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The AFI Anime Report
Here I was at the El Capitan behind a line of about 300 people waiting to see one film: Laputa. [In fact, someone told me the row for the film was the longest he’d seen for any AFI film for that month.] There were people who wanted to see Spriggan, but they were in a substantially smaller line. For people who have been irritated at Disney for delaying the dub of Laputa, not only did they have the chance to see it in Japanese with subs, they got to see it in a theater that Disney rents, in order to play many of it’s movies.
The types of fans varied. Some only had experience with titles like Akira and Princess Mononoke. Others already saw Laputa and Spriggan through imports or fansubs. There were even neophytes who were seeing anime for the first time, simply because of their connection to the film festival. Nonetheless, they all converged on that particular day. And the funny part is that I’ve never seen that large a queue for a film playing at that theater. Even the Disney hits-such as Toy Story 2-never attracted the echelon that Laputa attracted. The length of that line made the line across the street-for the premiere of Charlie’s Angels-seem very insignificant.
To give you an idea of the significance of this event, you have to realize that Hollywood has very limited parking. Your options are to either pay for parking in an underground lot, drive far away from your intended location, and walk, or take a bus. And you were required to pre-order your ticket by credit card, or lose any chance to get a seat. In fact, tickets had run out so much, that the theater had to borrow tickets from another theater. Surprisingly, there were also people trying to get passes at the very last minute.
Anyway, after waiting for an extra half hour, [The show was delayed because of a Q+A session with the first film.] we finally got to see Laputa. For those who don’t know, Laputa is the first Miyazaki/Ghibli film I’d seen. I decided to see it, simply because Manga Vizion mentioned that certain characters were being incorporated-from certain Miyazaki-directed Lupin episodes-into the film. So when I saw the UK dub, I instantly fell in love.
I consider Laputa to be Miyazaki’s best film, because it smoothly uses many of the themes present in Miyazaki’s other works: youth, environmental consciousness, and love of nature and flight. To give you a summary, Laputa is the story of a young miner-named Pazu-who meets a girl-named Sheeta- who carries a necklace with a mysterious stone that has attracted the unwanted attention of pirates, the army, and a government agent named Muska. Both children are orphans searching-for different reasons-for the mysterious floating city known as Laputa. Pazu and Sheeta stick together throughout their obstacles, and their friendship to each other is as powerful as their friendship to the environment.
What makes Laputa work most is how Miyazaki emphasizes the vastness of the world he’s created. From the fog in the mining town built on a cliff, to the luminous crystals in the mines[Miyazaki conceived his mine art from his visit to Wales.], to the roots in the floating gardens, you can tell there’s a lot of attention to detail. You feel like you’re there. Then there’s also the huge [I can’t emphasize the word enough.] airships with mounted cannons that truly make this film an epic. And yet he still manages to make the dogfights fast and furious. I also have to give credit to Jo Hisaishi, whose pastoral compositions make you yearn for simpler times. And finally, the translation was flawless, despite the fact that white subs were used.
So what did the audience think? They absolutely loved it! Many fans complained that when they saw Princess Mononoke, non-fans would often snicker at the violence. This was not the case with Laputa. When Pazu and Sheeta were hurt, the audience was concerned. They took the serious soliloquies seriously. While there was occasional laughter, it tended to be in places where it was meant to be funny-such as Ma Dola’s(the pirate leader) joke about digestive problems. And yes, there were people who entered and exited the room constantly. But the bulk of the audience stayed rooted in it’s place, awed by the film. We each had these tabs of paper with numbers 1-5 to rate the film[1 being the lowest, 5 being the highest.]; and I have absolutely no doubt that anyone in the audience could have given the film a score lower than four. The massive applause at the end [in contrast to the small applause at the end of Mononoke] proves the movie was a success. Sadly, when I returned-for Spriggan-the number of people in the audience diminished. I myself have seen the fansub of Spriggan, but for people diligently waiting for ADV’s theatrical release, you can get a commercial of it at www.sprigganthemovie.com. Or you can read it as Striker, via Viz manga. Anyway, I decided to see Spriggan-as well-since I’m a fan of everything Katsuhiro Otomo, obviously including his most famous work:Akira.
A Spriggan is basically a super-soldier meant to protect the world’s ancient treasures from abuse. The reason is because these artifacts control some aspect of nature. Ominae Yu is one of these Spriggans. He’s basically what you get when you cross Kaneda(from Akira), Indiana Jones, and Solid Snake. Him and his friend Jean are assigned to protect Noah’s Ark, because the U.S. wants to use it to become the head of the world. The U.S.-in response to the Spriggan-sends some of the meanest killers to capture the Ark. One of these opponents-Fatman-is covered in a sheet of metal and carries a chain-machine gun so powerful, it would make Duke Nukem envious. What naturally ensues are many intense battles.
While Otomo only produced Spriggan, you can tell that his art and style had influenced the movie. From the rich cels, to the realistic faces, to the psychic kids, this movie can be referred to as “Akira Light”. The story itself is entertaining, if simplistic. It can best be described as “just another day in the life of a merc with psychic powers”. But then it’s only part of an ongoing series in Japan; so it’s only expected that the movie is meant to promote interest in the manga by not going into depth on the characters.
As I’ve only read the first graphic novel, I can say that in terms of action, the film is very faithful, though slightly more hyperkinetic. Yu tends to be cockier in the manga, fighting with a little too much confidence. In the anime he wins his fights through his intense rage which fuels his inner-psychic powers. And as for Jean, Otomo forgot to mention that Jean goes crazy at the sight of his own blood. I guess the goal was to emphasize the subtle differences in the pair. Ominae tends to be more stressed while Jean tends to be composed.
The animation is best when it comes to the natural backgrounds. It almost looks like you’re really in the arid regions of Turkey, what with the detail given to mountains and deserts. The character designs are very realistic as well. It makes me think they used real models. The music is appropriate for the environment it’s used in; but it isn’t very memorable, since it’s hard to use epic background music in a film that’s only 90 minutes long. The action sequences are the probably the fastest I’ve ever seen. Characters zoom so fast, that you become as baffled as the opponent as to where the enemy went.
The audience pretty much enjoyed the action scenes. They were impressed with every bone snap, every flip, punch and machine-gun rattle. Unfortunately, some people tended to laugh at some of the anti-American statements. They also couldn’t take the psychic boy-McDougall-very seriously, during his cackles. My only complaint was when some people laughed when McDougall addressed Yu by his experiment number. On the positive, they took the violence seriously; they didn’t break down like the audiences who saw Princess Mononoke. And finally, while there was applause at the end of the film, it was much smaller than that for Laputa. On the ratings scale, I don’t think anyone in the audience would give the film higher than a 4.
So in conclusion, I’d say there was a positive reaction for both films. At first I didn’t understand why they chose to bring these two films together until I realized that they worked, because they were polar opposites of one another. Laputa embraces an idyllic past, while Spriggan fights a catastrophic future; but both films have environmental messages that are worth paying attention to. Hopefully, the strong attendance for these films will be enough to give them decent theatrical distribution.