kira director Katsuhiro Otomo has relatively few finished works under his belt—his manga books and his movies alike are astoundingly detailed, perfectionist projects that don't allow him the luxury of a fast-paced, high-output career. But the projects he does take a significant hand in are always memorable at worst. His 1996 anthology film Memories goes well beyond "memorable," in part because of the amazing team Otomo assembled to work on it.
The first of three stand-alone segments, "Magnetic Rose," was written by Satoshi Kon (writer-director of Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue) and directed by Koji Morimoto (who went on to helm the eerie "Beyond" segment of The Animatrix). Unsurprisingly for a Kon piece, "Magnetic Rose" deals with shifting and changing realities, as the small crew of the salvage-and-wrecking-service ship Corona follows an SOS to a gigantic metallic rose in Earth's orbit. The two crewmembers who investigate find gravity, oxygen and a set of shifting holographic images evoking a long-dead past. As they struggle to find the survivors that might have called them in, the phantasmagoria around them becomes personal, directed and dangerous.
The second segment, "Stink Bomb," directed by Tensai Okamura (who went on to do Wolf's Rain), generally maintains a bizarrely humorous tone, in spite of its serious subject matter. When a hapless young pharmaceutical-plant worker accidentally takes the wrong experimental medication, he becomes a biochemical weapon, with increasingly horrific effects as he becomes more frightened.
Otomo directed the final segment, "Cannon Fodder," himself. In a city consisting mostly of impossibly huge cannons, where all resources seem to be devoted to lobbing gigantic shells at an unknown enemy, a young boy longs to grow up to be "the one who fires the gun," not just a cannon-loader like his father. The piece isn't so much a story as a day-in-the-life vignette that follows the boy's family through a miserably oppressive, routine day of cannon maintenance and shell manufacture—none of which affects the boy's enthusiasm for big guns and hollow patriotism.
Serious art meets equally serious plotting
Overall, "Memories" has much the same feel as other serious animated anthologies like The Animatrix and Robot Carnival (which Otomo also contributed to). There are flashes of humor, particularly in the bizarrely cheery "Stink Bomb," but mostly, the tone is chilly, grave and almost too dead-serious. It's as though everyone on the project is trying to say "This isn't just anime, it's capital-A Art."
It would be easy to support that theoretical claim. The animation on all three pieces is stellar. "Magnetic Rose" looks like a Kon-designed piece, but it's packed with the elaborate painted detail of Otomo's films. Every rivet and seam and wire on the Corona stands out, as does every leaf and droplet in the holograms. The zero-G scenes are particularly smooth and convincing, but the entire piece is beautifully crafted. "Stink Bomb" looks far more like Otomo's work, and it comes closest to standard anime, but it's still precisely and exactingly rendered. "Cannon Fodder" contains the least action of the three pieces, but it compensates with almost impossible visual richness. Heavy shading and crosshatching give everything a stark density and weight, and while nothing but the weapons looks realistic—the piece is artfully cartoony—Otomo manages an almost alternate-universe solidity.
"Cannon Fodder" could use a more dynamic story: It consists almost entirely of an involved cannon-loading-and-firing process that's simultaneously fascinating in its precision and slightly rote and dull. "Stink Bomb" and "Magnetic Rose" compensate with plots that keep their characters in nearly nonstop motion. But where "Stink Bomb" is almost a shaggy-dog tale, complete with punchline, "Magnetic Rose" is a painfully serious and intense piece. All three segments make impressive use of music, but "Magnetic Rose" tops the bill, thanks to multitalented composer Yoko Kanno, who mixes her genres per usual, but leads with a strong operatic theme.
About the worst that can be said of Memories is that "Magnetic Rose," as the strongest piece, should have been last instead of first, and that it's designed more for serious animation buffs than the average anime fan. But those buffs will find it an essential addition to their collections.
The Memories DVD is pretty simple: multiple-language subtitles, but no dub option, very simple music-and-animation-free menus and few extras, apart from a 30-minute interview with the three directors. Not that more is necessary, for a release this impressive—though the soundtrack-play option that some anime companies are experimenting with would certainly have been welcome.
— Tasha
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