It looks exactly like this is what all the big-budget live-action movies were leading toward: The ultimate destruction for Optimus Prime and the Autobots. In a new three-season anime series beginning on Netflix this month, Transformers: War for Cybertron gets underway in what’s built up to be like a battle for Gallifrey in the Doctor Who universe. Its first chapter, Siege, picks up at the end of the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. In the first trailer, we hear the familiar sound of new Optimus Prime voice actor Jake Foushee echoing the longtime voice of Peter Cullen, who voiced the character from its inception through the tie-in video game for this new era. We hear despair for the future of the Autobots in his message. Fans of the five decades of Transformers toys and stories will soon learn his fate against Megatron, who stands ready to reboot them all.
Audiences have seen some great animated films in recent years, with movies upping the ante on technology and visual magic, whether in Ferdinand or Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse or Spies in Disguise or Klaus. Netflix’s new anime movie, a sequel to its live-action, futuristic, sci-fi hit Altered Carbon, takes animation and visual effects even further. Altered Carbon: Resleeved is part Blade Runner 2049, part Marvel’s The Punisher (season two), and part Wu Assassins. Live-action action sequences are rarely as thrilling as those choreographed in this film.
As with the live-action Altered Carbon, the inspiration from Syd Mead’s trademark futurism is all over this film, and that world looks just as stunning in anime form. The storyboarding and layouts, the surprise screen angles, wipes, and character movements are like nothing you’ve seen before, and the details are at times life-like and three dimensional. The story and execution is a vast improvement on the second season of the live-action show, which was a really good season of episodes to begin with.
Two years after the end of season two we catch up with Takeshi Kovacs, resleeved and working a job for Mr. Tanaseda, who has him pursuing a girl named Holly, a tattoo artist with cybernetic eyes and pawn of the yakuza, who carries some critical secrets. Working for CTAC is Gena, a badass agent carrying secrets, who clashes with Kovacs early on. It’s two days from an ascension ceremony–the anointing of a new mob boss–and in that time Kovacs must figure out why Mr. Tanaseda has set him on this job. The anime film, available with English subtitles or dubbed, has a new hotel and a new concierge named Ogai (voiced in the dubbed version by Chris Conner, who plays the concierge, Poe, and hotel manager in the live-action series). Ogai is a holographic Japanese man loyal to the new boss, but fond of Holly. Fans of the series will find his hotel to have equally exciting defensive feature’s as Poe’s hotel, The Raven.
In a year of retrospectives that included the return to theaters of Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan(1982), would you have guessed that the film to fill the most theater seats would be Hayao Miyazaki’s 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind? Sunday I saw just that, as Ghibli Fest 2017 and Fathom Events presented the first of three screenings nationwide. Tonight you, too, can see Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind at select theaters nationwide, the subtitled version, followed by the 2005 English dubbed version screening again Wednesday. Check out the Fathom Events website here for participating theaters and to get tickets. If you are a fan of Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, epic fantasy films, or great cinema in general, Nausicaä is a completely different film in the theater than as seen on the small screen. In the theater you will be immersed in Miyazaki’s sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, post-apocalyptic world. You’ll surrounded by the prolific composer Joe Hisaishi’s sweeping, gorgeous melodies and breathtaking emotional cues. And if you’re an anime fan debating which of Miyazaki’s creations is the best–Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, or My Neighbor Totoro… you may decide Nausicaä is the winner.
Nausicaä is chillingly timeless and current. I discovered what began as a rather chatty theater suddenly became quiet as the story’s themes unfolded: the consequences of unchecked technological advances, the price of decades of polluting the environment, the likely outcome of warring nations bent on total destruction of the other, the results of failing to take responsibility for the animal kingdom. Miyazaki combined more compelling and important drama in one film than many top directors have created in the entirety of their careers. But the film is not the stuff of your typical bland mainstream drama–it’s chock full of action and daring adventure of the fantastical variety while also considered a science fiction tale because of its dystopian vision of the future. Set one thousand years into the future, the world was once ravaged, and cities destroyed, by mutated insects and beasts created by humans as bioweapons that laid waste to everything like military tanks, all during the horrible Seven Days of Fire.
But over the centuries a balance has formed between the Toxic Jungle, humans, and the animal world. A young woman named Nausicaä, a princess of the Valley of the Wind, is praised and respected by her people. She studies the forest, its creatures, dangerous spores, and the environment, all in secret, searching for anything to help her preserve the progress that has been made. Her world is soon upset by the people of Tomekia, militant humans led by Princess Kushana (voiced in the English version by Uma Thurman) bent on destroying the insects and sending the world out of balance. But it is Princess Nausicaä that steals every scene. From the very beginning she emerges as a great leader, clever and resourceful, never hesitating to protect the people and things she cares about. And the plot threads are entirely unpredictable–Miyazaki’s entire grasp of fantasy, interlocked with amazing special effects for an animated film, suck us down into the quicksand with Nausicaä and a boy named Asbel. Miyazaki created a flying contraption for our heroine, a glider so wonderfully conceptualized every viewer will believe it could be real, based on sound aeronautic principles, from the soaring trajectories, weight, and movement in flight to Nausicaä’s different ways she grasps the ship to maneuver it. Even the enormous multi-eyed Ohms feel ominous and threatening.
Think fast, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon players–where can you find the lead actors of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica all in one film?
He is one of the top ten filmmakers of all time–Academy Award-winning director Hayao Miyazaki, known for Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and much more, but Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is considered by many to be his masterwork. It is a grand work that the film medium could not yet hope to transform into live action—a devastated world destroyed by atmospheric poisons, and barraged by gigantic insect beasts, sweeping cinematography, and a post-apocalyptic world layers and layers deep. And from this arises a young woman named Nausicaä, princess of the Valley of the Wind. Innocent and driven, can she piece back together what divides man and nature?
It’s a story of dangers and sacrifices, of epic scope, feuds between warring clans, a dying planet, and the forging of a new heroine. A sci-fi adventure fantasy first released in Japan in 1984, Nausicaä’s story of protecting nature is a timeless tale. Miyazaki adapted his own 1982 manga story for the screen, celebrating its 35th anniversary this year with so many other great science fiction works internationally. The film stars the voice talents of Sumi Shimamoto, Goro Naya, Yoji Matsuda, Yoshiko Sakakibara, and Iemasa Kayumi in this month’s subtitled screenings, with English voice actors including Alison Lohman, Uma Thurman, Patrick Stewart, Mark Hamill, Edward James Olmos, Shia LaBeouf, and Chris Sarandon in the dubbed screenings.
Frequently ranked as one of the greatest animated films of all time, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is being presented by Fathom Events in the States as part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2017. Tickets are available now here at the Fathom Events website.
Writer Brian Wood, who dazzled us with several series including Dark Horse Comics’ final successful Star Wars title before the brand returned to Marvel, will bring a classic animated series into the 21st century this summer. Robotech, the show that introduced many American viewers to the world of anime for the first time, will be getting its own monthly from Titan Comics, as announced this weekend at C2E2 2017.
The series is expected to touch on elements from every past iteration of Robotech, including Harmony Gold producer Carl Macek’s original vision that was famously modified by Cannon Films. Originally a Revell model kit line, Robotech is best known for its 85-episode sci-fi anime cartoon series that began airing in the States in 1985. Expect to revisit Macross Island with familiar characters Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes, Lynn Minmei, Roy Fokker, Claudia Grant, and Henry Gloval.
Artist Marco Turini and colorist Marco Lesko have created some beautiful interior imagery for the series. Check out a preview of Issue #1 below. Issue #1 will feature alternate covers from Stanley Lau, Karl Kerschl, Michael Dialynas, Blair Shedd, and The Waltrip Bros.
