Memories
~by Albright

This mindset is present in anime as well. What are the most popular anime series as of present (in the US, at least)? DBZ, Kenshin, Inu-Yasha… all of which are varying degrees of just plain bad. (But that's just this reviewer's opinion…) As long as companies can get the school of anime-fan minnows swimming in their direction, they have little incentive to produce anything of quality and substance.

So when someone thumbs their nose at making beaucoup bucks and instead really throws talent at a project; who shuns creating to please an audience and instead just creates; who gives the benefit of the doubt that whoever watches their project will actually have an attention span; then what results can often be quite spectacular. Yet it will be almost certain to pass under the radar and go unnoticed; it simply won't have the flash to attract the mindless, instinctive minnows. However, those who do find it are typically in for quite a treat.

For me, Memories was an impulse purchase. I was browsing the ludicrously large Japanese animation aisle at Suncoast one day — something I rarely do, as I do not wish to be associated with the FnO who can spend hours in that aisle; you know, you've seen/are one — when I came across this single DVD, which, with its dark spine and foil-stamped title, stood out like a sore thumb among the hundreds of pastel-colored cases of sets of discs belonging to this four-disc series or that eight-disc series. Memories was its title, subtitled "Three Unforgettable Tales From The Masters Of Animé." Well, I was always looking to increase my knowledge of foreign animation, and France is putting out some really nifty stuff nowadays; and it was only $20, so I went home with it.

Well, it turned out not to be French, but rather more Japanese stuff; but that's okay, because this Japanese stuff actually turned out to be really unique and excellent. It's awesome when an impulse purchase like this turns out so well.

Memories was released to sadly little fanfare early this year by Sony. It clocks in at just under two hours and is not actually one production, but rather three different and unrelated one-offs. The project was headed by Otomo, the progenitor of Akira and Metropolis.

But the similarities end there. "Magnetic Rose" is a haunt story in the vein of Poe; in fact, I'd be willing to venture that it's based loosely upon "The Fall of the House of Usher." The four-man crew of a salvage ship receives a strange SOS in the form of beautiful opera singing. Bizarre magnetic pulsations prevent the ship from coming close enough to investigate, so two of the crew, Heintz and Carlos, set out for the source of the signal on their own. What they find appears to be an ornate, yet uninhabited palace. Eventually they get split up in the labyrinthine mansion, and each experiences different surreal dreams… or, actually, memories. But whose?

After the dramatic mind-frick of "Magnetic Rose," "Stink Bomb" gives us some much appreciated levity. This one was directed by Tensai Okamura, who also did Kikaider and Wolf's Rain, but let's not hold those against him in this case. This one opens with a man, Tanaka, receiving an shot at a health clinic; he's got a cold and it's got him sneezing like crazy, and none of the over-the-counter medications seem to work. Fortunately, he works in a chemical laboratory which is developing a new anti-cold drug. He sneaks a couple sample capsules off of his boss's desk and gives them a try. The next thing he knows, it's the next morning, and all of his co-workers are unconscious, on the ground where they fell, with no clue as to what overcame them.

Worried, Tanaka finds an emergency video-phone in his boss's office and calls for help. The government big-wig on the other end of the line, concerned about the bizarre medical emergency, tells Tanaka to take the pills off of his boss's desk and bring them to Tokyo by any means necessary. It turns out Tanaka grabbed the wrong bottle by accident, and instead of taking a cold remedy, he had taken an experimental anti-bio-weapon drug in development for the government. Resolutely, Tanaka takes the drug and starts out on his way to Tokyo, but as he goes, he finds that everyone around him mysteriously falls unconscious, if they aren't already. It turns out the drug reacted with his inoculation and turned him into a walking biological weapon, and now he's bound and determined to get to Tokyo by all means necessary. When the government figures out their error, they try everything in their means to stop him, but it turns out Tanaka is not one to give up easily.

As mentioned before, "Stink Bomb" is pretty funny. Even the character designs will make you crack a smile (and they actually have noses!). And the way Tanaka goes through every deterrent thrown at him, even including a barrage of rockets from hundreds of attack helicopters, is a gag approaching Looney Tunes levels; you can't help but crack at least a dry smile.

"Cannon Fodder," directed by Otomo himself, is the shortest and yet the most unique of the three. The first thing you'll notice about "Cannon Fodder" is the unique design; the characters and many objects are reminiscent of old wooden toys, while the city itself feels like a blend of Nazi-style fascism and Soviet-style industrialism; cryptic numerals and slogans like "No Conquest Without Labor" are scrawled on city walls (in English; make of that what you will). And if you have an eye for picking out good animation technique, you'll be blown away by the long, sweeping camera pans "Cannon Fodder" exercises. In both Japanese and American toons, camera pans more complex than the Flintstones' car passing the same house and tree over and over and over again are rarely seen, but "Cannon Fodder" pans all over the place; up, down, in, out, in circles. Today, the animators would have probably used computers for this a la the forgettable Ameritoon Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron; but this was 1995, baby, and animators weren't cheating that much yet; in the "Making Of" on the DVD, you can actually see some of the long, winding, hand-painted backgrounds that were used in "Cannon Fodder's" filming.

By the end of Memories, you've seen three very different shorts which go in three very different directions, but the one thing they all have in common is their uniqueness from anime "standards;" they go places that Japanese (and American as well) cartoons just don't go very often. And this proves that that's not because animation is incapable of telling amazing stories like this; rather, that it takes talent and effort that the aforementioned audience-pandering directors and animators can offer. (But on the other hand, why should they? I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm more than willing to bet that Dragonball Z Volume 38, "No, Buu's Still Not Dead Yet," sold more copies than Memories, both here and in the archipelago. C'est la vie.)

So that's why I encourage stuck-in-a-rut "anime fans" who feel safe only watching big-name, standard productions, the aforementioned minnows who can only swim in the same direction as everyone else, to live on the edge for a moment and check out Memories; and that's why I encourage the anti-animation cynics in the world to give it a try too. I guarantee that both will be in for an experience that changes their expectations of anime and animation in general.

Memories is released by Sony Pictures and Destination Films. It has a standard Dolby stereo soundtrack in Japanese only; no English dubs, unfortunately. Subtitles are available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Extras include the aforementioned "Making Of" and some trailers of Sony's other anime and Asian live-action DVD releases. (Returner is a fun Japanese sci-fi/action flick with some slick special effects.) The disc has an MPAA rating of PG-13 and a CHV rating of PG; "Magnetic Rose" has some four-letter words, violence, and brief nudity, but the other two are fairly kid-safe. However, it may be worth noting that my twelve-year-old little sister didn't have the attention span for this and gave up about halfway through "Stink Bomb."