Okay so, I'm kind of cheating for this review. Panda! Go, Panda!, is not a movie in a sense, it isn't even really a package film like The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, it's a 2017 DVD and Blu-Ray release of two short films, Panda Kopanda from 1972 and Panda Kopanda and the Rainy-Day Circus from 1973. I have a general rule about reviewing short films, in that I just don't review them. 40 minutes is the general accepted minimum length required for a movie to qualify as "Feature Length" according to the AFI and the BFI, and neither of these shorts reach 40 minutes. So the question is, Does this fall into my rules? Well, I decided to cheat a little bit, this is gonna review the shorts as though they are part of one big package film, because the DVD release allows you to watch both of them in one sitting, no selecting at the menu, just click play and watch. Does this mean short film packages from the likes of Disney and Pixar up for review? I'm going to say no, I'm making an exception here because, honestly I do need to talk about anime more on here.
Panda Kopanda follows a little girl named Mimiko who is left home alone when her Grandmother leaves to Nagasaki for a memorial service. She finds a baby panda sleeping on her back porch and befriends the little guy, meets his father, and the three of them quickly decide to become a family, with Mimiko becoming the little Panda's mother, and PapaPanda becoming Mimiko's father. The first short mainly follows the three of them getting along together, with the little Panda "Panny" following Mimiko to school, and Mimiko learning that the Panda's actually escaped from the Zoo. The whole short is actually really cute, and the three lead characters are all very perky and bubbly. It's a very comforting watch, and really has that Studio Ghibli vibe to it, which is entirely because this was Written by Hayao Miyazaki, and directed by Isao Takahata, both of whom would go on to found Studio Ghibli in 1985. Other staff include Yoichi Kotabe as animation director, Yasuo Otsuka as a character designer, and Yoshifumi Kondō as an animator.
The second short, Panda Kopanda and the Rainy-Day Circus follows Mimiko and the Pandas as they discover an escaped baby tiger in their house. Being a cutesy anime, the tiger quickly befriends the three, and Mimiko reunites the baby tiger with its mother at the circus. Of course it wouldn't be called the "Rainy-Day Circus" if their wasn't a rainy day, or a stormy day that floods most of the town they live in. With the circus animals stuck in the flood, Mimiko and the Pandas need to rescue them. This short is just as cute as the previous, but it was also a bit tenser, the music in the opening when the circus crew were looking for the tiger, it almost made it feel like a horror movie, which of course makes it all the funnier when Mimiko excitedly does a hand-stand on the table proclaiming that she's never seen a real burglar before, and the climax with the circus train was both fun and kind of exciting. This is admittedly a film for younger kids, but I can see them really getting into this one.
Both of these shorts have really simple designs, but it really fits the tone they were going for with these movies. The characters look cute and the stories they're put in are equally so. There really isn't a whole lot I can say on the animation side of things, it has a simpler style and doesn't do a lot of what I think most people come to expect from anime, but it wasn't meant to have any super detailed moments or extravagantly choreographed sequences, it was meant to be a cute and charming series of shorts about a girl and two pandas and that is what it is. I also watched this movie subbed, and the Japanese voice actors really did do a good job, I honestly almost dread watching it dubbed because I feel that American voice actors very rarely get "cute" down right, I can name some who do, but not a whole lot. I think my only real problem with these shorts is that... well whenever Mimiko is excited, she does a handstand, and that leads to a lot of shots where we see here underwear. I do feel like that is something I should tell people about before they give this a watch.
Other than that, Panda! Go, Panda! was a fun collection of two really cute shorts. You can draw a lot of connections from it and Hayao Miyazaki's future works, especially My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo. If you're a big Studio Ghibli fan, I would classify this as a must see, and if you are an anime fan, I would say this is worth checking out. It's nice comfort viewing, the stakes are never very high and the whole this is just an adorable and fun watch, it would be fantastic to show for kids, and it's a cute comfortable watch for anyone else. I may be a bit biased because the Panda is my favourite animal in the world, but even looking at this objectively, it's not aiming for more than cute and fun, and I'd say it succeeds. Yeah, this was kind of a short review, but hey, it happens. I give this collection a solid recommendation.
No comments:
Post a Comment