Review of 'Memories (Memorîzu)'

memories.jpg Memories is a set of three movies created by the master anime director Katsuhiro Otomo (who might be remembered as the director of “Akira”). Each story, directed separately by three other anime directors (Koji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, and Katsuhiro Otomo) is different in both style and story but are all masterpieces.

Magnetic Rose (Koji Morimoto) tells the story of a salvage ship who find an unusual planetoid formed of scrap. Docking, the crew find that the world has been created by a woman's memories. I found this a bit lagging at the end but the suspense of the exploration of the world is palatable.

Stink Bomb (Tensai Okamura) is the light story of this trilogy as a hapless chemist accidentally sets off a chain of events that sees his body converted into a chemical weapon. His ignorance of this fact makes it quite amusing as he approaches Tokyo with the military being called in to stop him.

Cannon Fodder (Katsuhiro Otomo) is a short story about a kingdom continuously at war with an unseen enemy. A typical day of a worker going to work on his assigned cannon. A satire of the pointlessness of war.

The animation is all first class which, coupled with the fantastic stories, make this a true master of the anime genre. I cannot pick any of the three that I preferred more than the others – All are fantastic.

Rating: “Nearly perfect, but not quite”

Review Date: 2007-07-11


Directed by: Katsuhiro Otomo, Koji Morimoto and Tensai Okamura

Studio: Tri Star

Year: 1995

Length: 110 minutes

Genre: Japanese Animation

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113799/


Other reviewed films by Hiroaki Ando, Hajime Katoki, Shuhei Morita and Katsuhiro Otomo:

Other reviewed films by Katsuhiro Otomo: