Customer Reviews

Cinema of Mamoru Oshii: Fantasy, Technology and Politics

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As the author of the other book in English about Oshii (which came out two years before this one), I was initially looking forward to reading "Cinema of Mamoru Oshii." However, there were a number of passages in the book that gave me pause. For example, here are our respective introductions to the OVA "Twilight Q 2":

"The Twilight Q OVA series was originally intended to highlight the
stories and talents of up-and-coming anime directors through a series
of unconnected, imaginative short stories, but the project lasted only
two episodes. The title of the series can be read as an homage to two
influential television shows: The Twilight Zone and Ultra Q, a
mid-1960s' series that can be described as a cross between a Japanese
version of The Outer Limits-style science fiction and a Toho monster
film. Although the anime series was in color, the allusion to these two
black and white television programs is indicative of the sense of noir
and mystery aimed for in Twilight Q.
"The first episode of Twilight Q was directed by Tomomi Mochizuki, who
would go on to direct the first Kimagure Orange Road film (1988) and
Studio Ghibli's Ocean Waves (Umi ga Kikoeru, 1993), and featured
character designs by Akemi Takada (who later did the character designs
for Patlabor.) Released in February of 1987, this episode involves a
girl who finds a mysterious camera on a beach that contains pictures of
her with a man she has never met. Eventually the girl finds herself
traveling forward and backward in time, leading to a rather open-ended
conclusion. Oshii's "sequel," released in August of 1987, treats the
idea of reality as similarly plastic, although the ending is far more
satisfactory. The second episode of Twilight Q garnered more attention
due to Oshii's involvement but the series did not ultimately catch on
with the anime-buying public."
"...The experiences of the detective in the film are drawn from the
life of Oshii's father, who was a frequently-out-of-work private
detective..."
from Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii by Brian Ruh, p. 61-62

"Initially designed to provide an arena wherein budding directors could
exhibit their skills through a collection of unrelated narratives, the
project did not develop beyond its second installment. The title echoes
two popular black-and-white television programs of the 1960s, The
Twilight Zone and Ultra Q, with wich it shares a penchant for the noir
and for grotesque distortion."
"The first episode was directed by Tomomi Mochizuki (Kimagure Orange
Road, 1988 and Ocean Waves, 1993) and revolves around the character of
a girl who finds a camera on the beach which turns out to contain
images of herself in the company of a stranger, and the starts
journeying back and forth in time. The episode written and directed by
Oshii elaborated Mochizuki's conception of time as a markedly elactic
dimension, concurrently bringing into play generic and graphic motifs
characteristic of classic science-fiction cinema and literature, as
well as autobiographical elements. The portrayal of the film's
detective, in particular, is based largely on Oshii's memories of his
father as a frequently unemployed private investigator."
from "The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii" by Dani Cavallaro, p. 83

Draw your own conclusions.

If there's any director who deserves his own biography its Mamoru Oshii. A lot of directors make their mark by having a visual style, but Oshii seems to be one of the few that actually has his own language. A fact that stood out in sharp relief when I watched "Innocence." There is a distinctive voice to his work that will probably become more accepted and understood by future generations. In the meantime, this handy book, "Cinema of Mamoru Oshii" is a comprehensive probe behind the symbolic language that underscores all of Oshii's films. A perfect example of how well this book disects Oshii's cinematic language is the description of how the characters in his films rarely make eye contact. They are frequently facing away from each other. This was overtly done in the end of Innocence when Motoko's body is facing in the same direction as Batou, but actual eye contact is still avoided as Batou's placement is a few feet past Motoko's. It was almost as if Oshii was saying, "this is as close as these two will get." An interview excerpt in this book confirmed that this design of placement was to exude a sense of lonliness in the characters -- an attribute that shows also in the way Oshii directs the dialog of his characters.

The chapters are conviently segregated by film, and so you journey through Oshii's body of work in chronological order. This allows the reader to pick up on symbolic patterns that migrate from film to film, while also seeing how Oshii's seems to broaden his understanding of his own voice with each film.

The downside to this book is that language is, at times, pretentious as it tries too hard to be academic. The author writes in the same voice as all books on "high-art", using expensive jargon that might alienate those readers who are looking for something of a more casual read. Not that this book needed to be "dumbed down" but that the same intelligble assesments could have been done in a writing style that is more accessible. Having said that, I understand why the author chose to write in this tone as her objective seems to be placing Oshii's work in the eye of Western Academians who would otherwise not take the anime style seriously.

I think this is a definite buy for those who fans of Oshii's work and want to receive a critical perspective that wouldn't otherwise be found on the web.

Why pay $15 more than "Stray Dog of Anime" for only a difference of 16 pages?