verbify
I'm trying to figure out why Miyazaki is the only anime director I really like. I'm starting to think it has to do with his ability to create very convincing characters in very brief scenes, something this movie generally fails at. There are two-line talking frogs in Spirited Away that have more character than some of the main ones here. There are no characters in this movie. Everybody is a thumbnail. And it doesn't add up where every character is an element in a single character, like the fragmentary characters in actual dreams. Everybody feels hollow.That said, the visuals are gorgeous and uniformly memorable, the scene transitions are very fun to watch, and it's all scored very nicely. I enjoyed it. It just wasn't interesting.
Sasha Minh
A whimsical and incredible man made anime.The soundtrack, graphic style, content, music perfectly matches with the theme, deliver such a whimsical feel as well as hauntingly thoughts. I have watched so many Japanese's animes and I have learned that they are good at making complicated and uncomplicated things happens at the same time. The movie is not only breaking everyone's imagination but also limits, abilities, leaving the audiences in the confusion of not knowing what's actually real.When you think about it, this plot is kind of similar to 'Inception' US movie, but with higher graphic feels and more whimsical scenes, Papurika has pushed this concept of dreams up to a new level.I'm not a really good at writing but I have forced myself to compliment something on this fascinating movie. This anime is incredibly well made and once again I want to bow myself in front of Japanese dedication..
welshnew50
A sublime collision of a variety of characters' necessitate-processing contextually to A virtual immersion , but limited in a almost nightmare like restriction of clashing pure imagination , crammed into a otherwise very short real-world plot ...humiliatingly contrasting role-matched characters, but of chr.s deliberately made simplistic for pride's sake , the unconscious' limits made easy to get a sense of , touch, almost , in a narrow and discard-able story , not needing either time nor expertise to fathom.Masterful , but watchable-without unrealistic understanding , connected to over-the- top (and boring) control-via technology plots , but imagination stimulating , rather than plot-familiarizing. Excellent..While more concrete , recognisability-dependent movie plot followers may well find this movie unfamiliar and obscure , or overpoweringly complex-reasons difficult to follow , many of its characters are of highly trained roles in a sci-fi scenario of complicated possibility of forces in a new or perhaps just yet-with any form of control , place of comprehension to the mind ... a tangled car crash wreck of imagination and inadequacy in a pure form as characters in a story of dream-connection , dream together in a series of collapses and envelopments of scope of only a small amount of , but observer-pervesingly satisfyingly constrictive or expansive inclusion of thought or neuronal connection-testing , as the characters struggle to both minimize damage in a already existing circumstance or precedent of the dream- technology going wrong , and simultaneously for recovery against a conglomeration of deathly thought , at times of cellular nightmarish depths and envelopment , at times only of perceived-power, immature and inexperienced (and realistic in those limitations) of inflated-overconfidence or self- dependence ... those perceiving power within the technology , monstrous and bound , those less caught up in its power more free , but daunted and only human in a variety of ways , that doesn't choke the plot with too much personal character-detail ...Balanced , although a little familiar-plot clichéd , it contrasts the actions of different people behind the veil that is lifted upon awakening from the perspective of any of the characters as they go into and out of the immersion , and demonstrates distance in shambled, jumbled, dreams magnificently , metaphors and transformative concealment of characters' limited interactions with the dream-scape so easy to miss , but also easy to associate with the deliberately different characters' roles ...Roles which in contrast to your own or absence of , easily make you think about detaching from yourself or your past , and what your own limitations would be , in this invasion of privacy in the extreme , yet still within a relatively safe real world environment , the contrast of yet-perfected technology in such desire , impossible to miss.Strengths of characters in its real world and this immersive one, are also contrasted by subconscious limitations , as each's struggles for shadows and terraformative continuation or stability-for-recognition , yet not in an intimidating dark sort of way ... distance and projection , and possibly even ESP is stimulated , without a person needing to either know exactly what is going on , nor why different levels of dream entrapment happen as the movie develops , forcing you to try to continue to try to identify where the ongoing problem in the technology lies , inamongst the characters , that you just can't know well enough to be able to ... forces you to try to use other indicators ... almost a last-minute cramming of psychoanalytic method of dream object identification for the average Jap. animation fan ... fantastic stimulation !!Don't think about it too much ... you can probably just watch , and try to spot things , almost like a game , unlike what one can take seriously of one's own or loved ones' minds ... a invasion of privacy , yet to come ?Great for an introduction to dream-scapes , even for the young ... sure to get them seeking out hidden parts of their minds they never knew they had ... perhaps not for those sensitive to horror ... better than many though ... more like egg-shell shock weirdness , than horror ... fantastic !Rodney Edwin Welsh
