Spirited Away and Samurai 7
Along with all of our new books, we also got two new anime DVDs (well, one is a DVD, and one is a DVD set). If you don't know what anime is, it's Japanese for animation/cartoon. However, anime is often not what we think of as cartoons--anime covers all genres, from science fiction to documentary-style stories, and it also has a range of styles. Almost everyone knows the "typical" anime, with characters with oversized eyes, but anime has come a long way from that stereotype. You'll see this if you watch either of our two new shows -- Spirited Away, a Miyazaki movie, or Samurai 7, an anime adaptation of Kurosawa's movie, The Seven Samurai. (By the way, we also have this in the library.)
In Spirited Away, Chihiro, a young girl, must grow up from being a rather spoiled brat to a strong heroine. Her and her parents move to a new town, and they are accidentally drawn into a strange new world of spirits. This place turns out to be a resort for traditional Japanese gods and spirits. Her parents, not understanding the rules of this unusual place, and not caring, either, stuff themselves with food that isn't theirs and are turned into pigs and taken away. Chihiro, determined to get them back, must find a way to infiltrate this spirit society -- to that end, she convinces a mean old witch Yubaba to give her a job while she searches for them. This is another brilliant Miyazaki movie, full of adventure, warmth, humor, and suspense.
Samurai 7 borrows the premise of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954): driven to desperation by bandits who steal their crops, the inhabitants of a small village hire unemployed samurai to defend them. With nothing to offer as wages but their precious rice, the villagers recruit warriors poor enough to accept the dishonor of working for peasants. Samurai 7 moves the story into the future: the bandits and some of the samurai are mecha. The grim ronin Kambei leads the viewers in the defense of their village, then tackles the forces of the orchidaceous emperor Ukyo. The warriors perform gravity-defying leaps, as they slash through steel plating, deflect bullets, and split laser beams with their swords in a climactic battle that occupies most of the last three episodes. [This section was taken by Amazon.com, because they wrote a summary better than I could.] Samurai 7 is a set of 26 episodes, so 7 DVDs, but then can be checked out in batches.
Both of these DVDs can be found on the new books cart at the front of the library, after which they will be moved to the DVD section upstairs.