Memories User Reviews

Note: This review is of the English Subbed version.

Story One: “Magnetic Rose”

Directed by Koji Morimoto

Plot/Setting  

The first story in this movie takes place in the year 2095, and focus on a small group of men who travel through space scavenging the metal from derelict ships and satellites. However on this particular outing things soon become complicated. Just as the crew are about to return home they receive a distress signal from within a graveyard that is full of derelict ship hulks that is surrounded by an energy field of some kind that makes getting close dangerous. Despite the dangers of the energy field they attempt to go in any way as it is required by law that all space vessels must respond to any distress signal they come across or face losing their license to pilot space craft.

Once they arrive at the source of the signal things take a turn for the worse as equipment begins to malfunction and the two men sent onto the derelict hulk to investigate the source of the emergency signal find the belongings of what appears to be a long dead opera singer. Soon things become even worse for the men as they begin to see unexplainable things that disappear moments later, statues that begin to bleed from the eyes and they begin to imagine seeing and hearing the dead opera singer singing her haunting songs throughout the ship. 

Review  4/5

The first story in this movie had a suspense thriller theme that was set to a future where space travel is akin to modern day sea fairing vessels. It had a very good flow of progression in introducing the characters/setting and giving the viewer enough of an understanding of the characters mindset to feel as if they were believable as people and that their decisions were not just made for the sake of a story but that the characters, if real, would actually have made the same decisions. 
 

The whole movie had a very beautiful music and art design as both complimented each other in a way that lead to a truly haunting and ominous felling through the entire movie. Combine this with amazingly fluid and detailed animations, top notch voice acting, believable character personalities and a truly haunting setting to all combine for a very intense and interesting story that had you wondering what was really going on the whole time and dying to know how it was all going to culminate in the end. This was by far my favorite of the short stories on the movie and just an all around classic timeless story I would recommend to anyone, even those who typically don’t like stories set in space or a sci-fi setting. 

Story Two: “Stink Bomb”

Directed by Tensai Okamura
 
Plot/Setting

The story follows that of Tanaka Nobuo, a low level moron working at a pharmaceutical company who has a very serious cold. After literally trying every medicine he could buy and still having the cold he gives up on finding a way to get over it and simple heads off to work. Once their co-workers suggest that he should try the newly developed medicine they were going to release in a few weeks as it should be able to cure almost any cold. However being the unlucky idiot he is, he picks up the wrong bottle of pills and instead ends up taking a pill that was being developed in secret by the government. After taking the pill he decides he should lay down for a rest to let the pill work, hoping that he would feel better when he woke up, however when he awakens he discovers that everyone in the facility is unconscious. What he is unaware of is that he himself is the cause of the problem as the pill he took has caused him to begin releasing a toxic gas whenever he is emotionally upset, which when smelt by people cause them to fall unconscious, as well create a magnetic field around him that interferes with electronic devices. The story follows the fool as he travels around Japan unknowingly spreading the gas through the country as the government tries desperately to stop him.  

 
Review 3/5
To say this story was a drastic change in mood and tone from the first is an understatement, as this story was essentially a dark comedy. The story starts out relatively benign as you followed the simple enough set up for what the rest of the story would revolve around. This dimwitted fool constantly outmaneuvering the government’s attempt to stop him from spreading the gas through the country as he is completely oblivious to what he is doing. It takes a very tongue and cheek approach to the music and animations as everything is over exaggerated, with explosions and jumps over large bridges while bombs are going off all around the fool as he constantly just makes it out alive every time.

Perhaps it was simply because of the drastic change in tone from the first story, or my personal dislike of silly stupid characters, but I just didn’t find myself enjoying this story at all. The story started off well enough and began early on to hint at an interesting last man on earth style story set in Japan with this dimwitted fool, but once it took the left turn of being a comedy that just wasn’t funny to me all i wanted was for it to end. 
 
The story concluded on what amounted to a punch line to a long drawn out joke, that while in and of itself made me chuckle, still made me feel as if it wasn’t worth the long drudged out story with a frustratingly annoying main character and situations that preceded its set up. If you’re a fan of comedies with innocently stupid people who are oblivious to the destruction of things that are going on around them and being the cause of it, like a Mr .Bean or Ernest comedy from the 80’s and 90’s then you will probably like this character and story.  
 

Story Three: “Cannon Fodder”

Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

 
Plot/Setting  

The story is set in a world that literally knows nothing but war. Every man woman and child’s life consist of ether going to school to learn about war, creating the guns and ammo to go to war or fighting in the war itself as ether a soldier or cannon operator. The story follows the day in the life of a family that consists of a young boy who goes to school dreaming about growing up to be the guy who fires city sized cannons, the wife who works in a factory building ammunition for weapons and the father who works as a cannon loader. The worlds architecture and clothing is very reminiscent of a world war two European design with all the clothing being of military make and all the buildings having large cannons on their roofs.

 
Review 3/5
The final story in this movie really didn’t have any kind of character development or progression to speak of as it was more about trying to get across ideas. The obvious one being the idea that war is bad by exaggerating many of our worlds countries love for senseless war by depicting a world that literally knows nothing but war. The idea being that we as people are willing to blindly following a leadership and not take the time to think for ourselves when they tell us that some invisible unknown enemy is all around us, and that we need to support war as the only way to prevent them from invading and destroying our way of life as a means for the government to enslave and control its populace.  
 
That of course is only one take on the moral of the story and that is where it gets interesting as it is impossible to summarize the moral of the story because it was designed in a way that it was supposed to make you think about different aspects of life on many different levels. Whether it be poor working conditions, the innate love of violence and war that is in everyone, how easy it is for people to just accept living in a bad situation when you believe there is no alternative and how fear of the unknown can be used as a way to suppress and control an entire population as well as a plethora of other hidden ideas within the story that you may pick up that others might not. On the surface the story just seems stupid and pointless but when you take the time to think about it and see it as a story that is trying to show you a point of view, then it expands into a totally new level of storytelling and instead becomes a debate rather than a story.

As a short movie in and of itself it isn’t very interesting or exciting to watch, as it just slowly trudges along the mundane life of this small lower working class family in this war infested world. However once you look beyond the surface layer of its presentation as a movie you see a deeper meaning in the story as almost every frame of animation was designed to illicit some kind of idea or emotion about the fears of man being used to control and subjugate themselves and too many hidden meanings to really discuss without going into pages upon pages of discussion about it. That said this review is about the enjoyment of watching it as a short movie and not so much about the message it is trying to convey, which sadly means that i cant rightfully give it that high of a score as it isn't as interesting to watch as it is to think about its deeper meanings.