Another: Ball Jointed Anime? Creepy…

Here’s another (different use) anime that I watched extremely quickly! (I have some free time on my hands and this is how I spend it. Time well spent.) Another is an anime based on a novel of the same title written by Yukito Ayatsuji. It’s a creepy story about ghosts and, what’s worse, ball jointed dolls. A popular thing in Japan and popular among people who like Japanese culture here, it is the freakiest thing to come out of Japan. Those things bleed evil and look like the devil himself. And that’s why this anime scared me, because they kept doing flash images of those creepy dolls…

So that’s where this story/anime is coming from. Another is the story of a death that happened wayyyy back in 1972. A high school kid died in some strange way and it was tragic. But as life moved on, people in the class said that they could see the student was still there. Even the teacher went along with it. They took the desk to

Those creepy dolls… Ugh.

graduation, and the student even showed up in the final class picture. Creepy, right? It’s another year and it’s been 26 to be exact. With a new transfer student coming in to Yomiyama North from Toyko, Koichi Sakakibara is about to discover what true horror is. In true Final Destination fashion people start dropping like flies from what appears to be the Class 3 curse.

The freaky students of Class 3.

When a show/anime/movie is based on a book, you hope it can be just as good as the original. Never having seen an anime based on anything other than a manga, I don’t have any basis for grading this anime. But I thought it was rather well done. Based around a small town with a secret, the whole story is about finding skeletons in the closet. There are a few twists and a supernatural element that isn’t too over the top as to believe in a situation like this. The animation style is creepy enough with all the characters drawn like human ball jointed dolls. It has plenty of shocking deaths and blood, and everything in the show (probably due to the dolls) has a frail quality feeling to it.

The Eye, anyone?

This anime deals a lot with conversations that happen between characters, and what is said is what matters. There isn’t a whole lot of action until the end, but that was okay with me. It seemed like a new change of pace to watch a show that didn’t focus all around motion, but took it slower and dealt more with the dialogue than what people actually did. It has its creepy elements and would do just fine if it was adapted into a horror movie. But that is what’s surprising seeing this as an anime. It takes a cartoon medium and turns it into something more adult, more Victorian (it’s the only word coming to mind). If you wanna watch an anime without all the bells and whistles, this is probably the show for you. A creepy look into dolls and the dead, this show gets a 6.5 out of 10.

Premonition: The Asian Early Edition

(Tagline not true)

So does anybody get the reference in my review title? If you do, this movie plot would sound familiar to you. I’m all for this movie, because I was all for that show back in the day. Kyle Chandler’s a pretty good character actor, and in one of my up and coming reviews, I’m going to discuss Super 8, a good role for his style of acting. Anyways, for those who don’t know, the plot of this movie and the plot of Early Edition is one and the same. One is just horror. In the short version, man finds a newspaper. It predicts terrible things that will happen that day (AKA day the newspaper dictates). Guy has to stop these bad things from happening for his own good. A perfect mix of the morality of stopping something before it happens and the supernatural. Let’s get it goin’.

So, in this particular film, Hideki Satomi is at an outing with his wife Ayaka and daughter, Nana. (Reference to anime, perhaps?) Stopping at a phonebooth in order to get service to submit a project he was working on like the unaware

This dad just cares too much.

working dad he is, disaster strikes. Hideki finds a newspaper clipping, quite old, of a 18 wheeler accident at their location. Not understanding, he turns around to find his wife out of harms way, but his daughter trapped in the backseat of the car. With no time to spare… Hideki doesn’t save his daughter.

Feeling like a failure of a dad, Hideki loses whatever job he had and goes to the degrading work of high school literature teaching. His wife, being as crazy and illogical as most mothers in situations like this, divorces her husband in pursuit of psychics and other fortune telling newspapers. That’s something I just really don’t understand. Why would parents divorce over the loss of their children, or, more to the point, the wife wanting to leave the husband. Maybe I’m not old enough or experienced enough to understand, but that would create a bond between me and my wife over that tragic loss. Unless it has something to do with seeing his daughter in his wife or something…

A husband and wife, reunited.

Anyways, Ayaka starts to discover a past of these predicting newspapers while her husband attempts to shut out all thoughts of the child he couldn’t save. In some way or another, the two are reunited and begin their journey to discover just exactly why these two were able to see and understand these newspapers. But all that is revealed is not necessarily good. In a spiraling torrent of evil and unearthed past, Hideki and Ayaka must escape the future in store for them for their pursuits of the deadly paper.

So, in comparison to the other Asian horror films I’ve been watching, this one probably takes the cake. Coming from Japan, the usual suspects of good horror films, this one had the most amount of jumpy parts and disturbing images. The plot was straight ahead horror. Unearthing a secret that changes their lives forever horrifically. Check. Discovering a not so good background. Got it. It’s all good. The acting is dec, (short for decent, get used to it) and the special effects are right there in the middle of the road, not spectacular, but good enough to make me squirm a bit.

A true dad sees his dead daughter, no matter the place.

But what this movie boils down to, as I’ve been told I’m good at deciphering, is the role of the dad. The father in this movie deserves to be subjected to exactly how good of a dad he is. For the record, there are three reasons he’s a good dad:

1. At some point in the film, Hideki attempts to/sacrifices his life in order to save his daughter. This gains any dad instant “dad martyr status.” In truth, if this happens, the surviving wife will tell their children about the courageousness of their father and just how great of a dad he was for dying for them.

2. Hideki’s life spirals into a terrible depression at the loss of his daughter. Any time a dad will grieve an entire life for their child just proves how much they care.

3. Last but not least, Hideki sees images of his dead daughter and it gravely shakes him. This achieves “prophetic depressed dad” status. Any dad, if they truly cared for their child, will never get over the last image they had of their deceased child.

Combine all 3 of these criteria and you have one great dad. Subtract those parts of the film in which Hideki departs from the path of the true dad, and Hideki ends up with about 145 dad points. (100 points if you sacrifice your life for your child.) There’s no particular cap on dad points, but that’s a pretty damn good score. (If you enjoyed this segment of my blog, please like this post or let me know through comment and this’ll come back in the future.)

Not this, Sandra, not this.

And now the rating. I’ll give Premonition (not the Sandra Bullock film) 6.8 out of 10.