Anime Movies

I am not a big sucker for anime, even though I have watched my share of it. 2 of my favorites are Death Note and Trigun. Trigun in particular is one that I am very fond of, its tragi-comic story is really moving, some scenes still vividly etched in my mind, like the death of Legato. It starts off as a funny and sometimes mildly irritating story, of a man who might or might not be the legendary destroyer of cities, Vash the Stampede, who is awesomely voiced by Masaya Onosaka (Shinji in Bleach). But then its turn into a completely serious space western is seamless. The first scene in which Vash really gets serious, somewhere in the fifth or sixth epsiode is quite breathtaking. Most anime boast of some great kick-ass music and Trigun is no exception.
But I haven't watched many anime movies, the few that I have watched though left a mark on me. 3 of my favorites are Princess Mononoke, Akira and Ghost in the Shell.
Princess Mononoke is by legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki. It was most probably my very first anime movie, saw it way back in 2006, when I was in my (good) movie watching infancy. It was a time that I fondly remember, when I used to watch movies with friends Bikash, Gurab, Mayank, etc. Nowadays I mostly watch movies alone or in a theatre. Anyhow, I saw this one in IMDb top 250 list and got it and watched it with Bikash, in his Emperor Asoka's era PC. The animation simply blew me away, particularly the last scene, and the theme of saving our environment was potent as well. Music composed by Joe Hisaishi was awesome as always. I got as many Studio Ghibli movies as I could after that, but never managed to watch another one till date, although Bikash I guess did watch atleast Nausicaa and Spirited Away.
I watched Akira when I was in UK, borrowed it from my college library. Considering that I really like the cyberpunk genre (movies and books which typify high tech and low life, benchmarks in movies is Blade Runner and books is William Gibson's Neuromancer), Akira was something that instantly appealed to me. The starting bike scene is a post nuclear holocaust Tokyo of huge buildings and neon lights was super cool. The transformation of Tetsuo into a insecure teenager into a menacing villain was managed very nicely. Music as expected was great.
Very recently, I finally managed to watch Ghost in the Shell, which I was meaning to watch for quite some time now. It is famous for inspiring the Matrix, which incorporated many of its elements like the green flow of numbers and characters for the internet, or as it is called in Ghost in the Shell, the net, and well as the plug-in to the nape for logging into the Net (if only we could do it). Ghost in the Shell is probably The best anime movie that I have watched, the story, the animation, the music are just flawless. Set in Hong Kong (somewhat odd, I thought the setting would be Tokyo, but I guess Hong Kong fits the plot pretty amazingly as well), it is about a futuristic group of cyber cops trying to nail a genius hacker called the Puppet Master, who manages to hack into the brains of people and make them do his dirty laundry (so to speak). A 3 minute montage of the main character Major Kusanagi riding a boat across Hong Kong is simply awesome, the music and the amazing scenes of the underbelly of a post modern megalopolis, wow! It gets very philosophical at times, but never tedious and the action, though somewhat muted in comparison to many other anime, is very nicely choreographed as well.
In the end, I would like to say that please watch the movies in Japanese, with subtitles if necessary. Its a crime against humanity to dub movies, in my humble opinion.