Eiga Daisuki Pompo-san

Joelle Davidovich Pomponette, better known as simply "Pompo," is an extremely talented movie producer, having inherited her grandfather's connections and cinematic eye. Despite her promising outlook, Pompo refuses to produce anything other than trashy B-movies. That is, until she hands her assistant, Gene Fini, a script for an ambitious screenplay about the life of a composer and announces that he has earned his first directorial credit.

Determined to make the film shine, Gene throws himself completely into his work. However, with an overwhelming workload and a deadline only days away, the aspiring director struggles with what must be sacrificed in the name of creation.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Fini, Gene Main

Shimizu, Hiroya Japanese

Pomponette, Joelle Davidovich Main

Kohara, Konomi Japanese

Woodward, Nathalie Supporting

Ootani, Rinka Japanese

Mystia Supporting

Kakuma, Ai Japanese

Braddock, Martin Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Gardner, Alan Supporting

Kijima, Ryuuichi Japanese

Peterzen, J.D. Supporting

Ogata, Mitsuru Japanese

Bank President Supporting

Oobayashi, Ryuusuke Japanese

Alan's Manager Supporting

Koyama, Rikiya Japanese

Corbett Supporting

Sakamaki, Manabu Japanese

Hirao, Takayuki Director, Sound Director, Storyboard, Screenplay, Art Director

Imura, Kenji Episode Director

Niizuma, Seiko Theme Song Performance

KAF Inserted Song Performance

Reviews

Aug 15, 2022

Gippy

Recommended

I was fortunate enough to watch a screening of this at the Anime NYC convention in November, months before the public release. It was part of a double billing along with Belle, the latest film by Mamoru Hosoda, whom you might know from Wolf Children. While Belle packed the auditorium and received far more hype in the form of its own booth and advertisements all throughout the convention, Pompo felt like the actual masterpiece.

From the very beginning of the movie, the cinematography stunned me. Compared to most other anime, the world of Nyallywood seemed very much alive, colorful, and dynamic. Every scene transition was ... fancy, sort of like how Akudama Drive was initially presented. But while the snazzy effects tapered off after episode 1, for Pompo, it remained for the entire movie. Perspectives and establishing shots were wide and varied, and any flapping mouth scenes were kept to a minimum amount of time. The character designs may be simple, but that allowed the characters to act more fluidly.

Pompo's creed when it comes to movie production could be considered controversial. It constantly drove home the point that a story shouldn't tell everything that happened. It should tell everything IMPORTANT that happened. The movie itself listens to its own advice, as its runtime is 1.5 hours. Some may disagree with Pompo's aggressive "scorched earth" method of film editing, that there is inherent value in savoring every bit of the story. There are many fans of long-running epics such as One Piece. Even live-action movies are trending towards ultra-long runtimes, such as Avengers Endgame at 3 hours. Fans who prefer grand world-building shows with a cornucopia of characters and side stories will hesitate to accept Pompo's film editing method as a proper and correct way to tell a story. However, as a fan who prefers all stories to wrap up in 2 cours (26 episodes) or less, Pompo's message resonated with me. Many directors who love to pad their stories could learn a thing or two from this. Despite Pompo's tight runtime, not once did it ever felt rushed, and every scene felt like it lasted for just the right amount of time. It certainly had more substantial content than Belle, which ran 32 minutes longer, and had sluggish scenes that I wished would end already. Could Pompo have been longer? Certainly. But even at 1.5 hours, it gives every character their moment in the limelight, and makes you care.

At the two-thirds point in the movie, the film editing for the movie being created is complete. Had the movie concluded like that, it would've still been a great watch. But there's a powerful final act, and this final act was what put Pompo over the top as an all-time great. It recognized the sweat, devotion, and sacrifices needed to be the very best, whether it's for a hobby or a profession. As a content creator, I understood this all too well. Sometimes "good enough" isn't what you really desire. You want to leave it all on the floor and have no regrets. Pompo had spent significant time developing the lead character's backstory, in which he had absorbed film knowledge and wrote his own ideas in his notebook since childhood. Even then, he wasn't a miracle worker; he had to put in a backbreaking amount of time and effort to create the final product, affecting his overall health. The supporting characters were also developed enough that you could believe they all got to where they are through hard work and effort. Even the stereotypical attractive actress introduced at the beginning of the movie, whom I thought was a throwaway character, showed another side of herself.

The final act of Pompo did what other "work creation" shows could not: convince me that the work being created was actually fantastic. With the critically acclaimed Shirobako, there was no illusion that the three anime the studio produced would be classics. The one-shot anime in Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, another well-regarded show, was an admirable attempt by amateurs, but ultimately wasn't all that special. Remake Our Life skipped showing whatever the main characters created, probably because the author couldn't write anything of that level. But the movie made in Pompo, called Meister, looked like a legitimate award-winning work, and I'd watch a full version of it.

Pompo is an absolute gem. With its rapid direction and loveable cast, this was the movie at Anime NYC that should've received all the attention. There's enough in its playful, colorful appearance to appeal to a wide audience. But it's the thought-provoking ideas, such as its "scorched earth" method of film editing, and unconventional cinematography, that will leave a long-lasting impression on viewers.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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May 5, 2022

Barneysaurus

Mixed Feelings

NOTE: THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS SO PLEASE AVOID READING THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE ANIME

I hate that I’ll dig into Pompo The Cinephile (or Eiga Daisuki Pompo-san in Japanese) as much as I will for the rest of the review because you can clearly tell the people making this movie were truly passionate about it, but ultimately the movie simply has a lot of problems that cannot be simply ignored. Pompo the Cinephile is a movie that can be best described as full of ambitions and ideas, but ultimately fails in fully fleshing out those ideas because of how aggressively underwhelming it is in ... regards to its execution.

The movie is about Gene Fini, the assistant of Joelle Davidovich Pomponette (Pompo-san), a film producer at the movie capital "Nyallywood'' who is given the task to direct a film based on a script written by her.

There are some interesting stylistic choices under its toolbelt, like scene transitions, echoing the way the late Satoshi Kon would bleed different scenes together with an amazing sense of flow. The way it visualizes the main character Gene Fini’s inner thoughts whenever he’s in his creative zone was a particular treat.
The visual parallels created between Gene’s personal struggles with finding his own voice in the film and the protagonist of Meister, the film Gene is Directing and Editing were interesting at some times but at other times didn’t have the connective tissue to connect the struggles of the two together, but it trying to do that was admirable.
(Disclaimer: The following is something that’s a personal pet peeve of mine, and because of that I’m not deducting any points for it but I do want to address it)The movie does this one thing that I don't really like in some modern anime where they have these long sweeping one-shots that move around the 3D Background without any sort of motivated movement in mind. It's fine when something like AOT does it because they use that to emphasize the momentum and the speed of the characters when they're using it for their 3D Maneuvering gear, it does not fit when it's just a shot of an opera performing, there are so many ways to capture the grandiosity of the opera without doing this showy camera move that does nothing but distract the viewer.

Popo the Cinephile’s character work is generally lackluster, Gene is the only character that is actually somewhat fleshed out. They introduce him as a person with problems regarding his voice as an artist and ambitions as a filmmaker, and how he finds solace in films due to being an outcast. The parts that showed his inner thought process whenever he’s editing are easily the best parts of the movie because those are the only parts in which Gene really shines through as a living breathing character.
Pompo, the titular character (though not the main one, funnily enough) is only really there to serve as a catalyst to all of the other characters’ arcs in the story.
This movie has a weird problem with characters wherein it introduces someone, establishes an arc for them and then:
A. just never doing anything with it
B.rushing it so quickly that you never really see said character progress throughout.
For example, the character Natalie's introduced early into the movie. Her arc is about having the confidence to perform and actually landing a role, and they resolve all of that in the first act by way of montage after which she gets the lead role in Pompo’s new film.
Alan Gardner is easily the weakest of the core cast. He is introduced as someone having a history with Gene who happens to conveniently work at Nyallywood Bank, the bank that ultimately helped fund Gene’s movie after a very contrived conflict introduced at the end of the second act. It feels like they introduce this character purely to be someone who helps solve said conflict regarding the funding of Gene’s film (who also receives a Deus ex machina too in the form of Nyallywood Bank’s CEO). They try to flesh out Alan by explaining his conflicts in a single throwaway line but it does little to help.

The movie’s core theme is about trying to ultimately live to one’s own ambitions. The problem is that it does little to really delve into its core theme and everything surrounding it. A lot of the core problems of the movie exist because the length of the movie that they (the filmmakers) set for themselves to serve what they thought would be a cool trick (a topic that is discussed inside the movie and is also one of the conflicts presented in a conversation with Gene and Popo), but what it ends up doing is that it leaves the movie no room to really truly get into the themes and ideas it wants to discuss, leading to it rushing through everything and never focusing on anything. The movie also pretty much forgets to have a conflict in the main story so they shove a few just before the third act and resolve them almost immediately.
I also personally feel like this haphazard way of immediately resolving conflicts leads to it having a very problematic message at the end. Gene, due to overworking himself during the editing phase which leads to him suffering from anemia. Personally speaking, they could have taken it to an interesting direction and have an interesting message regarding overworking in relation to one’s passion. What the movie does instead is that it lets Gene’s reckless behavior be ultimately rewarded at the end by him escaping the hospital he’s been sent to rest and him finishing the film to great critical and commercial praise. This sends the message to the viewer that one’s ambitions serve greater precedence than their own health and wellbeing which is problematic and irresponsible to promote.

Overall, Pompo the Cinephile had the potential to be a really interesting and possibly introspective movie about personal ambitions and filmmaking, but the runtime ultimately works to its detriment by delivering a very shallow final product. Imagining what it could have been is ultimately more infuriating and disappointing than the actual movie. It’s not the worst thing you will ever see, because the few virtues it has are the only things carrying the movie, but there are definitely much better movies and anime out there tackling similar themes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Oct 5, 2023

saitoyuu

Not Recommended

Funny

I don't wanna sound rude, but this film is exactly the same quality as Pompo's films lol

It feels like the entire movie was made for portraying an irony

The story is so shallow, the characters are so bland even the Pompo herself, and i couldn't find what's so interesting about this movie other than the visualization, just like Pompo's films.

Visual wise, they're good but not that great, the animation, the design, and the colors in this movie. I really love the transitions they use. I love how they try to put movie-like effects in an animation which is kinda tricky, but they made it work.
That makes ... me think, maybe this movie is just an experiment project. But Clap makes great animation, so if this being an experiment project, it's very underwhelming compared to other Clap's anime. It's like this anime was a task for their interns lol

I only recommend this to people who watch anime for finding a desktop wallpaper.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Eiga Daisuki Pompo-san Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Feorg - Dec 27, 2021	61 replies	by Shu_Ackerman »» Dec 18, 8:35 PM
	1hr 30min movie length mshfqtny - May 2	10 replies	by Carpal_Tunnel69 »» Jul 26, 8:28 PM
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