Perchance To Dream

I am currently in some considerable physical pain, having just been out to watch a film. This is of course not a normal response to the cinematic medium, unless of course we're talking about micheal bay (thrice cursed be his name and all his descendants). I'm both pleased and relieved to state that my current discomfort derives not from the film itself, but from the rigours required to achieve it's viewing. Many would question this as well. After all, surely the logical course of action when going to see a film would be something along the lines of "go to cinema, watch movie". But this simplistic assesment betrays their appalling taste in film. Put simply, the chances of the local flea pit showing something worthwhile are so slim as to be laughable.

No, if we're going to be watching something we're going to want to watch something good. And that means getting up to bloody london. And that means gettting to the bloody train station. And since the weather was tolerable and I'm fat I decided to WALK down to the station. It's only about 3 and half miles according to google maps, and I can do it under the hour they reckon, so go me. Give me a gold medal and a hip replacement, somethings not working properly.

Of course, in order to even get that far first I have to actually convince myself to go out at all, which really isn't as easy it may sound to many. After all, I can have a really bad time being lonely and miserable at home, for a fraction of the cost. Why go to all that expense? So, as you can see I really do need to get out more. Anyway, sticking my metaphorical fingers up at both mind and body I set out to see King Of Thorn.

King Of Thorn is a manga I've had my eye for a while, it having somehow cropped up in my amazon reccomendations. It sounded interesting, but I hadn't yet got around to buying it in. So when I found out there was a showing of the anime my curiosity was natuarally piqued. For a start, what bloody anime? According to the programme it's only come out this year. This explains why it's not on amazon yet and thus why I had to trudge umpteen miles up to bloody london to see it.

Of course in addition to being interested in the manga and needing time out of the house there is also the fact that this has my type written all over it:

So really there was no excuse to miss this. Outside of my crippling mental problems. But fuck those guys.
The plot concerns a group of people who are put into suspended animation as a hideous plague known as the medusa virus is ravaging the world. If you wonder why they call it that then go look up a few things and catch up with the rest of the class later. After an unknown period of time the survivors awaken. Only everythings completely fucked and this hideous monsters. Good luck with that guys, off you go.

I'm not going to go into much more detail than that, as you can't really without spoiling stuff. The plot makes a kind of sense and manages to remain fairly consistant throughout. There are some interesting twists to the story, but nothing that isn't entirely unexpected. Everything is set up beforehand, which does make the prospect of the manga quite intriguing. After all, if the film is following the mangas plot quite closely then there must have been a fair amount of planning ahead from basically day one. Obviously I'm somewhat spoiled as to the major plot developments now, but I'm still interested in picking up the original to see if certain themes and characters get a bit more fleshed out.

The animation style is generally pretty good, with a few interesting choices in the use of cgi. My first impression being (honestly) "do those turbine REALLY need to be cg?". That they seem to use cgi on the monsters does make for an interesting look, emphasising as it does the unnatural aspect of the beasties. A little odd, but not overly offputting. The designs of the various monsters, characters and the like all seem pretty good, but of course the real test is how they compare to the original source material. Which is not something I'm able to do yet.

One of the things highlighted in the talk beforehand was that whilst the books and the film were succesful, they weren't exactly on the crazy popularity tier of some of the big name stuff. And as much as I hate to say it I don't think it will. It's a good, solid film certainly. But it's also more the sort of thing you'll be watching if you're already into anime. More a sort of B rank the A+ of the blockbuster stuff. Which frankly suits me down to the ground. We can forget about the hype and rabid fanbases and just appreciate the work on it's own merits. It's an engaging story with some fairly tight plotting and fun characters. It's fairly original both in the basic set up and some of the design elements, and although things may seem a bit muddled at the end it's at no point dissapointing.

Most certainly I enjoyed it, and I don't feel like it was a waste of time or money going through the effort to actually watch it. In fact the only dissapointing thing is just howdifficult it is getting to see it, seeing as how it was only playing for one night and probably won't be out on DVD for a long while yet.

Still, one watch out for when it finally does gain some degree of availability.