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this is Shinkai at his most Ghibli, and i mean that in the best way possible.

from the first five minutes you know that this will be a different Shinkai movie. there's no brooding male protagonists pining over potential/lost loves, barely any Radwimps needledrops, but instead it's brimming with a sense of whimsy and adventure, with Shinkai going full tilt with its fantastical elements. everything from its surface conceit of a girl hopping across Japan in chase of a magical cat to its symphonic and swooning fantasy scoring (the best one in a Shinkai film yet), has very clear and overt Ghibli influence.

but what ... makes this movie so special is that Shinkai isn't channeling only the great master found in Miyazaki, but also more importantly, the quiet masters of Takahata and Kondo. it really feels like Shinkai is trying to push himself as a filmmaker here, drawing upon influences and wearing them on his sleeve, remixing and implementing elements of past masterpieces to create something wholly unto its own.

in doing so, Shinkai creates a world of magical realism; not quite an isekai like <i>Spirited Away</i> but more of an urban fairy tale a la <i>Whisper of the Heart</i> (which gets a namedrop!) and <i>Kiki's Delivery Service</i> (which gets a needledrop!!).

Shinkai's stylistic inclinations shine in this regard, due to how beautifully these worlds of his contrasts the magical and arcane. it never feels like Shinkai is veering AWAY from the style he's cultivated, instead he BUILDS UPON it: the rendered spaces and minutiae of Shinkai's candy-colored hyper realism feel more lived in than ever, not just high definition backgrounds or clips to put in a tiktok compilation, but spaces where people have lived, where every crack and layer of rust isn't just there to look aesthetic but to evoke entire lives, whispers of past occupants and users bound to the inanimate.

it's even more impressive then, that not only is Shinkai able to weave his signature romantic tropes with the more brisk pacing and fantasy elements of a Ghibli location-trotting adventure, he's also able to seamlessly ground the film by incorporating central themes of grief and collective trauma.

Shinkai is not one for subtext, this is clear in his monster hit <i>Your Name</i> and probably why a lot of people hate that movie lol. so of course in <i>Suzume</i> he states his main goal of the film outright: this is a movie about 3/11.

from the beginning, you could already tell where things are going, but it was still flooring to watch how Shinkai so tastefully highlights the effect this event had on Japan and how its youth is still haunted by it though they would prefer to just forget about it. <i>Your Name</i> resonated so much with Japanese audiences not only because of its core romance, but because it was an escapist fantasy that evoked 3/11 imagery, a saccharine "what if love erased disaster? what if love can make us all forget?". <i>Suzume</i> is a rejection of that. instead it asks Japan to NEVER forget, and instead to remember TOGETHER, using that collective trauma as a way to connect with others to heal, but to also forge a new future.

it could have been so easy for a film dealing with such heavy subject matter to come off as hokey, as hamfisted. the way <i>Suzume</i> addresses such things explicitly and still manages to feel like it's not forcing anything is really masterful work. Shinkai accomplishes this by focusing on the BONDS made through collective trauma instead of the trauma itself; it felt like a healing film. i can't imagine how it'd feel for the Japanese audiences.

aside from its themes, Shinkai succeeds in translating that catharsis on a universal level through the way he structures his narrative, but more specifically, how he focuses on the characters.

one of the main problems i have with Shinkai even though i love his work is that a lot of the time his female characters just don't have agency or depth. they're always damsels (even if they have superpowers) and they always feel like some sort of goal to be attained by the titular protagonist. this translates well when it comes to his films about longing and male ideation of women, but it gets trite and exhausting when its done straight-faced over and over.

flipping the dynamic here to have a female lead was the best decision he could have possibly made. i love the how much focus was put into the feminine perspective in this entire film. the first half is such a comfy road trip movie where you get to meet an ensemble cast of colorful characters (predominantly female) across Japan.

that time spent with the plot put on vibe mode breathes so much life into this world, and really brings home the theme of connectivity, of ghosts in our midst, of collective trauma as a cohesive whole made up of millions of remembered fragments of lives past. it's astounding how perfectly Shinkai balances his tendency to linger on beautiful landscapes and rendered backgrounds with the need to give context to them, filling them with a soul that makes them feel more than just eye candy.

Suzume herself is a wonderful protagonist. her empathy and her spunky attitude has you really root for her from the beginning, and her chemistry with the male lead doesn't feel anywhere near as contrived or one-sided as his previous films. sure, the male lead doesn't have much depth or much to do, but it serves to highlight all the other characters we meet along the way, and also serves to give Suzume more screentime to flesh her out.

but yeah i've been a Shinkai defender for the longest but <i>Suzume</i> is what truly feels like a graduation for him as an auteur. the last time i got this feeling was Peele with <i>Nope</i>: all of their influences are crystallized and distilled, all their auteurisms and stylistic flourishes are refined and more potent than ever.

it doesn't try to reinvent the wheel by any means, but when you succeed Gen Z spiritual successor to <i>Whisper of the Heart</i> then you're nothing short of a master director in my eyes.

while it possesses on its surface all the density and intoxicating visual cadence of works like Evangelion, Sonny Boy's open-ended method of introducing concepts and characters and leaving nothing unresolved, as well its more cerebral approach to its thematic subtext as opposed to Eva's spiritual/emotional approach makes me think more of Serial Experiments Lain.

the main reason being i came away from every episode and the show at large in a state of surrender. like Lain, all the themes and ideas of the show are presented almost purely in a visual barrage (whether it's through the aforementioned rhythm of its editing, the psychedelia of its ever-changing ... settings, or the playful compositions that never relent to draw the eye even during static conversations, it's a pure assault that numbs you), and even with my full attention there were times where the subtext or main theme was lost on me, yet the comprehension of what it was trying to say slipping my grasp didn't affect my fulfilment nor my enjoyment.

in other words, Lain and Sonny Boy give a distinct sense of cerebral exploration of ideas by fully leaning into the strengths of the anime medium, conveying said ideas through the insane limitless possibilities of animation to make the experience feel almost purely experiential.

it demands revisits because again, the thematic meat of the show engages you on an almost subconscious level, and when you realize you should stop trying to solve its opaque density as if it were a Rubik's cube, you're left to just get sucked in and experience it all.

the beauty of Sonny Boy is that pairing this approach with the intentional disregard to almost all arcs'/subplots' conclusions makes almost each revisit feel unique each time. every interpretation, assumption, conclusion you may reach may change, and sometimes you end an episode without any of them.

it's a perfect reflection of the main GENERAL theme of the show, which wrestles with the illogical chaos of life coming out of adolescence. when prodded about this, director Natsume Shingo said:

"Every subjective point of view, no matter what it is, has its own form of correctness. One of the themes of the story is the children who continue to resist the illogicality that is born from that subjectivity."

the work itself espouses that theme. you can look up video essays or reddit posts all over and every single episode will have different interpretations, and they're all valid! but during the experience itself it's hard not to just become transfixed as your mind tries to reconcile what your eyes are being assaulted with.

Tarkovsky's quote about the "meaning" of his films comes to mind:

"Everybody asks me what things mean in my films. This is terrible! An artist doesn't have to answer for his meanings. I don't think so deeply about my work - I don't know what my symbols may represent.

What matters to me is that they arouse feelings, any feelings you like, based on whatever your inner response might be. If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens.

Thinking during a film interferes with your experience of it. Take a watch into pieces, it doesn't work. Similarly with a work of art, there's no way it can be analyzed without destroying it."

above all, Shingo understands that to succeed with something as esoteric as this work, you need to make the experience itself take precedent (visually!) above all else.

but unlike Tarkovsky's final point of art being analyzed, when Sonny Boy is taken under a scalpel to be scrutinized, it doesn't wither away, but instead, impossibly, its ideas blossom into something new entirely.

like life, though you may know the only way to experience it is to move forward, you can never fully box in or comprehend the experiences you collect every step of the way.

in the beginning of 2018, i finished NGE and watched End of Evangelion for the first time.

it was the lowest point in my life. i was out of rehab for an amphetamine addiction, was recovering from a mental breakdown, my grandfather who i adored had just passed away, my father was deported and i had to relocate to a new state, my mother lost her job and now i live beneath the poverty line, i am thousands in debt, i was severely underweight, i had pneumonia that would ravage my body for over half a year, i had to drop out of college, the girl ... i'd fallen in love was someone i could never have.

i was done with everything at this point. jobless, schoolless, loveless. i burnt many bridges, lashed out at anyone around me who tried to help. i wanted it all to just end.

but Hideaki Anno dared me to love myself again.

End of Evangelion is a cathartic treatise on the human condition. many people cite it as a "depressing" movie, but thematically and emotionally, it's one of the most uplifting films i've ever seen. and seeing it when i felt like i was at the lowest point in my life, it felt like the film understood me better than i understood myself.

it's honestly the only film i can think of where i can confidently say it literally changed my life. my outlook on myself, the prospects of a better life, the very concept of a healing process, all of it crashed down on me in the last half of EoE and i was a mess of tears and snot for a good hour before i spilled my feelings in my review.

a LOT has changed since then.

i feel happier than i have in years. i have a woman who loves me, supports me, cares for me. i've made a career change into a role that i absolutely love with huge earnings potential. i'm healthy. my friends are healthy. i have an actual social life.

but i couldn't even be a fraction of how happy i am without that kick in the gut that i got in the beginning of 2018. sure, the road ahead was tough. sure, i still had depression in the coming two years, but it never got as dark as it could have if it wasn't for End of Evangelion looking straight into my soul, and challenging me to just keep walking. to just, keep living.

suicide attempts stopped after End of Evangelion. days wasted away where i would stare at the ceiling were gone. Anno told me that, impossibly, it was ok for me to love myself.

fast forward to now. i spent a good hour and a half sobbing, thinking of how far i've come, how much i owe to everyone who's helped me upon my feet along the way, how much i owe to Evangelion. it makes the central message of the film hit that much harder.

with this film Anno is telling me, and everyone else who's held the story of Evangelion so near and dear to them, is that our lives are the real story; Evangelion has always just been there to help write it.

if End of Evangelion dared us to consider loving ourselves again, Thrice Upon a Time dares us to learn to love each other again.

where else do we refuel the boundless hope for peace? where else do we find the drive to keep going? where else do we find the solace and the vision for a future to fight towards? it's through each other.

no man is an island, and Anno, in his medium-bending metanarrative, urges us to connect with each other. he challenges us to try and lower our AT Fields with one another, to remember the bonds that we so easily forget are there.

he thanks us for joining him on his artistic journey, has the characters we know and love find all the happiness they could possibly find, as if telling us "this story is over. the ending happened thrice upon a time, and now they've found that happily ever after. please, find yours."

the film actively acknowledges that there are people, LOTS of people out there who have found peace and hope through Evangelion, and now it pushes that even further, challenging us to internalize everything we've learned from this incredible saga and apply it to our own sagas. he takes the line between fiction and reality, and literally destroys it.

now it's up to us to to birth our own neon geneses. the fiction of Evangelion, through the lessons we've learned from this saga, becomes reality once we share it with those around us.

and the gospel is love.

life will go on. things will change. new rough patches will appear. a second impact may lead to a third, and then a fourth. but one thing is for certain: i will carry Evangelion with me for the rest of my life.

thank you for telling me that things are going to be okay, Anno-sensei.

thank you for daring me to finally be happy.

pure, raw, unadulterated heart.

from a series where characters shout their emotions and character beats explode in an earnest explosion of color comes a film that doubles down on its unashamed sincerity, pulling at heartstrings with the force of a clenched fist.

it's a movie that is very plainly about moving forward, a movie where your past nor your bonds restrict you, but strengthen you, a movie where the purest of selfless willpower can go toe to toe with the darkest of selfishness.

this movie is NOT subtle, it does NOT have any big insightful ideas, and it is NOT concerned with trying to push ... any real envelopes. it runs with the most basic and most crowd-pleasing characterizations/motivations, and it just soars in the process.

i loved the parallels that ran through the movie. from the getgo i knew the setting of a speed train would inform/reflect the film's thematic ambitions, but i never would i have expected the film to double down on them in such an effective way. that surprise stems mostly from the excellent portrayal of our protagonist Tanjiro's senpai of Rengoku.

in Rengoku, a character we are just starting to know, we see an ideal. as the sun rises to vanquish the scourge of demons, Rengoku's seemingly unstoppable willpower and desire to protect the wellbeing of others is an absolute. he is Tanjiro's ideal. he has Tanjiro's heart and purity, but possesses strength that dwarfs Tanjiro's.

essentially, he is Superman, and Tanjiro is a Superman-to-be. ironclad in their convictions, perfect and pure and static in character.

what makes the last third of the film so powerful is most of the film is dedicated to Tanjiro reaffirming his belief that forward is the only way to go. no matter what he's lost, no matter who he's lost, there are still people in the painful here-and-now of reality. and reality, time, none of it waits, none of it relents, none of it stops. you don't have to just worry about your own well-being, you have to dedicate yourself wholly to the ones who need your strength.

Tanjiro's repeated attempts and final success to break free of the first demon's hold on his mind is us as an audience fully experiencing the character of his soul: absolute purity. the film visualizes his (and his companions') "subconscious" in a way that perfectly tells you who he is- and if you still don't get it, he's going to shout it at you anyway.

his journey runs parallel not only to Rengoku, the ideal, but the main villains: the demon who takes over the train as a way to gain approval/move up in the ranks, and the upper level demon who swoops in during the third act. here we see how willpower like Tanjiro's and Rengoku's can be tarnished, that unstoppable drive used for selfish reasons rather than selfless ones: you turn into a monster.

it's in that parallel of a younger, ambitious generation trying to become/succeed the next generation that most of the heart of the movie lies.

all the tragedy, the heartbreak, the grief that we as an audience are swept with at the end where the main cast is left on the side of a trainwreck in wracking sobs lies within the inspiration and failure of pure idealistic heroes sacrificed for the sake of younger pure idealistic heroes.

in a world that's so wrought with complex, unexplainable loss, it's understandable how something as pure as Mugen Train can have such widespread appeal and cut through all the jaded, depressing cynicism of our current reality. Mugen Train dares us to look past what's happened because that's the only way we can make tomorrow better. it doesn't tell us to forget about grief, but instead, to transpose it into the will to do better for another day.

it's all a huge punch in the gut, but it's one i think a lot of us need right now.

Jujutsu Kaisen, or Sorcerer Fight, fully lives up to its name.

not only does it fully embody its title's straightforward nomenclature, it also fully embodies the nature of its anime subgenre: battle shonen.

it's a show that's brimming with energy. from its high octane animation quality to the one-two punch one liner comedy to its brisk nonstop pacing to the varied score with new tracks for every new fight, Jujutsu Kaisen is a pure delight to watch.

but it's clear to me that Jujutsu Kaisen is more than just a fast paced seasonal thrill ride. to me, Jujutsu Kaisen is a watershed moment for shonen, a pivotal show ... that will forever shift not only the battle shonen subgenre but the anime medium from this point onwards.

airing directly after the close of a decade that had equal amounts of wild experimentation/the preservation of hand-drawn animation in more niche circles (Mob Psycho 100 and the works of Masaaki Yuasa come to mind) and lucrative derivative creative bankruptcy/the rising over reliance of shoddy CGI in the mainstream (name any of the dime a dozen isekai), Jujutsu Kaisen serves as a perfect middle ground, appealing to the largest audience possible whilst upholding a standard of quality that's heretofore unprecedented in a mainline battle shonen.

reminiscent to 2019's Demon Slayer (which was a watershed moment for the medium in of itself), Jujutsu Kaisen rises above every single one of its contemporaries as a showcase not for the best writing, the best original premise, nor even the best characters (which is not a slight against the characters at all; they're all wonderfully rounded-out, even the sentient Panda).

no, Jujutsu Kaisen serves almost purely as a showcase for the handdrawn animation that explodes across the screen, bringing in its viewers for more doses of animated phantasmagoria every week.

i found myself dumbfounded at the amount of hard work the animators over at MAPPA poured into this, with week after week of sakuga goodness flowing without any seeming end. even small character moments and simple conversations possess detail that most shonen don't even bother with; characters actually emote even in mundane scenes, their hair animated to react to walk cycles or gusts of wind.

but what elevates the animation as well as the show at large is how the writing, pacing, and plot all serve to highlight the animation and the battles themselves.

to understand what makes Jujutsu Kaiden's structure so special, we have to also understand that it's not original; this isn't the first anime to use this formula of prioritizing battles over everything.

the formula of a nonstop battle shonen is something that's been around for a while, most prominently featured in classic manga/anime like Yu Yu Hakusho and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo.

it's a formula that forgoes the hallmarks of typical battle shonen that turn so many people off the subgenre as well as the medium at large; it's lean, cutting off any unnecessary "filler" episodes, excising any episode that is fully dedicated to exposition and/or character development.

instead, the formula these battle shonen utilize is one that purely revolves around the aspect of battle itself:

-"training" arcs are relegated to a one or two episodes at most, with the breakthrough required from this narrative device achieved purely through fight scenes

-comedy isn't just relegated to a few side characters or an episode or two, it's organically weaved between battles and sometimes, within battles themselves

-battles/fights themselves don't just serve as climax to machinations of ongoing plotlines, but also as a form of therapy for our characters, doubly advancing the plot while also rounding out our characters' backstory and development

Demon Slayer is the most recent example of this formula, but even that show falls to some of the pitfalls of the genre, its pacing taking a break from the action for comedic bits, exposition, or world building.

what Jujutsu Kaisen does differently is that it fully commit to that formula to the fullest.

it's no wonder that the show is so delightful in wearing its influence on its sleeve when everything it accomplishes is built off everything that came before. in acknowledging rubbing shoulders with battle shonen giants like Naruto and Bleach (which has a very profound influence on Jujutsu Kaisen in more ways than other predecessors, but that's another topic for another time), it also acknowledges how it makes up for their shortcomings, learning from their mistakes and advancing the medium-dominating genre of battle shonen as a whole.

at the end of the day, Jujutsu Kaisen may not be wholly original but it isn't trying to be. in perfecting what makes the battle shonen subgenre works so well, and fixing the shortcomings of its biggest influences, Jujutsu Kaisen becomes something wholly different altogether.

it's forward-thinking in every way possible, working in tandem with respect for the influences that came before as well as upholding and revitalizing the lifeblood of traditional handdrawn animation.

only time will tell if this show is truly a microcosm of what popular anime will look like in the future (the upcoming adaptation of Chainsaw Man on the horizon is a great sign).

regardless, it's very plain that Jujutsu Kaisen is an instant classic. here's to the future!

this show seamlessly operates on a multitude of levels, selling to us a familiar world that reeks of societal rot.

foremost, Monster is an absolute masterclass of character study. every single character introduced onscreen has untold depths and realistic flaws that are explored in an engaging almost operatic manner. it's that juxtaposition of grounded realism and execution/presentation in an operatic vein that makes the show compelling.

the atmosphere only adds to the gripping intricacies of Monster's labyrinthine webwork of connective character arcs and backstories and layer upon layer upon layer of backstory, its almost placid/saccharine tranquility giving way to untold horrors and displays of brutality with every ... layer that's peeled away by its narrative.

but there's also something to be said of the socioeconomic overtones, the commentary and critique of the Iron Curtain and its subsequent downfall. Europe and the world at large treated the unification of Germany (and the dissolution of the Soviet powers) as one might brush dust under a rug. subsequently, the marginalized victims and countless underground cells that operated with full agency under the willfully-blind eyes of the new First World were completely neglected.

it's telling that our main protagonist is an outsider, Japanese. and as the conspiracies and multitude of characters unfold and stack and interweave, we're bouncing across Europe, seeing the post-Cold War effect through his eyes.

just like the Cold War's untold millions of victims didn't suffer in the theatrical massive scale of battlefields, so did the victims of its aftermath didn't wander around in war-blackened hellscapes.

instead, as we see from an outsider's eyes, the victims walk around society as pariahs. the suffering isn't as overt as it was directly after a hot war (no scenes of rubble for miles around, starving suffering of children picking through radiated corpses a la Grave of the Fireflies), instead its all smothered under the veneer of social hierarchy, hushed by the persuasive fist of capital, erased and burned away by shadowy tendrils of conspiracy.

it all fuels the series' fixation on values, on the steadfast nature of characters who relentlessly pursue answers and justification in a world that's as muddied and decontrasted as the animation's color grading.

where the series stumbles is in its overzealous dedication to adapting its source material. it's obvious in most of its cinematography that the images are just meant to be static (this is ultimately the downfall of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as well). there is 0 attempt to take creative license and fully optimize the material to become moving picture, and the fact that there weren't any scenes excises from the manga also contributes to much of the show's glacial pace. nothing here deserves merit on its own as a standalone anime, it all feels derivative of the manga that it so worships to the detriment of creative integrity.

and as much as i love episodic shows, i cannot stress enough how the sense of urgency is consistently undermined by the show's insistence that it adapts everything 1:1, disregarding the fact that pacing of something on a page is worlds apart from pacing of something that is onscreen.

nevertheless Monster is still something truly special. despite the fumbles it trudges through in terms of standing on its own, the writing and the perfection in the handling of characters/setting/theme from the source material manages to shine through and transcends any of its faults.

it more than deserves the universal acclaim that's heaped upon it.

there's a refreshing simplicity with how straightforward Demon Slayer tells its story.

characters verbally announce how they feel, there aren't any attempts at convoluted world-building or expectation subversion, everyone firmly inhabits their trophy character archetypes with just enough depth and charm to let us connect. with Demon Slayer, what you see is what you get.

it's that straight-story style that makes this show so memorable and so damn accessible to everyone. despite its very anti-Western sensibilities (i guarantee most of the show's fans don't know anything at all about the Taisho Period), the emotions and the character struggles are painted in such broad strokes that it's ... impossible not to get engaged.

it's fitting then that the show's climactic battles are complementary in their larger-than-life explosions of colorful, explosive, and in-your-face bonkers insanity.

everything may be shallower than preferable to those with a more seasoned taste but it's not trying to be anything more, and for what it is Demon Slayer delivers its thrills and visual splendor with a soul-filled panache that's rarely ever seen in a shonen.

it's straight to the point without any fat, and sometimes that's more than enough.

Lupin the Third: The First is Lupin PERFECTION

i watched it with a cinema that was full (socially distanced) of very obvious Lupin fans and even thought there was only like 20 of us max in the theater, it was one of the most FUN experiences i've ever had in a cinema!

the whole film just felt like a film straight from the Red Jacket era and the CGI was a flawless fusion of realistic textures and cartoon physics that i haven't seen in such a dazzling manner since Spielberg/Jackson's TinTin.

from the iconic Yuji Ohno tracks to all of the main crew's mannerisms and iconic ... skillsets, i'm blown away by how much this film adheres to the formula and tropes of the Red Jacket era, forgoing modernization through plot elements completely and relying on the time tested elements that makes Lupin so timeless.

i was pleasantly surprised to see that even the side characters had moments to shine and written in a way that had me connect to them more than the usual throwaway side characters featured in Lupin outings.

all in all just everything i expected and more! it totally understands the Lupin formula and has a plethora of subtle callbacks and jokes that were just a delight. there was nary a moment that i wasn't beaming from ear to ear.

the ending note from the late Monkey Punch really hit me hard! a perfect cherry on top for a perfect representation and love letter of our favorite thief.

RIP Monkey Punch, long live Lupin III!

going into Patlabor, looking at its posters and promotional material, i immediately assumed that this would be something akin to a mecha police procedural show. a show that would focus on busting mecha criminal-of-the-week every episode with cool action scenes and an overarching narrative that culminates into one huge final battle.

but what i got instead is one of the greatest slice of life shows i've ever seen, a genuinely funny, heartwarming, and endlessly entertaining journey that i never wanted to end.

Patlabor isn't just perfect anime, it's perfect television.

it sets out to create a familiar yet new world that lays the foundation the series to be ... relatable and grounded (some of the best episodes are just the characters getting into antics and bullshit with no mecha involved at all) and wildly fantastical (there's like three kaiju episode and two supernatural episodes with ghosts and the show treats both straight-faced!!!); realism is flawlessly juxtaposed with the fantastical in a way that only enhances each other.

the direction is purposeful and effective with its visual storytelling, the varied score is chock-full of 80s wholesomeness, and the animation (despite not being as fluid and detailed as the OVA) is playful, expressive, and at many times, just downright beautiful.

but what really makes this show special, special enough to skyrocket into my top 10 anime of all time after the first watch, are the characters.

much like other beloved television that you just can't seem to put down (specifically Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Star Trek: The Original Series/The Next Generation), the show can go anywhere it pleases because we as an audience are sold on the main ensemble cast.

there is such a diverse and absolutely loveable variety in the main crew (who, by the way, is led by a spunky tomgirl. like can we appreciate the fact that this is a MECHA with a well-rounded, non-sexualized woman as the lead??? this is 1989!!!!) that makes any and every episode endlessly watchable. just like the aforementioned Star Trek there's a sincere comaraderie between all these characters, and even if they do inhabit certain anime/mecha archetypes and don't change THAT much throughout the show, Patlabor still takes the effort to round each and every one of them out to make them that much more compelling.

one of my favorite elements of this show is how it takes time to just...breathe. to let the world of the show itself sink in, to let characters introspect, to let all the comedic chaos of the day-to-day pause. at the end of the day, Patlabor isn't about a police division with giant robots, it's about normal working people working a normal job to help other normal people. it's that heart that makes all the episodes and all the characters so loveable, and it's that heart that made me fall in love with everything the show had to offer.

sure, the show isn't too deep or anything, there isn't much mecha action to be had at all, there aren't any major plot twists or huge upheavals of the status quo, but that's just a testament to how GOOD the show is in its characters.

i DIDN'T want anything major to change, i DIDN'T want an overarching plot (in fact, when the show DID have an narrative arc, it understood that having it derail the main formula would be annoying so it just occupied like 5 episodes in the middle of the 37 episode run and then immediately went back to episodic comfiness. this show knew what the fuck it was doing!), i DIDN'T want the show to try to be anything it wasn't.

all i wanted was to spend an infinite amount of time getting to know Division 2 and experience their hi-jinks and adventures and drama and small-scale issues without end.

THIS is not just how you make a perfect slice of life, it's also how you make a PERFECT television show, where each and every episode is so entertaining in their contained narratives that you can't help but want to gobble up more and more and more ad infinitum.

i loved every minute of this show, and there's now a huge hole in my heart now that it's over.

The Ideon: Be Invoked ran so End of Evangelion could fly.

i haven't been THIS slackjawed at anything anime since my first watch of End of Evangelion several years ago.

absolutely masterful. the best payoff i've gotten from the groundwork of a preceding TV show tie-in since motherfucking Fire Walk with Me. it's THAT amazing.

the sheer amount of emotions this film puts you through as it boils to a mind-melting fever point is overWHELMING. the previous 39 (well, 38 really if we have to discount the final episode) episodes completely lull us into believing in the in-world plot armor; everyone on board the Solo Ship and the ... Ideon are protected.

there's never been a situation where they would die or be harmed. so when that plot armor is stripped away, and we see MAIN CHARACTERS and fucking TODDLERS getting their heads blown off, brains splattered by shrapnel, the shit is absolutely horrific. it doesn't even need to be overtly gory or bloody (in fact, some deaths are quite beautiful) to evoke gutting feelings of despair/disgust as everyone is slaughtered to the bitter end.

it doesn't help that this film takes extra, extra, extra care to humanize literally EVERYONE with momentary character moments/beats on both sides. every protagonist has a moment and interactions, every notable side character. we start to care for them in this film even more than we did in the entire run of the preceding show.

and of course it's at the end, even when we've identified and felt pity for the villainous Buff Clan leader, that's when the plot armor is ripped off and everyone, EVERYONE, starts getting picked off one at a time through a series of near-graphic deaths. apocalypse wrought by hellfire.

it's a truly dreadful experience.

but then, when you think it's all over, the film completely turns itself end over end and becomes a transcendent spiritual spectacle complete with intercut live action footage, a powerful 2001: A Space Odyssey homage, and several minutes of an ethereal choral/symphonic closing suite.

it's an emotional whiplash that eventually leaves you in a transfixed, arresting catharsis. i haven't felt this way in years about any film, anime or otherwise.

just a masterpiece through and through. between this and Do You Remember Love? it's now obvious to me that 80s Japan has created the best space opera of all time outside of Star Wars.