Manga

Buddha by Osamu Tezuka
 

This graphic novel took me quite a while to read, perhaps because it was so action packed, but the story line was not poorly constructed. I am a very visual person, so I usually enjoy more pictures than words, but in this case I felt there was SO much action going on both within the plot or within the visuals and it turned me off a little bit as I kept reading it. There would be a few pages without ANY words and it would be a duel or some exciting moment in the story, but the amount of information within the panels is so overwhelming to look at, that I was heavily depending on the text to keep focused. The story itself was not bad, but it was not my favourite at the same time. At first, I thought the woman and sons relationship was a tad strange, just a little too close for comfort. Fortunately, for the majority of this novel, his moms trying to find him so it doesn't get too creepy. I also felt like the plot was a bit all over the place, or possibly just how they set it up within the panels, as there are no transitions. It was just very hard to get into the story itself, because every few minutes you'll get into one part of the plot and then all of a sudden you're viewing his mother on her journey to find her son. I was a little disappointed that both the mother and son died, not to mention TOGETHER. Even though, I wasn't completely satisfied with this story, I still am glad I read it, because it'll broaden my graphic novel horizon.


Film
Night on the Galactic Railway


I looked up the original Japanese story by Miyazawa Kenji, "Ginka Tetsudo no Yoru" that this movie is based off of. The main characters are human in the original, but in the film they're cats. It seems a bit odd since the change didn't seem necessary to me, especially since all the main characters are cats yet some of the background characters are still human. In my opinion, you should only make changes like that if it's necessary for the story.

Wide World of Comics

Animation
The Triplets of Belleville.

I’d love to be twisted,
utterly twisted,
twisted like a triplet from Belleville.
—from the “Belleville Rendez-Vous” song

This is one of my top favorite animated films of all time! It's just so GOOOOD! It's just so unique and unlike anything else I've ever come across. I love how there is hardly any dialogue throughout the whole film; the mostly wordless characters are then defined by their actions. Each character is stylized to fit them perfectly, whether it's the cyclist orphan who's all nose and thick long legs, the grandma who never stopped clumping along even with her clubfoot and wandering eye, or even the dog Bruno who skitters by on skinny legs barely visible under his huge bulky mass. They push the characters as far as they can to the point where they're borderline abstract. Like the gangsters who are basically rectangles with faces that snap together like Legos to make opposing silhouettes.

I think that the lack of dialogue that I spoke of above really seems to amp up the awareness of everything else that's going on in the film. Simple things are fun to watch and make me laugh like crazy, especially the huge fat people of Ur-City which seems to be a combination of Paris, Montreal, and New York City. On a side note, I think that the fat people themselves tell a lot about American culture (e.g. the Statue of Hamburger). Food stands for money, since only the richest in Belleville have money for food, and are then all obese. Just about everything in this film is loaded with a deeper meaning.

Film
Rene Laloux, Fantastic Planet

This film certainly had an interesting plot, and it's based on a novel that I've never read. It kind of reminds me of King-Kong in space in a way; how the movie opens up with a woman running and a giant hand keeps blocking her. Turns out it's a bunch of Draag children that accidentally killed the human woman they were toying with, and the small child she was holding is orphaned. I really like that turn, I wasn't expecting that at all.

The abstract, or surreal, images in the film are pretty neat-o. I don't usually like film in this style but the story was so odd that I kept on watching. In a way, it not only reminded me of King-Kong, but also James Cameron's Avatar; the giant blue aliens and the lush, beautiful and yet deadly planet.