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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.comics
Subject: Re: Warriors of the Wind: A Review
Message-ID: <1706@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Mar-86 12:21:15 EST
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1706
Posted: Wed Mar  5 12:21:15 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Mar-86 00:32:21 EST
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I saw WARRIORS at Boskone this year as well as two other Japanese
animated films LENSMAN and GALAXY EXPRESS 999.  WARRIORS was quite good
I thought.  It occurred to me as I saw it that if done in live action
it would have been a film of the stature of STAR WARS.  What is good
about animation is that pretty much whatever the mind can picture can
be brought to the screen relatively easily and cheaply.  You just have
to get imaginative artists.  Ironically, that last commodity is very
hard to get.  Way back when the Star Trek animated cartoons were on I
complained that the stories were very much the same as in the
live-action stories.  Without having to worry about a special effects
budget the stories could have really taken off.  They didn't and the
animation was not very good.

Japanimation is better, but has its own problems with imagination in
odd ways.  Look how often interstellar flight is treated illogically
with traditional images.  Interstellar craft look like B-52's,
battleships, railroad trains (!), three-masted schooners (ok, that one
was MESSAGE FROM SPACE in live action).  GALAXY EXPRESS really had to
bend over backwards to show the audience that they were really doing a
Western set in space.  They didn't need the train on top of that.  In
spite of falling back on the B-52s for craft, WARRIORS OF THE WIND
(a.k.a. BUG WARS) had mostly brand new images.  I felt when it was over
that I had seen a substantial science fiction adventure.

One quibble with Kathy Li's review.  She said that the animation was
very good.  I would have said that the animation was not very good but
that the artwork was.  I don't know how many frames/cell were used but
it was way too high, giving the animation a jerky feel.  That is
generally true of Japanimation.  Another aspect of the animation, the
movement of the background, I think was not up to the standards of
Disney or Bluth, but I cannot say I really remember.  But the
imagination of the artwork was quite good and I think that that is what
Kathy was saying she enjoyed.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper