Wonderful Days

At first I was afraid this was going to be like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - a big let down, but I was pleasantly surprised by this high quality Korean animated feature.

Like both the Final Fantasy installments, which this is so reminiscent of, Wonderful Days takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a group of humans are fighting for a better tomorrow - their wonderful days. One can tell that the plot is not a major aspect of the movie; there is very little background on the present events and little or no clarification of what is what. But that's ... not important.

The characters, too, are unexplored and their personalities have little significance. There is no motivation for their actions and random switches in beliefs. It's like a mega chameleon fest, where none of them know what their true colours are. Poor character development. But then again they're not important.

What drives this anime, and the reason why I give it an 8 after all it's shortcomings, is the absolutely brilliant animation and sound. To really enjoy this, you need to watch a good quality version of the movie. The cell-shading/CG artwork was fantastic and played its part perfectly in describing the darkness of post apocalyptic earth. I never thought cinematography was important for anime, but by god was it well done. Some of the "shots" coupled with some excellent music brought out the emotion which the 1-D characters could not provide. It is like watching Monet paint. Maybe that's a bit too much, but you get the idea.

If you're planning on watching this, don't go in expecting something extraordinary, it's nothing brilliant. But it was certainly enjoyable, if not interesting to see what the Korean animation industry is capable of. It's a very promising step...

I actually had to watch this bad movie twice because I wanted to be sure of what I’m writing, and the first time I watched it I had some trouble to understand the plot since I fell asleep. I’m so disappointed in this movie

The reviews were really positive, the plot seemed really interesting and the cover of the anime looked awesome.

It was also recommended with the Final fantasy advent children which I really like. I’m sorry to say that I really can’t find what’s similar with these two. And I think that the person who recomended Final fantasy advent children with this anime, needs to ... rewatch Final fantasy advent children.

Anyway, the characters were really flat and didn’t feel realistic at all. The art is decent, but not very good. Actually when I think of it, the only part in the movie that I enjoyed was when Jay and Shua were fighting, and that scene lasted for less than a minute.

I came across this movie while i was looking through some animes that were on sale. As it only was like 4$ I thought I’d buy it. I didn’t really expect anything from it, since it was Korean and all, but I was pleasantly surprised..

[5]Story: The story had potential, and had this been a series with at least 12 episodes I think it would have been really good. But as it stands we only have a movie and the 1.5 hours of playtime is not nearly enough to explore the desolated world we are introduced to in ‘Wonderful Days’. If you want to know ... the premise of the show, just read the Synopsis here on MAL, no need for me to go through it here. There really isn’t anything more to say about the plot. If you liked the premise you should have no problem watching the show and enjoying it for its other aspects, just don’t expect anything more than the premise..

[9]Art: The art is probably the very best thing about this movie, and this is what makes those 1.5 hours of your life worth the watch. It’s especially the backgrounds that amazes me and I think only Makoto Shinkai has done better (of the animes I’ve seen this far). The backgrounds are dark and depressing in tone and they seem very realistic. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a sucker for flashy technology stuff, and this movie is no let down on that department. Flashy computers, elevators and whatnot, everything beautifully animated. Had to use my “drool-bucket” again. The thing that kept this movie from getting a 10 here is the characters. The thing with the characters is that they have a much brighter tone to them than the backgrounds, so they don’t really match up, if you know what I mean. Animations and all were fluid, so no problems there. This may be my personal taste though, and its nothing major anyway, but just thought I’d mention it.

[7]Sound: The sound is pretty good, but I’ve heard better. The sound is better than average, but it was only enough to get it up to a 7. I can’t say much about the voice acting really since I watched it in Korean. It just felt very different from Japaneese, and I don’t think I can give a very good opinion about it so I’ll just leave it untouched. I’ll just say though that the voice acting wasn’t disturbing or anything like that, so I guess I can say it wasn’t bad at least.

[6] Characters: The characters were much like the story, unexplored. Again I think it’s because of time constraints. Even though the characters doesn’t have any real development you can understand why they are doing what they are doing and so on. This score would have been lower would it not have been for the side characters which I think have some good personalitys that fit the setting of the anime and are appropriate to where the characters live (Ecoban/outside).

[7] Enjoyment: I enjoyed this movie quite a bit and I think it was well-worth my time. It’s a shame that such a good storyline was destroyed by time constraints though. All in all this was a pleasant surprise to see what the Koreans can do. If you just need something new, relatively short and artistically awesome, then watch this, you won’t be disappointed.

Damn. I am so disappointed that I didn't like this.

Story (3) + Character (3)
Just to clarify this: I think the story is a really good idea. But it could have been carried out so much better. I kept on being unable to connect with the different groups and characters, and found myself not really being interested in them. The dialogue is flat and impersonal, and little is done to personify the main characters in any other ways. I am not feeling any sympathy (or any other feelings for that matter) toward the diggers nor the Ecoban people, simply because I don't feel like ... I know them or what their lives are like.
Now, I have seen several action driven films where the actions scenes by far make up for the lack of character. Wonderful Days is not one of these. Most of the scenes (with a few exceptions) seem to go on for way too long, because there is hardly any content in them. Again – it’s all flat and lifeless.
I think that ultimately the plot could have worked really well if it had been given more time to be explored, developed and personified – either in a longer movie or in a series.

Art (9)
Not much to say here really. It is just wonderful, breathtaking and inventive. I’d recommend the film to people just for the graphics. Even the very obvious difference in animation between people and backgrounds/objects work really well for some reason I can’t figure out.

Sound (6)
The film music is good and somewhat inventive. However, I feel that any effect gained by the good music is lost due to the slowness and lack of believability in the scenes.
I was only able to get a hold of the English dubbed version. Most of the voices work well, but some of the actors are not really that great.

Enjoyment (4)
I found myself being bored and hoping that the next scene would be better. Because I so desperately wanted the film to work – unfortunately the first scene was the best as far as I’m concerned.

In the long run I feel like Wonderful Days is just like one of those pretty girls that think that because they have the looks, no one will notice the lack of personality.

Sky Blue is probably the lamest anime movie I have seen so far. Not that it is entirely bad, I have enjoyed watching it, but if someone asked me what I think about it, “lame” would be a perfect word.

Lameness begins with storyline. It is the most generic dystopian future storyline that you could think of.
Mankind has split into groups of two: elite, who live in ultra sterile futuristic Eden, and working class who live in the wasteland.

While I think it is accurate vision of the future or even depiction of the present day (we already are divided by where we live, where we eat, ... relax, etc), I can’t help but find it boring.
Boredom begins because now we have very clear distinction of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. I wish we would see this movie from one side only. Like, if we only saw elite, bad guys and good guys could shown opposite and thus a chance for a nice plot twist.

However it is not the case and everything is as predictable as it gets. You know exactly what is going to happen in the end. Maybe not the details, but on the large scale, everything is clear from the very start.

Characters are also really lame. I couldn’t care less about any of them, except maybe some secondary guys who are way more sympathetic than the main guys!
Main characters are blank, uninspired, generic and boring.

Music is … I don’t remember it. It is there, but always somewhere in the background.

However there are some positive things I can say about this one: wasteland is really cool, more time and character development in there could have created nice Mad Max atmosphere.

Eden invasion was a tribute to Death Star invasion and I always love references and tributes. Too bad I don’t really like Star Wars.

Other than that, it is an mediocre sci-fi movie with nice animation, boring characters and decent story line.

Some extra points for me wishing to look at the sky more often after watching this.

6/10

originally written for http://mykkanime.tumblr.com/

An absolutely stunning film!

Although not a new concept, the story line of an ecologically devastated earth, Elite overlords, and scavenging workers is brought wonderfully to life. I would love to see this taken up as a series, which would allow much more development of the characters. There is a relationship between Jay & Cade which doesn’t really get touched on until near the end, when it becomes clear that they are more than just friends. This begs the question of her relationship with Shua. Apparently, he left the city whilst still a small boy, and hasn’t been back for 10 years, yet she recognises ... him instantly. I can’t really say any more without real plot spoiling.

The graphics and art work are superb! The backgrounds are claimed to be CGI, (Wiki says that they are just processed to look like CG). The characters are traditional animations, and there is some live action rendering as well. The overall look is great.

Inside Ecoban we are treated to sweeping panoramas of a vast city complex, with beautiful landscaping and soaring architecture. The Delos Core is portrayed as a technological marvel, with anti gravity lifts and holographic computer memory storage, as big as a small city itself.

Outside the city is a landscape of shanty towns, shrouded in perpetual fog, or lashed by the incessant rain.

The digger characters are a bit flat and stereotyped, but fit the story line well. Arrogant, hot headed punks, brutish thugs, loud mouthed show-offs, they form the typical cannon fodder of any rebellion. They all come good in the end. I was a bit disappointed that there weren’t any real attempts to show the impact of the disaster on those outside Ecoban. Other than a few blind children, there aren’t real obvious genetic variations.

Don’t let my grumps put you off! This is a great film, and well worth an hour and a half of your time!

Nice animation, poor plot.
Enjoyed watching it only because of nice art. The plot is the most trivial you can think of. Characters only a bit better. Only good for meditative world watching.

"Wonderful days" I would characterize as "stylish romanticism".
Each scene pleases the eye. Scenes of an action don't pull suddenness. Probably I yet didn't see finer cruelty. The torn-off hands and the raked heads cause only admiration, but not disgust. And in general I like this atmosphere of the cyberpunk: the far future, the destroyed cities, pieces of iron dominating by the world and the desperate loner heroes, trying to escape from this environment, never gave rest to my sick mentality. Somebody can calls a plot naive. Well, is also that? It is always pleasant to see, when somebody goes to the dream, despite that ... this dream for a cinema is banal. But in difference from other pictures "Wonderful days" is one of the best works opening this subject.
Top-level graphics. Animators prove once again that combinations of different styles of drawing won't die never and will be demanded. In the film all is worked abruptly and on contrasts. The traditional equipment of drawing is used at the image of heroes. All the rest - difficult, but realistic three-dimensional models.
It is necessary to watch the film to open for itself new sides of animation.

This movie surprised me. I usually don't like CG mixed with my anime, but for this movie, it seemed to work well. The story is pretty good, and so are the main characters. It was the ending that got me though. You always hope for a decent ending, and this movie will give you that. I also liked the song that Shua played on his gramma phone, having a song completely in English kinda threw me off for a minute lol. I recommend this movie to anyone who likes a little si-fi and a movie with a decent story ^_^

WOW...The best animation I have ever seen...the best art by far, beats EVERYTHING I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of crap, the story is pretty awesome, don't know why its rated so low.

Just wanted to write something so that people who start watching this do not have too much expectations.

The premise is good; dystopian society, two classes of people, a small twist near the end.
But the characters were very boring:- flat with sudden emotional changes and actions. Random backstories inserted here and there for a few seconds which they probably could have focused on more had the animators not interested Sakuga at every other place and pointless animation of random things which really wasn't needed. Footage of random windmills, bikes and places for minutes straight which could have been cut short to add more substance to the ... story.

The art was really good and the CG didn't look too out of place. Overall its okay for a one time watch maybe but you might fall asleep midway.

First and foremost, do not expect an action movie, as this movie is more a drama with action scenes here and there.

As a disclaimer, I'd like to say this is my first time reviewing a movie/anime, and I watched the movie dubbed cuz I didn't want to bother myself with reading subtitles.

The setting is pretty straightforward, a futuristic post-apocalyptic world where resources are waning away, and society is split between 2 classes: the elite dictatorship-like rule (the politics of the society is not explored) and the "diggers" who as the name suggest, make sure the elite living in the city "Ecoban" are getting the resources ... they need.
The story shoots off explaining exactly that. A machine failure occurs, and the manager asks the officer to halt all work so the workers will not be harmed. As the officer (non-surprisingly) refuses, the manager threatens with a strike, following the officer kicking him and shooting him for his non-compliance.

Characters 6
The Characters are pretty basic. A caring though badass protagonist, the security force is brutal, and there's always that one kind-hearted officer among them. The diggers are the stereotypical "Ghetto" people, though they are not very explored. Workers, rioters and criminals, as one would expect from a ghetto full of downtrodden people.
The protagonist is pretty developed and his character is revealed pretty quickly, though the characters around him have development that pretty fits an hour long movie.
I wouldn't say they are too interesting, they are just there to keep the story going.

Story 7-8
As for the story itself, I'd give it a 6-ish. It's a basic story of rebellion against an elite. What I very liked about it is the pacing and how they build it to come to the climax. For an action movie (which it is not) the pacing is slow, but for a drama it is fitting very well, which is why I give it a 7-8. This is where the characters' purpose comes in, as they themselves are not all amazing, but they give the story a good "flow"

Graphics 10
Nothing to say. Great application of CGI with animation, this movie is beautiful.

Soundtrack 9
The sound design of the movie is great. The scenes aren't packed with ambient sounds to compliment the setting, but keep it natural. The music is employed very well to deliver the mood shown in the scenes.
In the English dub some of the voice-acting is pretty mediocre. The protagonists is well depicted, as some other characters, but overall it is not that great.
Overall it's a 9 for me regarding soundtrack.

To sum it all up, it is a great movie in my eyes if you want a chill afternoon or before bed movie. I loved it and do recommend to try it out.

It's an overall 8.5 for me.

This is an outstanding anime that mixes diffrent types of animation seamlessly and in a way that makes this movie a smorgasbord for the eyes. The music and the characters are deep, rich and complement eachother perfectly. It's one of the few Sci Fi's that actually succeeds in getting me to belive that it really is set in the future.

The minus is that it's a bit slow at times and that the bad guys in the movie is a bit to archehtypicly evil (or free of human emotions).This is wheighed up by the main antagonist and protagonist which actually has a really developed back-story to ... explain the choises they makes.

To sum it up - a movie with great quality, depth and wonderful settings!

If you are someone who highly values style in an anime, especially in regards to lighting of scenes and the general soundtrack, you'd likely get more from this movie than I did. I also want to make the disclosure that the DVD I found for this only had EN dub and no subtitles available, so certain issues might be addressed better in the JP original or EN sub.

The movie is set in a dystopian world where pollution savaged the Earth and to allow humans to survive, "ancestors" designed a living city but barred the majority of survivors from entering it, leading to many thousands of ... deaths except for those that were allowed to come in to work as slaves, named "builders". It's not an overly complicated story but unfortunately that's the extent of the story we get about the world. The city doesn't have much character or life about it, ironic for a "living" city. You might picture something similar to the great living city of Blame! but unfortunately its nothing similar and only serves as a generic set piece a few times with nothing really unique about it.

The builders outside of the city also struggle to have an identity, especially when the push was for them to be allowed into the city, but they aren't allowed in and instead have to live out in the wasteland, which was what they joined up to be builders to avoid. Since we learn so little about the world outside the 3 main characters, it never drew me in and I had to go check to see if there was source material this was cut down from but it seems to be a wholly original work.

Overall lore aside, the current issue is that the city seems to be dying and a rebel citizen is trying to cause it to detonate in an "energy release" which we are told will kill most of the citizens of the city. This is very briefly mentioned and then hand-waved away, which does make it quite hard to relate to the rebels who are rather suddenly revealed to be the heroes of the tale. The main character Jay is part of the security team for the city along with a potential love interest Kade who is the commander of security. They form a love triangle with Shua, the rebel who infiltrated the city.

Outside of being romantically interested in each other, the three main characters are pretty empty. Jay in particular is worst affected by this because she seems to have very little agency, instead just following Shua from place to place, changing allegiances seemingly on the drop of a hat because she met a boy she had a crush on over a decade before. Kade's main purpose is just to be the other side of the love triangle. He has little motivation outside of having feelings for Jay, so much so he's willing to backstab people in hopes of her loving him. Shua has the most character but is also the weakest, because the character is a fairly generic anime protagonist. He's very capable at everything he does, wins fights fairly easily, is brooding and talks about dying constantly but makes sure to show that he likes helping orphans.

Action sequences in the movie are surprisingly weak but that's mainly due to how one-sided the fights usually go, with the rebels quite easily gunning down the nameless soldiers. This includes an invasion of the city at the end of the film which goes so easily with only about 7 rebels, I have no idea how the city has kept control over the builders for so long when they claim to have a 100 to 1 advantage in numbers. The gore effects and the animation in the combat can be quite appealing to look at, especially the bar fight and the final confrontation but its rarely exciting or surprising. Probably the worst part is a long sequence of a character entering the city at the end through a glider they specifically built for the mission, seemingly being the only thing stopping them from launching earlier, but after finally making it in, he just bumps into the other rebels who drove their car in without issue. It made the entire glider storyline pointless outside of pretty heavy handed symbolism.

The soundtrack was great for the most part even if there was one part of the final fight where I felt that the soft, uplifting, nearly operatic music didn't work during a large gunfight.

The CGI animation does look dated but the overall production value and presentation of the movie is still great today. It's going to be a weird comparison, but a lot of the character design reminded me of the Dead Space animated movies, particularly the first one.

Despite the short comings, I'd recommend it for a watch. The story and characters are pretty weak and a few performances in the EN dub are pretty weak but the feeling of the world and the animation quality does make up for a lot of the shortcomings.

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle."

I think you already had a good idea of the story setting before reaching this review, so I won't extend into that. The art and direction here are really good, with very impressive CGI for a 2003 movie - feeling very natural in the animation.

For an 80min movie, it deliveries a fine characters and background development, although nothing much to mention about it. An overall good movie which you will enjoy more if you are into the genre - post-apocalyptic, dystopian future, social and environmental issues, and so on.

The ending shows a big ... [not plot-related] irony to one of the characters motivations, but I'm afraid many people missed it.

I'll be short and sweet with this review. Looks great, for something came out 20 years ago. Characters and Story is pretty dire. Sound is good.

Visuals 10/10 - Really can't stress how good it is, there was clearly a lot of effort time and passion poured into the visual quality, but I will also give points to the style of it, the environments are very very well done and really help build the dystopian/post apocalyptic feeling the world. Face expression are phenomenal and filled with expression.

Story 4/10 - Boring in most places, very underdeveloped and the ending leaves so much left to ... be answered. For an hour thirty film I should not be feeling bored nor struggling to understand the story. The Villains are comically evil and incompetent at the same time. The length of film makes the ending feel oddly rushed, plot points left unresolved and some characters outright forgotten about in story never to be seen again.

Character 3/10 - Some side characters are better developed and more integral to the story then our MC's in a few places. These side characters actually raise the score as they are funny and decent. Our the MC's are just there I guess, they lack clear motive or drive.

Sound 7/10 - Run of the mill imo, but it all feels appropriate and well done. No real issues here.

Total 6/10 - Style over Substance, Style carries it HARD.

Impressive visuals and intersting premise, but poorly written

Despite having both outstanding visuals, for the year it came out in, and an interesting premise of a dystopian future distraught with inequality within the social class, the movie suffers from poor paced sequences that aren't strung well together to tell a coherent story.

Moreover, some of the events felt forced, especially between some of the leading characters (Jay, Shua and cade) with a love triangle that seems to be forcibly inserted into the film to evoke a 'moving experience'. Other problems include poorly fleshed out characters, and a major one being the lack of exploration on ... the environmental themes, particularly that of 'pollution'; initially made as one of the driving factors of unbalance presented within this fictional world.

On the other hand, some of the OST's were quite pleasant to listen to throughout the run. Overall, this film was rather disappointing considering the high-budget made into it's production with the help of Samsung. Phenomenal visuals, but weak story, themes and characters.

5/10