I've always loved watching films zooted but as I get older, I sometimes FORGET that I've seen something until I'm back in it. So last night I was all excited to watch Onibaba after seeing it hyped in Willem Dafoe's Criterion Closet picks. And right after the opening scene I realized it was my second viewing!
I love this one. Won't forget it again. A uniquely poetic "war is hell" flick with some genuinely shocking content. Acting and direction are both on point.
The problem I had as I made that one attempt to get to know the genre more deeply than feature films - so much of the "culture" for what it's worth is wrapped up in TV series - ended in disgust.
I know exactly what you're talking about and this is what pushed me away. During this time, I was a horror gorehound. If it had buckets of blood, the better: Jason, Pinhead, Freddy, the low-budget derivatives and of course all the European precursors the decade previous. I could see idiot characters get cut up and mutilated all day without batting an eye.
So when I discovered "adult" anime, I was all in. "Whoa, this guy got bisected in a sword fight, laughs, pauses for a few seconds then starts screaming with arterial spray everywhere! Cool!". But then I started noticing how often teenage schoolgirls and women with, how should I say, certain animalistic "features" were put into the fold. Highly uncomfortable.
It's a culture that gets more strange/bizarre/uncomfortable the deeper you scratch. Compared to what we see in the west, where the sponsors must be appeased and so we get "Safer" media.
Not to say that the same carnal urges don't exist everywhere else; but it's kind of acceptable there, in the same way you go for a break in Sweden and put the TV on the night you check in, and it's fleshlight pr0n. Been there.
Yeah I can't claim encyclopedic knowledge of anime or anything, and I KNOW there are exceptions, but the main stream of the stuff gave me that feeling. Maybe it's just cultural difference, but honestly, having been to Japan, the stuff I bounced off in anime seemed in no way part of mainstream culture. Animation itself is a bit of a subculture over there, I suspect.
My older brother convinced our dad to take us to see Akira in the theater when it came out. I was about 10 years old and it seared itself into my brain. My father slept through most of it.
The problem is that it set the standard for what I expected anime to be, and I've mostly been disappointed ever since. Ghibli stuff is obviously cool, Ghost in the Shell was dope too, but I remember my nerd friends in high school getting into Dragon Ball Z and I was just bored with it. One day this girl I had a big crush on asked if I wanted to hang out with her after school and I was like "Uh, I already told my friend Andy I'd go to his house." 2 hours later I'm sitting there in his room while he scrolls through screen grabs of hentai on his computer and I was like "I think I made a huge mistake..."
I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion not too long ago and was put off by the horny teenager aspect too - it's crazy how it veers from that stuff into crazy existential scenes and back again! Plus the ending is just baffling. Not sure I'm dipping my toes into any more series but I'm all for the face-melting Akira type stuff that comes out every once in a while.
"Images" (Robert Altman, 1971): Years ago, all I knew previously about this is that both John Williams and Stomu Yamashita collaborated on the soundtrack. I found it at a local video rental store (yes, they still exist!) and checked it out. Susannah York's character, a poet, retreats with her photographer husband to her childhood home in the UK. Things get weird when her former husband "appears", she sees herself in the distance and a friend of the couple, with a daughter who looks like a younger version of herself, comes over and imposes a little too much. This is a dive into the mind of someone who doesn't know what's real and what isn't.
This also led me to rent "California Split", another Altman film, about gambling addicted friends who learn about the highs and lows (no pun intended) of the "lifestyle".
I also saw "Buck And The Preacher" (Sidney Poitier's directorial debut) with Harry Belafonte hamming it up and the two fighting off Cameron Mitchell's posse of thugs.
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I know exactly what you're talking about and this is what pushed me away. During this time, I was a horror gorehound. If it had buckets of blood, the better: Jason, Pinhead, Freddy, the low-budget derivatives and of course all the European precursors the decade previous. I could see idiot characters get cut up and mutilated all day without batting an eye.
So when I discovered "adult" anime, I was all in. "Whoa, this guy got bisected in a sword fight, laughs, pauses for a few seconds then starts screaming with arterial spray everywhere! Cool!". But then I started noticing how often teenage schoolgirls and women with, how should I say, certain animalistic "features" were put into the fold. Highly uncomfortable.
Not to say that the same carnal urges don't exist everywhere else; but it's kind of acceptable there, in the same way you go for a break in Sweden and put the TV on the night you check in, and it's fleshlight pr0n. Been there.
Cue my Mrs giving me laser eyes.
This was really good and it's on Netflix:
This also led me to rent "California Split", another Altman film, about gambling addicted friends who learn about the highs and lows (no pun intended) of the "lifestyle".
I also saw "Buck And The Preacher" (Sidney Poitier's directorial debut) with Harry Belafonte hamming it up and the two fighting off Cameron Mitchell's posse of thugs.