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Reviews (1)
29 Mar, 2016
It's a Pretty Good Movie.
"Memories" is an omnibus of three short films that is collectively about 100 minutes long.
"Magnetic Rose" is the first, and while it had some good design work and the animation was great, I felt this short got unnecessarily intense in the last act. "Stink Bomb" is the second, It also has some great animation (There is one shot with spacesuits in a tunnel which contains an incredibly live-action movie like glare effect), though I felt the short only really picked up in the second half with some very fantastic and energetic action sequences which contrast the rather scary atmosphere of the first half. "Cannon Fodder" is the last short, and I think it is definitely the best; I trust Otomo's directing to be very non-gripping, and really liked how the short's focus was simply seeing a day in the life of a fictional world presented very matter-of-fact-ly, this allowed the appeal of the short to come from the environment that was presented instead of the audience's thoughts while watching the short. The movie ends with a nice techno dance piece that plays during the credits roll.
"Memories" overall has some uniformly great animation, though the appeal of the film may be limited by a sprinkling of some mature imagery (and some PG-13-level swearing in the English subtitles). I personally think that the films get better as they go on, but I could imagine the argument that "Magnetic Rose" is the best simply due to the engagement factor of the short film. Watching this film was a good time, and I think that it has an appeal to a broad range of audiences, not just Anime fans.