Anime Review: Brave Story

Managed to grab tickets for Brave Story at Cathay AMK Hub last night :)

The cinema theatre was decent. We got "couple" seats... except that the person initially issued me one seat from one couple seat, and another seat from another couple seat!! :( The leg space was ample, and the theatre was only 1/3 filled with no annoying crying babies. Screen is a bit small and the sound system is so-so... wait, I'm not reviewing the cinema theatre here... oops.



Brave Story is a 2hr fantasy anime based off the same titled manga. Obviously you can expect a very long adventure story shrunk down to just 2hr so a great deal of details were excluded. It was however sufficient to cover the gist of the story, which features a young boy Wataru from the real world, having encountered a family crisis, went into an alternate fantasy world called Vision in attempt to wish for his family crisis to disappear. The story revolves around Wataru exploring the different places in vision, making friends, getting popular and eventually making tough choices like deciding between personal wishes, helping friend in astray, and sacrificing for the greater good.

As expected of typical fantasy targetted at the young, most of the characters in the story are friendly looking animal humanoids like cat-girls and lizardmen, and not so friendly looking creatures like giant toads and fire-breathing dragons and black flying monsters with sharp teeth. There are also typical character classes (heros, magicians, priests, highlanders (barbarians) and what-nots) and magic (monster summoning, colorful spells of different elements, transformable weapons) and treasure hunting (collecting 5 different gems before a wish can be granted).

The ending was also expected, you know, the hero making a politically correct decision that impacts the world, and overall it was a reasonably happy ending.
S might have more to talk about this but she doesn't want to blog this review, so, well, no further comments.

As mentioned, a great deal of story details were excluded by shrinking a manga series into just a 2hr movie. So there was this karaoke part where a song is played and a majority of Wataru's adventure just flashes past with bits and pieces of information. I felt it would be better if the manga was converted to an anime series of 13 episodes rather than just a 2hr movie, to give the whole story more credit.

Having read manga and watched anime of similar genre/storyline like Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken and Dragon Quest: Emblem of Roto, I find Brave Story to be a little less exciting than what I'd like it to be. It is decent enough to entice the younger and new people to this genre of manga/anime, but it is not fantastic enough for me. I had watched the trailer months ago and waited in anticipation, and I was almost tempted to purchase the manga series before I watched the movie, but I decide not to after the show.

I give the movie a 7 of 10, mainly for a good attempt to introduce this genre of anime/manga to this little island. Hopefully there will be more good anime movies introduced here.

The "Hungry Ghost Month" Rant

Warning - this is a rant post. Whatever is written here is my personal view and I'll simply delete away any flame comments.

I absolutely dread the Chinese 7th Lunar Month aka Hungry Ghost Month. This is when religious Chinese burn joss sticks and joss papers and other fancy papercrafts as a tribute to their ancestors, supposedly allowing them to receive the burnt stuff in the form of money and luxury items in the dead world.

Ok, all these sound really pious and good, loving acts for the ancestors. And no offense to those who burn offerings with a caring mind to think of others. But I simply cannot tolerate folks who burn the joss papers everywhere like nobody's business and as if they own the whole bloody common void deck and greenery. Hello, the government provided free recycled giant oil drums to let you burn your stuff inside it so that you won't dirty the grass patches and cement floors. Why do you have to ignore the oil drum that is only 1 metre away and insist on burning your stuff on the grass patches and cement floors and drain covers? Do you know how dirty it gets with all the ashes flying around with the smoke into the windows of your helpless neighbors who happen to live just some floors above where you commit your burning acts? Do you know how dirty it gets in the aftermath, especially if it rains, that the poor road sweeper have a hell-of-a-time trying to clean up the leftover mess? Do you know when the ashes smear onto white shirts and dresses they almost can't be removed? Do you know the black circular patches of burnt grass are nothing as pleasant looking as crop circles?

To be fair, let me try to put myself in your shoes. Ok, so you absolutely cannot use the oil drum because everybody else uses it and you do not want to accidentally mix up your burnt donations among others and in the end it doesn't get delivered to the correct recipient... Wait, the location where you are burning now doesn't belong to you, or your daddy, or your great-great-grand-daddy. It's a common green and common void deck. It's not the backyard of your kampong hut anymore, wise guy. Are you 100% certain that burning on this drain cover will let you successfully deliver your tributes to your ancestor?

Let me offer a better solution to you. You want to plant joss sticks to direct your ancestors to the correct location? Plant them along your windows. You want to make sure your burning offerings get delivered correctly? Burn them inside your own home. Your 100sqm or whatever-size home is what you own and where you stay. Nobody will question what you burn inside there, and you can be sure this is 100 times more accurate in terms of delivery. Wait. The firemen might object, but that is another issue altogether.

End note, people should learn the essence of traditions and implement the good points wisely, not follow steps of traditions like dummies.

L's Anime Corner

What is Anime? Can eat one? ... Oh! I noes! Those Kids Channel shows like My Little Pony issit?