Once again the week is wrapped in anime, which is not something I was actually into until very recently. I had watched Satoshi Kon, Studio Glibly and some other modern essentials, but I always lived in a self imposed snobby subs over dubs world. My best friend broke through that with the excellent, ultra-violent and terrible Angel Cop. It’s a kinda cocaine meets Robocop affair, with a surprising amount of Japanese ultranationalism added for no discernible reason. I’ve seen it many times now and often watch it ambiently to fall asleep too, or while writing/hoovering/anything-ing, but the most important part is how it opened me up to trash VHS anime rips on YouTube. Getting rid of my pretentiousness around the medium and embracing dubs has brought a lot of enjoyment to my life.

Neo Tokyo is another anthology of anime shorts, there’s this Alice in Wonderland framing device, that I didn’t find too interesting, then two more meaty ones. Running Man is this rhythmic, beating piece about a Racing driver who either dies/ascends to a higher plane mid race. It has the truly perfect late 80’s anime vibe, all cigarettes and neon. It’s very like World Record, one of the shorts from the Animatrix, where a dude runs so fast his legs explode. But I don’t know if that’s referencing this, or maybe they’re both referencing something older, I feel like I’m missing anime fundamentals? Learning about anything is a process of finding out how little you can hope to know, but with anime I’m just especially lost and behind, in this way where I don’t know where to start with catching up.

Construction Cancellation Order is the last short, it’s about a manager sent to shut down an out of control ‘project’ deep in the jungle of an fictional country, the place is entirely run by robots and out of contact. The beginning has Apocalypse Now vibes so I was very sure it was going to be a Heart of Darkness with robots thing, but it was a bit more Brazil/12 Monkeys? It felt like it was trying to say ‘capitalism bad’ and ‘unions are good’ but lacked some of the language or courage to really articulate it. The style of these shambling, hard-hatted robots was great and it’s also full of rhythm and feeling like Running Man, but I don’t think it quite comes together.

I should say I don’t think discovering the ‘anime fundamentals’ is just doing that page from Ready Player One where he lists all the cool ‘obscure’ film and TV from the 80’s that he’s watched. I want to know more of the context and construction of the work. I’ve read about anime screen writers doing storyboard work or directors doing animation work and that’s just not how it works in the west. It’s hard to translate what a job title means, who are the underdogs, what is seen as pastiche or hard cutting. I’d like to recommend the YouTuber Hazel, her videos have given me some of the context that I’ve been looking for.

My girlfriend and I watched Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw this week and decided it was the best Fast & Furious movie, mainly because The Rock, Idris Elba and Jason Statham don’t take it seriously and clearly enjoy one another’s company. My girlfriend was even heard to utter: “I do want to see them make another Hobbs and Shaw, but I don’t want have to see Ryan Reynolds act again.” Which is faint praise, but I’ve never heard her say that about another Fast & Furious movie, or really any franchise movie, regardless of the Ryan Reynolds content. Who you may have heard was hit by a beam of light from the heavens, so it’s not something she has to worry about anymore.

I think Fast & Furious is like an unstoppable wrecking ball at this point. The series is very aware of this, Fast 10 is the last, but it’s being presented in two parts. Some kind of lingering spin off seems inevitable, there’s just too much energy and the logistical structure around these films to hit the breaks now. I once went to a talk where the series Cinematographers talked of the dozens of cameras they had set up all the time, of caring little if rigs got in shot (they’d be removed digitally) and how “if the camera isn’t moving, it’s not going in.” I don’t think the stunts or the plot gets bigger every movie either, they seem to just get longer and less coherent. It’s weird to look back on how unlikely it is as a franchise, Vin Diesel isn’t even in the second and has a fleeting role in the third. But after 6 or so of these they kinda level off and when Idris Elba has nanobots that make him a superhero, you have to greet it by shrugging your shoulders. I couldn’t be surprised by Fast 10 or Fast 10: Part 2, it could end with a Batman cameo, it could have time travel, there is just no harder to go.

My recommendation for the week is S1m0ne, a slightly forgotten Al Pacino film from the writer/director of Gattaca. It revolves around Pacino, who plays a film director, replacing his lead actress with a flawless computer generated alternative. She can do no wrong, her fame quickly eclipsing his, even when he tries to torpedo her career. It reaches fantastic levels of parody as Pacino pulls elaborate capers to pull off not-quite-in-person appearance events and keep her sizeable adoring public happy. S1m0ne was well into production when Lord of the Rings appeared with Golem, changing perceptions of what a CGI character could be, just 15 years later Peter Cushing had a digitally constructed cameo in a Star Wars movie made long after his death. With how much digital work is done on the average blockbuster, with fully GCI characters becoming normal and even beloved, it’s hard not to imagine the events of S1m0ne, a few little lies and we could have a digital actor who’s never late, hungover or able to refuse a stop on the press tour.

There’s always a degree of navel gazing in these films, whenever Hollywood turns the lens on it’s self the result is ‘wow it could only happen here!’ Sometimes this gets a little grating and usually foreign work is a bit more honest, or even honestly Hollywood films about TV. But I think S1m0ne strikes the balance, it has enough new things to say even if it generally feels a little diluted.

I wanted to end with Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01, its a silly and very good anime thing about an idiot twink trapped in a mech. Its sorta like Blue Thunder, a movie about a police helicopter that you cannot have not seen. Just a nice comfortable and funny thing to watch and also just on YouTube which helps. I hope to find more of this more off beat stuff; it feels at least a little like it was waiting for me.