100 Meters (2025)

I continue my incidental pattern since April 2025 of watching at least one animated movie per month. This one's my first anime since October, and it continues another incidental pattern: animes that are neither fantasy nor sci-fi. Considering how I used to think that all anime was too weird, I can't complain.

The most focal character herein is Togashi, at three points in his life: sixth grade, high school, and ten years after. In each chapter, he's an excellent sprinter, but his attitude toward the sport isn't stable. Sometimes he thinks it'll solve all his problems, sometimes he loses interest, and sometimes he falls to pieces over an inability to stay on top.

Perfect Blue (1997)

This was one of the last items on my Netflix queue before the disc service discontinued. Once I saw that it was replaying at a local theater, I leapt at the opportunity. In truth, I'd been putting it off before, because people warned me it was grittier than the cover made it look. But anime fans deem it a classic, and I had enjoyed director Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, and to a lesser extent Paprika.

In her early 20s, Mima (Junk Iwao) gets tired of being in a pop trio and takes up acting instead. Her agent, Tadokoro (Shinpachi Tsuji), nabs her a role on a mystery TV series, with increasing airtime. Some fans are displeased with her career shift, and hostile messages are followed by substantial violence against people involved. The prime suspect is a freaky stalker known as "Mr. Me-Mania" (Masaaki Ōkura), but he's not the only cause of trouble in Mima's life. Under stress, she starts to imagine her pop persona as a separate, impish being out to supplant if not kill her....

Blue Giant (2023)

This title is better known for a manga series. Indeed, the film adaptation doesn't get its own Wikipedia page; it rates merely a few paragraphs on the manga's page. Nonetheless, it enjoys high ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, so I got curious.

At 18, Dai (Yuki Yamada) moves in with long-time friend Shunji (Amane Okayama) in modern Tokyo, hoping to succeed as a largely self-taught saxophonist. He discovers Yukinori (Shotaro Mamiya), a same-age yet mature jazz pianist who started taking lessons at age four. They take to practicing together, and Shunji joins in as a complete tyro of a drummer. Despite Yukinori's misgivings, they perform publicly as a trio called JASS. (Hey, it's Japan, where many adults have never heard jazz.)

The Imaginary (2023)

While IF has gotten more attention if only via star power, I took more immediate interest in another animation about "imaginary" yet actually existent companions. This is only the third Studio Ponoc feature ever and the second I've seen, once again based on a book.

The protagonist is Rudger (Louie Rudge-Buchanan), the made-up friend of maybe seven-year-old Amanda (Evie Kiszel). He takes the form of a same-age boy, and they have vivid adventures together while half-acknowledging the unreality of it all. Nonetheless, they develop interpersonal conflicts, especially as Amanda starts to feel isolated in sticking with someone even her mother (Hayley Atwell) doesn't believe in. When a car accident puts Amanda in a coma, Rudger fears he'll vanish by being forgotten. Fortunately, a talking cat (Kal Penn) leads him to a thriving secret community of abandoned imaginary friends, feeding off the imagination found in a common library. But unlike the rest, Rudger isn't ready to leave his real friend forever if he can help it, even knowing of an extra danger waiting for him: Mr. Bunting (Jeremy Swift), a real man who senses and consumes the imaginary in order to stay preternaturally youthful.

Suzume (2022)

Ah, my first anime in about five months. Apart from that, all I knew going in was that it involved a young adult duo, a magic door, and an ominous-looking feline. That much looked promising to me.

The title character (Nichole Sakura), an orphaned modern high school girl, meets college man Souta (Josh Keaton), who asks where to find nearby ruins. Intrigued by his strange quest and handsome looks, she heads there after him and learns the hard way that he's dealing with dangerous supernatural forces. Specifically, he wants to ensure that an earth-shaking giant "worm" invisible to most people stays locked in the land of the dead, called "the Ever-After" in translation. Alas, Suzume unwittingly moves a "keystone," a statuette that turns into flesh-and-blood talking kitten Daijin (Lena Josephine Marano) and abandons its post, increasing the likelihood of doom on Japan. Souta tries to work alone but grudgingly admits that he'll need Suzume's help to lock secret doors in abandoned areas across Japan until the imprisonment is stabler. Suzume's guardian, Aunt Tamaki (Jennifer Sun Bell), becomes increasingly worried about the girl ditching school and running off with a strange boy. Souta's fair-weather friend Serizawa (Joe Zieja), unaware of his duty, wants to find him too.

The Boy and the Heron (2023)

I wanted to see this the moment I learned that it was the first feature directed by Hayao Miyazaki since he semi-retired a decade ago. I didn't bother to look up much else about it. The reputed semi-autobiographical nature led me to suspect another realistic story like The Wind Rises, but only the first act could pass for realistic.

In World War II, when Mahito is a preteen or early teen, his mother dies in a fire. Following Japanese tradition, his father marries her pregnant sister, Natsuko, and moves from Tokyo to her country home, where a bunch of seniors also live. Traumatized Mahito isn't keen on his new classmates or his new maternal figure, but he does take interest in a ruined building in the nearby woods. Moreover, a mysterious gray heron seeks his attention with increasingly abnormal behaviors, provoking curiosity and spite. When Natsuko disappears into the woods and no one can find her for hours, Mahito decides to follow the heron, fully expecting a demonic trap.

Weathering with You (2020)

Another surrealistic Japanese film already, but that's about where the similarity ends. I was not at all surprised that many of the same people, including director Makoto Shinkai, worked on Your Name. Taki even gets a cameo.

Sixteen-year-old Hodaka runs away to Tokyo, which is experiencing record rainfall. The irresponsible Mr. Suga eventually hires him to write articles on the occult. In the course of this work, Hodaka learns of "sunshine girls" who can change the weather via Shinto prayer, albeit over a pretty small area for a short time -- and then meets one such girl, Hina, about his age. Since she's desperate for a job herself, he helps her start a freelance sunshine service. Hodaka develops a strong crush on Hina, but two factors threaten to pull them apart: Rapidly increasing business from a 100% success rate draws the attention of authorities who don't approve of minors living alone, and lore has it that sunshine girls who exercise their powers enough are destined to fly off into the sky before their time.

Patema Inverted (2013)

Has it really been a year and a half since my last anime feature? I guess anime TV shows have tided me over. Well, I hope to see another one much sooner, because this one reminds me what I've been missing from TV.

Late in the 21st century, a team of scientists trying to tap energy from gravity (just roll with it) accidentally reverses gravity for a large number of people and objects. Some of the "inverts" manage to hold on, move underground, and establish a separate civilization there. Patema (Cassandra Lee Morris in the dub), teen daughter of the late invert chief, has spent her entire life underground. Bored of the cramped darkness, she visits a forbidden tunnel leading to the surface -- and almost falls into the sky. Fortunately, surface-dwelling teen Eiji (Michael Sinterniklaas) is there to catch her and slightly outweighs her once she drops excess baggage. He takes her to a shed, hoping to figure out how to get her home before less tolerant people find her.

Only Yesterday (1991)

Netflix confused me by stating the year of release as 2016. Turns out it was never dubbed in English or distributed in the West until the 25th anniversary. I find this strange, because the story isn't half as foreign to us as in many animes that reached the U.S. faster.

The setting alternates between the mid-'60s and early '80s as 27-year-old Taeko (Daisy Ridley) reminisces about her fifth-grade self (Allison Fernandez). She presently takes a "vacation" doing farmwork with a sister's in-laws, hard-pressed to say what about it reminds her of that particular year of her life. It wasn't especially good or bad, but the various episodes get her dwelling on what could have been -- and what may yet be. Farmhand Toshio (Dev Patel) starts to look promising....

Okko's Inn (2018)

With disc deliveries slowed again, I opted to stream a movie, and not wishing to spend a long time on selection, I went straight for the first anime on my list. Hey, it had been more than seven months. All I really knew going in was what the one-sentence Netflix summary said, plus the inviting art style.

Elementary schooler Okko (Seiran Kobayashi) is curiously uninjured from a car crash that kills her parents. She moves into the small-town inn run by her grandmother, Mineko (Yôko Asegami), where she soon discovers a rare effect of a near-death experience: She can see and hear spirits. The first one she meets is the ghost of a young boy, Uri-bô (Satsumi Matsuda), who hangs around the inn because he was Mineko's close friend in life. At Uri-bô's urging, Okko offers to become the assistant innkeeper, set to allow Mineko to retire eventually.

Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017)

This is the first and more popular of only two productions by Studio Ponoc, a breakaway from Studio Ghibli. The company was not yet trying to distinguish itself from its predecessor; MatWF presents a lot of the same trope patterns (e.g., goo monsters) and even a similar logo, giving thanks to Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. I suppose if it weren't for the likenesses, I might not have checked this movie out.

It's not clear what decade the story takes place in; the only TV we see operates by dials, but it is in an old woman's (Lynda Baron) rural British house. Judging from the literary source material, Mary Stewart's The Little Broomstick, it might be around 1971. In any event, the woman's tween great-niece, Mary (Ruby Barnhill), has just moved in because her parents are too busy to take care of her. Between summer boredom and concern for a missing local cat, Mary ignores a rule against entering the misty forest and discovers both an old broom and a fly-by-night, a rare flower that blooms once every seven years. Unwittingly breaking a bulb, she gains a day of magical powers and the half-sentient broom flies her to Endor College, a secret school of magic. Headmistress Madam Mumblechook (Kate Winslet) and chemistry professor Dr. Dee (Jim Broadbent) congratulate her on being a prodigy, but when she tells them how she got her powers, they lose their friendly air and become determined to acquire the rest of the fly-by-night at any cost for their unethical pet experiment.

A Whisker Away (2020)

Even with the theaters closed, it'd be a shame for me not to see a 2020 flick until the year was half over. This Netflix suggestion jumped out at me. Its reception varies from strong to middling depending on the site, but a brief plot summary told me to expect cuteness if nothing else.

Japanese high school girl Miyo, nicknamed "Muge" for reasons that don't translate well, has an unsubtle crush on classmate Hinode, but he tends to find her exuberance annoying. Unsatisfied with her situation, she is easily persuaded by a mysterious man she knows only as "the Mask Seller" (despite not charging money) to try out a magic mask that lets her turn into a cat and back at will. In feline form, Muge finds the unsuspecting Hinode much more affectionate toward her, but living a double life is never easy. The Mask Seller, who alternates forms, hopes that she will give up on her human life for good. You can bet he has an ulterior motive.

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2002)

Cowboy Bebop is easily my favorite action anime series, partly for its relatively normal premises. I still had some trepidation in approaching the movie, released a few years after the last episode (but taking place in between two late episodes, AIUI). After all, Serenity disappointed many Firefly fans. And was CB:TM made only for people who'd seen the entire show, which I haven't yet? The answer turns out to be no, and I'll fill in the rest of you shortly.

In 2071, Mars is so terraformed that you could hardly tell it from a near-future Earth. In a Martian metropolis, terrorists spread an illness unknown to doctors and seemingly impossible to trace. With no leads, the authorities post an enormous bounty on the perpetrators, calling the attention of a ragtag band of perpetually underfunded bounty hunters (some of them slangily called "Cowboys") aboard the spaceship Bebop. Yeah, they ought to care anyway, but they try not to.

Mirai (2018)

This 2018 Best Animated Feature nominee, the final one I've viewed, must have received the least attention of the five, at least in the West. After all, the director is Mamoru Hosoda, not Hayao Miyazaki, and the production company is Studio Chizu, not Studio Ghibli. But the fanciful poster drew me in.

Kun, age 4, initially welcomes newborn sister Mirai (whose name means "future") but becomes irritable as his parents pay less attention to him and as Mirai proves too limited in abilities to offer fun. When neither parent watches, however, Kun meets people he shouldn't be able to meet. It begins with the household dog turning into a man with a tail. Then Mirai appears as a 14-year-old, incongruously calling him "big brother." Other strange encounters and travels ensue from there, giving Kun new perspectives on his family and himself.

Your Name. (2016)

Gee, it had been four months since my last reviewed animation and nearly eight since my last reviewed anime. I opted to jump back in with a recent picture that enjoys immense popularity, especially in its homeland, where it broke box office records.

Mitsuha, a modern high school girl in the fictitious backwater town of Itomori, wishes she could be a handsome boy in Tokyo. She kinda gets her wish when she swaps bodies with high-schooler Taki, a switch repeated every time they sleep. Initially, both take it as a realistic dream; when they return to their old selves, they find compelling evidence to the contrary, including acquaintances' behavior around them. They take to writing in smartphone diaries and otherwise leaving messages for each other, hoping not to ruin their lives. This lasts only until the second act, after which Taki misses Mitsuha enough to try to track her down. But he was never prepared for a major complication....

The Boy and the Beast (2015)

Not long ago, Hayao Miyazaki was the only name in anime to mean anything to me. Then I became aware of his fellow directors and writers Isao Takahata and Satoshi Kon. Now I've finally seen enough of Mamoru Hosoda's work to keep an eye out for his style.

In a modern Japanese city by night, nine-year-old human runaway Ren happens to encounter Kumetatsu, a cloaked bear apparently vacationing from a secret magical realm of feudal-style anthropomorphic mammals. Kumetatsu will become the next lord of the Beast Kingdom if he can defeat crowd-favorite boar Iôzen, and the current lord has advised him to acquire an apprentice warrior in the meantime. He bucks the trend by inviting normally unwelcome Ren, who comes if only to avoid the human authorities. Ren doesn't immediately warm up to the idea of this new master — he won't even share his name with Kumetatsu, leading to the new dubbing "Kyuta" — but each sees untapped potential in the other.

Summer Wars (2009)

Thought I'd kick off the summer with a movie that has "summer" in the title. Alas, TV anime isn't the only anime that doesn't always live up to its titles. This flick has a war of sorts and could easily have taken place in another season.

Set in either the near future or an alternate present, it introduces us up front to an online network called OZ that's even more pervasive than Google. Protagonist Kenji is an OZ programmer in high school who deems math his only strong suit. When he gets an anonymous email full of numbers, he injudiciously accepts the implicit invitation to decode them. The sender turns out to be Love Machine, a rogue hacker bot that swipes his avatar and wreaks havoc on OZ. Indignation at this frame-up is by no means Kenji's biggest motivation to fight back: Japan really has put all its eggs in one basket, and Love Machine's actions can be deadly.

When Marnie Was There (2014)

I make a point to watch more than half the Academy Best Animated Feature nominees in any given year. I had seen two from 2015 already and may add Boy & the World, but Anomalisa sounds disturbing. Coming on the heels of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and The Wind Rises, WMWT marks the first time that Studio Ghibli got three back-to-back nominations, tho still no Oscar since Spirited Away.

The setting appears to be '60s Japan. Twelve-year-old Anna starts the movie as a self-loathing loner, stressed enough to compound her asthma. Her foster parents send her on a wellness trip to the country home of...let's call them her aunt and uncle. At first she's still depressed, but she takes interest in a reportedly abandoned mansion that somehow seems familiar -- and meets a same-age girl living there, eager to take a break from an oppressive home life. The two form a strong if secret bond in no time, but something seems off about Marnie's appearances and disappearances, as well as Anna's tendency to wake up a ways from where she thought she was. Anna starts to question Marnie's reality, and the plot gets a little more complicated....

Taro the Dragon Boy (1979)

I know of very few anime movies that predate Studio Ghibli's 1985 debut. This one may be the earliest I've seen, with the possible exception of the same year's Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro.

The setting is rural Japan before the Japanese discovered irrigation. Taro, around age nine, has a reputation for being lazy and gluttonous but good at sumo and popular with woodland critters, who can talk. An impressed tengu (Shinto spirit) grants him the strength of 100 men, activated only when he aims to help others. When Taro asks his grandmother about his long-gone mother, he learns that she had involuntarily turned into an aquatic dragon while pregnant, which explains the scales on part of his back. He makes it his quest to find her in whatever distant lake has become her home.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

Yeah, it's one of those foreign films that had to wait a year for the Academy to notice. I made a point to see it before the Oscars for the sake of knowing as many Best Animated Feature nominees as possible, tho I knew from the outset it wouldn't win. The last non-CG winner came out in 2005, and TTotPK sports a watercolor look with a dash of charcoal.

I had thought that director/writer Isao Takahata, being older than Hayao Miyazaki, had retired. He has made few movies in the last 15 years, none of them well known in my circles. His works tend to be more quintessentially Japanese than Miyazaki's, as evidenced by Disney's embarrassing attempt to redub Pom Poko for an American audience. But I'll give him credit for variety: The tragedy Grave of the Fireflies and comic-in-motion My Neighbors the Yamadas could hardly have differed more. TTotPK, based on a Japanese folktale, makes a worthy addition to his legacy.