USHIRO NO SHOMEN DA ARE (=Look, it's back to front), Chohen Animation Movie, 90 mins.
This one is so obscure that I had to translate the title myself. The character designs look very like those of a Studio Ghibli production. Set before and during World War II, it shows Japanese domestic life through the eyes of a small girl, Kayoko. The title evidently derives from a childrens' circle game and song which is shown at the opening of the movie. (The song and game are similar to the one featured in DOOMED MEGALAPOLIS).
Initially charming in its portrayal of the children, the mood gradually darkens as the off-stage war gathers momentum and Japan suffers military reverses. Lavishly animated, gripping and full of historical and cultural interest, this is a great movie that bears some comparison with the Miyazaki movies and with TOMBSTONE OF THE FIREFLIES.

BE-BOP HIGH SCHOOL.
Inexplicably unknown as it has a lot that should make it popular with most anime fans, with its rock'n roll music and violence. All the characters are senior high school students. In an extremely well-directed opening sequence the two heroes, a pair of rock'n roll thugs with baggy trousers and greased back hair, are pacing down an alley past youths from a rival gang. With hardly a word spoken, violence erupts and as quickly ends. The story progresses; meetings with more or less scornful schoolgirls; a smaller boy gets beaten up; gangs threaten each other and fight. This is stylish tongue in cheek stuff and notably well designed even if one cannot understand what is going on. Adapted from the manga of the same name.

St MICHAEL'S ACADEMY (fan subtitled by Arctic Animation)
Not just another Japanese girls' school story in which things go a little too far; this quickly distinguishes itself with with a highly intelligent and articulate script. The school, a hotbed of sexually charged repression, purports to prepare girls for the Takarazuka stage company. This is one of the most daring pieces of anime I have seen, and not for the usual reasons so much as for the sheer surprise engendered by many scenes, and also for what it attacks. Japan is not a Christian country and the eye this turns on the Christian religion is not a sympathetic one. First time viewers may well watch much of the video in a state of this-can't-be-happening disbelief! It helps to be well read enough to appreciate what is being attacked here. I shall not reveal more, save that this one makes JESUS OF MONTREAL look like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

GENJI MONOGATARI (Asahi Video Library),107 mins
Respectful and fairly faithful, if abridged, adaptation of the Japanese classic novel by Murasaki Shibiki. The animation is rather static and this looks like a low budget production. In short, rather sleep-inducing, but at least it proves that some art anime videos like this get made. And this is one Japanese-language video for which the English text should not be hard to find! The video is now released in the USA (subtitled)

GENJI vol. 1
Not to be confused with the above! This is the first volume of an adaptation of a popular manga series; seemingly about a group of young people who have a parallel existence in the past. The opening scene has a squad of mediaeval warriors being routed by modern tanks, and there are other equally dynamic and intriguing scenes, but I hadn't much idea what was supposed to be going on.

KARULA MAU (fan subtitled).
A shojo horror anime that draws heavily on shinto magic, this has an excellent story and some dramatic action. The twin Oghi sisters are the current practicioners from a clan of exorcists. The opening subtitles offer several minutes of explanation before remarking wryly "And now for the quiz", but in fact this is an exciting and well-made anime of some cultural interest and I recommend it.

GOSHOGUN ETRANGER (fan subtitled)
GOSHOGUN - THE TIME ETRANGER (Manga Video, 80 mins, cert PG, £12.99)
The movie sequel to a long-forgotten Japanese video series which featured the Goshogun group, adventurers who travelled around the Galaxy. The movie is as strange as its title, and I'm rather surprised to find it turning up as a Manga Video release. Some forty years on, retired adventurer Remy Shimada, who refused all rewards, is a recluse, while her former co- adventurers have become wealthy or successful in various professions. While the police in a future city chase bank robbers, Remy, in a hurry to make a meeting she has set up with her former colleagues, interferes and forces the robbers off the hover-road. She then crashes her hovercar while swerving to avoid a bird and is critically injured.
Her former comrades gather at the hospital. In flashbacks we relive segments of her life, and in particular a time when they were trapped in a nameless city, peopled by religious fanatics of Arabian appearance, with their deaths foretold for a date a few days away. The images of a young, vigorous Remy, contrasted with the older, dying woman, are unbearably poignant. The city is, perhaps, a metaphor for Remy's struggle for life.
The fan subtitled version is one of my favourite pieces of anime. Even though much of the animation isn't very good, there are some scenes, such as the dark Arabic city, and the fight to reach the temple, that work well. A great story, very odd stuff, dramatic and ultimately very moving. Make up your own interpretation. The MV version gives the heroine an uncertain French accent but otherwise is okay. (****)

UTSONOMIKO (Kadokawa)
A fantasy anime with a magical mediaeval Japanese setting. This features a team of young Ninja types in light-coloured clothing, and there is a fair admixture of comedy. The principal characters appear to be indestructible despite being stabbed, magicked, thrown off cliffs etc. Yes, it seemed a bit juvenile to me, though it has its moments. It's not that bad, but I felt that for once the obscurity was deserved. The same company made WEATHERING CONTINENT, ARISLAN, AND SILENT MOBIUS which are all much superior.

I CAN HEAR THE SEA, ( fan subtitled by NEXUS).
This is included here because if made in any other country this book adaptation would have certainly been made as live action by an art movie director like Agnes Varda. It certainly has more in common with art movies, and should tell you more about the lives of young Japanese than those other effusions of the Japanese screen: popular anime, yakuza movies and SF monster movies.
The anime is from a story by Saeko Himuro. It soon distinguishes itself by some stylised directional touches as a low-key drama, with intensive use of flashback. Senior high school student Matsuo gets a phone call from classmate Morisaki who introduces him to a transfer student, Rikako Muto. Nothing much results from this meeting, but both youths become fascinated by the beautiful Muto.
Muto's personality is gradually revealed; she is a difficult girl, aloof and often rude. Muto, in contrast to other animated heroines, is stunningly like a real girl. She's changeable, deceitful and suffers from period pains. The action that develops as Muto's secret is revealed is riveting. This video is completely different in tone from most anime, and redefines one's ideas of what anime can be like. (In an ironic aside, the hero is briefly shown watching a lurid TV anime show.) A well-produced anime with realistic characters and a believable story. This one by rights should be in the video shops alongside the subtitled foreign art movies.

OMOHIDE POROPORO (aka ONLY YESTERDAY)
This also has a documentary-type quality and would have been made as live action in any country other than Japan. It's based on a manga series and apparently both manga and videos have been very popular. A bit like a Japanese *Heimat*.
It's an excellent movie and being apparently intended for older viewers is quite different from the familiar anime fare. Twenty-something unmarried office worker Taeko has a lifestyle crisis and returns to her country roots. (The Western viewer should bear in mind that being an OL (office-lady) is not a career so much as an interlude before marriage at around 28). There are lengthy flashbacks to her childhood.
This is another movie that shows a great deal of detail of Japanese domestic life including, as the fan script points out, teenage magazines and pop music tastes of some years ago. Both the videos and the manga series are very popular in Japan. The artistic high point of the movie is a scene of a family row that works perfectly without translation.
Another that deserves to be on the subtitled art movie shelves.

ANIMATED CLASSICS OF JAPANESE LITERATURE (subtitled).
This is a real oddity, a vast series of adaptations of Japanese classic short stories. It consists of three or more sub-series releases, each comprising a dozen or so tapes, each tape having either two or three stories. These were made by Nippon Animation, who also made the World Masterpiece Theater series of anime TV adaptations of famous children's novels, an equally prestige-before-profit enterprise.
However asides from its merits as literature, ACJL has also, from the samples I've seen, some interest because of the epoch of the stories, as they mostly depict a Japan which though already industrialised is not the same Japan we know today. For its merits as animation, see below.

ANIMATED CLASSICS OF JAPANESE LITERATURE (Central Park Media, 50 to 80 mins, unrated, subtitled, $29.95)
Presumably intended as a hook to arouse interest in Japanese classic short stories in Japanese students more accustomed to watching anime, this series is a real oddity. The stories, and the glimpses they afford of prewar Japanese life and attitudes, are interesting, and might induce some to seek out the original texts in translation, but the animation is dull and uninspired. Just why CPM are issuing one of the biggest subtitled animated series ever, and one of the least commercial, with only token publicity, is a mystery. My tapes were reduced to £12.95.