Valley of the Wind

Hayao Miyazaki is a well-known anime director and co-founder of Studio Ghibli. He does amazing work and I was first introduced to him when I saw Spirited Away - which was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award. I have seen almost all of his films and each one amazes me with it's intricate details, characters and unique worlds.



Nausicaä and the baby Ohm

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is the second film Miyazaki directed and was based on his manga of the same name. The film is set on post-apocalyptic Earth 1000 years after a devastating war destroyed civilization and the Earth's ecosystems. The results is a landscape covered by toxic and deadly forests with humans surviving in small pockets of habitable land. Giant insects (Ohm) and other creatures are the only ones that can live in the toxic forests. Civil war breaks out between neighbouring countries and it's up to Nausicaä, a princess from a small valley community, to stop the war from spiralling out of control and causing more destruction to a very fragile Earth.

 

The film has a strong environmental message, but what initially caught my attention was the quality of the animation. The entire world of giant insects and toxic forests was enthrallingly beautiful. What completely flabbergasted me was when I found out the year the film was made - 1984!

 

Pixar and Dreamworks do great work, but there's no need to fix something which isn't broken. Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki have stuck to a very captivating formula of animation style and storytelling which I hope will never disappear.

El Cazador de la Bruja

I watched my first anime probably when I was in high school. It was the Ghost in the Shell movie and since then I've been hooked. I have watched all the Ghost in the Shell films and the two series. It's mind blowing how intricate the plot and characters are. It took a while to get used to how different anime is. I think it's because the Japanese language and culture is different in the sense that they do not say what they mean directly. Feelings and emotions are not expressed so overtly as in the more Western cultures. This might make anime seem slow or the characters unfeeling, but if you pay attention to the detail, there is so much to see.

After Ghost in the Shell, I started looking for more anime. I got onto Okazu (okazu.blogspot.com). It's a blog about the latest and coolest anime and manga. Most, but not all, have some lesbian elements known as yuri. The site is a great start into some of the most interesting and coolest anime I have seen.

El Cazador de la Bruja is Spanish for Hunter of the Witch and is the third anime series in a very slightly related series of girls-with-guns anime shows. The first is Noir (French for black) which is about an assassin who gets involved with a girl who has lost all her memories but is an excellent killer. As the show progresses, it becomes evident that there is most more that connect these two women than either of them thought. I was amazed by this show and loved every minute of it. The second series is Madlax. It also involves an agent-for-hire and a girl, both who have tragic pasts and both linked to a country at war with itself. There are gun battles, evil mafia, intrigue and some magic - need I say more. El Cazador de la Bruja concerns a mercenary who gets stuck with a girl with some very special powers. Lots of people are after them in this sort of western cowboy type anime. Very cool and enjoyable.

Another show I really loved is Red Garden. Four schoolgirls wake up one morning to realize their old life is gone and they have to fight in a battle they weren't even aware of before. The way the characters handle these new found hardships was very real and you were rooting for them throughout the show.

Anime has made me look differently at the world around me - it makes you think. The fact that most anime shows contain very hot women with big guns is of course completely irrelevant :-).