I know this is kind of weird, but I’d like to find more anime that is melancholy and introspective, or at least has such moments. I find that most anime is either hyper-spazzy, silly, action-packed, or some combination of the three.
I’m specifically looking for stuff like that second episode of FLCL (the “Firestarter” one), with the wonderful little moments of quiet introspection about growing up and about solitude, and also some of the quieter moments in a forgotten anime called “Mermaid’s Forest.”
Niea Under Seven
I suspect you’re just watching the wrong anime.
Strinka
February 24, 2006, 9:32pm
3
I’m not sure I know what you mean but maybe Full Metal Alchemist or Evangelion? Though, I suppose Evangelion is more insane than introspective. Full Metal Alchemist is good, though.
Try Serial Experiments Lain .
Does *The Grave of the Fireflies *count?
MsMitey
February 25, 2006, 1:25am
7
Thirded. I get a little teary-eyed just thinking about this one. I’m not much of an anime fan, but I liked it a lot.
Snuffle I’ve just got something in my eye, that’s all! Sniff
Noir . At least part of the time. Sometimes it’s got chicks with guns killing people, but sometimes it’s all moody and introspective.
The recent Zettai Shonen would qualify.
Haibane Renmei is very melancholy and pretty introspective.
I came in here just to suggest that. Influenced heavily by the excellent Murakami book… um… crap. I have it around here somewhere… ah yes. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
Taber:
Tokyo GodFathers, maybe?
I thought of that, but there’s an awful lot of like car chases and stuff, IMO. Great movie; I just mean for this thread.
Night on the Galactic Railroad is the very definition of ‘melancholy and introspective’.
It’s also got several scenes of beautiful surreality.
It’s also one of my favourite movies.
There’s an anime that evil captor ’s mentioned a couple of times that kinda fits the bill, in a twisted sort of way.
In a bad-to-mediocre hentai called “Fragile Hearts” there’s a scene that’s curiously touching. It’s about a wistful young android with a hot bod who’s designed as a sex droid. She goes on various assignments and is eventually captured by bad guys who turn her into a sexy female fighting robot.
The weird thing is, throughout this pretty much unthinking male sex fantasy, there are weird intimations of mortality. She walks down the street and sees a box of replacement android heads that look like hers. She walks out on a plaza after being gang-raped in a subway into a beautiful sunset and pauses to drink it in. Then, in the very last scene, the camera pans across a stack of discarded robot bodies, and we realize that the sex droid is in what is likely to be her final resting place.
A touching, almost poetic scene. Then the camera pans across the robot bodiies, we see her bent over a crate, being raped. One last use before she’s discarded … also strangely poetic. Then we see that her molestor is a gorilla. Not a guy in a gorilla suit, a gorilla. What the hell is a gorilla doing in a warehouse for discarded androids? It has not appeared in any previous scenes, neither has anything like it. It’s like they said, “Too touching and poetic with the warehouse for androids. Throw in a sex scene. Wait a minute, that could be touching and poetic, too. Make it a gorilla she’s having sex with.”
God, hentai are weird.
I’ve found one or two reviews of it online that seem to get the same impression, too. Like Frank Capra directing Caligula , or something.