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As Good As It Gets

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This film I feel is another under the radar gem, it was really popular for it's time but as time went on it's became forgotten. This film is also a childhood relic of mine, it was one of the first films that actually got me into the Japanese anime genre, if you can believe that. When I saw this film it just blew me away from the animation style, music used, context, it wasn't anything I've ever seen before. Watching it now I still think the film holds up, especially in animation.It's also one of the only anime anthologies out there which are unfortunately really scarce, the only other one I can think of is "Memories" but that's a different story. This film to me is sort of "Fantasia" for the 90's which is cool, because like "Fantasia" it was basically anthology of animation shorts correlating with music pieces, and that's exactly what this film does. You could say this plays also similar to Issac Assmov's sci-fi anthologies since his stories always had to do with humans coexisting with robots or robots acting and becoming human.The animation I think is great, each of them have different styles that fit the context, I still think it looks really good despite how many years it's been. The music is great, I feel most of the scores used are memorable.There are many stories but I'll just talk about three that are my favorites.Starlight Angel: This is basically a fairy tale but in sci-fi form which is great because it's a combo of two genres I love. It's a typical story of the right guy saving a beautiful girl but it's really in the execution that makes it stand out. I really like the amusement park, it's practically Disneyland of the future. I like the character designs which are beautiful, even in there expressions of emotion which are just fantastic, despite not hearing what their saying we understand exactly what their dialog perfectly from their expressions; in a way it just goes to show you don't always need verbal dialog to deliver perfect dialog. The score is just beautiful, it's my favorite in the film because it has an adventurous and romantic quality to it.Deprive: This is another great one, it's also in a way another fairy tale if you want to think of it that way, once again right guy saving the woman he loves from evil. Though this one it's more of an shonan actioneer approach but it is fraking awesome. I really love the action sequences and the choreography is spot on, it's just awesome just seeing the protagonist knock the crap out of a lot of evil robots that are cool looking their all unique in design, let alone practically bigger than him like seeing him jump on a bunch of robots practically stomping on them like Gomba's from the video game "Super Mario Bros". In a way this story is sort of an anime version of pulp comic book hero "Magnus Robot Fighter" since the protagonist sort of is like Magnus, armed with super strength and martial arts to trash the robots, seeing this story makes me wonder why the hell an anime/animated series of that comic book franchise hasn't been made yet.A Tale of Two Robots: This one is my absolute favorite, it is just fraking hilarious. It's basically mecha anime but in the 18th century which is awesome . I really like the designs of each of the mecha are unique, my favorite one is the one from the Japaneze side which looks awesome, it's practically a giant walking Bogotá. I even like how they operate from the physics and technology they had access to in that century it feels right and makes this sort of a steam punk tale since that genre was always about old technology advanced further. I really like the fights which are fun, however it's really more both character factions that really drive the tale because both the characters that command the mecha are total nitwits. It's just hilarious how both are so determined to take out the other, showing how indifferent both are.Well that's all I have to say, Robot Carnival like any Carnival is a variety of fun.Rating: 4 stars

Animated anthology films are few and far between. Its a shame - few feature length films can offer so much wonder. Fantasia, Fantasia 2000, Neo-Tokyo, and Memories are must-watches for any fan of the art. Robot Carnival isn't well-known, but its one of my favorite films.Robot Carnival is special not only for the few restrictions enforced on the directors, but because it has a single restriction - all the shorts must be about robots. And each short provides a different perspective on the sci-fi trope. Each with a different art style, a different genre, and a different tone, not a single story repeated.Its a very intriguing film. You never know what's around the corner. Some of the shorts will be alright, others amazing. Its not as consistently good as other 9-star films, but its such a breath of fresh air. The discussions with friends afterwords make Robot Carnival a great party movie. The shorts are so different from one another, no two people will have the same opinion on the film.Robot Carnival was an early discovery of mine - I learned about it by watching a sci-fi channel trailer for Lensman, a VHS anime I bought for a dollar. To find something so beautiful and unique, yet so unknown...it has a permanent place in my heart. If you're a fan of animation, you need to see this.

There's something about voiceless or semi-voiceless films that just doesn't feel right. Charlie Chaplin was successful because his actions spoke more than he ever could have. Here, the animation doesn't really manage that. The result is awkward-moving over-acted characters. Robot Carnival is weird.This anthology is a collection of short animated films concerning various robot-related scenarios. Some are better than others, but overall there isn't a great deal to be said for any of them. It took me two attempts to get through the whole film, and if it wasn't for a pre-existing interest in concepts of the cyborg then I may not have at all. Stylisticly, on the plus side, some scenes and designs remind me of Battle Angel Alita, Wind of Amnesia, and even Naüsicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Not coincidentally, as Miyazaki's key animator Takashi Nakamura is on the direction team). Perhaps my dislike is a cultural product: the DVD never got an English release, though it was apparently shown on the Sci-Fi Channel several times. For this reason I had to put up with a terrible fansub version which managed to turn most of the very few spoken sentences into garbage - "sometimes I will be jealous strongly of her" and "I have never get mother love" are two random samples. Funnier still was the curious incidence of subtitling the English-speaking character in A Tale of Two Robots. "Next time, you will see my electric self-propelled artillery" becomes "Next time I'll come with automatic robot!".One story which did stand out was Cloud, directed by Mao Lamdo. Animated very simply with what looks like a pencil, there was a certain charm to the piece. Although much too long, there was an element of robot and human philosophy there which I couldn't help but appreciate. The robot child walking endlessly, unchanged, through major world events, catastrophes and conflicts, oblivious, head down and braced against the wind is powerful. Its later transformation into an alive, sensuous human being, suddenly aware of its surroundings and able to transform them, is a hopeful outlook for the cyborg man, if somewhat unrealistic.The comments made by the Madonna-lookalike android in Presence were also noteworthy. "I know myself very well... what is my purpose?" It seems that the android has exactly what we lack – a vision of itself and its surroundings that is completely objective.The rest of the segments have little merit other than the big names of some of the people involved in their conception. How is it that a gifted person such as Kōji Marimoto (Fly Peek!, Animatrix) can produce something as boring as Franken's Gears? And why would someone involved in mega-hit (though I'm not a fan) Mobile Suit Gundam (Hiroyuki Kitazume) produce shōjo trash Star Light Angel? Having said that, Katsuhiro Ōtomo's opening and closing scenes were well designed and animated, and somewhat interesting, too. These are the parts of the film that make best use of the decadent budget and unusually high animation quality (Presence is especially notable for the quality of animation, where Yasuomi Umetsu (Kite)'s style is clear and vivid).Lastly, for a film so ostensibly dependent on the soundtrack, it was curious to find most of the OST to consist of the most decade-limited music known to man – 1980s disco. The animation, too, had a very 80s anime feel. Having been made in 1987, I suppose this is excusable (the animation, not the music).All in all, not really worth it.

This remains one of the best Anime feature films I've ever seen, and, in a stroke of great luck, was also the first Anime feature film I ever saw. While a little (well, a lot) on the artsy side at times, Robot Carnival is a great example of the reckless imagination and superb craftsmanship that Japanese animation at its best is known for. Unfortunately, it's also an example of a kind of film that is becoming very rare in the anime world today. Robot Carnival mops the floor with the ever spreading hordes of Dating Game adaptations/Merchandizing tie-ins that are never the less dominating the industry. Robot Carnival ought to be one of the most well known Anime in the world, not the obscure relic of hardcore geeks that it seems in danger of becoming. If you see a copy of this, buy it on the spot and see what animated film making ought to be.