Happy Birthday: Inochi Kagayaku Toki

You owe it yourself to watch this movie. I agree with most of what the previous person stated in their review.

I find it sad that a movie of this quality (ignoring the animation and sound issues) can go unnoticed and unappreciated for so long.

This English sub is quite good, again the animation and sound are not the best, but I think anyone who really loves Anime and wants to see everything Japan has to offer should watch this.

My personal opinion (keep in mind it is my opinion) is that if someone re-made this movie for western audiences it would be very well received.

I can't believe I never knew of this thing's existence until JUST now! I seriously can't believe it! Where has this movie been all my life?! This thing is just amazing! Wonderful, sublime, awesome, tear-jerking, emotional, beautiful, heartbreaking, I'm running out of adjectives! Worst of all, WHY IS THIS THING NOT SUBBED YET?!? Well, Licca Subs seems to have interest in subbing it, but they better do so once they have time, because this anime movie NEEDS a sub! How did I see this, you ask? Well, the only footage of this movie I could find was from a Russian fansub group, and I don't ... understand Russian, but I did manage to understand the core of the story and some of the dialogue (yes, the Japanese version exists). Now, onto reviewing Happy Birthday: Time When Life Shines (or Happy Birthday: Inochi Kagayaku Toki)!

So basically the story's about a sweet but weak-hearted girl named Asuka Fujiwara who goes to a school full of bullies and cowards. Her mother doesn't give her much attention. She seems to favor her big brother, Naoto, over Asuka. Asuka feels better when she befriends a severely disabled girl named Megumi (who I think might have cerebral palsy or something). But when her mother intentionally forgets her birthday and says it'd be better if Asuka didn't exist, Asuka is so traumatized that she loses her voice. Naoto, feeling angry at his selfish mother, decides to send Asuka to her grandparents' for a while. There, she learns everything she needs to know about the beauty of nature, her mother's reasons for being the way she is, and, most importantly, the fact that life is precious.

I'm gonna get to the good parts first, and believe me, there are TONS of good things about this movie. Wanna know the thing about this movie that got my attention the most? The fact that THERE'S ACTUAL DISABLED KIDS IN THIS MOVIE!!! Yes! There are ACTUALLY disabled kids with illnesses like cerebral palsy or something like that! No anime I've seen has ever been gutsy enough to show actual disabled kids before! No wonder this anime is so criminally underrated and under appreciated! Yes, someone gets it! Someone gets that NOT EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN JAPAN is physically and mentally beautiful (no offense intended). Seriously, why are most anime nowadays making all their characters look physically perfect? Jeez! It's like they have a complex against flaws or something! Even most American cartoons acknowledge that not everyone is perfect, both physically and emotionally! Heck, they don't even give their characters braces! Well, I'm glad to say that this beautiful gem not only acknowledges that not everyone is perfect, but acknowledges that that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Bravo!

Now onto the characters! I'm just so happy that this anime portrays all of it's characters realistically and makes them into real, down-to-earth people with flaws and reasons for doing what they do. Asuka's a great lead character. She starts off weak and broken, but thanks to the kindness of her grandparents and other people she meets, she evolves into a bold, warm-hearted, and outspoken young girl who isn't afraid to stand up to bullies who are being mean to her friends. Plus I love the friendship between her and that girl Megumi. They're so cute together! When I first read the plotline of this movie, I thought her brother was going to be just as selfish and cruel as his mom, but when I watched it, I was proven wrong. While he's still kind of a guy, he not only cares for his younger sister, he disapproves of his mom's cruel ways and even berates her at one point! You go, Naoto! Asuka's classmates are awesome too, turning from a bunch of bratty and cowardly kids to kind and respectful people. I found Kobayashi's transformation to be very convincing. I didn't get what happened to him, but he has his reasons for being the way he is, and he changes when he and Asuka get into a fight. The same goes for Asuka's mom, who goes from disliking her daughter to remembering the pain she used to feel when she was a child. I'm glad they didn't make Asuka's mom a totally evil person. But out of all the characters, my favorite has to be Megumi. She is just awesome beyond belief. Just her very presence makes this anime shine. She's pretty much one of the center characters of the story. I wish there were more characters like her in anime nowadays!

As much as I'd love to keep glorifying this movie, I have to admit that yes, like other anime, it has its flaws. For one thing, this anime was made in 1999, so of course the animation is rather dull and a little inconsistent (some faces looked weird at points), but it doesn't try to be anything it's not. Yeah the animation's not stellar, but that doesn't stop the movie from being really good! Plus the footage I found of this anime has REALLY BAD sound quality. At first it nearly turned me off, but I had to convince myself this is better than nothing, so I endured it. Also, the OST isn't really all that memorable, but that's fine.

However, as much as this anime has both flaws and good points, I feel that the single BEST thing about this anime are it's themes and moralistic values. Basically, it's an anime about life and the joy of living, but it has other strong themes too, like undying compassion, true friendship, the fact that supposed evil deeds always have a reason behind them, the beauty of nature, love, social injustice, and the power to heal. Lots of anime touch upon these themes, but they're rather poorly executed. However, HB: IKT does everything right and knows what it is. It's simple, but it definitely strikes an impact. It did on me! I cried at this movie! Twice! At totally different scenes! One of which I absolutely CANNOT spoil because it will ruin the entire movie if I do. But if you don't cry at this movie, then get your eyes and heart checked! In a way, this reminds me of Amuri in Star Ocean (Crazy, right?). Yeah yeah, that's a sci-fi anime while this is slice-of-life, but they actually have a lot more in common than you think. They both focus on social injustice, true friendship, and the power to heal. Seriously, why don't they get more attention?!

Happy Birthday: Time When Life Shines is a wonderful jewel that MUST be in any collector's collection! Come on, people! Sub this thing and give it the attention it deserves already!

*Warning! Heavy Spoilers!*

Story: 3
Art: 3
Sound: 5
Character 3
Enjoyment: 3
Overall: 3

This will be a review for the anime “Re-Birthday”, a film that so few on MAL have seen yet is considered a hidden gem. Were this film to reach the wider public by some obscure, low-budget, 70s kids anime-oriented youtube channel like “AnimeEveryday” I have no doubt that it would be absolutely beloved by the entirety of MAL. As you can infer I didn’t really enjoy this movie and there are good reasons for it.
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As those of you can plainly see: this anime was directed and animated by Magic Bus, a low budget hentai making studio and the same people who are unfortunately famous for making schlock like Mad Bull 34, Wounded Man, and only around 3 anime to their name that is considered to be of any real value (though nearly all of them were produced in joint projects with Madhouse or Shaft). Most famously of them is Legend of the Galactic Heroes, an anime that is so praised on MAL that it is erroneously considered the single best anime ever and of all time. This of course is the only reason why Magic Bus isn't looked down upon by our beloved MAL Church of Good Taste like A1 Pictures, White Fox, or such. These of which on average not only produce better content on average than Magic Bus but get a worse rep due to sensationalism brought on by our beloved wannabe loli, underage crossdresser fanfiction writing, brony lolcow, bootleg John Lennon looking dweeb Conrad Collins as he watches from behind the screen at his domain of the AniTube downing a bottle of week-old whiskey paid for by his girlfriend among other things. The director of Re-Birthday, in particular, is our very own Satoshi Dezaki who unlike his younger brother Osamu Dezaki, the man responsible for creating some of the greatest anime series ever made, has mostly made low budget unmemorable flicks, OVAs, and a few forgotten TV series as well as the above mentioned Mad Bull.

I would like to mention first and foremost that unlike most people I am generally ok with what other people as pure unadulterated cheese. Some of my favorite anime include Elfen Lied, SAO, Nagi no Asukara, and pretty much anything by Key that is not Angel Beats, etc. In all of these shows, I could probably find one idea that I liked which made me appreciate regardless of whether the plot didn’t make sense or if the characters were generic or unoriginal. Be it learning to share your niche interests with others, learning to adjust to a new place, or just having fun slapstick comedy that most people can appreciate. The theme of Re-Birthday is that “everyone is inherently good” and that all evil actions have a reason and motive behind them. This theme that Re: Birthday has chosen to convey through its writing is not unique as many, many, many anime have expressed variants of it such as One Piece, Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Monster etc. The former all having handled it well as an addition to their own main ideas. Well being a relative term. However Re: Birthday or as I like to call Re:Tarded handles its theme with the same lack of self-awareness that something seemingly innocent show like Captain Planet might handle a serious issue like AIDS or deforestation.

Our story centers around a young girl named Asuka (not to be confused with infinitely better characters with the same or similar names) Fujiwara from an unknown town in Japan who is just an absolute darling, little cinnamon roll, cherub, angel, and paragon of virtue who enjoys going around helping kids with cerebral palsy at the local disabled children's school and protecting her classmates from being bullied without a care in the world. Which goes on through nearly the entire film.

But hold on there's a catch. Later on, it is made clear that Asuka’s mother Shizuyo, has been secretly favoring her brother under the pretenses of her daughter having lower grades than him. Asuka's brother Naoto admits, to her upfront that Shizuyo had throughout her life on this earth never felt even an ounce of affection towards her daughter and that every birthday party supposedly dedicated to Asuka's name was only done so to keep her quiet. Asuka, grieving over her mother's outburst, loses her voice the next day and winds up having a severe fever lasting roughly 2 months. After getting the shit beaten out of her by her mother, the girl then had to be taken by train to her maternal grandparents' farm where she completely recovered from her fever the day after arriving with her vocal cords repairing themselves the following day.

Later on, after returning home from her grandparents' house, Asuka and her friends proceeded to confront the class bully and track down Germy who had been routinely skipping class. They then had to confront her as their classmate is grappling with thoughts of killing herself. The 4 then did the unthinkable, the monumental Herculean task of telling the teacher that Germy was being bullied. All of a sudden a parent-teacher meeting was put in place and everyone who had bullied Germy for the last 2 months broke down into tears and say they're sorry. EXCEPT for the main bully saw at the beginning of the film picking on Germy, the likes of whom was not fazed at all and whom we will refer to henceforth as Caillou. She then has a forced change of heart which is followed up by Asuka yelling at her mother who then has a forced change of heart and the movie ends. Notice anything wrong with this? You bet your ass there is!

First, we need to talk about Asuka. She is the blandest character in any anime that I have ever seen but the thing is: I don’t generally expect every anime character I see to be completely original and different either. Most anime characters tend to reflect the trends of the demographics that consume that specific genre in their designs and age groups. Usually, a character can be humanized by giving them defined interests, goals, and plans for the future as well as an outlook on life influenced by the various external factors around her. Asuka has none of that, She starts off as a boring mary sue character or something to that effect whose only traits are that she’s a brunette and she’s an elementary school champion of justice. She feels like more of a cringe PSA advertisement for “everyday heroes” than an actual factual character. Asuka losing the ability to make use of her vocal cords and then falling into a fever because her mother forgot her birthday is probably one of the dumber plot points in this series and the fact that it took only two days to get rid of a predicament that had gone on for 2 months is absolutely beyond me. The power of love doesn’t heal vocal cords Dezaki you putz!

Not to mention that this movie has more face turns than Naruto. I shit you not. Half of the characters in this movie are nigh irredeemable assholes or bystanders who end up not preventing most of the conflict from occurring when they have the power. Asuka's mother has hated Asuka forever solely because of the fact that the girl resembles her dead older sister (which is not even really true since they look completely different). This was the same sister that Asuka's grandparents had to spend more time growing up with because of her sickness and had an apricot tree planted for her instead of Shizuyo, the mother. At her age, she should have gotten the memo a long time ago but I guess not. Then after nearly a decade after Asuka being born and a child yelling at her she suddenly regains her maternal instincts. The brother who was initially in on it with the mother and who was initially cheering her on for her actions suddenly becomes very saintly and kind when Asuka gets sick for reasons that are never explained. He also drops out of school to “become his own man” (presumably under a bridge) and no one questions a thing.

The movie also never goes fully explains why Germy was being bullied…...or why she was even being called Germy in the first place. The whole suicide subplot occurs without any real buildup or explanation. Usually when a bully picks on someone that person has to possess undesirable qualities that one can exploit or has done something to anger the bully. Throughout the film, she has her backpack stolen from her, her desk drawn on, and is prevented from entering the classroom and the teacher doesn't even notice a thing. That same teacher even broke down into tears when Asuka and friends informed her of Germy’s bullying and responded that she thought her class was perfect. With the principal and teacher involved and supposedly taking this very seriously, you would think that suspensions would be issued and expulsions considered at the very least but no! All they do is recite Germy’s suicide letter to the class and the little turds go from talking about how “hot” one of the parents is to sobbing their eyes out and talking about how sorry they are. Caillou, like the brother, goes from being a rotten little bastard who scoffs at suicide letters, bullies his classmates without being reprimanded in the slightest, denies his own crimes in public and beats up Asuka for calling him out then becomes kind after the disabled girl is about to crash and drown in the lake. Then admitting afterward that he was in fact locked in a closet as a child and scalded with hot water by his mother for reasons that are never explained.

Megumi, the disabled girl who Asuka had been visiting periodically, unlike all of the other characters is honestly more of a stage prop. I’m not sure what her purpose in the film was other than to look creepy, smile, and laugh all the time. Even when she’s hurtling towards her death. When the director tried to make me cry and feel sorry when she did die and “live on in everyone's hearts” because of her disorder I didn’t feel as though any of it was earned. The least they could have done was give her a personality and not make her look and act like a clone of my creepy Aunt Nina but to no avail.

When you come to the conclusion that the average panhandler from the streets of Dharavi, Mumbai is spending more money on himself in a year than the budget of your feature-length film you know you’ve done something wrong. The soundtrack (which is too good for a show of this caliber) was pretty emotionally sterile but decent at best. You could replace the entirety of it with an airhorn version of Only Time by Enya and insert it periodically and the end result may end up actually improving the movie slightly. With the ending credits consisting of the Trololo song as a clip of Dezaki laughs at us in the background, doing the windmill in our faces.

The art as you may have guessed as of now is sort of abysmal for the time and doesn’t befit a film with a synopsis such as this. There's an awful light filter that ruins the serious moments like the bullying scenes, Asuka losing her voice and makes any part of this movie that takes place in the daytime look like it was being filmed inside a Gundam space colony that was in the middle of getting pulled a quarter of the way into the sun. Most characters tend not to have more than 4 or so facial expressions which severely lessened the emotional impact of scenes like the ones where Junko is yelling at Asuka to never approach her again. The designs looked like they had been made out of a bunch of amorphous lines and squiggles that were arranged to make a person with no real detail or intricacy. “bUt LaMp ItS JuST a StyLE”. Need I remind you that all of this was produced in 1999, I get that the Summer 1999 anime season wasn't exactly the most promising with GTO being the only somewhat high budget anime with good production values coming out but the thing that everyone has to realize (and probably instinctively knows) is that nearly every noteworthy anime movie created BEFORE 1999 has better animation and art either compared to Re-Birthday or for its time. The art and soundtrack in re-birthday look like they would fit better in the late 70s. But then again stuff like MSG 0079, Lupin 111, and Ashita no Joe have better character art, better soundtrack, and don’t have that god-awful light filter.