Guskou Budori no Denki (2012)

This movie wasn't exactly what I expected. In a nutshell, the movie is a slow paced slice of life film of a boy who after a tough childhood is forced to venture out into the world and find his place. A story that has been done many times before, sometimes done very well and some times not so much. This movie is for me a bit of both. The main character Budori, I found to be a bit lacking and bland. He shows little emotion and fails to stand out much at all. He is a hard worker and willingly accepts any work he is given without complaint.Although given his situation, it is understandable. But for a main character, even in this sort of story, is rather dull. Half of his dialogue pretty much boils down to him just saying 'yes, sir.'. The story itself is nice and is the sort of thing that has been seen many times before and will be seen again. However I felt it could have been executed a little better. I found the transitions betweens stages in his life a little lacking, as if he just accepted each part of his life, while forgetting his past. Especially when it comes to his family. My main problem with the story, is at least for me it is a bit confusing. But this may also be what people will enjoy the most. The film is very open and leaves a lot to your imagination to be interpreted how you will. If you enjoy movies that leave open questions of what something is or what happened, whether something is literal or a metaphor, you will probably enjoy this. However if you are more like me, who likes solid answers and everything to be summed up perfectly in a nice bow (although I usually miss the point anyway ;O) , you may not find this type of story telling quite to your liking. But that isn't to say you won't enjoy it. However I think by fat the strongest part of the story is the animation and the soundtrack. It is beautiful throughout and I would almost say to watch it just for the animation. So overall a nice, beautifully animated, enjoyable, some what slow, but not boring movie, which generally makes you really think about what is happening in rather than just telling a detailed story. Not outstanding, but certainly worth a watch.

Guskou Budori was not the kind of movie I expected. I thought I was going to watch "Arashi No Yoru Ni meets epic fantasy battles with cats", spiced with a decent adventure anime plot. What I got was a slow-paced, deep, poetic and philosophical slice of life that really got me thinking about life. The visuals and the soundtrack are awesome, and I enjoyed the symbolic nature of the movie (though I feel like the movie derails a bit in the surrealistic sequences, even though I liked them). The characters and the dialogue felt a bit soulless now and then. Especially the tight-lipped Budori felt likehis sole purpose was to act as the eyes of the audience, so that the actual plot could unveil around him. Still, as I watched the credits roll, I got more and more curious about the original novel, and I feel like this movie left out quite a bit of it. It's definitely worth watching, just don't expect to see a traditional fast-paced adventure story.

The art style and designs are obvious hommage to night on the galactic railroad, or, rather "Because it worked once for Miyazawa, let's not reinvent the wheel." The problem is, as always, they just copied the approach without ever getting into why it worked. I, personally, don't mind any design as long as it doesn't get in a good story's way, but in this particular case it's rather irritating and distracting. It's like they're saying in your face, "You can't enjoy a story intended for children as an adult, because we enforce childish designs over it for no good reason." The same can be saidabout those greeko-something runes used in Budori's world. There is no point in adopting those, it's just distracting. Though these runes might also turn out to be some hommage or justified by some hidden motives, I'm writing this from a neutral clueless viewer's pov. Corners are smoothened here, and any even slightly traumatizing experience is reduced to zilch. It's apparent from minute 15-on, there would be no upfront plot turns to the worse, no violence, no openly admitted tragedy — everything that makes drama a drama is censored. The music is disingenuous and generic, too. No more mind-blowing scores of the 1994 movie, only amogus OST here. The occasional 3D CGI is also ugly as always. Generally, this movie does everything Osamu Tezuka's studio always does. Everything I detest about Tezuka's studio. After the thief scene, the movie went completely bonkers, because, "We already have anthropomorphic cats as characters, might as well get away with some more made up psychedelic bullshit." The problem with the surrealistic nature of Miyazawa's stories is, when you read the psychedelic bullshit in the book, the details are omitted. It's left for your imagination to conjecture how it would look, why it would have happened, what are the motives and consequences. Thus, the events look more consecutive and reasonable, gaining a cement footing and a flexible filling. When a movie shows that, the events, peoples, things, actions all have a predefined shape, because that's what movies do — visualize. But now that you can see those events, not just read them, with so little left for your imagination to make this work, they look like straight up psychedelic bullshit and a movie creators' fault for being so lame. Well, you won't be completely wrong thinking this way. But that's kinda what the old movie suffered from a little, too. You can, in fact, make psychedelic bullshit look cool, like in mind games, or make it make sense, like gegege no kitaro, or at least pretend it makes sense, like evangelion (albeit this option is hardly anything good either), but here it's just cringe. After the arrival to Ihatovo, this movie is just an extremely awkward and uncanny chimera of every techno-magical story you've ever seen, not excelling in anything and without any idea what it intends to be, shallow and insubstantial. The 90s ver, though, made every effort to not resort to magic or even fiction. It knew exactly what it wants to be, perhaps even much more so than I can comprehend, was gleefully inspiring when intended, as well as utterly gloom and despairing at other times. While this is just soulless. Even now, having finished this movie, I can't say for toffee what was it about: Well... there was a catboy... He attended the school and uhh... liked poetry, I guess? Then they had zeppelins and monorail, I guess? So he kinda wanted to fight global freezing so he, uhh... Lit a volcano...? — This story has no purpose whatsoever, it feels like just some disparate short sketches compiled into one big animated blob. In all fairness, however, the old movie has also made a mistake of omitting the second silkworm factory chapter altogether. It was pretty fascinating in the book, and both adaptations messed it up.

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