Gosh I remember renting Memories on video cassette from Blockbusters and absolutely loving it. Not having seen anything like it animation-wise before, I was enthralled. Also, I’m glad that they kept Puccini’s music as even though Madam Butterfly is definitely orientalist, that aria is phenomenal and really fits with the film.
It blew us away when we first stumbled across it too -- especially Magnetic Rose. What an achievement. It's hard to believe that it exists! And no question that the original Puccini music is Orientalist, like Otomo pointed out. Even so, Kanno did something fascinating with the way she kind of reclaimed it here, and it's hard to imagine the film without it.
This film wasn’t mentioned once in my animation undergrad. I found a DVD used before it came out on Blu-Ray and was (and still am) totally amazed. An absolute must watch for anyone interested in animation, and stands on its own as a piece of psychological sci-fi mastery. Love the write up! Thank you!
I wish I could get my hands on an English copy of the manga.
It really deserves a bigger place in the history books -- it's a stunning piece. Thank you so much for the kind words!
As for the manga, the anthology as a whole is out of print and super expensive, but you can read the original Magnetic Rose story over here: https://imgur.com/a/giUtSIL
It's called Memories in English, but both the Magnetic Rose film and manga share the same title in Japanese (Kanojo no Omoide). Although the broad outlines of the two are similar, you can see just how much got changed and added in the film version.
I really lucked out, a friend of mine found it for like $10 used at a local comic shop that didn't know what they had. I lent it from him and got to read it :)
There’s also some good scans over at MangaKakalot along with Domu, which I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. So much Otomo inaccessible to the US/in English.
Magnetic Rose was an absolute masterwork. I think also Heintz’s traumatic past, in a way, grounded him against falling into the fantasy of the Magnetic Rose, with the climactic line about memory being no escape. Miguel, meanwhile, was never shown to have such grounding trauma but instead was vain and went along with the fantasy, trading his real life for a simulation. His daughters death was a tragedy, but you still have to hold it and honor it.
I wish there was more like this. Definitely hooked on Kon from the moment I saw Magnetic Rose.
There definitely isn't much out there that hits all these notes. That said, if you haven't yet explored the other films Kon contributed to in his early career (Patlabor 2, Hashire Melos), they may be worth checking out -- Melos especially had a lot of staff overlap with Magnetic Rose!
Another wonderful essay! Recovering one of your old pieces makes me feel you should open your own website and copy all of your articles there. I dread the day when Substack could decide to shut down everything and we would lose all these masterful pieces.
Thanks so much! Really kind. And preserving the newsletter is something we think about as well. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine bot tends to save our public articles, but the paywalled ones are another story. Rest assured that, if Substack were to fail, it'd be our top priority to migrate and properly archive our work thus far!
Memories and especially Magnetic Rose is wonderful, thank you for writing about it in detail. I do wish we'd get more of Otomo's early manga in English, other than a couple single issues of Memories in English and a UK Graphic Novel version of the same, we have gotten hardly anything here from his early work.
Thank you -- glad you liked the piece! It would be great for more of Otomo's manga to be available here. Even when his major early stuff (like Domu) does get translated, it usually falls out of print and goes to sky-high prices. Given how popular the Akira movie continues to be, you'd think there'd be more interest from publishers.
What shocks me even more is a relative lack of interest from the fan communities that will fan translate the stuff publishers won't touch... its weird.
Welcome back! It looks like Miyazaki is having a great year with the Eisner win and success of his latest film. I can't wait to watch How Do You Live when it comes out in North America!
WOW thank you so much for bringing this film to my attention! One of my favorite subgenres is this kind of space mystery - exploring an abandoned wreck, trying to uncover what happened there. To see it so masterfully done, while combined with one of the best haunted house stories since The Shining was really incredible. Kon and crew always hit hard, and I will be recommending this to all of my friends (or at least those who would be able to handle that sucker punch of an ending.)
Ah, this is great! More than happy to introduce you to Magnetic Rose -- hopefully your friends enjoy it as much as you did. The twist is admittedly pretty brutal, and not for everyone, even though it makes sense with the theme of the story: Heinz choosing to accept reality even when it's painful. Kon may have hated that one line about escaping into memories, but it still lands. Glad you liked the film!
I finally watched Run, Melos! and really liked it. This is now on my list.
Ah, that's so awesome to hear! Hope you enjoy this one as well.
Gosh I remember renting Memories on video cassette from Blockbusters and absolutely loving it. Not having seen anything like it animation-wise before, I was enthralled. Also, I’m glad that they kept Puccini’s music as even though Madam Butterfly is definitely orientalist, that aria is phenomenal and really fits with the film.
It blew us away when we first stumbled across it too -- especially Magnetic Rose. What an achievement. It's hard to believe that it exists! And no question that the original Puccini music is Orientalist, like Otomo pointed out. Even so, Kanno did something fascinating with the way she kind of reclaimed it here, and it's hard to imagine the film without it.
You took the words out of my keyboard. Loved getting animations from Blockbuster and agree Puccini’s music just enlivens everything.❤️
This film wasn’t mentioned once in my animation undergrad. I found a DVD used before it came out on Blu-Ray and was (and still am) totally amazed. An absolute must watch for anyone interested in animation, and stands on its own as a piece of psychological sci-fi mastery. Love the write up! Thank you!
I wish I could get my hands on an English copy of the manga.
It really deserves a bigger place in the history books -- it's a stunning piece. Thank you so much for the kind words!
As for the manga, the anthology as a whole is out of print and super expensive, but you can read the original Magnetic Rose story over here: https://imgur.com/a/giUtSIL
It's called Memories in English, but both the Magnetic Rose film and manga share the same title in Japanese (Kanojo no Omoide). Although the broad outlines of the two are similar, you can see just how much got changed and added in the film version.
I really lucked out, a friend of mine found it for like $10 used at a local comic shop that didn't know what they had. I lent it from him and got to read it :)
There’s also some good scans over at MangaKakalot along with Domu, which I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. So much Otomo inaccessible to the US/in English.
I'm kind of amazed that fans haven't found the first 15 years of his works...
Magnetic Rose was an absolute masterwork. I think also Heintz’s traumatic past, in a way, grounded him against falling into the fantasy of the Magnetic Rose, with the climactic line about memory being no escape. Miguel, meanwhile, was never shown to have such grounding trauma but instead was vain and went along with the fantasy, trading his real life for a simulation. His daughters death was a tragedy, but you still have to hold it and honor it.
I wish there was more like this. Definitely hooked on Kon from the moment I saw Magnetic Rose.
There definitely isn't much out there that hits all these notes. That said, if you haven't yet explored the other films Kon contributed to in his early career (Patlabor 2, Hashire Melos), they may be worth checking out -- Melos especially had a lot of staff overlap with Magnetic Rose!
Another wonderful essay! Recovering one of your old pieces makes me feel you should open your own website and copy all of your articles there. I dread the day when Substack could decide to shut down everything and we would lose all these masterful pieces.
Thanks so much! Really kind. And preserving the newsletter is something we think about as well. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine bot tends to save our public articles, but the paywalled ones are another story. Rest assured that, if Substack were to fail, it'd be our top priority to migrate and properly archive our work thus far!
Memories and especially Magnetic Rose is wonderful, thank you for writing about it in detail. I do wish we'd get more of Otomo's early manga in English, other than a couple single issues of Memories in English and a UK Graphic Novel version of the same, we have gotten hardly anything here from his early work.
Thank you -- glad you liked the piece! It would be great for more of Otomo's manga to be available here. Even when his major early stuff (like Domu) does get translated, it usually falls out of print and goes to sky-high prices. Given how popular the Akira movie continues to be, you'd think there'd be more interest from publishers.
What shocks me even more is a relative lack of interest from the fan communities that will fan translate the stuff publishers won't touch... its weird.
Welcome back! It looks like Miyazaki is having a great year with the Eisner win and success of his latest film. I can't wait to watch How Do You Live when it comes out in North America!
Happy to be back! And we're excited to see the film ourselves -- it's due out later this year. Trying to avoid too many spoilers until then.
WOW thank you so much for bringing this film to my attention! One of my favorite subgenres is this kind of space mystery - exploring an abandoned wreck, trying to uncover what happened there. To see it so masterfully done, while combined with one of the best haunted house stories since The Shining was really incredible. Kon and crew always hit hard, and I will be recommending this to all of my friends (or at least those who would be able to handle that sucker punch of an ending.)
Ah, this is great! More than happy to introduce you to Magnetic Rose -- hopefully your friends enjoy it as much as you did. The twist is admittedly pretty brutal, and not for everyone, even though it makes sense with the theme of the story: Heinz choosing to accept reality even when it's painful. Kon may have hated that one line about escaping into memories, but it still lands. Glad you liked the film!
stunning, as usual! :)