Review of Memories

I'll try to be as spoiler-free as possible for this review. I discovered this anthology movie with a review I saw on YouTube a few months ago. I bought the DVD shortly after and watched it in its entirety. As the description above says, this movie has three short segments (well, two middle-length stories and a shorter one). I'll start with the last segment, "Cannon Fodder". Really grainy graphics (in a good way), excellent camera work, but weak stories and characters (although very good voice acting); this is my least favorite of the three segments. 6/10 Unto the second story, "Stink Bomb". As a satire on human's over-re-activeness,it presents very strong facial caricatures and behaviors from the characters, very detailed and fast-paced action shots, and some excellent voice acting. Also, you can't help yourself but to laugh nervously for the main character. 8/10

And finally, the first story, "Magnetic Rose". Based on a re-written script by Satoshi Kon, directed by Koji Morimoto and paired with astounding music by Yoko Kanno, this 45-minute story deserves its place in the Criterion collection. Gorgeous visuals (both in the background art and the character movement), top notch voice acting, tremendous music and suspenseful story; all the ingredients for a 10/10 score.

Overall, despite that the quality of the segments dwindles as the movie goes, this is an absolute must watch, both for those who wish to dig further in the anime history, and for those who want to get a snip-it of Japanese top-quality animation.