My favorite anime: The Mars Express director’s journey from The Rose of Versailles to Patlabor 2
Mars Express, the new sci-fi noir thriller from French director and animator Jérémie Périn, is finally available for streaming on VOD this week following its US theatrical run in May. Périn’s film is fantastic: a sophisticated, hard-boiled detective story set in a futuristic society where humans and robots live side by side, which owes just as much to Chinatown And The long goodbye as it should Ghost in the shell.
Polygon recently had the chance to connect with Périn, so we had to wonder: What was your first favorite anime, and what is your favorite anime now?
My Favorite Anime is Polygon’s column dedicated to collecting the stories of the world’s biggest celebrity anime fans, charting a path from their first introduction to Japanese animation to the shows and films they love today. This is what Jérémie Périn had to say.
What was your first favorite anime?
Based on the manga by Buichi Terasawa, Space adventure Cobra is a 1982 science fiction adventure anime about a bored office worker who accidentally discovers that he is a reckless mercenary who erased his own memories to escape a deadly group of space pirates. After regaining his memories, Cobra resumes his life as a mercenary and embarks on adventures across the universe with his partner, Lady Armaroid.
While Terasawa quoted Star Trekthe James Bond film series and René Laloux’s animation as a source of inspiration while writing the manga, the starting point of Space adventure Cobra also bears a striking resemblance to Philip K. Dick’s 1966 short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” later adapted by Paul Verhoeven as Total recall.
The other anime Périn quoted: The Rose of Versailles, is a historical drama set before and during the French Revolution and follows the story of Oscar François de Jarjayes, the youngest daughter of a military general who raises her like a son so that she will one day succeed him as commander of the Royal Guard at the Palace of Versailles. Distraught about the fate of the French public under the crisis old regimeOscar eventually leaves the guard to fight alongside the revolutionaries with her lover, André.
While these two anime couldn’t seem further apart at first glance, they actually have one notable thing in common. Both Space adventure Cobra And The Rose of Versailles were directed by Osamu Dezaki, the anime legend who directed the 1970 anime adaptation Ashita no Joe and co-founder of the Japanese animation studio Madhouse. Dezaki is considered one of the most influential anime directors of the 1970s and 1980s, known for his distinctive visual style that incorporated split-screen images, Dutch angle shots, and other techniques unusual in anime at the time. He is also best known for his use of pastel freeze frames called “postcard memories”, which have since become a foundational visual trope throughout the medium of modern anime.
What is your favorite anime now?
Directed by Mamoru Oshii and produced by Production IG, Patlabor 2: The Movie is a 1993 sci-fi political thriller set in an alternate 2002, where ‘Labors’, large-scale robots designed for heavy construction work, have revolutionized the Japanese economy. To respond to the increase in work-related crime, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police forms a special crime unit that deploys their own Patrol Labors (“Patlabors”) to solve these cases.
Unlike previous anime in the Patlabor franchise, Patlabor 2: The Movie is not a police comedy, but an explicitly political film that focuses heavily on domestic and international issues facing Japan at the time the film was produced, such as the debate over Japan’s post-war identity and the deployment of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). ) in UN peacekeeping operations in Cambodia. The plot involves the members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Special Vehicles Unit attempting to arrest the leader of a terrorist cell plotting to cause chaos under the pretext of a coup.
With a budget that is more than twice that of the first Patlabor film an improved layout production system in which talented animators and artists such as Masahiro Ando, Satoshi Kon and Hiroyuki Okiura worked under animation director Kazuchika Kise, Patlaboration 2 was praised for its more refined photorealistic animation style, a style that would later be replicated in Oshii’s next film: the 1995 cyberpunk action anime Ghost in the shell.
Patlaboration 2 is considered one of the best anime films of the ’90s. Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to stream online. However, the film, along with the entire Patlabor series, is included in the Patlabor: The Mobile Police Ultimate Collection Blu-ray set, available from the Crunchyroll Store or Sentai Film Works.
The Rose of Versailles is available to stream on Pluto TV and Freevee with ads. Space adventure Cobra is available to stream on Pluto TV and Retrocrush.