The movie that predicted Tokyo hosting the 2020 Olympics and the movie set in the days leading up to the 2020 Olympics. Seemed like a fitting way to bring in the year.
Akira (1988) - Rewatch on Blu-ray
Hey, it's
Akira and it just never gets old. For more of my thoughts on the film, see my thread
here.
Napping Princess (2017) - Rewatch on Blu-ray
It had been some time since I'd seen this one and I gotta say it's still a blast. This is such a downright
fun film that I honestly don't get what some folks are seeing when they badmouth it so much. Especially jarring is the claim that
Napping Princess is boring since perhaps the greatest weapon in the film's arsenal is sheer entertainment value, which is only bolstered by the stunning animation, solid storytelling, likable characters, excellent voice acting, and Yoko Shimomura's musical score. Interestingly enough considering that the film opens three days before the 2020 Olympics, and how much of the plot involves a motorcycle with some pretty special technology, is that Kenji Kamiyama who wrote and directed the film was a key animator on
Akira, a film well-known for predicting that Japan would host the 2020 Olympics―guess working on a film like
Akira must have had a pretty big impact on Kamiyama, huh? The second time around, it was also pretty fun picking up all the clues that lead to the surprise twist in the latter half. My thoughts on the dub haven't changed much, either. It doesn't surprise me that Michael Sinterniklaas and Stephanie Sheh, who have directed excellent English dubs for
Your Name,
A Silent Voice,
Mirai, and
Okko's Inn, also directed this dub since it is without a doubt up to par with what a great dub should be. I still think Brina Palencia's performance as Kokone Morikawa, who often dozes off, entering a dreamworld as a young princess named Ancien who is especially talented in technological magic, and also finds that these flights of fancy, based on a story her father told when she was a child, may hold some answers about the real world and her father's abduction, is some of her best work, perhaps only topped by her turn as Natsuki Shinohara in
Summer Wars―I still say she gets to do more, at least personality-wise, in either than she did as Rei Ayanami in the
Rebuild of Evangelion, though as I've mentioned before, it's simply how Rei was written as someone who doesn't show emotion much at all. Also, having seen
Summer Wars a few times fairly recently, it became pretty clear that Palencia actually uses the same voice she used for Natsuki, which is pretty cool since it fits this character perfectly. Chris Niosi is equally impressive as her childhood friend Morio, the genius who is on break from a Tokyo university and sets out with Kokone to solve the mystery. Doug Erholtz is rock-solid as Momotaro "Momo" Morikawa, Kokone's father who appears in the fairy tale he told Kokone as a pirate named Peach, and gets abducted by the villains for supposedly "stealing" technology. Lex Woutas is appropriately sinister and "Eeeevil!" as Ichiro Watanabe, who appears as Bewan in the dreamworld, who is the mastermind behind the scheme to abduct Momo and wants to steal Kokone's grandfather's company. Speaking of which, Paul St. Peter, who I must confess I thought was Gendo Ikari himself John Swasey the first time I saw the film, is also excellent as Isshin Shijima, Kokone's grandfather and Momo's father-in-law who is the CEO of Shijima Motors completely unawares of Watanabe's abominable plans, appearing in Momo's story as the king, making the most of the character's limited screen time. Everyone else also does solid work here and the dub script is completely natural. All in all, it was a whole lot of fun rewatching
Napping Princess, and doing so right after
Akira kicked off 2020 on a high note. Later, guys. Here's to surviving another year together on this forum.