Anime Column] 100 Anime to Watch by Keyword! 100 Anime to Watch vol.1 "Girls und Panzer the Movie" etc.

Drinking parties among anime fans tend to be a game of association. Whenever someone says, "XXX has XXX scene," someone else replies, "Speaking of XXX scene, don't forget XXX. Anime and animation are connected by invisible threads like this. Let's follow the "anime to watch" using keywords as clues.

Many people must have been surprised to see the blockbuster hit "Girls und Panzer the Movie. In fact, more than half of the approximately two-hour screening time is spent on the battle of tanks. It would be more accurate to call it "Girls und Panzer und Panzer" in terms of composition.

To explain again, "Girls und Panzer" is an anime in which the Oarai girls' team fights hard in a world where there is a fictional martial art called "Tank Do" (which is practiced only by women). The tanks that appear in the anime are mainly those that were active in World War II. The tanks are coated with a special carbon coating that allows them to withstand even the firing of live bullets.

In the movie version, there are two major match scenes: the first is the eviction match that begins at the beginning of the movie. The first is an eviction match that begins at the beginning of the film, where the actual scenery of the town of Oarai is utilized. The battle begins on a golf course and moves to a town lined with stores, then to an outlet mall, and finally to a sandy beach.

The monster movie and robot animation genres have been produced and consumed as a kind of war movie. Girls und Panzer the Movie," in which real buildings in Oarai are destroyed in the name of "sports," can be said to be a "war movie with one turn" that was created via the monster movie and robot anime genres.

The other fight scene is the climax, which begins in the hills and ends in an old amusement park. The first half of this scene is a typical "war" setting, but the amusement park in the second half is a tricky stage that would only be possible in a "chariot race. Bean tanks run on the rails of a roller coaster and are chased through a maze of planted trees. This climax lasts very plentifully.

One would think that such long battle scenes would become dull, but this is not the case because of the large number of characters, whose personalities and changes are impressively depicted in short dots. Incidentally, the characters here include not only the characters but also a group of tanks with rich personalities. This work has a simple storyline with a variety of characters (humans and tanks) as its branches and leaves. The simple storyline does not allow the fight scenes to delay the drama, but rather allows the viewer to concentrate on and enjoy the fight scenes, which are filled with a variety of ideas.

The simplicity of the story is an important factor in enjoying the fight scenes.' The movie "Farewell Space Battleship Yamato: Warriors of Love," released in 1978, is just such a simple movie with a lot of battle scenes.

The film is a sequel to the hit "Space Battleship Yamato. The story is about Yamato's single-handedly rising to the challenge of a space crisis brought on by a new enemy, the White Comet Empire.

While the previous film was more of a nautical (maritime) story set in space, this one is more of a "war story" in the style of science fiction. Although the total running time is 151 minutes, the drama is concentrated on the time leading up to Yamato's departure (the conflict of "I want to answer the call for help from space, but that would be a violation of orders (treason)") and the climax (the conflict of what to do when there are no more weapons to fight with). Most of the remaining time is spent fighting the White Comet Empire. The climactic battle alone takes place in three stages: the defeat of the White Comet, the appearance of the Urban Empire (a giant city converted from an asteroid), and the appearance of a super giant battleship. This is one of the longest episodes in the history of Japanese animation.


On the other hand, in just over 100 minutes (almost 50 minutes shorter than "Saraba"!) ), "Strangea: Muhou no Kaitan" ( 2007) squeezed both battles and drama into just over 100 minutes. Set in the Warring States period, the film depicts the battle between a boy named Zitaro, who is being chased by a Ming martial arts group, and a mysterious man named Nameless, who is assigned to protect him. Although the film is more focused on the conflict than "Galpin" and "Saraba," it is not complicated at all, as it is an orthodox film based on the lineage of films such as "Shane" and "Gloria. The climax between Raro, a man who seeks to be the strongest, and Nameless is a hand-drawn fight that makes the most of the differences in height that are only possible in animation, and the hand-drawn sensuality and the plausibility coexist in perfect balance. As the nameless man says, "I feel more alive when there is pain.

Lastly, if you are talking about "hand-drawn battle scenes of the highest quality," you cannot miss the OVA "Macross Plus" from 1994. The air battle scenes between test pilots Isamu and Gardo are unprecedented. Countless missiles and the behavior of the variable fighter dodging them. The spectacle of observation and imagination is overwhelming. Whether hand-drawn or 3DCG, the battle scenes in "Macross Plus" remind us that observation and imagination are the two wheels of "expression.

(Text by Ryota Fujitsu)