matt_doyle

Hurrah for Studio Ghibli, basically.  Just saw this last night and it was utterly charming, very faithful (and the changes made were ones which lead to the movie being more cinematic than the book while still retaining the same essential tone and character).

I grew up reading The Borrowers, and so it was, basically, magical to see the depiction of how these tiny people lived and adapted to scavenging human detritus to build their home.  The nails as stepping-stones, the variety of tools, the chessman sculpture -- some of it wasn't from the book, though most was, but it displayed a very clear visual animation which brought me glee throughout.

There was a visual reference to the stereotypical image of korobokuru at one point which was cute to me, especially as a fan of Honey and Clover.  I wasn't sure how I felt about the cat's behavior toward the end.  Wasn't sure what I was supposed to make of that crow, either.  Kind of wished Pod had been bald; but other than that the characters were perfect adaptations of their book selves, I thought.

I kept squeeing at how well thought-out their depictions of hydrodynamics at that scale were.  Maybe it's weird to be excited by animations of surface tension in water.  I'm weird, okay?

Anyway, I liked it quite a bit, although I was interested to see that it had more of a single clear villain than most Miyazaki movies.

 Delaying my next book review for either tomorrow or, well, later today at any rate.

Today I finished watching the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and I thought it deserved a little discussion.  Advance warning:  the comments will have spoilers, as I really really want to chat about all the twists and turns with people.

Anyway, Madoka is a show that combines the magical girl genre with... existentialist horror.  The foundational concept appears to have been someone asking themself the question "Who the Hell would make young teenaged girls fight battles against evil, and why?"

The answers are grim, shocking, heartbreaking, and sold with an intense and compelling narrative over a relatively brief twelve episode run.  You can find the show free to watch online, and if you have four hours to kill, I'd recommend it.

It became only the fifth movie or TV show I have ever cried at.  And then it broke a record and became the sixth I ever cried at, too.  The tenth and twelfth episodes were some of the most finely crafted and heartwrenching things I have ever seen, and the fact that I flat-out wept is just about the highest recommendation I could possibly give this show.

So.  Fellow viewers, let's take to the comment threads and chat about it.