Anime: Memories 71249

• Memories is an anthology film consisting in three short films: Magnetic Rose, Stink Bomb and Cannon Fodder. These short films are unrelated so I will review them separately.
  Magnetic Rose is set in the future, where a spaceship of garbage collectors receives an SOS from an unidentified ship. We follow two of the crew as they investigate the ship. The animation is extremely detailed and very beautiful, its quality and its art-style are comparable to that of the anime movie Ghost in the Shell. The background music is good, and consists mostly of opera and classical music. In this short film, the atmosphere is oppressive and mysterious. The crew discover the holographic memories of the owner of the ship, and face a computer that has her memories.
  Stink Bomb is set in modern day Japan. A chemical researcher takes a medicine to get rid of his cold, but it turns out the medicine he took was a new type of chemical weapon, and everybody around him suddenly starts dying. In this short film, too, the animation quality is that of a movie. The art-style (the character designs in particular) is similar to the one in AKIRA – they were made by the same person so that’s not surprising. The background music is also pretty good. This short film is much more comical than the other two, the protagonist being a complete imbecile who doesn’t seem to understand that he is killing everyone, while the JSDF, the US army and the government are struggling to stop him from eradicating Tokyo. So there’s a comical distance between the army and the government doing everything they can to stop him, sending war helicopters, missiles, tanks and bombers to save Japan, and the protagonist being stupid and complaining about being hungry.
  Cannon Fodder, the shortest film, is set in some sort of steampunk totalitarian dystopia, in a WW1-looking city where every building has a cannon on top of it, and where the whole of society is committed to fight an unknown enemy by firing cannons at them. The art-style is very original and completely different from the two other short films, looking more like a western cartoon than a Japanese anime, and being ugly on purpose. In this short film, too, the animation is very good, the backgrounds are well drawn and very detailed. The quality of the background music varies, it is sometimes good, sometimes bad. This film being pretty short (less than 25 minutes), there isn’t much time for character development, and we are only shown a bit of the daily lives of the characters. There’s also no plot, but it compensates with having an interesting universe.
  In conclusion, these three short films are a very good watch, but the main problem is that they are completely unrelated as they have no common theme, and are way too short to leave an impact on the viewer. Despite this, it’s still an interesting experience, so I would recommend watching the anthology.

Sub-score explanation:

This anthology consists of three short films: "Magnetic Rose", "Stink Bomb", and "Cannon Fodder".

The title "MEMORIES" comes from the first short film ''Kanojo no Omoide (Her Memories): Magnetic Rose", where a group of garbage collectors in space investigate a SOS signal coming from an abandoned ship. Some of the scenes in this short film had an eerie, cold atmosphere highly influenced by (not surprisingly) AKIRA. For a short film, the story is well-developed with a intro, confrontation, and climax. It can be said that this section is a treat made for existing AKIRA fans, and the proof that Ootomo Katsuhiro 'hasn't lost it' yet.

"Saishuu Heiki (Stinkiest Weapon): Stink Bomb" is a hilarious bioterror comedy with lots of action. The Japanese title is a wordplay of "Ultimate/Final" and "Stinkiest", both of which are pronounced "Saishuu", but written with different kanji. You can guess from the title that this short film is a comedic relief for other two short films. It has no special value whatsoever, and exists solely to entertain.

These two short films had incredibly good graphic quality for something made in the mid-90's.

"Taihou no Machi (Town of Cannons): Cannon Fodder" is by far the best section of the film, and highly experimental.
The setting reminded me of Orwell's "1984", about a boy's day in a totalitarian society that revolves around firing cannons toward an unknown enemy. The whole 15 minute of this short film is done in one shot using many advanced transition techniques. There's zero character or plot development here, but it's all about the atmosphere and the playful presentation of a story that leaves it to our imagination. Not to mention the wow-factor considering this was made before the era of digital animation.

"MEMORIES" was a very interesting viewing experience for me, but as with many anthology, these short films had little coherence when seen together, without a real underlying theme. Being a series of short films, the plot and character development are also extremely limited. Still, this anthology, especially "Cannon Fodder", is considered to be masterpiece by some. You don't have to like it, but definitely a must-see for true anime enthusiasts.

What's "memories"? For me it's the memory of watching garbage anime made of 3 pieces:
The first one- actually this one isn't that bad... even it is just a remixed cliche.... it's about some space workers who after receiving an SOS from another ship/space station go on to find, surprise... that's it's all a trap set up by the station computer, which after the death of the owner (an opera singer... ) has gone all buggy-buggy.... ooooohhh. Anyway, the space station has some "useful" functions and lot's of things happen... but I'm not going to spoil the show for you (not that there's anything to spoil, the story is just too predictable).

The second one- I guess this part is be a comedy.... or not, since I didn't laugh or smiled once- instead, I was incredibly annoyed at the moronic plot, imbecilic characters (the main character especially)... stupidity is funny sometimes, if done right.... here, it's an annoying stink bomb.

The third one- it's about a nation of warriors... or a failed caricature of Nazi ... the worst part about this part is that the director is serious about everything, just like a patient troll.

Animation- 8 : it's the redeeming aspect of memories,
Sound- 7 : it worked
Story 3 : there was a story? where?
Ch. Development: 1 - I wanted to smash my monitor to pieces while I watched this
Value: 4 - I planned to quit...it seems I made a mistake somewhere and didn't complete my plan
Enjoymt. : 3 - I was annoyed, I didn't enjoy this

Split into three, totally independant short movies, Memories tries to be everything in all categories and fails to be that.

Since it is split into three, completely different and unrelated stories, it's impossible to go with a normal rating/review. I'll try to review them all in one review though, seperated by story.

First story

Synopsis
A group of people entered an abandoned ship, which used to be the property of a famous singer. But, like the title already said, the memories remain. The entire ship is filled with memories and they start to haunt the adventurers within the ship.

The animation is old and not too promising, but it is done pretty well. The voices (they use characters from Russia, Spain and a few other coutries) are well done. They all have a certain dialect which allows you to understand that they're not all Japanese as usual and most of the times it's even clear to hear where they're from, aside from their names.
The music is done well, although it's not my kind of style. They used Opera-music, which is hard to appreciate for me, but the background music helps to build up the tension and the entire, exciting, atmosphere, which is important for a space-horror movie. There is no gore, so don't feel repulsed by me calling it a horror.

The characters are done extremely well. Not all of them get the best character development, but most of them do get plenty. There is also one of them who fails to get any decent development, but that one hardly gets any time on the screen anyway.
Rewatch value: Definitely. Even though you might know what happens, the series doesn't disappoint with the atmosphere, which is wonderfully done in an unknown spaceship.

Conclusion:

Animation: 7
Sound: 8
Story: 9
Character: 9
Value: 8
Enjoyment: 9

Second story

Synopsis
Stinkbomb is about a man who accidentally uses a secret weapon, which is able to produce a devastating stinkbomb. The result is that he himself becomes the stinkbomb, causing everyone to lose consciousness of the stench. Although he doesn't know he is the cause, he travels forth in search for a living person who can explain why this happens. Unfortunately, the militair thinks differently about that.

Completely comedy in a sub-serious world. The animation is good and everything looks quite well, considering the age. It gives a feeling of those odd comedies which involve a lot of action, although it's just comedy.
The voices are okay, although there are voices which aren't really okay as well. For music, it's good enough.
The story is pretty simple and it's exactly that simplicity which makes this such a nice comedy. There isn't any difficulty to follow the idea of the story and you'll be laughing throughout the entire movie just because it is so horribly overdone :P Characters? Well ... it doesn't contain any character development at all, it's just pure hilarious comedy.

Animation: 7
Sound: 6
Story: 6
Character: 5
Value: 8
Enjoyment: 8

Third story

Synopsis
The third story is about an alternate world where people fire a cannon. Everything goes according to militairy rules to fire that cannon, and there isn't anything else except firing the cannon.

Although the idea behind the story could be pretty good (lots of sublimal messages in the story), the way it shows the story itself isn't anything interesting - or even boring and very disappointing. I wasn't able to capture the real meaning behind the story, since it was either too deep, or just not there.
The animation is just plain ugly, reminding of cartoons and repulsive to me at least. The voices were harsh, but fitting in the 'War'-atmosphere those people were.
The characters had some character development, but it was hard to see, since the story didn't make much sense to me.

Animation: 5
Sound: 6
Story: 4
Character: 6
Value: 4
Enjoyment: 1

In the end, Memories started off with a great movie, continued with a comedy which was also great and ended with a horrible bunch of rubbish in the form of a 3rd movie. Although it has nearly everything in every category you can think of, not all the movies aren't that great. It depends on your mood which of the movies you'll like, but I think the first 2 movies are entertaining enough to watch - and to rewatch even.