P and I have just watched a fabulous DVD called Laputa: The Flying Island (1986) by Hayao Miyazaki, a master of Japanese animation. We watched the DVD in English, with subtitles set as translated Japanese (in English). It was very interesting observing the language and cultural differences that way, but then again I’m a bit of a closet linguist and that’s the kind of thing that turns me on. =)

Anime is usually timeless – characters are drawn in an alternate time or place (or both) and you can revisit them at anytime. Unlike most movies made in the 80’s, they never look stale or dated. The hand drawn look feels more like a labour of love than the “let’s see how much money we can make” Hollywood computer animation. So to some extent it feels more like art to me (appealing to the highbrow, snobby side of me?)

Some of my favourite Anime movies (in no order of preference):

• Spirited Away (Miyazaki)
• Steamboy (by Katsuhiro Ôtomo who also did Akira)
• Tombstone for the Fireflies (by Isao Takahata) – a very sad story set in WWII. If you like to cry at movies, this one’s for you. Very very good, though.
• Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki again) – this one is pretty old, and might be hard to find. The English adaptation was written by Neil Gaiman, who writes amazing comics and interesting books.
• Howl’s Moving Castle (also Miyazaki)
• a good introduction to earlier anime movies from Modern Japan

Also, on the subject of Howl’s Moving Castle, I have just read The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones who writes like JK Rowling, Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman. She wrote great Harry Potter books before Harry Potter books were in fashion. A very enjoyable book to disappear into, if you like fantasy/SF. I was a bit shocked when I realised that most people don’t consider SF/fantasy serious reading (considering with most SF you need to know SOME Physics), but that’s fodder for another blog post…