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Memories is a collection of 3 short stories all written by the man behind Akira, he also handles directorial duties on the final story. In this review I have focussed on each episode separately. Magnetic Rose – A fascinating tale based around the answering of an emergency SOS by a group of garbage collectors in space. As with any story in this genre (e.g. Alien) the SOS leads the group into a danger in which they are not prepared for. Heintz and Miguel board the asteroid as Ivanov and Aoshima stay aboard the ship supplying them with info. The events on the asteroid border on the weird (without wanting to give anything away) and are confusing throughout the story but are focussed on the memories of a beautiful opera singer. The surroundings of the main protagonists are constantly changing - ranging from the beautiful ballroom into which they enter after leaving the elevator to dusty, aging and leaky corridors. Stink Bomb – An extremely bizarre idea is handled in a fun manner by the director and animator. The animation is less serious than that which is in Magnetic Rose with basic anime ideas covered. The lengths to which attempts to hinder the progress of the main character is made have to be seen to be believed and seriously reek of overkill (sorry about the bad pun). Cannon Fodder – This episode is about the monotonous day to day routine of a city whose role in life is to fire cannons onto a mysterious flying city. The men fire the cannons, the women produce the shells and the children learn about firing weapons in school. With the latter, the writer managed to show a maths lesson where trigonometry was used in a relevant manner (something which teachers are meant to achieve). The main source of amusement in this episode came from the sadness of the situation that the residents were trapped into carrying out daily. The Stink Bomb episode is probably
the most accessible out of the three. While the animation of Magnetic
Rose is superior to the other two, the storyline is a bit confusing as some
things aren’t explained that well (a problem with it being a 40min short story). |
