Review of Memories

Watching “Memories” in 2024, it's a unique relic one can instantly ascribe to the mid 90's, even without knowing its release year beforehand. For one, it's a compilation film, which were last popular, whether animated or live-action, in the mid 90's. (“Four Rooms” also came out in 1995, amusingly enough) It also features distinct animation styles which I've always loved, but have sadly fallen out of use. And not just an updated version of Katsuhiro Otomo's prominent noses and realistic faces we all know from 1988's “Akira”. Let's examine each of the three segments separately and then discuss how they coalesce together. 1. Magnetic Rose Whenone thinks of the best 90's anime, Magnetic Rose deserves a mention.

A space freighter receives a distress call and two crew members are sent to investigate. They come upon a gorgeous mansion and see visions of a long-dead opera star.

This was the first significant contribution by Satoshi Kon to the anime genre, who would go on to be one of its greatest geniuses with the movies “Perfect Blue”, “Millennium Actress”, “Tokyo Godfathers”, and “Paprika”. He wrote the script, a fine example of his ability to blend darkness and tragedy with incredible beauty and pure, unbridled emotion.

To talk too much about the short would ruin its surprise, but it clings to the “memories” theme more intensely than the next two segments do. The bitter memories of the opera singer Eva Friedel haunt the mansion and all those who come in contact with it. Crew member Heintz is haunted by memories of a family tragedy which the mansion tortures him with. As with Kon's later work, the symbolism and beauty mix together magically throughout, with a picturesque ending.

My wife complained that much of the segment was predictable, having played survival horror games like “Dead Space” and watched “Event Horizon”. This is fair, but one should note that “Memories” preceded most of those. I'm not claiming it was the first such story; Stanislaw Lem's “Solaris” was published in 1961, featuring a ghostly space station where the protagonist is tormented by visions of his lost lover. However, the subject was much fresher in 1995.

Overall, this is a wonderfully executed, beautiful example of 90's anime.

2. Stink Bomb

Sick office worker Nobuo gets a shot and then unwittingly eats an experimental capsule at his work, the combination turning him into an overwhelming, very stinky bioweapon threatening all of Japan.

The first act is a neat look at 90's Japanese office culture, much humbled from its 80's economic golden age, after crashes in 1990 and then 1992. Perhaps that was an inspiration for the dark comedy, displaying how workplace incompetence, including working through illness, can cause an entire company to perish. In this case literally so.

After that we get a bunch of scenes of Nobuo, utterly oblivious to the death and destruction he is causing, driving all across Japan as the military repeatedly tries and fails to kill him. It's modestly funny to begin with but gets less comical with each iteration. By the end, one can't help wondering why the hell all the bullets and bombs are magically missing and leaving him unscathed, like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. That might work if this was treated as a pure farce, but we're also subjected to serious discussions between high-ranking military and political leaders, which clashes discordantly with the slapstick.

The ending is supposed to be a surprise, but is fairly predictable, while also being impossible and nonsensical. Despite that negative appraisal, there was no other clear way to end this black comedy.

Overall, it's okay, but a far cry from Magnetic Rose, and the most forgettable of the three shorts.

3. Cannon Fodder

Utilizing a unique visual style rarely found in anime, we get a gritty, dirty tale of some European hellhole which has devoted all its resources and elite human capital to building, maintaining, and firing cannons at an unseen enemy. The characters are ugly, deformed, and dirty, the architecture is brutalist, and the living quarters shabby and cramped. It does a fine job of depicting the terror and risk of firing the behemoth cannons.

One can easily guess where the cannonballs are actually going to, and the segment depicts this for just a few moments, well before the conclusion.

The ending itself lacks resolution, as the main character, a young boy, simply goes to sleep. It's a memorable visual exercise conveying its setting exceptionally well, with a few neat scenes, but ultimately feels pointless. What did we learn here? That militaristic governments are bad, through an especially silly caricature of one? This desperately needed something more. At least a punchline.

Magnetic Rose is by far the best and most significant of the trio, and choosing to open with it was likely a mistake. Frankly, Memories would have had a far stronger ending, and perhaps a larger emotional impact had it opened with the simple, short Cannon Fodder, kept Stink Bomb as the comic interlude, and ended with the majestic, tragic science fiction tale.

All that said, Memories is slightly more than the sum of its parts. The segments are all different enough in tone, style, and even the animation to engage the viewer when one ends and the next begins.

Overall, one excellent segment and two solid, if flawed ones make for a very good anthology.

74/100