Grand

Rating: 10/10 (9 November 2009)

While I have not yet watched an awful lot of Animé, I can say that this is one of the greatest films I've ever seen. The animation is crisp and gorgeous, the style is excellent and with the right amount of motion to it, and design is impeccable, with beautiful, grotesque and amazing images presented for us to take in. Lighting and color palette are broad and well-chosen. An immense amount of imagination and creativity went into this, and you can feel it from start to finish. We are presented with a fascinating, strange world, an our trip to and around it is engaging. With a running time of just over two hours, this is the longest of its kind. However, it has spot-on pacing, never boring or overstimulating the audience members to the point where you take a break from your viewing, in spite of the odd, and once or twice even disgusting, things that this shows us. It is also open to interpretation. And in spite of that, it also tells a story so that anyone, of any age, can follow it. Not everyone will understand everything that's going on, but we can all enjoy it. I can only comment on the original actors, as I did not choose a dubbed version; their work is marvelous, and that goes for every performance. The dialog is well-written. Apart from some potentially scary and/or disturbing content, there is nothing offensive in this. The DVD comes with 18 minutes(!) worth of trailers for it, and, on the second disc, the whole movie in storyboard form, with a commentary track, subtitled in English, a well-done, informative and entertaining 47 minute making-of featurette made up of behind the scenes footage, concept art, clips and narration(in Japanese, subtitled). I recommend this to anyone who can let go of the expectation of realism in their fiction. 10/10