Memorîzu
Tags: comedy, psychedelic, satire, romantic, entertaining, sci-fi

Plot synopsis:
=== Magnetic Rose ===
The Corona, a deep space salvage freighter, is out on a mission when it encounters a distress signal and responds to it. They come upon a spaceship graveyard orbiting a giant space station. The crew's two engineers, Heintz and Miguel, enter it to get a closer look.
Once inside, they discover an opulent European interior and several furnished rooms (in varying states of decay), but find no signs of life. They discover that the station belongs to a once famous opera diva named Eva Friedel who disappeared after the murder of her fiancé, Carlo Rambaldi, a fellow singer. Continuing the search for the source of the signal, the engineers split up, with each experiencing paranormal encounters, including strange noises and visions of Eva. Miguel enters the dilapidated underbelly of the station, and in a cavernous chamber he finds a broken piano playing the distress signal. He begins to hallucinate and Eva suddenly runs up to kiss him.
Heintz finds a theater stage and sees Eva, who stabs him when he approaches. Suddenly paralyzed, Heintz relives a memory of his family, with his wife and daughter Emily. The illusion disappears when Eva takes his wife's form and tells him that he "will never leave". Heintz rushes to save Miguel, only to find that he had been seduced by Eva into thinking he is Carlo. Eva reveals to Heintz that she murdered the real Carlo for refusing to marry her and has forced others to look like him. She makes Heintz relive his daughter's death and nearly convinces him to join her. He resists and shoots the massive computer embedded in the ceiling causing the AI hologram of Eva to malfunction.
The Corona has been struggling against a powerful magnetic field coming from the station, pulling the ship towards it. In desperation, they fire a powerful energy cannon, gouging the structure deep enough to reach the cavern. Heintz is ejected into space (along with Eva's past victims), as Eva hauntingly sings to a conjured audience. The Corona is crushed and becomes part of the rose-like shape around the station. The episode ends with the whereabouts of real (and deceased) Eva being shown, and a representation of Eva talking romantically with Miguel as the two now exist only in Eva's lingering memories. Heintz is last seen drifting in space, still alive.
=== Stink Bomb ===
Stink Bomb is about a lab technician, Nobuo Tanaka, battling the flu, and partly based on the Gloria Ramirez incident. He mistakes some experimental pills for cold pills and swallows one. The pills are part of a biological weapon program, reacting to the flu shot already in his body. Tanaka soon develops a deadly body odor and becomes a walking weapon of mass destruction. While taking a nap, the odor he emits kills everyone in the Lab. Horrified, he reports the incident to headquarters, as they instruct him to deliver the experimental drug to Tokyo. Meanwhile, the odor he emits grows stronger to where it affects several miles of the surrounding area, killing every living thing that smells his odor, except flowers and plants. The Odor is so potent that Gas masks, and NBC Suits offer no protection against its effects. His odor kills everything in the Yamanashi Prefecture, including all 200,000 inhabitants of Kōfu city. Nobuo continues on to Tokyo unaware of the death his smell is causing, but the rest of the country is in a complete panic. The head of the research company and the Japanese military deduce that Tanaka is causing the poisonous gas and order him to be killed. The Japanese Military tries in vain to stop Nobuo, causing immense collateral damage to the Japanese countryside, but to no avail, as the chemicals on Nobuo smell cause interference on the targeting systems of its heat-seeking missiles.
The U.S. military, who have been observing the situation to that point, utilizes Japanese policy to take over the operation, and calls in a NASA unit with space suits to try and capture Nobuo alive. Unaware of this operation, the Japanese army collapses part of the bridge to prevent Nobuo from escaping, trapping him in a tunnel. They turn on wind generators loaded with liquid nitrogen in an attempt to freeze him. Tanaka becomes scared, disabling the machines while leaving the three astronauts unscathed. The soldiers force Tanaka into an exosuit and bring him back to military headquarters in Tokyo. Tanaka makes his way through the headquarters building, unaware that he is the source of the biological contamination. He then opens his exosuit, killing everyone.
=== Cannon Fodder ===
In a walled city perpetually at war, everyone's livelihood depends upon maintaining and firing the enormous cannons that make up most of the city. Nearly every building in the city is equipped with a cannon of varying size, able to fire huge artillery shells over the city walls. The story is centered on a young boy and his father, who works as a lowly cannon-loader.
The city is surrounded by clouds of smoke and dust provoked by the shots fired by the cannons. Despite news of successful bombardment of the "enemy moving city" by the local media, there is not any visual confirmation that it is true, or even if there is an enemy at all.
In the end the boy comes home from school and hears a television news reporter talking about the near-destruction of the enemy city. The boy hops into his bed, saying that someday he wants to be the exalted officer who fires the cannons, and not be a simple worker like his father. As he sleeps, an air raid siren sounds and a blue light sweeps across the window.

Review: Now that finally I own the DVD, I can say that it's the same as I remembered: magnificent.The "Magnetic Rose" segment feels at times like an homage to Kubrick's "2001 : Space Odissey", and now I could say it's a straight antecedent of the sci-fi tendency about the human mind in a simulated space which we have seen in "Dark City", "Matrix", etc.
The opera music plays a most important role, since it's the soundtrack what gives depth to the happenings here told."Stink Bomb" is funny as hell, taking the typical idiot hero in the Nintendo kind of plot (thhink Koji in Mazzinger, or Seya in Knigths of the Zodiac) as for what he should be (an idiot, every day man with the flu) , the story revolves around on the accidental creation of a human stinking bomb who treat hens the whole island of Japan.
Real funny in a way most kid's animes aren't.Finally, "Cannon Fodder" is the segment which I feel is the true masterpiece in this little anthology.
The music accentuates this strange feeling (very much like in Aeon Flux), and the unusual rendering style makes this a little strange jewel, not only from anime, but from all styles of animation.As I said before, most movie and anime fans don't seem to know, or don't have any memories about this surreal collection of animated storied.
Some might find these stories slow, but I think if you have any real appreciation of anime, you will find this to be an interesting piece of work.
Koji Morimoto's "Magnetic Rose", Tensai Okamura's "Stink Bomb", and Katsuhiro Otomo's "Cannon Fodder".
These movies all offer up something different, and wonderful, while still working there way along a nice line of thought..
This film is one part science-fiction thriller, one part bioterrorism comedy (THERE'S a category I've never put a film in!) and one part single-shot (99% of it, anyway) borderline-documentary.Disney couldn't make a film this engrossing if the fate of mankind depended on it.Those who have what I call the "It's an Anime" stigma should shake it off for "Memories".
Amazing anime trilogy from AKIRA's Katsuhiro Otomo, who presents three unrelated sci fi stories directed by different directors (he did the last one, writers/first-time directors Tensai Okamura and Koji Morimoto did the other two).
Morimoto's 40-min "Magnetic Rose" is stunningly animated, the most amazing of the two, telling of a space ship's investigation of a distress signal discovering a magnificent world created by a woman's memories  the music takes advantage of the operatic aria, Madame Butterfly, arranged by Yoko Kanno, who also supplies an excellent original score.
"Stink Bomb," the middle segment, is clever and funny and fast-paced; Otomo's anti-war statement in "Cannon Fodder" closes out the film with a subtle bit of thought-provocation about a city whose entire purpose is the firing of cannons at an unknown enemy..
This collection of short movies(all more than 20 minutes though) is a fun, action-packed and imaginative reminder why anime is among the best genres, and NOT restricted to kids(or in the case of these shorts, not really for kids at all).The last short of the three is called Cannon Fodder.
It's quirky and good but not great.The second short is called Stink Bomb, which is a crazy, fast-paced disaster/action story with a healthy dose of black humour.
The whole thing is funny and bizarre, and easily a classic.The first of the three shorts, which in my opinion should have been saved to last, is Magnetic Rose.
This is more like Otomo's Akira stuff; epic but with great characters.
All set to a classic opera score, it is chilling and eerie and grand-scale in a way Hollywood never seems to get right.If you like to watch the occasional anime, this is a very good choice.
It's a masterpiece.On 23 December 1995, Otomo Katsuhiro, the creator of Akira, released Memories to Japan's general viewing public.
"Magnetic Rose" is the first and longest of the three, followed by "Stink Bomb" and "Cannon Fodder".The animation of each episode differs, depending on how one views it.
While all three episodes are very well done, the style of "Cannon Fodder" is vastly different from "Magnetic Rose" and "Stink Bomb".
"Cannon Fodder" uses more computer effects than the other two, integrating them into the perspective of the scenes (like the Sharon Apple concert in Macross Plus), rather than just using them for a computer display.
While there, the pair encounter strangely real and seductive illusions which make one wonder what exactly is going on."Magnetic Rose" - the first part of Memories, an artistic masterpiece by Katsuhiro Otomo - is one of the best animes we've ever seen.
Katsuhiro Otomo's "Memories" combines the vision of Otomo's usual "God's revenge for the human race believing too much in science" with two first-time, although far from inexperienced directors.
The first of the three films, "Magnetic Rose" is by far the least Otomo-esquire of the three pieces, although based on one of his short mangas.
The second piece, "Stink Bomb" shows, if possible, a humorous side to biological warfare, as an unsuspecting pharmaceutical tech accidentally ingests a biological weapon and becomes a walking disaster.
The final film, actually directed by Otomo, called "Cannon Fodder" was by far my favorite, and the most disturbing of the three films.
The animation is unlike anything I've ever seen from Otomo, and full of sweeping single-cut shots that give you chills.
Overall, I highly recommend this movie collection for any anime fan.
The film is divided into three segments, Magnetic Rose/Stink Bomb/Cannon Fodder.
The most impressive segment is Cannon Fodder, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, to my knowledge its the first animated feature done in One-Shot (Meaning it never cuts, the camera just keeps moving around from scene to scene).
Its an amazing film, with awesome music, storytelling, and animation.
THis was one of the best animated movies that I've seen in along time .
I'm not a big fan of anime ,but I appreciate originality and "Memories " isn't like the Japanese animation that you see on television .Katsuhiro Otomo , the director of "Akira " directs with other two animators this collection of shorts .The first "Magnetic Rose " Takes place in the future , it's my favorite .The animation it's splendid ,full of details and a subtle use of CGI .The opera music was very effective to support the dramatic story .The second "Stink Bomb " ,takes place in the modern Japan ,and works very well like a dark comedy .
The animation it's very good ,just like the first .The third ,"Cannon Fodder " it's the most original ( and the most strange ) first of all ,the animation doesn't look like it were anime ,but it had a stylish and interesting appearance .The story follows the every day life of a family that lives in a society were every activity it's connected with the war .
While watching Memories I went to check IMDb.com for some further background information on the short's directors.
I expected them to all be intertwined, and in a way they are, only in substance if not in plot or characters as I had imagined.Anyway, all I can see is this film is a great watch in that it engages the viewer and forces him/her to think, the plots engage you in such a way that makes the overall experience rewarding to say the least.I am only commenting due to the fact that the current user reviewer rates it as forgettable.
People do die however in 2 of the cartoons, and the topics treatment is aimed for critical judgment.The 3 stories are shorts with a simple original idea.
The length of the stories is appropriate to the idea exposed and its treatment.Magnetic Rose: dwelling on lost times is unhealthy Stink Bomb: biological warfare can backfire Cannon Fodder: brainwashing done by the government.
My personal favourite story was Magnetic Rose because of its look into paranoia and the mind.
Three beautifully animated stories.
Like most anime, they all start with promise, drawing you in with beautiful visuals and a story that might just reveal something interesting.
This three piece omnibus benefits from superior art and idea, but may not appeal to those who like their anime psycho sexual and bloody.
Magnetic Rose is an effective 'Bermuda Triangle' tale; and Stink Bomb neatly covers environmental disaster with a slightly comic tone, but Canon Fodder is the piece that, for me, looks and feels like something different.
There are strong notes of Gilliam-esque styling and it left me feeling quite happy to watch another half hour exploring the grim, dystopian lives of the central characters - it feels like the first chapter, or perhaps prologue, of a feature length story of one cog battling against the authoritarian machine.
And I have to say it's an amazing flick done by 3 masterminds of Anime, including Otomo(who later directed Steamboy).All 3 episodes of this movie are both unique and well thought up.Magnetic Rose: The Date: October 12, 2092 A.D., the scrap collection ship, Corona has recently destroyed an old satellite deep in space.
But soon discover a world created by the memories of an Opera Diva.Stink Bomb: Nobuo Tanaka, a young chemist has been suffering from a series of colds.
For instance, the first part, which was the highest quality one in terms of animation, looks good but the story has been told a thousand times before, though it has some interesting twists.
The other two films are shorter and contain less plot and characterization.Not that this is a bad film, quite to the contrary, I am very rigorous in my ratings: 6/10 is for a very good film, 7/10 is for an excellent film, 8/10 is for a great film, 9/10 is for a masterpiece and 10/10, well, that's reserved for the REAL STUFF.I am still searching for a non-Ghibli anime films that can even approach the level of quality achieved by Miyazaki and Co., but it appears that they are simply on another level of quality..
The three pieces have a great artwork and a very fluid movement of characters and their surroundings.The first story is very dramatical and has a lot of suspense.
The third one has a very unique design of characters and artwork, has message to the viewer.Depending on which type of movie you like may vary which story is the best for you but all of them are great piece of artwork..
Memories is an anthology film consisting of three segments.
But they're all pretty good, sporting fabulous animation and original ideas.I don't like to go into detail over individual segments, because I think people should go in as blind as possible.
The biggest problem with the movie is that it descends in quality: "Magnetic Rose" is amazing, while "Cannon Fodder" leaves you wanting for more.
"Stink Bomb" deserves its place in the middle as comedic relief.Whenever funny, intriguing, or suspenseful, Memories does a general good job.
Great Animation Movie to watch!!!.
Japanese animation has been fantastic and its incredibly superb story theme.
i would sincerely suggest everyone to watch this great animation movie.
thanks to Japanese technology of animation that such nice movies exist!!
Just wondering on the possibility of anyone knowing if there is (or will be) a DVD version of this superlative Anime movie.
Part 1: Magnetic Rose Unsuspecting space freighter crew responds to a mysterious SOS signal and gets ensnared by the bizzare past of a galactic opera star.
Has touches of Kubrick's 2001 in the "museum"-like settings.Part 2: Stink Bomb Most accessable segment of the lot.
A good anthology of Anime shorts, different in their own way (MILD SPOILERS).
I rented this movie one day and this anthology was very good.
If you want to see for yourself, you should not read these summaries: Magnetic Rose- This is the most thought-provoking short.
Chaos also ensues, and the ending is funny.Cannon Fodder- This is the satire short.
It is directed by Katsuhiro Otomo (the writer of the stories in the movie and the director of Akira and Steamboy).
It is about a day in the life of a family that lives in an eerie country where cannons are fired at an unknown enemy.
Usually, people might say this is the worst of the shorts, but if you go beyond the surface, you'll discover the message: War is not only bad, but it is a stupid/simple way for people to keep their minds off of reality by relying on imaginations of the enemy when they do not know who the enemy is, and those that question that might wind up dead.I love these shorts, but the only problem (though small) is that all of these shorts are from the imagination of one person.
I'd like to see completely different people writing stories when it comes to anthologies.
Nevertheless, these shorts are great and they are different ("Rose" is thought-provoking, "Stink Bomb" is darkly comic, and "Cannon" makes fun of reality).
Kanojo no omoide 4/10 - Some great music, the rest is only okay"Kanojo no omoide" is a Japanese science fiction animated movie from 20 years ago.
The director here is Kôji Morimoto, who is probably a name to animation fans these days as he also worked on a segment of the Animatrix movie.
However, I must say that even if I liked the animation in here, I cannot say that i found the story too interesting.
Not recommended.Taiho no Machi 4/10 - Never tries to make a statement on (anti-)war, but the storytelling perspective is fairly mediocre"Taiho no Machi" or "Cannon Fodder" is a Japanese animated short film from 1995, so this one is also already over 20 years old.
At slightly over 20 minutes, it is the shortest by far from the trilogy of films included on Memorîzu and Katsuhiro Ôtomo is not just the writer as usual this time, but also the director.
Still the exact execution here did not seem too memorable to me and the animation style wasn't really to m,y liking either I must admit, but that's just personal preference and not really because it looks older than mid-1990s.
The exact plot and attention to detail, especially about the story rather than the animation could have been a bit better too and as a consequence I found most characters really forgettable, even the key players.
Not recommended.Saishu Heiki 6/10 - What a difference the wrong medication makes"Saishu Heiki" or "Stink Bomb" is a Japanese anime short film from 1995 that runs for 40 minutes and was written by Katsuhiro Ôtomo and directed by Tensai Okamura, both pretty prolific in their fields.
This film is easily over 20 years old already now and the story is about a young man who takes the wrong pills and eventually ends up as an environmental and military catastrophe.
Maybe my preference for this one is that I also liked the animation style here and that most of the characters were interesting enough by just being there and without really in-depth exploration and background elaboration.
The third vignette, Cannon Fodder, is a futuristic steampunk anime about a polluted city in a massive line of defenses drawn as a re-imagined Maginot Line, a line of fortified defenses named after the French Minister of War André Maginot in the 1930s.
The first segment of this "trilogy," Magnetic Rose, is my favorite of the three.
When you see the first segment of Memories, it should be quite clear that Otomo must have been very heavily inspired by Solaris when he created the original manga as well as this animated version.The second segment, Stink Bomb, is an amusing black comedy piece.
Typical of animated shorts of course, but for some reason I was expecting more from it.
It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn I saw several visual similarities between the anime segment and the RPG.
It's also got one of anime's foremost geniuses behind it - Katsuhiro Otomo.Memories begins with the haunting Magnetic Rose, which has three travelers exploring a mysterious spaceship haunted a woman's memories.
That is the fact that Otomo has no shame in doing satire in a grand tradition that questions such things as how a government would foul up in trying to avert a potential disaster and then how to cover it up and the universal topic of war.The first of the satiric pieces is Stink Bomb.
Again, the soundtrack is humorous, upbeat, and utilizes jazz to evoke a light tone.This segues into the Otomo directed "Cannon Fodder," a more direct piece of satire which obviously targets the world's obsession with war and its use of force to solve a lot of problems.
This exemplifies the wonderful ability of Otomo to not only be a great master in animation, but a relevant storyteller as well..
I didn't even both watching the Cannon Fodder because the other two were just too horrible.
Three Storys, Three Short Film Masterpieces....
Really this movie is far from being just three pretentious short films just putted together; is a masterpiece that reveal certain aspects of human behavior, that explores sadness, fear, loneliness, egoism, hope, alienation, and the sacrifice of truth for happiness.Two of the short films (the first and the third one) are, personally, in my top 10 of short films of every kind; that's the level of the films.The First One shows the reactions of different people before an opportunity that brings you happiness, but in exchange you must give up to the truth, to believe blindly in this new reality that is a complete fake.
Only that, in difference with the common anti imperial movies this is a comedy that makes you laugh in many parts.The Third and final one introduces us to a world that is in continue state of emergency and that lives for attacking a enemy that, in the whole film, you and them (the characters) can't see; and an enemy that, with certain situations, the creator suggest us that maybe it doesn't exist.