talking flame. WHAT?!? To make it worse there’s a hopping scarecrow to keeps popping up and then makes no sense when they try and explain his back story, in fact it’s so separate from any logical storyline you wonder why they left him in. Basically it’s good, but trying to make sense of what’s going on requires too much brainpower.

Spirited Away

This is not as confusing but the proverbial shit hits the fan pretty quickly as the girl’s parents sudden become pigs and she has to work in a steam house. Only for a variety of monsters appear, she escapes, turns an oversized baby into a hamster and finds the oppressive witch’s identical twin sister and they live in a bungalow in a filed before returning and suddenly everything is ok. WHAT?!?! That makes no sense?! Do want to explain it? I can’t! No-Face is freaky as hell but is quite innocently cool at the same time. Any other film and you’d just turn it off because it’s just odd, but in the context of this film, he’s pretty cool.

Ghost In The Shell

Now this is more like it, futuristic cyborgs fighting crime. After a criminal which brainwashes people. Excellent. And then WHAT!?! I totally got lost in this film. I can see that they were trying to find the location of the mystery hacker but then it pulls in the whole “ghost in the machine” theorem and then I got really confused, especially since you totally lose track of who’s good and who’s bad. And then Kusinagi fights a big spider robot thing, rips her arms off and then is a little girl. WHAT!?! Where did that come from?

Final Fantasy: Unlimited

Now I love Final Fantasy so I bought this boxed set of the series. What I wasn’t prepared for was that not only is this NOTHING to do with Final Fantasy apart from a chocobo, the odd summon and some cactuars, this is so confusing and bizarre that you really have to watch it and disassociate anything you do know from Final Fantasy games. So yeah Kaze has a gun for an arm, loads three chambers with multi-coloured soil, of which every episode goes through the rigmarole of explaining every single cartridge, before firing it off and a Final Fantasy summon appears vanquishing the monster, except it’s always over the top overkill and NOTHING for all 24 episodes explains anything! It’s good don’t get me wrong but it was very difficult to understand what was happening!

Mobile Suit Gundam

It’s always puzzled me from watching this first series of all the gundams, is to why oh why did the government create a prototype humanoid war suit which could only be piloted by an immature teenager. It was good though as I suppose it added the sense of vulnerability to the protagonist but I still don’t see the logistics of the big robot having a rifle. Why not just build a gun into his arm! It’s incredible how many permutations and off shoots of this series have spawned, i.e. Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam, Gundam Wing, Turn-A Gundam, etc and while they all follow a pretty much identical format, but at least it’s a good format!