June reviews: Mononoke 

 no, not that one

 

To say that i struggled a lot to pick the subject of my first review wouldn't be inaccurate, wanting to pick something with both enough style to speak of it's technical aspects, and enough substance to discuss it's themes. 

That's when i though, why not pick something whose style and substance are one and the same? and so i present the 2007 Mini-series: Mononoke

Set at some indeterminate point between the final days of the Edo period and the start of the Meiji era, the series follows a man only ever referred to as "the medicine seller" a figure who travels the land hunting Mononoke, unnatural spirits that have bound themselves to the mortal world through negative emotions.

And that's really all the plot there is. Mononoke, unlike many of its contemporaries, is a fully episodic series, being made up of a series of 2-3 episode long story arcs that, outside of the medicine seller's presence, have nothing to do with one another.

The medicine seller himself is by far one of the show's strongest aspects, with an immediately iconic design that brings to mind Yoshitaka Amano's work in the 2D Final Fantasy games, and a stellar performance by Takahiro Sakurai, the seller oozes a kind quiet confidence, as if, no matter how dire the situation, he is always in control

 

And yet, despite this, he is only ever an observer, a secondary character whose role in the story is to slay the demon once it reveals itself, Mononoke has very little interest in going into the minutiae of things like magic systems and special techniques, and is instead much more concerned with the stories of the people the seller meets on his journey, these stories are what lie at the heart of Mononoke

While Mononoke's voice cast is often stellar, it certainly goes for quality over quantity, and it's often possible to count the number of spoken lines of dialogue in an episode with both hands, instead, the series aims to tell its stories visually, and this is where it truly shines, while it doesn't have the hyper detailed movement and high octane fight scenes that one associates with "good animation" in the modern anime industry, Mononoke's art direction is superb, from the Ukiyo-e inspired backgrounds to the character designs, it all flows together to make for one of the most unforgettable series I've watched.

now if only that HACK Miyazaki hadn't completely ruined my ability to look up information on the show with his SHIT movie but i digress

 

 

                        RATING:STRONGLY RECOMMEND

 

  you can watch the series here