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Simply Perfect

Fresh and Exciting

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Many people have commented that this film has a poor plot, but they rate the film highly anyway. This can be confusing, because it is difficult for a movie to actually be good entirely independent of the events within it.The trick to understanding this is that in many films with a bad plot the characters are trapped into acting in a grossly unrealistic and contrived manner. In Wonderful Days, the scenarios laid out, and indeed the physical environment are all laid out to create a predictable story arc.Unlike a number of other recent anime movies however, the characters are not contorted into an equally false shape. The behavior of the characters is not terribly surprising, and they are not necessarily characters of great depth, but such characterization as there is, is fairly well done. Particularly interesting is the use of stock anime characters, even including cute Pokemon type animals, in a meaningful and emotionally mature manner.The real strength of this film however, is in its animation/cinematography. Visually, Wonderful Days can be placed next to the best Asian animation like the Ghost in the Shell films. The artistic tone is well supported by the soundtrack as well, making it easier to appreciate the film if so minded.So to sum up, Wonderful Days is visually stunning, but fairly predictable and contrived. Intellectually, and in plot or character development the contrived and sentimental nature and construction of the film is difficult to ignore, but there is no question but that here, as well as visually, it is head and shoulders above Appleseed, or either of the Final Fantasy films. If you adjust your expectations accordingly, and take the precaution of watching the film with subtitles (thus avoiding bad dubbing) you will not be too disappointed.

I really didn't find anything remarkable or salvageable from what is essentially a terrible anime. I think everyone can agree that the plot is flimsy, unoriginal and uninspired, but for me there wasn't even anything worth appreciating visually.As an anime fan I find myself increasingly perplexed with numerous studio's obsession in integrating CGI with traditional animation. If I wanted to see CGI I'd go and watch an action movie or a 'cinema of attractions' piece such as the new 'King Kong' - that is marketable largely for its use of CGI. When I go to see animation i expect to see at least SOME hand-drawn imagery... it's not that the use of CGI in animation doesn't work; the 'Ghost in the Shell' TV series or 'Blood: the last vampire' is an example of when it works - used occasionally and effectively.'Sky Blue' however is a hackneyed attempt at visual beauty. The 2D animation is detailed, yet horrendously jerky and sparse - CGI is used whenever it can - whether it be a gun that a character is holding or a vehicle speeding across the screen. It seems that the studio has used CGI simply to cut down on production time, (CGI is quicker to render than painstaking hand-drawn cells). Apparently this film took 7 years to make... looking at the badly rendered CGI and atrociously animated characters, this is incredibly hard to believe. The problem is that apart from the beautifully rendered STILL backgrounds, most of the CGI looks rushed, cheap, and does not blend at all well with the 2D animation.The English dub is awful, the lead male's voice is so forced... no-one should have to try that hard to sound cool.An utter disappointment. I do not recommend this.

Movie: The story is strong and filled with interesting characters, yet despite the breadth and depth of the story the characters are kept light and you don't really feel as though you do anything more than scratch the surface of them, which is a real shame as they they seem as though they could be given so much more life and reality with some more backstory. There were a couple of moments that didn't do the film much justice, one was that some of the character voices had the usual anime style of being just a tad over acted, and the others, which are all too typical in anime and manga, cute animals and unusually annoying children. It feels as if the film is pulling between two genres when these sort of styles are brought in. On one hand they are trying to create an adult themed cartoon, and on the other you have voices and characters straight out of Pokemon. This bothers me, because if they had managed to focus on a pure adult animation then this movie would have increased in estimation, but although these failings are not bad enough to really harm the film they do affect it. Still, with all this there's something that just takes your mind away from it all the time, the visuals, they are stunning. The backgrounds to just about all of the scenes look fantastic, and some of the sequences were stunningly created and looking really beautiful to the eye. Careful consideration has been taken about where to place the viewer, and how to recreate the actual movement of a camera through the scenes. Nowhere is this more apparent than the opening scenes with the bike racing through the outside world, it's a wonderful piece of animation. Picture: Widescreen 1.85:1 Anamorphic: Very sharp and clear picture, the colours tended to be duller due to the nature of the story, but when colours arrived they were strong. During the fog scene there was very little evidence of the grading effect you see in lower quality encoded DVDs and digital signals, it was very smooth and you had to really look to see this effect. Overall an excellent picture reproduction. Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS: The DTS audio was utterly brilliant being delicate, crisp and clear. During any action sequences the audio was loud and bold and very spacious, travelling around the speakers with the action. The full effects of DTS were used with audio coming from all around you, which was helped by the thoughtful positioning of the camera in regards the action and therefore where the sound and movement would be coming from. There was a good use of silence too which heightened the actual sound effects when they arrived. The soundtrack was wonderfully chosen and matched the movie superbly, with the final scenes elevated by the chosen operatic piece which was quite stirring. Extras: None. Overall: Although there are a few more annoying aspects of anime creeping in here with some not so strong voice acting and childish animation, overall the movie is good. What really makes it is the fabulous animation combined with the excellently visualised camera movement. It truly is a feast for the eyes, and when the DTS audio is layered above it you're sucked into the world so easily. Yet for all those good points the story is left quite light and brushed over, especially with the lead characters who are hinted at being deeper than they really are. There was so much to explore here and yet it's been ignored. Definitely worth a viewing if you are a fan of such movies, otherwise you might find this visual feast a tad less satisfying.

This is definitely more than a pure animation. It's more like a movie, only an animated one. My emphasize here is on the word movie. Not because it has a brilliant colorful animation, that sometimes appears to be 3 dimensional, and sometimes 2 dimensional ( which is spectacular by itself). It has that. But I'm thinking of it as a movie because of high details. Actually, this is direction. When I watch animation, I don't really care who's the director of it. In fact, Until this one I forgot there is one in each animation like in every film. This movie is full of details that make it look much better than other animation. I'll mention some of them, that I found the most interesting.1. Near the beginning of the movie, there is a scene with a tunnel exit covered by a waterfall, that flows not quite as one could expect of it. You get an explanation of the irrational flow a couple minutes after, but isn't it amazing they thought about it? 2. Flies around a lamp. When was the last time you saw flies around a lamp (in animation), just as part of the view, because they attracted to light and not to portray something ( like trash site, bad smell, dirt or other metaphoric things that flies represent). 3. While Jay was entering the rebel zone a guard watched him through the optics of a sniper rifle. They could show us only the guard, without the mentioned aspect. But no, this is what a direction is about!!! 4. Jay's fight with the army's commander. Just watch the details.I could possibly continue with some more examples,like shooting scenes from different angles and so, though those were the most vivid to me. Think about it. Think about they thought about it. In one word the animation was excellent. In some words it was a tasteful mixture, with live colorful characters and places. I don't really think they could do it better. Both the 3 dimensional animation and the 2 dimensional looked awesome. I really don't agree with those who say that the latter was dull and poorly done. As I said, I don't think it could be done better.Another aspect of this movie, that stroked me with it's uniqueness, at least from western animation, is the brutality and the naturalism. I don't know much animation (again western), where a gun was violently put against somebody's head, shooting it, and spilling the blood all around. I don't think this kind of violence is good or bad, but in a way it completes the movie. I just get the feeling that it's necessary. This also brings it closer to movies because there is some convention (unspoken) that animation is for younger audience.Well, the movie is not all good. Like every other movie, the plot is a crucial thing. Wonderful Day clearly lacks one. It tries to be scientifically ingenious in it's main idea which makes no sense if one thinks about it (you don't really have to think, its obvious enough). There is another thing that bothers. This movie involves a drama among three characters, which at the end gets exaggerated and too emotional ( emotional not for the viewer but for the characters themselves). There are a lot of animated and non-animated movies with that kind of drama in them. Some of them pass this drama to the audience, while others try but fail. Wonderful Days belongs to the latter. It has a good revealing of the drama at the beginning and the middle of the movie, but in the end it disappoints.Wonderful Days' flaws are minor compared to its highlights. I would recommend it to anyone who likes animation and is not disturbed with excessive violence. My rating: 7.5/10