Here is the second short film in Katsuhiro Otomo’s short collection of films, Memories. There is not as much staff to highlight in this short film other then it’s directed by Tensei Okamura of Wolf’s Rain fame. You know, well before he worked on that series, but it counts. This is a short film based on the Gloria Ramirez incident where hospital staff got sick just by being near her. Wonderful to watch during a pandemic. Woo.
This is a short that follows lab technician by name of Nobuo Tanaka. He starts standing in line to get a flu shot before showing up at his medical research lab that has some horrible sanitary conditions. Of course, one of the other staff members mentions a special pill that will cure him instantly in the director’s office. Of course, that turns into a chemical weapon based on his mental state. His mission, from when he wakes up, is to bring the information about the Pill to Tokyo.
This short film gets more and more ridiculous as it goes on in a supposedly comedic way. I mean, the escalation against the guy is funny at least. His area of affect grows as he gets more and more stressed out as he gets confused by the situation itself or wondering why he’s being shot at. The military intervention starts small, gets a bigger and bigger presence as time goes on, and jumps from tanks and helicopters missing their shots at him to men in modern space suits hopefully taking them out. So many complicated things here.
What misses for me is that a lot of things are built on characters being ridiculous stupid or not knowing things in convenient ways so everything can escalate like that. There isn’t a lot of grounding here. That is how it misses a bit on the dark humor of dead people if they are dead because don’t know. Same with Tanaka not even noticing how he is affecting people despite the fact that he has been in the center of it all. It’s a bit too much. It’s not anchored to anything to make it interesting at all. At it looks really nice I guess. Maybe this portion isn’t for me.
Mechanical Anime Reviews 
Yeah, I got the dark comedy, but it was nowhere near as good as Magnetic Rose. I’m sure this short would be very awkward to watch in these COVID times.
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Yeah, it’s fine on it’s own. Just why would you put Magnetic Rose first?
I feel like that the COVID situation may have ruined a lot of this film for me. Just was too much I suppose.
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Exactly! I still didn’t get the ordering of the short films.
I sure bet. It’s affected my viewing experience when it comes to plots involving pandemics or even just seeing people holding hands or hugging. I can’t look at that the same after Russell Kane’s joke about closing his child’s eyes when watching an innocent movie in these COVID times.
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Stink Bomb was the short from this series that was just fun to watch for me. It just sounds absolutely ridiculous but given these times… the level of self-awarness that Tanaka has during this film, seems to be on par with the Karen’s and Kevin’s of the pandemic so maybe they were on to something there.
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You are probably right! I still don’t get why people should and shouldn’t wear some kind of masks or something.
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