Summary for December 2024

Picturesque

Sophie is sitting on some stones on a grassy hill. We only see her back, wearing a cloak and a straw hat. She is looking into the distance where there is a river with trees covering the bank, green fields and rolling hills separated by rows of trees. Far away, closer to snow-covered mountains under a blue sky with some fluffy clouds, is a city – only small dots of buildings.

I didn’t like Howl’s Moving Castle that much. While Kiki is more or less the same, Nausicaä is a clear expansion, the story of the book and the movie are very different, in a way that reading the book first made watching the movie very confusing for me. What they have in common is that I don’t think they sold the romance that well, if at all. The characters were… eh. I wasn’t on board with the themes.

There is a valid criticism of Miyazaki’s handling of war that I won’t go into here, and Howl’s is a great example for that discussion.

Ponyo on the other hand is simply adorable. In a way, it is a return to My Neighbor Totoro, in a slightly bigger way. And that’s alone is enough for me.

Humanoid hands holding a sword, the hilt of the witch is a large circle, inside it is another smaller circle with a plate that looks like Pac-Man: “pie” with a triangle piece missing. — [The dark and gritty *Pac-Man* reboot.]

I don’t think I had a choice not to see Secret Level. So I did. The best episodes are the ones where the story has to deal with a game mechanic, so it is very disappointing that most of them chose the same one: respawn. The others just chose to tell the story in a world of a game, and for 10 minute episodes, sometimes even less, they were fine stories. Ultimately, not a disappointment, not by a long shot, but overall just not a memorable anthology.