David Tallerman's Blog, page 16

Guest Interview: Russell James

This week on the blog, I'm talking to my fellow Flame Tree Press author Russell James about his new release The Playing Card Killer, which looks something like this:


Brian Sheridan may be losing his mind. It’s getting hard to know what’s real.
He’s plagued by dreams of women strangled with a red velvet rope, their corpses left with a signature playing card. And while awake, he’s hallucinating a strange man who appears to be stalking him. Brian hopes all this is driven by his sudden withdrawal from a lifetime of anti-anxiety medications.
Then the victim from one of his nightmares shows up on the news. She’s been murdered and Brian immediately fears he may be the unwitting killer. Detective Eric Weissbard thinks the same thing, and starts to build a case to get Brian behind bars and stop the string of horrific murders by the man the press have dubbed The Playing Card Killer.
Can being proven innocent be worse than being found guilty? That may be the case as the truth about The Playing Card Killer sucks Brian into a whirlpool of kidnapping, torture, and death.
And without further ado, here's the interview...
- How much of yourself and your own life went into The Playing Card Killer? Do you like to draw on what you know or would you rather make it up from whole cloth?

I am proud to say that nothing about being a serial killer sprang from any real life experiences. And I’m going to stick to that story.

However I will admit to spending a lot of time in the story’s location, Tampa, Florida. It’s a great city and the varying locations make it a super background for the novel. Selecting the locations to wrap the story around grounded the tale in a level of reality and forced some of the storytelling into directions I hadn't specifically planned on. But I think that sparked more creativity, which probably gave a better result than if I’d just invented a convenient city from scratch.

- Do you have a favourite character in The Playing Card Killer? Who was most fun to write and are they the same person?

The killer (to be vague and avoid spoilers) was a fascinating character because of the twisted process that made him who he ended up being. But I really like Detective Weissbard. He’s a fish-out-of-water in his new job with the Tampa PD. Being a good detective, he’s dedicated to finding the truth, and follows the leads where they go. He gets to be almost as confused about the killer’s identity is as poor Brian is. I also got to give Weissbard more depth through his interactions with his wife, and that was fun.

- Did you have an elevator pitch, and would you be willing to share it?

Could discovering you aren't a serial killer be worse than discovering that you are?

- What most motivates you to hit the keyboard and get writing? If you had to pin your impulse to tell stories down to one thing, what would it be?

There’s always an itch to get a story down on paper. An idea I think is interesting or a certain storytelling twist that I want to incorporate into a novel. But the real kick-starter to writing it is getting some positive feedback from readers. Sometimes it’s a review, sometimes an email. The best is when I meet someone at a convention or signing who really enjoyed what I’d written.  Knowing that what I’d written made an impact on someone makes me want to stop whatever I’m doing and get back to work. 

A great example was when I got a note from a man who’d read my novel Sacrifice. In that novel, a bunch of high school friends get together after thirty tough years to vanquish a demon they thought they’d killed decades ago. He said it inspired him to look up all his old friends and get caught up. That made me very happy.

Q Island spawned a lot of other examples. I got a lot of positive feedback from parents of autistic children very satisfied with how I portrayed Aiden, the autistic child in that novel.

- You've worked across quite a range of genres. Was that a conscious decision or simply a case of telling the stories that came to you?

An idea tends to suggest a genre, and that’s the way the writing goes. I did specifically seek out a genre with the Grant Coleman adventure series through Severed Press. Some of my horror novels would earn a hard-R movie rating, and at conventions I would have to steer parents away from them when their kids asked them to buy it. But I had nothing to steer them to. So I decided that I wanted to write some monster books like the ones I loved as a kid, keep any sex out of them, and tame the language down to what can pass on network television. The writing style and plot twists aren't dumbed down, though. Severed Press has a fantastic fan base for giant creature books, and I specifically wrote one to try and crack that market. Lucky for me, and Professor Grant Coleman, I did.

- Do you have a dream project? Are there tales you've been itching to tell but not quite figured out a way into?

I have a story about  a teenager and an old priest who are battling demons across France and Italy to keep Lucifer from enslaving the world. The Exorcist meets The Da Vinci Code. Still trying to pull that one off.

- Of everything you've written, what would you most like to see made into a mega-budget Hollywood movie? And what are your thoughts on dream casting and an ideal director?

I’ll officially go on record and offer ANY of the stories I've written up as a movie or mini-series.

I’d really like Q Island to make it to the screen. In it a virus breaks out on Long Island, New York that turns people into crazed killers. The government quarantines the island. A woman is trapped there with her autistic son. He gets infected, but he does not get sick, and his autism gets better. She realizes he could be the cure to two things, if she can get him off the island. She had to get past the government, past the crazies, and past the gang leader who has his own plans for the miracle boy.

I think this would be a great miniseries with the big cast of characters, After seeing Bird Box, I cast Sandra Bullock as the hero mom. And put anyone who directed any Avengers movie in charge.

- You've written three books now following your paleontologist hero Professor Grant Coleman. Is that a profession that particularly interests you?

I've loved dinosaurs since I was a kid and thought it would be amazing to discover the fossils of ancient animals. When I needed a continuing character for my adventure tales from Severed Press, palaeontology seemed like the profession that could get wrapped up in a bunch of stories like that. So through Grant I could vicariously pursue a career that I could never do in real life.

- What’s up next? What are you working on and what’s in the pipeline that you’re allowed to talk about?

I have a short story coming out in March in the Flame Tree Publishing American Gothic anthology.  It’s wedged in there between Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce and a bunch of excellent contemporary authors. I feel like a weekend jogger suddenly running the hundred meter dash in the Olympics.

The next novel is about two National Park Service rangers at Fort Jefferson National Park, out west of the Florida Keys. They encounter rogue spies, a conspiracy dating back to the 1960s, and end up in the fight of their lives with giant crabs. It’s the start of a new series set in our wonderful National Park system. I also have a couple of novels and a novella out making the rounds, and we’ll see what happens with those.

-oOo-
Russell James grew up on Long Island, New York and spent too much time watching late night horror. After flying helicopters with the U.S. Army, he now spins twisted tales, including horror thrillers Dark Inspiration , Q Island, and The Playing Card Killer. His Grant Coleman adventure series covers Cavern of the Damned, Monsters in the Clouds, and Curse of the Viper King. He resides in sunny Florida. His wife reads his work, rolls her eyes, and says "There is something seriously wrong with you."
Visit his website at http://www.russellrjames.com, follow on Twitter @RRJames14, or say hello at rrj@russellrjames.com.


THE PLAYING CARD KILLER is available at:
Amazon USAmazon UKBarnes and Noble
...and everywhere else!

Film Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime Review Index (By Date)

14th February 2019

Eight Clouds Rising **1/2
Babel II **
Please Save My Earth ***1/2
My Dear Marie ****

23rd January 2019

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket ****
GoShogun: The Time Étranger ****1/2
Lily C.A.T ***
Arcadia of My Youth ***1/2

6th January 2019

Ellcia **1/2
Super Atragon ***1/2
Robot Carnival ****1/2
Master of Mosquiton ***

9th December 2018

Agent Aika: Final Battle **
City Hunter: The Motion Picture ***1/2
Rei Rei ***
Kite ***1/2

11th November 2018

Photon: The Idiot Adventures ***1/2
Domain of Murder ***
Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture *1/2
Agent Aika: Naked Missions **1/2

28th September 2018

Queen Emeraldas ****
Samurai: Hunt For the Sword *1/2
Black Lion *1/2
Maze **1/2

2nd September 2018

Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back **
A Chinese Ghost Story ***1/2
Colorful *
Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland **1/2

19th August 2018

City Hunter: Secret Service *1/2
Wrath of the Ninja: The Yotoden Movie ***
The Cockpit ****1/2
The Dagger of Kamui **1/2

19th July 2018

Voogie's Angels **
Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture ***1/2
Magic User's Club! ****
Battle Skipper **

27th June 2018

RG Veda *1/2
City Hunter: .357 Magnum *1/2
Urusei Yatsura: Inaba the Dreammaker ***
Adventure Duo: Yôjû Sensen **

11th June 2018

Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma ***1/2
Ninja Resurrection **
Spirit Warrior: Castle of Illusion ***
Guardian of Darkness ***

17th May 2018

Samurai X: The Motion Picture ***
Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge ****
M. D. Geist II: Death Force *1/2
Darkside Blues ****

9th April 2018

Ninja Cadets *1/2
Burn Up! ***1/2
Wild Cardz *1/2
Shinesman ***

19th March 2018

The Humanoid *
Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight ***
Harmagedon **1/2
They Were Eleven ***1/2

27th February 2018

3X3 Eyes: Legend of the Divine Demon ****
Phantom Quest Corp **1/2
Ys: Legacy (Book Two) **
Elf Princess Rane ***

10th February 2018

Gestalt **
Madara ***1/2
Urusei Yatsura: Ryoko's September Tea Party *1/2
Sol Bianca: The Legacy ***

18th January 2018

Geobreeders 2: Breakthrough ***1/2
Battle Arena Toshinden *1/2
Ys: Legacy (Book One) *1/2
Big Wars ***

18th December 2017

Iria: Zeiram ***
Silent Service ***1/2
Spirit Warrior: Festival of the Ogre's Revival **
Mask of Zeguy **1/2

17th November 2017

Lupin the Third: The Secret of Twilight Gemini *1/2
A.LI.CE *
Urusei Yatsura Movie 5: The Final Chapter ****
Knights of Ramune **1/2

21st August 2017

Green Legend Ran ****
Urusei Yatsura Movie 6: Always My Darling ***1/2
Moldiver **
Tokyo Babylon **1/2

11th July 2017

Urusei Yatsura Movie 4: Lum the Forever ***
Wizardry **
3X3 Eyes ***1/2
Otaku no Video ***

12th June 2017

Battle Angel ***1/2
Urusei Yatsura Movie 3: Remember My Love ***1/2
The Heroic Legend of Arslan **1/2
Venus Wars ****

15th May 2017

Shamanic Princess ****
Digital Devil *1/2
Virgin Fleet **
Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer ****1/2

27th April 2017

Black Magic M-66 **1/2
Urusei Yatsura Movie 1: Only You ****
Project A-Ko: Uncivil Wars **
M.D. Geist 1/2

23rd March 2017

Sakura Wars: The Radiant Gorgeous Blooming Cherry Blossoms ***
The E.Y.E.S of Mars *
Legend of Lemnear ***
Project A-Ko 2: Love & Robots **1/2

10th March 2017

Sakura Wars: The Gorgeous Blooming Cherry Blossoms ***
Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie *****
Angel's Egg ***
Armageddon **

13th February 2017

Doomed Megalopolis ****
Slayers Gorgeous ***
Bubblegum Crisis ****
The Five Star Stories ***1/2

1st February 2017

Project A-Ko ***1/2
Psychic Wars 1/2
Golgo 13: Queen Bee 1/2
Slayers Great **1/2

1st December 2016

Slayers Return ***1/2
Cyber City Oedo 808 ****
Plastic Little: The Adventures of Captain Tita ***1/2
Ruin Explorers: Fam and Ihrie ****

10th November 2016

A Wind Named Amnesia ***1/2
Dirty Pair Flash: Random Angels ***
Slayers: The Motion Picture ***
Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie ***

23rd October 2016

Pet Shop of Horrors **1/2
AD Police ***
Demon City Shinjuku ***1/2
Riding Bean ***1/2

17th September 2016

Ranma 1/2: Nihao My Concubine **1/2
Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal ****
Sol Bianca ****
Silent Möbius **1/2

28th August 2016

Dirty Pair Flash: Angels at World's End **
Vampire Wars *
Gunsmith Cats ****
Ranma 1/2 The Movie: Big Trouble in Nekonron, China **1/2

29th July 2016

Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II: Lovers Again ***
Dirty Pair Flash: Angels in Trouble ***
Red Hawk: Weapon of Death **1/2
Memories ***1/2

10th July 2016

Burn Up W **
Urotsukidôji II: Legend of the Demon Womb *1/2
All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku ***
Tokyo Revelation **

26th June 2016

Dominion Tank Police ***
Twilight of the Dark Master **
You're Under Arrest: The Complete OVAs ****
Twin Signal **1/2

22nd May 2016

You're Under Arrest: The Movie ***1/2
Oh My Goddess! ***1/2
Wicked City ***1/2
Shadow Skill ***1/2

11th March 2016

Patlabor 2 *****
Madox-01 **
Zaion: I Wish You Were Here *1/2
Psycho Diver **

24th January 2016

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend *
New Dominion Tank Police ***
Street Fighter 2: The Movie **1/2
Appleseed **

11th December 2015

Macross Plus (Movie Edition) ****
Armitage III: Polymatrix ***1/2
Bio Hunter **1/2
Gunbuster ****

30th August 2015

Adventures With Iczer 3 **1/2
Black Jack *1/2
Ghost Sweeper Mikami **1/2
Dragon Half ****

31st July 2015

Patlabor: The Movie ****1/2
Casshan: Robot Hunter **1/2
Geobreeders ***1/2
The Dark Myth ***1/2

28th June 2015

X: The Movie ****
Spriggan ****
New Gall Force ***
Zeoraima - Project Hades **

29th May 2015

Vampire Hunter D **1/2
Dangaoih *1/2
Orguss 02 ****
Roujin Z ***1/2

8th May 2015

Bubblegum Crash! **1/2
Virus Buster Serge **
Amon Saga **
Rayearth ***1/2

29th March 2015

Ninja Scroll ***1/2
Detonator Orgun **
Landlock ***
Macross Plus (OVA) ***

Film Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime Review Index (By Title)

1 - 10
3X3 Eyes ***1/2
3X3 Eyes: Legend of the Divine Demon ****

A
AD Police ***
Adventure Duo: Yôjû Sensen **
Adventures With Iczer 3 **1/2
Agent Aika: Final Battle **
Agent Aika: Naked Missions **1/2
A.LI.CE *
All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku ***
Amon Saga **
Angel's Egg ***
Appleseed **
Arcadia of My Youth ***1/2
Armageddon **
Armitage III: Polymatrix ***1/2

B
Babel II **
Battle Angel ***1/2
Battle Arena Toshinden *1/2
Battle Skipper **
Big Wars ***
Bio Hunter **1/2
Black Jack *1/2
Black Lion *1/2
Black Magic M-66 **1/2
Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma ***1/2
Bubblegum Crash! **1/2
Bubblegum Crisis ****
Burn Up! ***1/2
Burn Up W **

C
Casshan: Robot Hunter **1/2
A Chinese Ghost Story ***1/2
City Hunter: .357 Magnum *1/2
City Hunter: Secret Service *1/2
City Hunter: The Motion Picture ***1/2
The Cockpit ****1/2
Colorful *
Cyber City Oedo 808 ****

D
The Dagger of Kamui **1/2
Dangaoih *1/2
The Dark Myth ***1/2
Darkside Blues ****
Demon City Shinjuku ***1/2
Detonator Orgun **
Digital Devil *1/2
Dirty Pair Flash: Angels at World's End **
Dirty Pair Flash: Angels in Trouble ***
Dirty Pair Flash: Random Angels ***
Domain of Murder ***
Dominion Tank Police ***
Doomed Megalopolis ****
Dragon Half ****

E
Eight Clouds Rising **1/2
Elf Princess Rane ***
Ellcia **1/2
The E.Y.E.S of Mars *

F
Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture *1/2
The Five Star Stories ***1/2

G
Geobreeders ***1/2
Geobreeders 2: Breakthrough ***1/2
Gestalt **
Ghost Sweeper Mikami **1/2
Golgo 13: Queen Bee 1/2
GoShogun: The Time Étranger ****1/2
Green Legend Ran ****
Guardian of Darkness ***
Gunbuster ****
Gunsmith Cats ****

H
Harmagedon **1/2
The Heroic Legend of Arslan **1/2
The Humanoid *

I
Iria: Zeiram ***

K
Kite ***1/2
Knights of Ramune **1/2

L
Landlock ***
Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture ***1/2
Legend of Lemnear ***
Lily C.A.T ***
Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland **1/2
Lupin the Third: The Secret of Twilight Gemini *1/2

M
Macross Plus (Movie Edition) ****
Macross Plus (OVA) ***
Madara ***1/2
Madox-01 **
Magic User's Club! ****
Mask of Zeguy **1/2
Master of Mosquiton ***
Maze **1/2
M.D. Geist 1/2
M. D. Geist II: Death Force *1/2
Memories ***1/2
Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket ****
Moldiver **
My Dear Marie ****

N
New Dominion Tank Police ***
New Gall Force ***
Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge ****
Ninja Cadets *1/2
Ninja Resurrection **
Ninja Scroll ***1/2

O
Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight ***
Oh My Goddess! ***1/2
Orguss 02 ****
Otaku no Video ***

P
Patlabor: The Movie ****1/2
Patlabor 2 *****
Pet Shop of Horrors **1/2
Phantom Quest Corp **1/2
Photon: The Idiot Adventures ***1/2
Plastic Little: The Adventures of Captain Tita ***1/2
Please Save My Earth ***1/2
Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back **
Project A-Ko ***1/2
Project A-Ko 2: Love & Robots **1/2
Project A-Ko: Uncivil Wars **
Psychic Wars 1/2
Psycho Diver **

Q
Queen Emeraldas ****

R
Ranma 1/2: Nihao My Concubine **1/2
Ranma 1/2 The Movie: Big Trouble in Nekonron, China **1/2
Rayearth ***1/2
Red Hawk: Weapon of Death **1/2
Rei Rei ***
Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie *****
RG Veda *1/2
Riding Bean ***1/2
Robot Carnival ****1/2
Roujin Z ***1/2
Ruin Explorers: Fam and Ihrie ****

S
Sakura Wars: The Gorgeous Blooming Cherry Blossoms ***
Sakura Wars: The Radiant Gorgeous Blooming Cherry Blossoms ***
Samurai: Hunt For the Sword *1/2
Samurai X: The Motion Picture ***
Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal ****
Shadow Skill ***1/2
Shamanic Princess ****
Shinesman ***
Silent Möbius **1/2
Silent Service ***1/2
Slayers Gorgeous ***
Slayers Great **1/2
Slayers Return ***1/2
Slayers: The Motion Picture ***
Sol Bianca ****
Sol Bianca: The Legacy ***
Spirit Warrior: Castle of Illusion ***
Spirit Warrior: Festival of the Ogre's Revival **
Spriggan ****
Street Fighter 2: The Movie **1/2
Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie ***
Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II: Lovers Again ***

T
They Were Eleven ***1/2
Tokyo Babylon **1/2
Tokyo Revelation **
Twilight of the Dark Master **
Twin Signal **1/2

U
Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend *
Urotsukidôji II: Legend of the Demon Womb *1/2
Urusei Yatsura Movie 1: Only You ****
Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer ****1/2
Urusei Yatsura Movie 3: Remember My Love ***1/2
Urusei Yatsura Movie 4: Lum the Forever ***
Urusei Yatsura Movie 5: The Final Chapter ****
Urusei Yatsura Movie 6: Always My Darling ***1/2
Urusei Yatsura: Inaba the Dreammaker ***
Urusei Yatsura: Ryoko's September Tea Party *1/2

V
Vampire Hunter D **1/2
Vampire Wars *
Venus Wars ****
Virgin Fleet **
Virus Buster Serge **
Voogie's Angels **

W
Wicked City ***1/2
Wild Cardz *1/2
A Wind Named Amnesia ***1/2
Wizardry **
Wrath of the Ninja: The Yotoden Movie ***

X
X: The Movie ****
You're Under Arrest: The Complete OVAs ****

Y
You're Under Arrest: The Movie ***1/2
Ys: Legacy (Book One) *1/2
Ys: Legacy (Book Two) **

Z
Zaion: I Wish You Were Here *1/2
Zeoraima - Project Hades **

Film Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime Review Index (By Rating)

1/10 (Atrocious)
Golgo 13: Queen BeeM.D. GeistPsychic Wars
2/10 (Poor)
Colorful
A.LI.CE
The E.Y.E.S of Mars
The Humanoid
Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend
Vampire Wars

3/10 (Watchable)
Battle Arena Toshinden
Black Jack
Black Lion
City Hunter: .357 Magnum
City Hunter: Secret Service
Dangaoih
Digital Devil
Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture
Lupin the Third: The Secret of Twilight Gemini
M. D. Geist II: Death Force
Ninja Cadets
RG Veda
Samurai: Hunt For the Sword
Urotsukidôji II: Legend of the Demon Womb
Urusei Yatsura: Ryoko's September Tea Party
Wild Cardz
Ys: Legacy (Book One)
Zaion: I Wish You Were Here

4/10 (Not Bad)
Burn Up W
Adventure Duo: Yôjû Sensen
Agent Aika: Final Battle
Amon Saga
Appleseed
Armageddon
Babel II
Battle Skipper
Detonator Orgun
Dirty Pair Flash: Angels at World's End
Gestalt
Madox-01
Moldiver
Ninja Resurrection
Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back
Project A-Ko: Uncivil Wars
Psycho Diver
Spirit Warrior: Festival of the Ogre's Revival
Tokyo Revelation
Twilight of the Dark Master
Virgin Fleet
Virus Buster Serge
Voogie's Angels
Ys: Legacy (Book Two)
Wizardry
Zeoraima - Project Hades

5/10 (Worth a Watch)
Adventures With Iczer 3
Agent Aika: Naked Missions
Bio Hunter
Black Magic M-66
The Dagger of Kamui
Bubblegum Crash!
Casshan: Robot Hunter
Eight Clouds Rising
Ellcia
Ghost Sweeper Mikami
Harmagedon
The Heroic Legend of Arslan
Knights of Ramune
Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland
Mask of Zeguy
Maze
Pet Shop of Horrors
Phantom Quest Corp
Project A-Ko 2: Love & Robots
Ranma 1/2: Nihao My Concubine
Ranma 1/2 The Movie: Big Trouble in Nekonron, China
Red Hawk: Weapon of Death
Silent Möbius
Slayers Great
Street Fighter 2: The Movie
Tokyo Babylon
Twin Signal
Vampire Hunter D

6/10 (Good)
AD Police
All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku
Angel's Egg
Big Wars
Dirty Pair Flash: Angels in Trouble
Dirty Pair Flash: Random Angels
Domain of Murder
Dominion Tank Police
Elf Princess Rane
Guardian of Darkness
Iria: Zeiram
Landlock
Legend of Lemnear
Lily C.A.T
Macross Plus (OVA)
Master of Mosquiton
New Dominion Tank Police
New Gall Force
Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight
Otaku no Video
Rei Rei
Sakura Wars: The Gorgeous Blooming Cherry Blossoms
Sakura Wars: The Radiant Gorgeous Blooming Cherry Blossoms
Samurai X: The Motion Picture
Shinesman
Slayers Gorgeous
Slayers: The Motion Picture
Sol Bianca: The Legacy
Spirit Warrior: Castle of Illusion
Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie
Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II: Lovers Again
Urusei Yatsura Movie 4: Lum the Forever
Urusei Yatsura: Inaba the Dreammaker
Wrath of the Ninja: The Yotoden Movie

7/10 (Very Good)
3X3 Eyes
Arcadia of My Youth
Armitage III: Polymatrix
Battle Angel
Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma
Burn Up!
A Chinese Ghost Story
City Hunter: The Motion Picture
The Dark Myth
Demon City Shinjuku
The Five Star Stories
Geobreeders
Geobreeders 2: Breakthrough
Kite
Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture
Madara
Memories
Ninja Scroll
Oh My Goddess!
Photon: The Idiot Adventures
Plastic Little: The Adventures of Captain Tita
Please Save My Earth
Project A-Ko
Rayearth
Riding BeanRoujin Z
Shadow Skill
Silent Service
Slayers Return
They Were Eleven
Urusei Yatsura Movie 3: Remember My Love
Urusei Yatsura Movie 6: Always My Darling
Wicked City
A Wind Named Amnesia
You're Under Arrest: The Movie

8/10 (Highly Recommended)
3X3 Eyes: Legend of the Divine Demon
Bubblegum Crisis
Cyber City Oedo 808
Darkside Blues
Doomed Megalopolis
Dragon Half
Green Legend Ran
Gunbuster
Gunsmith Cats
Macross Plus (Movie Edition)
Magic User's Club!
Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket
My Dear Marie
Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge
Orguss 02
Queen Emeraldas
Ruin Explorers: Fam and Ihrie
Shamanic Princess
Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal
Sol Bianca
Spriggan
Urusei Yatsura Movie 1: Only You
Urusei Yatsura Movie 5: The Final Chapter
Venus Wars
X: The Movie
You're Under Arrest: The Complete OVAs

9/10 (Classic)
The Cockpit
GoShogun: The Time Étranger
Patlabor: The Movie
Robot Carnival
Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer

10/10 (Unmissable)
Patlabor 2
Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

Film Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 46

I've got behind on these posts again!  Honestly, I've so many of them on the go, and so much stuff to watch on the shelf, and the only real lesson I've taken away from all this is that you should never start collecting anything ever, even if it's awesome and provides you with deep and abiding joy and makes the world a better place and goddammit now I want to watch more nineties anime.  This is madness!  Send help!

This time: Eight Clouds Rising, Babel II, Please Save My Earth, and My Dear Marie...

Eight Clouds Rising, 1997, dir: Tomomi Mochizuki

My latest weird nineties anime obsession - should that be weird nineties anime sub-obsession? - is tracking down titles from Media Blasters subdivision Anime Works, out of all the major distributors of the time surely the one with least quality control or sense of shame.  And yes, that's really saying something: but if a title was released that was unfinished, or a tie-in web series, or the prologue to a video game not released outside of Japan, or just plain awful, there are good odds it would come out under their label.  Yet on the flip side, much like U. S. Manga Corps, their frequently weird choices also threw up plenty of minor gems that might never have made it to the West in more discriminating hands.

Case in point, Eight Clouds Rising, a Manga adaptation that leaves most of the story untold and instead serves as a two-episode prologue, establishing characters, conflict, and setting.  Which would suck were it not for the fact that they're very good characters navigating a well-developed conflict, and if the setting of a village in rural Japan is hardly one we've never seen before, it's at least brought to life with some distinctive artwork.  Really, that's Eight Clouds Rising all over: familiar in almost every detail and distinguished by being a little better than most similar titles and a little smarter and more adult in its approach.  That extends from the character designs to the interpersonal drama to the convoluted historical back story.  It felt to me a lot like an updating of Dark Myth, which I've a ton of time for even if no one else has, and also a Japanese take on The Wicker Man if the villagers were basically in the right.

Given the rather steady, meticulous approach, there isn't much space left in less than an hour for set pieces or lavish moments, but what we do get is striking.  The bloody familial ritual that opens the second episode is a grueling bit of horror made effective largely because we've had extra time to get to know the characters.  A clash in a nighttime forest immediately after works for largely the same reasons.  It's actually nice to see this kind of story told in a relatively intimate fashion: coming to it after the dreary apocalyptic drama of the X TV series, I have to admit that was a relief.  Yet the result remains something that probably only Anime Works would have bothered with: pleasant for what it is but too short to be the treat that another hour or two operating at the same level might have resulted in.  Like so much of their catalogue, it's the sort of title you might have picked up at a rental store and enjoyed despite its running time, but with copies tough to track down now, it's inevitably bound for total obscurity - and that's kind of a shame.

Babel II, 1992, dir: Yoshihisa Matsumoto

Normally I'm loathe to buy dub-only releases.  I'd always rather hear the original voice actors, and honestly it seems to me that there's something kind of wrong about wanting to enjoy the culture of another country without the language.  But mostly it's because I usually find American dubs pretty cheesy.  So I was all set to splash out on Discotek's recent blu-ray re-release of Babel II, until I read some less than positive reviews and watched the less than overwhelming trailer.  Plus, I tend to go for the original releases where I can, to add that bit of extra authenticity to my nineties anime experience or somesuch nonsense.  Point being, when a thoroughly ancient-looking "perfect"* collection appeared for not much money, I decided to bend my rules.

I needn't have worried.  Yes, the dub is cheesy, but so is the material; at worst I was grating a bit of Parmesan onto an already laden four cheese pizza.  Babel II is so goofy and of its time that it almost feels like parody at points: when our psychic hero's three guardians arrived and they were a giant robot, a black panther, and a dragon, I couldn't keep from chuckling.  What could sum up the fantasies of a teenage boy in the nineties better than that?  In fact, you can largely predict the plot by guessing what said teenage boy would want to happen next.  The only exception is the initial setup, which threatens to be something smarter: nearly inducted by a cult of super-powered individuals, young Koichi realises their leader's sinister intentions, only to discover in short order that he's the successor to the biblical Babel, who was really a space alien you see, and built his namesake tower as an antenna to reach out to his own kind, only to have it torn down by dumb earthlings.

I mean, okay, that's a ridiculous premise, but at least it's novel, and the first episode lays it out intriguingly, keying us in to the bigger picture only as Koichi himself discovers it.  So it's shocking that by the end of the second, the Babel stuff has vanished, never to return, and what replaces it is lots of punching and shouting and psychic attack volleyball, held together by nothing much beside one of anime's most tepid romance subplots.  Really, it's staggering how much Babel II squanders its better elements, even at the cost of narrative logic: Koichi routinely forgets he has basically unlimited superpowers and insists on fighting alone against overwhelming odds when he has a dragon, giant robot, and shadow-panther presumably just cooling their heels somewhere off camera.

At least it looks pretty good.  There's enthusiastic use of colour and the budget was obviously none too stingy.  However, even there, director Matsumoto leans too heavily into the sorts of animation shortcuts that were already old hat by 1992, so that many a solid shot has the life sucked out of it by being followed by a needlessly crummy one.  All told, Babel II is a title that just can't stop shooting itself in the foot.  And the worst of it is, there's a fun show crying to get out here; a cheesy, stupid, nineties-teenager-endorsed one to be sure, but still fun.  I was, after all, a teenager in the nineties, and a part of my soul responded with glee to the cool musical sting that played when the title came up each episode, not to mention those preposterous companions.  At half it's length, Babel II would have offered some solid entertainment, but with only a couple of good ideas that it mostly ignores, there's nowhere near enough here to fill two hours.

Please Save My Earth, 1993, dir: Kazuo Yamazaki

The first thing you notice about Please Save My Earth is that it's gorgeous.  And that should come as no real surprise: not only was this an adaptation of a monumentally popular manga, it was created by Production I.G., around the same time that studio were producing such visually extraordinary work as Patlabor 2 and Ghost in the Shell.  More than anything, no-one animates the human form better than I.G. do, and that's a huge boon for material more concerned with its characters than almost anything else, and which troubles itself with action only in brief spurts.  Though when it comes, it's a reminder that there's something else Production I.G. were in the top tier of: a clash between psychics toward the end is perhaps my favourite example of that overdone trope, genuinely capturing the sense of people with extraordinary powers trying to tear each other apart with their minds.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  What we have here is a six episode OVA with an appealingly grabby concept: a group of teens come to discover from their shared dreams of other lives that they are in fact the reincarnations of a bunch of alien scientists who until recently were monitoring the Earth from a base on the moon, until they were struck down by a tragedy that's only revealed in doled out snippets.  You might expect that mystery to be the focus, but rather the cast - including seven-year-old Rin, who's up to his second reincarnation - take centre stage.  In particular, the show concerns itself with the questions their predicament raises.  Confronted with a past life as real as your present one, do you let it own you?  Do you reject it?  Do you have the choice?  And young Rin, for reasons as close to a narrative spine as really exists, has more trouble letting go than anyone, due to the discovery that his neighbour was once the tragic love of his life.

There's a lot going on there, and it's fair to say that Please Save My Earth doesn't do an especially splendid job of juggling it.  Plot lines bob to the surface, characters take precedence for a while and then vanish, we never get quite enough flashbacks to the moon to fully appreciate the significance of events in the present, and what seems like the crux of the story ends up forgotten in favour of a final episode that doesn't wrap up much at all.  On the flip side, that last episode is a terrific character study full of exciting, difficult ideas, and really that's the show from top to bottom: as messy as any attempt to cherry-pick a narrative from a much-loved, twenty-two volume manga could hope to be and yet frequently excellent on a scene by scene basis.  I guess that's the influence of those terrific production values as much as anything, along with a haunting score from the great Hajime Mizoguchi and a closing track by the incomparable Yôko Kanno.  But as much so it's down to a script that's unafraid to wrestle with the concepts it raises, and manages to make them meaningful on a level beyond the somewhat batty sci-fi notion.

With all of that said, it's unfortunate that Please Save My Earth isn't easier to get hold of.  It was released by Viz, who from what I've picked up so far were exceptionally reliable on quality and exceptionally sucky at getting their products out into the world.  Hopefully they, or someone else, will eventually rescue their back catalogue, because this is the sort of anime that shouldn't be languishing in obscurity.  Its imperfections are numerous and mostly down to the fact that it was clearly intended as a companion piece rather than an alternative to the manga, but it's still smart, gorgeous, intriguing stuff, made by talented people at the peak of their considerable powers.

My Dear Marie, 1996, dir: Tomomi Mochizuki

Anime is unique in its ability to balance creepiness with cuteness in ways that really shouldn't work, and no release I've seen pulls off that unlikely balance better than My Dear Marie.  Within cringe-worthy seconds we're introduced to technological genius and socially inept nerd Hiroshi Karigari on the advent of his greatest triumph.  Not content with joining the college tennis club so that he can stalk Marie, the girl he's infatuated with, he's now built a robot double of her, exact in every detail except hair colour.  Only, things don't go quite to plan: to his surprise, if not ours, robot Marie wakes up on her own and it rapidly becomes apparent that she's not going to be content loitering around the house being letched over.  After she reveals her existence to Hiroshi's classmates, who insist on posing awkward questions about who this person who looks just like their Marie is, he's forced to pretend that the pink-haired, android version is his sister, a role she seems mostly content with.

That, mind you, is just the first ten minutes, and things soon get a good deal more complicated.  At first that's in the sort of ways you'd expect: the remainder of the first episode finds robot Marie trying to fix up human Marie with Hiroshi, while secretly wondering if she mightn't just keep him for herself.  But episode two goes off on a wild tangent, in which tough girl Hibiki falls instantly in love with Hiroshi and then blackmails him into dating her.  And by episode three we have robot Marie getting retrofitted with a subconscious and interrogating the nature of her existence through the surrealism of dreams, because where else would you take a three episode show about a guy building his perfect girlfriend than a mediation on sentience that explicitly references Philip K. Dick?

This works for a number of reasons, and the solid animation, with some unusually sketchy and very appealing character designs, is definitely among them, as is Hisaaki Hogari's playful score.  But honestly, all the nice animation and music couldn't have saved My Dear Marie had it decided to play up its seedier aspects.  Thank goodness it isn't that: it's infinitely sweeter, a good deal cleverer, and shockingly willing to indulge its better impulses.  Foremost of those is taking its cast seriously, even when reducing them to stereotypes might be funnier.  My Dear Marie really isn't that funny as comedies go, but there are grace notes that are more satisfying.  In that last episode, for example (one of my favourite episodes of anything in quite a while, by the way) there's a running gag in which robot Marie insists on waking up an unimpressed Hiroshi to narrate her weird dreams, until he finally snaps and points out in detail why other people's dreams are boring.  It's not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but Marie's glee at sharing the Freudian details of her mental landscape and Hiroshi disgruntled mix of geekish pride and awkwardness raise the sort of fond smile only familiarity can bring.

Honestly, maybe I'm giving credit where it's not entirely due.  Maybe My Dear Marie isn't problematicising gender roles and messing with preconceptions and prodding at the nature of existence half as much as I decided.  Maybe its repeated insistence on sexualising robot Marie one minute and reminding us of her inhumanity the next is purely coincidental.  Heck, maybe that third episode isn't the recursive Zen parable I took it for.  I suppose that if you stripped all of that away, you'd merely have an odd, charming, three episode OVA with unusually developed characters and not much of an ending.  But assuming for the moment that I'm right, the result is one of those rare shows that does something else only anime seems capable of: taking the dumbest, most hackneyed concepts and dredging fascinating treasures from their depths.

-oOo-

Given that it's ages since I watched these, I don't have anything very useful to say in conclusion.  I feel a bit bad for selling my copy of Eight Clouds Rising, but realistically was I ever going to watch it again?  Probably not.  Whereas I feel really good about selling my copy of Babel II.  Of the keepers, it's definitely My Dear Marie that's stuck with me, in part because the autotext on my phone seems obsessed with it.  And on the whole, I kind of feel this wasn't a great selection, probably because Please Save My Earth has refused to linger in my memory even slightly.

Ah well!  I'm sure the next lot will make everything okay!  Where there's nineties anime, there's hope.




[Other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Part 32, Part 33, Part 34, Part 35, Part 36, Part 37, Part 38, Part 39, Part 40, Part 41, Part 43, Part 44, Part 45]




* Given the lack of language options, extras, or anything else beside the thoughtful inclusion of chapter stops, I doubt the word perfect has ever been abused more thoroughly.

Back in Black (River)

First the good news: the third novel in the Black River Chronicles series, Eye of the Observer, is about to head off for copy-editing, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we have a cover to show off in the near future.  The release date isn't set yet, but I don't think it's going to be too far off.  Maybe start saving your pennies for the end of spring, early summer at the latest?  As I've mentioned elsewhere, there have been some delays along the way, but they're all sorted now, the wheels are turning, and I'm so, so pleased with how this one worked out.  In many ways, it feels like a book I've been itching to write for an age; the basic concept has been nagging at me for a long, long time.  And it gave me an opportunity to push four characters I really do care about harder than I ever have before.  Because that's how you show you care about your characters, right?  By putting them through the worst sort of torments you can come up with?

(Okay, yeah, it's probably a good thing I chose to write fiction instead of having kids.)

Second, the other good news: I just now returned the signed contracts for the fourth and final book in the series.  Yes, final ... this one's going to wrap up the story Mike and I began way back at the end of 2015, and I promise you, it's going to be all sorts of epic.  We're going to be leaving Durren, Tia, Arein, and Hule - and let's not forget Pootle, given what a major player he is in book 3! - a heck of a distance from where we met them way back in Level One.  As you'll see in Eye of the Observer, graduating is rapidly becoming the least of their worries, and there's no guarantee that everyone's going to reach the end in one piece, or even in roughly the same shape.  In fact, after the events of that third book, there's not much guarantee of anything!
Thirdly, the other other good news: if all goes to plan, Eye of the Observer won't be the only book I have out from Digital Fiction Publishing this year.  That's all somewhat up in the air at the moment, but there's a meaningful chance that a few long-gestating projects will see the light of day before 2019 is out.  Any one of them will be exciting; if we somehow pull off the lot then that's going to be pretty damn amazing.

But in the immediate future, it's all about the Black River Chronicles, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  I'm thrilled at the notion of finally cracking into the last book, and I'm equally thrilled at the prospect of putting book three together once and for all and having my words behind another cover by the astonishing Kim Van Deun and getting this things into the hands of those folks who've been good enough to follow us this far.

Film Ramble: Top 10 Fantasy and Science Fiction Films of 2018

As ever, I should caveat this with "that I've managed to see", shouldn't I?  I'm kicking myself for not managing to catch I Kill Giants last year, since it would easily have made it into the upper half of my top ten, and I'm sure there are a few great movies I've similarly missed in 2018.  All the same, I've done my due diligence as well as I could, which is why it's nearly February as I post this.  And I feel safe in saying that 2019 was a year that squandered no end of opportunities.  In particular, Marvel settled clearly into a trench of making very good but not great movies, as did Pixar, the newly reborn Star Wars franchise settled for likable mediocrity, and Disney - I mean, I know they're all Disney, but let's pretend for the sake of my sanity - decided to release what by all accounts may be their worst cinematic moment ever.  I honestly can't say, because the Wreck It Ralph 2 trailer alone made me want to burn down a cinema to halt the flood of product placement and cross-branding that is twenty-first century film-making at its trashiest.

But let's move on from the obligatory ranting portion of the post!  Because honestly it feels like things have picked up in 2018.  The giddy heights are still a touch empty, but all told this is quite a fine selection of movies.  Oh, and also, if it was released into UK cinemas in 2018 then I'm calling it a 2018 film, no matter what the IMDB may say.  These articles are quite enough work without inventing time travel!  And as usual, the bottom slots came down to a total lottery: Deadpool 2, Aquaman, Coco, Black Panther and - to my utter shock! - Pacific Rim: Uprising all got awfully close, and lost out mostly because I didn't have much to say about them.

10) Annihilation 

I'm hopelessly torn on Annihilation, which I'd planned to wait and watch on blu-ray because I wanted to see it at its best - I mean, I wanted to see it in a goddamn cinema, but that's a whole 'nother story - and then caved in on for this article and found to be a mildly crushing disappointment, and yet has somehow lodged itself in my subconscious to the point where I feel bad about not including it.  So ... I dunno!  Garland's second shot at being a writer / director felt half-baked, flirting with ideas that didn't add up to a great deal, kind of like Stalker if Stalker ended with an artsy dance-off boss fight instead of one of the greatest sequences ever filmed.  Yet on a scene by scene basis, Annihilation has stuck with me.  Maybe that means it's an okay movie with some great moments.  Maybe that means I misjudged it.  I can't say, and for our current purposes it doesn't matter: tot up the best of Annihilation and you've something astonishing, which surely should earn it a place on a list that includes our next film.

9) Bumblebee

You have to be careful not to give bonus points to something for not being hateful crap, but it's extra tricky with Bumblebee, a film that seems at least a thousand times better for not having Michael Bay's name attached.  (Okay, he's the producer, but I'd bet you good money he was off doing coke somewhere while this thing was being made.)  There aren't many properties I feel nostalgic affection for, but Simon Furman's vast run on the Transformers comics was legitimately good stuff, enough so that I've been waiting with increasing longing for a movie that did it some measure of justice.  And lo, Bumblebee is ... kind of that film?  I mean, it a) has characters that behave like actual human beings / sentient robots and b) contains transformers that look like their respective counterparts and c) includes transformation sequences that actively resemble one thing turning into another, which immediately puts it well ahead of Bay's vomitous efforts.  On the other hand, if one was to be absolutely fair, it's hard to deny that whenever Hailee Steinfeld and / or a transforming robot isn't on screen, Bumblebee is pretty much mediocre boilerplate Hollywood film-making.  The result is a huge step in the right direction, but next time can we please not have the actual Transformers movie crammed into a five minute prologue?

8) Ant-Man and the Wasp

Look, I know an awful lot of people loved the hell out of Black Panther, and I won't pretend there wasn't stuff to love.  Maybe if I'd squinted a bit harder through the godawful CGI and fallen asleep before the woefully bland third act I'd have seen more of it.  But ultimately, Christopher Priest's run on the comics is among my favourite things ever, and reducing a character who's always at least nineteen moves ahead of everyone in the room to a stabby kitty guy who could be outwitted by passing traffic was never going to work for me.  Anyway, this is a lot of explaining to justify why Black Panther isn't here and Ant-Man and the Wasp is, when the truth is probably more along the lines of, Black Panther mixed a lot of stuff I loved with a lot I actively hated, whereas Ant-Man and the Wasp simply managed to be a solid film from start to finish.  I feel sort of dreadful for commending what amounts to Marvel making movies in their sleep, but if the results were always this fun and charming, I guess things could be worse.

7) Avengers: Infinity War

Oh look, it's Marvel again!  There's no way whatsoever that Avengers: Infinity War will stand the test of time, and I suspect that even watching it on anything smaller than a multiplex screen will be enough to erase most of its appeal.  But if you love cinema then you can't altogether neglect event cinema, and in 2018 we got event cinema at its peak: a film that seemed utterly doomed to failure until the moment it lumbered into the world.  It helps, of course, that the Russo brothers are the very best craftsmen that Marvel has at their disposal right now.  And if that sounds like damning praise then, yes, of course it is, but I dare so no one else could have kept this absurd carnival from exploding, and that it manages to function on a scene by scene basis is a heck of an accomplishment in itself.  If you were prepared to buy into Marvel's shared universe even after the idea had stopped being terribly interesting or exciting then Avengers: Infinity War was a just reward, a once in a lifetime moment that I found thrilling as heck at the time, even if I can barely remember a second of it now.

6) The Incredibles 2

The Incredibles 2 really ought to have sucked, given the colossal admission of defeat it felt like: for Pixar, obviously, but then sequalitis had long since proved to be a hill they had no plans to die on, but more so for Brad Bird, who'd put all this animation nonsense behind him to make proper grown-up movies and certainly didn't want to be dragged back to follow up an utter classic that required no following up whatsoever.  So perhaps the weirdest thing about The Incredibles 2 is how much it feels as though Bird wanted to develop these characters and this universe: whatever its imperfections, there's a sense of joy here that's almost tangible, like being reunited with old friends you'd forgotten how much you loved.  if the price is that nothing's terribly surprising - heck, certainly not the plot twist that was obvious from about five minutes in - then so be it.  For a movie that I actively didn't want to exist, The Incredibles 2 turned out to be an unexpected joy.

5) The Shape of Water

Okay, so this is probably stretching the 2018 thing the furthest, but what can you do?  I saw it in February, when it came out in the UK, it's not my fault studios are dicks.  To be honest, I'd given up on del Toro, after both Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak proved he'd cheerfully direct your grandma's shopping list if you chucked in a ghost or a giant robot.  The flip side turned out to be that, given a script that isn't crap, del Toro can still conjure magic as few directors can, treating the fantastic with the sort of earnestness and weight that most don't even understand it needs.  In fact, the bulk of what works best in The Shape of Water, starting with that exemplary Sally Hawkins performance, has nothing to do with genre, and its those foundations that make the later shift into more obvious fantasy storytelling so rewarding.  And underlying all that, I suspect there's quite an interesting thesis here about just how America got into the state it's currently in, viewed through the distorted lens of goofy fifties sci-fi movies.  If not then, hey, it's still del Toro mostly back on form, and that's not nothing.


4) Illang: The Wolf Brigade


And the award for this year's Asian genre masterpiece buried by its studio on Netflix because most people can't be bothered to read subtitles?  Why it's only the film I was most excited for back in 2017!  My favourite Korean director, Kim Jee-woon, the genius behind films like A Bittersweet Life and The Good, The Bad and The Weird, remaking one of my all-time favourite anime movies, the Mamoru Oshi-penned Jin-Roh.  And I guess it's sort of a bad sign that it only made number seven, but I'm confident that if I could have watched this in a cinema, or even on blu-ray, it would have rated higher.  Goddamn Netflix.  As it is, we get a a savage, compulsive, bitterly twisted sci-fi movie cum conspiracy thriller with a number of the year's best action sequences, that's maybe a dash too long and sacrifices a touch too much of the original's soulful angst and refusal to be any fun.  Still, good rather than great Kim Jee-woon gets you more bravura movie-making then most anyone else can offer.  In its best moments, Illang is phenomenal, and it deserves infinitely better treatment (and reviews) than it's received.

3) First Man

What do you mean, a biography of Neil Armstrong that doubles as a history of the defining moments of the American space program isn't science-fiction at all?  Oh, yeah, that's actually a fair point.  But look, it was one of my favourite films of the year, and I'd argue that there's a way in which it refuses to play the traditional games of either biography or history that does edge it, tenuously, into the territory of science fiction.  I mean, it's not a very good biography, emphasising as it does a version of Armstrong that's barely functional as a human being when he's not in life or death situations.  The earthbound stuff is deliberately flat, while at the same time kind of fascinating in its way, but once First Man gets into the upper atmosphere it delivers probably the most heart-stopping, thrilling, fascinating sequences of 2018, culminating - spoiler alert! - in a moon landing that manages to be achingly tense despite the fact that probably every human being on the planet knows it's going to end up okay.

2) Isle of Dogs

I suppose I was predisposed to love this, given that I've loved everything Wes Anderson has done post the mediocre The Darjeeling Limited, the cut-off point that, for whatever reason, made him decide to become the best fantasy filmmaker working in America today.  Given how solidly great everything he's crafted since has been, it's pointless to talk about best movies, but Isle of Dogs is certainly on a par with anything he's done, and a more satisfying animated film than the excellent Fantastic Mr. Fox.  It's also, despite those people who insist in the face of all possible evidence that Anderson is a one trick pony, yet another evolution in his storytelling: looser, darker, more visceral, and decidedly uglier, in so much as all those words are compatible with such a meticulous and lovely aesthetic.  Also, it's just a flat-out great genre picture, full of enticing ideas that it commits to wholeheartedly, building the sort of world that makes perfect sense within its own nonsensical terms.  Which is the whole Wes Anderson thing from top to bottom I suppose, but I can't quite get past how fun it is having him making actual, honest-to-goodness genre fare.

1) Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

If you want to know why Solo isn't anywhere on this list then here, obliquely, is your answer: whatever you do, don't fire Phil Lord and Chris Miller, because they're geniuses who could spin gold from horsefeathers.  And if there was ever a case in point of their astonishing gifts then - well, it's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, I guess, that perfect masterpiece that should really have been utter garbage, and which launched their careers as Hollywood wunderkind.  But there's also Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, a movie they merely wrote and produced that still manages to be more innovate and exciting than the vast majority of film-making in the last two decades.  Honestly, it's getting a bit boring how much Lord and Miller show up the state of American animation by exceeding it effortlessly, or reveal that blockbusters can also be smart in ways no one else even seems to be exploring, or find humour in places most writers wouldn't think to consider.  And none of that's truer than here, a colossal breath of fresh air wrenched from what should have been the most unnecessary, corporate, characterless piece of crap ever.

Film Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 45

Personally I thought the eighties were rubbish at the time.  My abiding childhood memory of the decade is waking up in the middle of a thunder storm and thinking nuclear war had kicked off, which I'd argue shouldn't be anyone's abiding childhood memory of any decade ever.  Yet it's hard to be really in love with nineties anime without acknowledging that eighties anime was up to some pretty cool stuff too, what with the nature of linear time and everything, and it's just as hard to truly understand the nineties stuff without getting a handle on what came before.  And yes, I realise this absolutely doesn't get us nearer to an end point for this series.  I mean, what's next, a seventies special?  The sixties?  Was there nineteen-forties anime?

Yup, it's the obsession that keeps on giving, all right, or possibly the hole that has no bottom.  Either way, this time around we'll be looking at: Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, GoShogun: The Time Étranger, Lily C.A.T, and Arcadia of My Youth...

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, 1989, dir: Fumihiko Takayama

For anyone wondering why it's taken me more than forty of these posts to get to perhaps the biggest franchise in all of anime, well, it's very simple.  You see, at my school, you were either a Macross kid or a Gundam kid, and woe betide anyone who crossed from one camp to the other.  Every day in the playground, we'd strap ourselves into cardboard recreations of our favourite bipedal war machines and battle with lasers and missiles - or rather, silly string and thrown polystyrene cups.  This would go on until the dinner ladies broke up our frantic interstellar conflicts, at which point we'd retire inside for pancakes and peanut butter.

Actually, that's an obvious lie.  The reason I'm only now dipping a toe into the boundless ocean of Gundam is because there's too damn much of it and I was scared.  However, once I stumbled across a couple of releases that were rumoured to be fairly standalone, I knew the time had come.  And that introductory nonsense wasn't altogether for nothing: War in the Pocket, the six part OVA made to celebrate the show's ten year anniversary, is very much about the notion of kids thinking that giant robots battering each other is just the best damn thing.  One in particular is the show's focus, young Al Izuruha, who by the start of the second episode has befriended a crash-landed pilot named Bernie after a violent clash on his supposedly neutral artificial homeworld.  Al is only too eager to help Bernie and his mercenary mates in their hunt for a secret weapon that the enemy appears to have stashed somewhere nearby, but it's not long before the consequences - and the casualties - begin to stack up.

So it's a coming of age tale then, along with something of an antiwar parable; Al's harsh lesson that dead isn't something you play is the heart of a story that prefers to operate on a small scale and at ground level, emphasising not the coolness of its robots but their appalling size and capacity for inadvertent destruction.  And this is an approach I'm totally behind, as well as an extraordinary surprise from a three decade old OVA from a franchise about giant robots punching each other.  We're awfully close here to exactly what I'd want from a tale like this, enough so that I'm kicking myself for a lifetime of Gundam neglect.  This is gloriously serious stuff told with the resources you'd expect of an anniversary release and with the benefit of some phenomenal talent.  I was frequently reminded of two of my favourite anime, Wings of Honneamise and Orguss 02, and it turns out there's a good reason: War in the Pocket shares the scriptwriter from the former and the director from the latter.

With all of that, it's not perfect.  For a start, it's wildly dreadful science fiction of the sort that cheerfully expects you to believe that people living on a space station as long as a small nation will still use wired phones and drive about in cars.  And while the characters and backgrounds are terrific in and of themselves, the former do have a tendency to appear as though they're floating on the latter.  For that matter, I suppose there are some storytelling mishaps as well: a budding romance between opposing pilots who don't know they're opposing pilots feels like it's stretching for one dramatic irony too many.  And the music is fine, but it doesn't always seem to get that this isn't supposed to be rousing fun.  Yet those are niggles compared with how War in the Pocket contorts the conventions of giant robot anime to tell a deeply personal story about growing up and learning that war is good, above all, for robbing people of the things they love.  That a show like this can exist is a great example of why I adore anime, and since it's even been recently re-released, it's pretty much a must-buy.

GoShogun: The Time Étranger, 1985, dir: Kunihiko Yuyama

One of my passions as a writer is imagining how real, functioning people would behave if they were trapped within the confines of pulp fiction, the sort of stories where traumas are shrugged off effortlessly and scars heal overnight and the general level of psychological insight is as deep as the average puddle.  This is something anime has done a uniquely good job of exploring: we need only look to the seminal Neon Genesis Evangelion, which concludes in no uncertain terms that what would really happen if you told a teenager to pilot a giant robot and save the world is that their poor young mind would snap like a dried-up rubber band.  That's not everyone's cup of tea, I'll admit, but for me it's fascinating: silly stories are fine, but sometimes you need to step back and plug in genuine emotions, to recognise how innately ridiculous and fallacious it all is.

Now, this isn't quite the game The Time Étranger is playing, but it's certainly a big part: revisiting a long-running, thoroughly daft-looking giant robot show* from an infinitely more mature perspective, treating its characters with the gravity normally reserved for bleak European art house movies.  And even that barely gets us halfway, if only because the film is up to a lot, all of it interesting.  Our protagonist is Remy Shimada, one-time pilot of the GoShogun and now, forty years later ... well, we never quite find out where Remy's at now, and the only sure fact we're allowed is that she turned down a medal in recognition of her heroism.  This also happens to be all anyone else remembers about her, more so even than why she was up for a medal in the first place - and if that feels like it might be significant then, yeah, you're getting the idea.  Anyway, Remy is on her way to a reunion with her former buddies when she suffers a car accident, brought on by a severe illness that alone would have been life-threatening.  Both together leave her in a hospital bed with at most a couple of days to live.

Ah, but meanwhile a much younger Remy is in a hotel room in a phantasmagorical Middle Eastern city, and she hasn't been there long before she's informed that she'll be dead in two days, and her death will be indescribably nasty, and there isn't a thing she can do.  Remy, being a former superhero, doesn't take this news lying down, but everyone she meets is quick to point out that, struggle all she might, fate is fate.  And also meanwhile, an even younger Remy is battling to survive on the streets after the death of her prostitute mother, and doesn't even younger Remy look like the creepy kid who's trying to persuade young Remy that her death is just around the corner and she better damn well accept it?

It's a head game, then, basically, and quite literally so in its central section.  It's also a character study of a really terrific character, and on top of that it's a dissection of superhero mythology, asking deeply pertinent questions about where old heroes go once the heroics are done with.  But within all of that, it's fun, and often funny, and brashly exciting, and frequently horrifying, juggling a complex array of tones that frankly I wouldn't have expected in a million years from the future director of Pokémon: The First Movie.  Oh, and it looks stunning; very eighties of course, because it was the eighties, but the animation is consistently superb, with an attention to weight and physicality that only really committed animators tend to get right.

In short, The Time Étranger is masterpiece.  A minor one, I suppose, since there's something innately audience-limiting about a Bergman-esque tale of life, death, and everything in-between that's also a sequel to a big, dumb giant robot show.  Then again, The Time Étranger couldn't have the heft it does without the knowledge that it's a sequel to a big, dumb giant robot show.  Its starting point is an assault on the very notion of sequelling such material.  Anyway, it's brilliant, and if someone had told me it was the long-lost debut of Mamoru Oshii or Satoshi Kon I'd have been infinitely less surprised than I would have been to hear that this is what the guy who made pretty much every Pokémon movie ever could have been doing.  It's extraordinary stuff, it's readily available, and it deserves a place in any anime collection, so for goodness' sake hurry up and grab a copy.

Lily C.A.T, 1987, dir: Hisayuki Toriumi

For the first fifteen minutes or so, it seems like Lily C.A.T is going to be the most blatantly plagiaristic thing you've ever seen.  And this is surprising, because though anime in the eighties and nineties lifted heavily from Western influences - you can't watch a lot from those decades and not realise that The Terminator, the Alien movies, and Blade Runner had a major cultural impact in Japan - nevertheless the tendency is to tweak rather than pillage, often by incorporating recognizably Eastern ingredients to flesh the material out in unexpected ways.  But for a good quarter of an hour, Lily C.A.T has none of that: it's Alien, plain and simple, with the only meaningful changes being that the space parasite in question is picked up in transit and that in this future, everyone dresses like it's 1987 and will be forever.

Lily C.A.T never gets more original, but it does do something interesting in itself: while it doesn't stop cribbing from Alien, it does begin to steal from other places as well, until the range of influences becomes exciting in its own right.  I mean, imagine what Alien would look like if you threw in The Thing, 2001, Joe Haldeman's sci-fi classic The Forever War, the previous year's They Were Eleven, and Midnight Run - which, okay, came out the year after and so couldn't have been an influence, but I can't think of an earlier example for that particular cliché.  The point being, if you fling enough influences together, the result inevitably becomes sort of unique.  And Alien, but with the monster from The Thing and the time dilation mechanics of The Forever War and the "not everyone's who they seem to be!" gimmick from They Were Eleven and no end of scenes pilfered from 2001 and a bit where a cop and a crook have to team up though they hate each other is a whole 'nother thing from just a straight-up Alien rip-off.

Does any of this make Lily C.A.T good?  That's harder to say.  It's nicely animated, with a somewhat realistic style, a nod to sensible spaceship design, and some efficient scenes of horror, much more so that animation tends to achieve.  Toriumi is a dab hand at building atmosphere and tension, and there are a couple of genuine shocks in here, along with some effectively unnerving sequences and a bit of truly shocking gore.  And the mad confluence of influences at least makes it tough to predict: you can see the general shape of what Lily C.A.T will be within the first five minutes, but its refusal to stick to any one mode provides plenty of twists along the way.  Plus it takes itself seriously, which turns out to be beneficial: there's nothing worse than the knowing rip-off that feels a need to nod and wink.

Beyond that, I suppose the most I can say is that I enjoyed it.  There's only so much I can criticise a good, well-animated Alien rip-off that brings a few interesting (if also stolen) ideas to the table.  I've seen it declared a lost classic and a total travesty and the truth is nearer the middle: it's a solid slice of eighties anime that really could have done to hew to its influences less closely.  Hardly indispensable then, but a solid way to pass a little over an hour.**  Oh, but if you're a cat lover - yeah, maybe you'll want to skip this one.

Arcadia of My Youth, 1982, dir: Tomoharu Katsumata

Arcadia of My Youth has a reputation for being both epic and a classic of its era, and it's certainly both of those things.  At a stonking one hundred and thirty minutes, it's certainly not skimping on running time, and it's easy to see why the story has stuck with so many, even nearly four decades after its release: on the one hand, we have something of an origin tale for Leiji Matsumoto's beloved hero Captain Harlock and a number of the Harlock-verse's core elements and relationships.  On the other, there's a huge narrative of a resistance war for Earth against alien invaders, one with plenty of real world parallels.  And in case anyone should miss them, they're hammered home in no uncertain terms by the flashbacks to Harlock's gloriously named ancestor Phantom F. Harlock as a World War Two pilot, which open the movie and remain a thread throughout.

When Arcadia of My Youth was first released in the US, it was under the less poetic title Vengeance of the Space Pirate and with forty minutes, including the opening Phantom F. Harlock prologue, excised.  And though this is a testament to the crappy way anime and anime viewers were treated in those days - the WW2-era material is among the film's best - it also raises certain doubts about how much absolutely needs to be here.  Because the truth is that one hundred and thirty minutes is a heck of a running time for what's an awfully slender story, especially if you do choose to ignore the historical aspects.  Harlock lands on Earth as effectively a prisoner of war, hooks up with the resistance, guided by old flame Maya, and eventually intervenes in the battle for another planet under the aliens' occupation.

In a sense, then, the epic-ness happens mostly on the level of heightened emotions: for better or worse, these are mythic characters caught up in a self-consciously mythic universe.  How you respond to that is entirely personal - I'm slowly warming to Matsumoto's shtick - but the fact remains that there are definite issues on a storytelling level.  At the risk of sounding like the dumbasses who sanctioned Vengeance of the Space Pirate, this material could do to be a little more pacy and action-packed.  There are odd moments of delirious excitement - the first launch of the Arcadia is giddy space opera at its finest - but they're few and far between, and too lumped among all that weighty mythic-ness.  And there are other issues too, foremost that nobody really does a great deal.  That's especially, dispiritingly true of the female characters: at one point, Emeraldas even explains to Maya that everyone would have done much the same had she just minded her own business.

At any rate, there's no faulting the production values.  Actually, as much as I'm warming to Matsumoto's very specific design ethos, the characters look a little horrible in motion, with their overly squashed-up faces; but the backgrounds, and particularly the preposterous spaceships, are utterly marvelous, and worth the price of admission alone.  And while the score is good enough, fine use is made of a handful of pieces by composer Antonín Dvořák that do an exemplary job of elevating the material to that legendary register it's so keen to gain.  Put it all together and you have a film that certainly succeeds in its aims, and strikingly so in its better moments.  It's only a shame it didn't also set out to be a bit more fun, or give its characters a little agency.  As such, Queen Emeraldas remains my favourite bit of Harlockana, but I'm glad I tracked this one down.

-oOo-

God damn it, I'm becoming an eighties anime nerd, aren't I?  With an end to this trawl through anime history actually somewhere in sight, that's the last thing I needed.  Although, let's face it, if that means I have to watch stuff like Gundam: War in the Pocket and The Time Étranger then I could be wasting my life in infinitely worse ways.  The latter, in particular, went straight into not only the upper tier of my anime favourites but my favourite movies full stop.  In fact, given that time and capitalism have ensured that any eighties anime you can buy today is sure to be pretty respectable, there's an argument that says this might actually go better than the nineties stuff.

No!  That way lies madness!  Next time: back to nineties anime!




[Other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Part 32, Part 33, Part 34, Part 35, Part 36, Part 37, Part 38, Part 39, Part 40, Part 41, Part 43, Part 44]





* Though they don't feel the need to mention the fact anywhere on the packaging, Eastern Star's recent DVD release actually also includes the GoShogun film from 1982, which is basically two episodes cobbled together with scraps from here and there and some weirdly hilarious fake in-universe trailers.  It's an amusing watch that does a respectable job of providing the necessary background for The Time Étranger, but mostly what it's good for is underlining how The Time Étranger is not a damn thing like GoShogun.

** Or 91 minutes, if you believe the wholly dishonest packaging. ***

*** And my major takeaway from this post is that whoever's writing the cover material at Eastern Star ought to be out on their ear, because they suck at their job.

Guest Post: The Headless Earl of Dean Castle, by Catherine Cavendish

Robert the Bruce gave the land on which the castle stands to the Boyd family to thank them for their support of him at the Battle of Bannockburn and in 1350 work was begun on building a fine castle keep. In the 1460s a palace was built following Thomas Boyd’s marriage to Princess Mary.
For over four hundred years, Dean Castle was home to successive generations of Boyds until the 4th Earl – William – was captured at the Battle of Culloden. Fighting as a Jacobite, the Earl fell victim to an ambush created by his own son. It would prove the ruination of him. He seems to have gone willingly to his inevitable death by beheading. His only wish was that his severed head be caught in a large cloth. He couldn’t stomach the idea of it rolling around in the dirt.
His wishes were duly carried out but it seems his head is still around. People have reported seeing it rolling along the floor of the corridors as if propelled by someone using it for a bowling ball.

But the headless Earl is not the only spirit apparently tied to the Castle. The 4th Earl was the last of the Boyd family to live there and even then – as a result of a devastating fire in 1735 – the building was in a parlous state which he couldn’t afford to repair. James Boyd sold the castle in 1746 and it passed through a number of hands until the 8th Lord Howard de Walden inherited it and commenced some serious restoration work. Finally in 1975 the 9th Lord Howard de Walden gifted the keep, the estate, his father’s collection of militaria and his grandfather’s collection of musical instruments to the people of Kilmarnock. Since then it has been open as a museum and the ghosts have been active.
Guides and visitors alike have reported seeing an elderly woman in an ankle length dress, with a plaid shawl covering her head. She is most frequently witnessed along the walkway overlooking the courtyard but has also been known to manifest in the kitchen. In 1992, the ghost beckoned to a guide who then followed her into a room used as an office. Immediately, the guide became violently ill, yelling for something to get out of her and apparently oozing a nasty substance from her skin. She subsequently recovered and continued working at the Castle.

Other people have reported hearing ghostly medieval music coming from the Minstrels’ Gallery and a portrait of the ill-fated William Boyd has a habit of dropping off the wall in the study.
In keeping with many castles, Dean Castle has a dungeon complete with an oubliette. Here, prisoners would be thrown down and left to rot without food or water until they died. It is believed that the last woman to suffer such a fate still haunts the dungeon to this day. She was a supporter of the Covenanters and affects visitors by constricting their breathing.
Sadly, if you want to visit the Castle you will need to wait as its website reports that it is currently closed for restoration work (reopening in 2020 I believe). The park and grounds are open though and some beautiful walks are to be experienced there.

For ghosts of a different kind, here’s what to expect from The Haunting of Henderson Close:
Ghosts have always walked there. Now they’re not alone… 
In the depths of Edinburgh, an evil presence is released. Hannah and her colleagues are tour guides who lead their visitors along the spooky, derelict Henderson Close, thrilling them with tales of spectres and murder. For Hannah it is her dream job, but not for long. Who is the mysterious figure that disappears around a corner? What is happening in the old print shop? And who is the little girl with no face? The legends of Henderson Close are becoming all too real. 
The Auld De’il is out – and even the spirits are afraid.



The Haunting of Henderson Close is available from:
AmazonBarnes and NobleFlame Tree Press
About the author:

Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Catherine Cavendish is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. In addition to The Haunting of Henderson Close, Cat’s novels include the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy - Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients and Damned by the Ancients, plus The Devil’s Serenade, The Pendle Curse and Saving Grace Devine. 
Her novellas include Linden Manor, Cold Revenge, Miss Abigail’s Room, The Demons of Cambian Street, Dark Avenging Angel, The Devil Inside Her, and The Second Wife 
She lives near Liverpool with her long-suffering husband, and a black cat who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue. 
You can connect with Cat here:
Catherine CavendishFacebookTwitterGoodreads

Guest Postage

Tomorrow will see the birth of a grand new dawn on this blog, albeit one that admittedly only involves catching up with the entire rest of the internet!  At any rate, I'll be hosting my first ever guest post, which is fairly exciting, but also likely to cause a bit of confusion for anyone who's forgotten this isn't just where I ramble on about ancient, long-forgotten anime.  So I figured I'd better offer a bit of forewarning: tomorrow it won't be me here, it'll be my Flame Tree Press stablemate Catherine Cavendish, and there'll actually be something interesting on offer, in the shape of Catherine talking about the morbid history and tenacious occupants of Kilmarnock's Dean Castle, in service of getting the word out about her new novel, The Haunting of Henderson Close.

Which looks something like this:

Ghosts have always walked there. Now they’re not alone… 
In the depths of Edinburgh, an evil presence is released. Hannah and her colleagues are tour guides who lead their visitors along the spooky, derelict Henderson Close, thrilling them with tales of spectres and murder. For Hannah it is her dream job, but not for long. Who is the mysterious figure that disappears around a corner? What is happening in the old print shop? And who is the little girl with no face? The legends of Henderson Close are becoming all too real. 

The Auld De’il is out – and even the spirits are afraid.

See you back here tomorrow!