Satsuki and Mei help their father and the Nanny clean up the house. While Satsuki is at school during the day, Mei plays outside in the yard and spots a little bunny-like ghost that disappears and then appears before her very eyes as if playing a game. Mei then spots something that resembles a cross between a cat and a rabbit and chases it into the large tree. Deep inside the tree she comes across a gigantic sleeping cat (a cautionary tale to cats everywhere – this is what happens if you eat too much!). She names the large, sleepy feline Totoro after the troll in her picture book.

Miyazaki introduces the magical elements gradually with the brief appearances by the soot spreaders (that, at night, fly up into the sky and head for the large tree near the house). My Neighbor Totoro evokes those endless summer days when you were a child and would spend hours playing outside, losing all track of time. The film captures perfectly how little kids amuse themselves with the games that they invent. In a nice touch, instead of scoffing at Mei’s admittedly fantastic story, her father encourages her to pay respect to the tree and the denizens of the forest.

My Neighbor Totoro celebrates the simple pleasures in life, like playing in puddles when it rains. Like all Miyazaki films this one is filled with images that are at once stunning and whimsical, like the bus that is a huge cat with its eyes as headlights (and a huge Cheshire grin) that is able to fly and travel along power lines. My Neighbor Totoro is a great example of magic realism with beans sprouting suddenly into a huge tree and a large flying cat transporting the two girls across the night sky. In a way, this fantasy world is how Satsuki and Mei deal with their mother being sick as they are forced to face the real possibility that she might die – something that a lot of children don’t confront in these kinds of films. My Neighbor Totoro is the perfect marriage of your childhood experiences and your childhood dreams.

Special Features:

There is a feature that allows you watch the entire film in its original Japanese storyboard form.

“Behind the Studio” is comprised of six featurettes that cover various aspects of My Neighbor Totoro. The film started off as a storybook that Miyazaki wrote and that helped rekindle his love for Japanese landscapes. He also talks about how he came up with the name Totoro and the various sizes of the character throughout the film. The film’s producer talks about the origins of the studio’s name. A 28-minute featurette explores the locations that inspired the film with footage of the actual places in this fascinating extra. The film’s composer talks about specific musical cues, like Totoro’s theme and how he felt that the character’s first appearance should have a musical introduction and not just sound effects.

Also included is the original Japanese trailer.

“Behind the Microphone” takes a brief look at the American version of My Neighbor Totoro with some of the voice actors talking about their love of the film and how they approach the job of dubbing their respective characters.

Finally, there is “Enter the Lands,” which allows you to take a brief look at various characters from several of Miyazaki’s films.

The first six minutes of dialogue-free footage demonstrate Miyazaki’s skill as a purely visual storyteller. We meet Ponyo, a goldfish who travels from the depths of the ocean to almost getting trapped in a net of a trash-collecting boat. However, she gets stuck in a glass jar and is rescued by a little boy named Sosuke. Her father is a powerful underwater sorcerer and he pursues his daughter on land. Ponyo is not your typical fish as Sosuke discovers. For example, she likes to eat the ham right out of his sandwich!

Ponyo and Sosuke become friends only for her father to reclaim the girl and return them to the sea. Sosuke’s father works long hours piloting a transport boat of some type which angers his mother but she has developed a strong bond with her son. Back at home, Ponyo begins to take on human characteristics like arms and legs, much to her father’s chagrin. She escapes from her underwater home and in doing so creates monsoon-like conditions on the surface. This almost destroys the ship that Sosuke’s father pilots with large waves that are created from her underwater escape. Ponyo and Sosuke are reunited once again and the film follows their adventures.

The underwater scenes come to life with vibrant colours thanks to the vast assortment of life that populates it. Miyazaki creates a fascinating sense of wonder with the help of the film’s soundtrack by his long-time composer Joe Hisaishi. There are also all kinds of vivid imagery, like the giant waves of water that resemble a fish. Soon, we see Ponyo running on top of the giant fish-like waves of water as Sosuke and his mother race home from the storm in her car.

Ponyo doesn’t quite have the same magical sense of wonder as other classic Miyazaki films but it is still a very engaging effort in its own right. There is something to be said when a minor work by Miyazaki is better than most animated films out there. Only Pixar has as good or maybe a better track record.

Special Features:

“Disc Introduction – Meet Ponyo” features the American version’s executive producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy singing Miyazaki’s praises and talking briefly about the film.

Kiki is a 13-year-old girl who is a witch. At this age, she must leave home by the first full moon and train for a year by finding the right town in which to live by herself. So, she says goodbye to her family and friends and departs on her mother’s broom with her black cat Jiji. Kiki heads for the ocean and finds a city that is not occupied by any other witches. She befriends Osono, a kind pregnant lady who runs a bakery and accepts the girl for who she is. This becomes the deciding factor for Kiki staying in the city where most people really don’t know what to make of her. Osono has Kiki work part-time in the bakery and allows her to use the phone for the delivery service she starts. Kiki also finds herself drawn to and annoyed by Tombo, a boy her age that she shares a common love of flying, she with her broom and he with a bicycle that he’s converting into a flying machine.

Like many of his films, Miyazaki presents the countryside as an idyllic setting. In Kiki’s Delivery Service, we meet then film’s protagonist living out in the country with her loving and supporting parents. Clearly, he sees nature as being a nurturing force. The city is a busy, impersonal place where a police officer chastises Kiki for disrupting traffic with her flying and a group of noisy girls her age walk past her without even acknowledging her presence.

Like any good fable, Kiki’s Delivery Service has a timeless quality to it. The city where most of the film takes place doesn’t resemble one specific place but rather an intriguing pastiche of several European cities and even one from America. One of the great things about Miyazaki’s films is that he doesn’t forget what it was like to be a kid – how they talk and act – and I think that is what about his films that appeals to both adults and kids. By running her own business, Kiki learns to be responsible and independent as well as the value of working for a living. These are values that seem in short supply nowadays which makes this film even more relevant than when it was released in 1989.

Special Features:

The first disc includes an “Introduction by John Lasseter,” the head of Pixar. He offers his brief thoughts on what Kiki’s Delivery Service is about and what he thinks of it.

The second disc contains the bulk of the extra material starting with the “Original Japanese Storyboards,” allowing you to watch the entire film in storyboard form.

“Behind the Studio” consists of six brief featurettes that explore various aspects of the film. We learn that Miyazaki wasn’t even supposed to direct Kiki’s Delivery Service but a problem arose that threatened the project and so he stepped in and took charge. It was suggested by his producer that the protagonist be an adolescent girl but Miyazaki had no experience with them and asked one of his collaborators to use his young daughter as the basis for Kiki. Miyazaki talks about the challenge of animating the flying sequences. The film’s producer talks about working with Miyazaki. There is a 28-minute featurette that takes a look at the real-life locations that inspired the ones in the film. Miyazaki’s long-time composer Joe Hisaishi talks about his approach to scoring these films and how he tries to enhance the imagery with music.

Also included are 10 minutes of Japanese trailers for the film.

“Behind the Microphone” takes a look at the dubbing for the American version of the film with interviews with some of the voice actors like Kirsten Dunst and Phil Hartman.

“Enter the Lands” is an interactive map of key locations from various Miyazaki films. By clicking on them you can take a character quiz and view clips from the film that briefly examine significant characters.

For those that aren’t sure where Headmasters fits in with the continuity, it’s not easy. It kind of fits in just after the end of series five where ‘The Rebirth’ left off, but ignores many of the occurrences in Rebirth. The Transformers aren’t yet introduced to the Headmasters, but peace has been restored on Cybertron. Naturally this doesn’t last as Galvatron returns with his motley crew (the Decepticons, not a band) and attacks everyone he can see.

Now as I said this has never been previously available in the UK, nor has it been broadcast over here as when it was originally produced Transformers were as good as dead in the western world. Thus the episodes weren’t originally transferred into English language, and this becomes the greatest stumbling block. Never has the value of a great voice actor been more appreciated than when he’s absent from the project. Frank Welker and Peter Cullen injected life into Transformers with a rare talent. This Headmasters series has been dubbed by, according to rumour, a bunch of Japanese students. The trouble is it doesn’t seem as though they had the original script. It looks as though they’ve guessed-imated the dialogue by looking at the animation. Characters are coming out with lines that are non sensical, such as Soundwave in the middle of a fire fight saying:

“One of these days I’ll come for you”

When it’s almost certain what he really said was something like:

*Adopts my best Soundwave voice*

“Decepticons, retreat”

This isn’t an isolated incident either; throughout the series you have characters basically talking garbage. It reminds me of a children’s TV show where kids would watch an old film and comically dub there own dialogue over the top as they saw fit, and naturally they’d have long passages of silence because they couldn’t think of something to say. It’s that amateurish. It would have better watching this in Japanese and trying to work out what was going on from the animation, which incidentally is first class.

It’s also full of errors, such as referring to Hot-Rod as Rodimus Prime, Wheelie is oft referred to as Willy and Blaster is now known as Billy. These kind of cock-ups must have come from the ‘voice talents’ involved watching some of the English versions to help with their pronunciation of the names and not quite getting it right.

Unlike the first few series of Transformers that we had the pleasure of watching in the UK, this series feature very high quality animation with a strong Manga influence. It’s almost up to the standard of the movie (note: I said almost). It’s a real shame that this wasn’t picked up with the original series’ and dubbed by Welker, Cullen and co as it would surely have been superb.

If you’re new to Transformers you should give this one a miss, it’s purely for the hardcore collector only. Animation buffs will enjoy it, but try it with the sound off, it’s better that way – you get a better idea of the story without the awfully inaccurate dubbing throwing you off the scent.

Akira is set some thirty years after the end of the third world war, a war that saw Tokyo destroyed. It is now 2019 and Neo-Tokyo is preparing to host the 2020 Olympic Games. The prosperity of the city is undermined by the rising crime and unemployment. The streets are owned by rival bike gangs, who engage in their own violent conflicts on souped-up ‘choppers’.

Kaneda is the leader of his gang, and his bike is a custom designed machine that no one else knows how to ride. He has spent his whole life coming to the rescue of his friend Tetsuo. Tetsuo, in his desperation to prove himself, gets badly hurt in a biker conflict and winds up in a hospital being experimented on by Government scientists. These experiments spark of supernatural powers in Tetsuo, powers that he can’t control.
Kaneda gets involved with a group of terrorists, not because of his beliefs but because one of them is an attractive female.
Tetsuo begins having horrific visions that may have something to do with the three supernatural children, each with a number for a name. These children are part of the same government experiments that affected Tetsuo, and presumably created Akira.

This is where Akira really gets going, and some of its viewers really get lost. Up to this point Akira is a very dark, ultra violent film noir with a deeply engrossing plot. Akira then delves deeper into itself, becoming a spider’s web of a film.

Until Akira I’d never seen a film that I just didn’t understand on first watching. Sure I’d seen many films that I didn’t understand why they’d been made, or why they’d been successful, but never have I just become confused by a film knowing it had beaten me. Akira is perhaps the most densely plotted movie I’ve ever seen, and it leaves the viewer thinking about its events, characters and overall meaning long after they’ve finished viewing it.

Don’t think that Akira is just confusing for the sake of it. It’s sure not one of those arty films that thinks it’s more intelligent than it really is and tries at every turn to mislead the viewer with unnecessary characters and plot devices. Akira’s characterisation is both clear and rich, with relationships between characters easily identifiable. Their goals and problems are clear at the outset, and how they strive to achieve them is within the boundaries of their characterisation. Akira’s complexities come from its storyline, just what is Akira and what does it mean? Will it bring about the end of the world or the beginning?

On the first watch the identity of Akira is part of the mystery, and Akira could be anything or anyone. It could be Tetsuo, it could be Kaneda, it could be the three supernatural children combined or it could even be Kaneda’s bike! It is supposed to be machinery and technology beyond man’s comprehension after all.

The revelation as to what, or who Akira really is and what it means takes place in the Tokyo Olympiad where Akira’s secrets were buried 30 years ago. Tetsuo’s supernatural powers have made him more powerful than even he can control, and the three supernatural children together with Kaneda attempt to stop him from destroying the city.

Akira isn’t the flagship of Manga and the most successful of the Manga movies because it’s the most palatable for the Western world. Far from it, Akira is one of the most stylishly violent and densely plotted movies ever made. If you’ve never tried Manga, this is the one to test the water with.

Akira is a must see film, not for those that like animation but for those that believe the medium of film should be both challenging and thought provoking.

Well, in a word… yes.

The mockery of justice with the cover misprint (a PG certificate with a Universal description) nearly delayed the release, but in the end proved unimportant and in all honesty may actually help. You see there are only 20,000 prints of this first run and the second run will have the cover altered. This original cover with the classification mistake will become something of a collector’s item!

And what a cover! We really prefer this to the badly rendered VHS cover and the American Ultra Magnus artwork. This was the original face of the movie way back with the Video Gems release, and for cinema posters here in the UK. This artwork was also picked by readers of TheTransformers.Net as their favourite, that’s why it was used. People Power!

When you put this long awaited DVD into your player you’re greeted with the introductory footage from BBC’s I Love 1984. This features interviews with comic writer Simon Furman and Transforce organiser Paul Cannon. This provides a nice little backdrop to Transformers if you’re unfamiliar or are trying to brainwash a colleague, spouse or child – I know from experience, it works.
There is of course the famous mistake in this program where Paul, bless him, talks about Soundwave whilst the good old Beeb cut in some footage of Blaster. Don’t blame Paul, it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t edit the thing, the BBC did and he feels really embarrassed about how dumb they made him look. Apart from that inexcusable error the interview with Simon Furman is great.

Once this footage ends we go straight into the animated intro sequence… and there’s no season 3 intro on a season 1 DVD here (as Rhino did with Ultimate Doom!). This intro rocks.

The words Access Granted adorn the screen, allowing us into the Transformers vault. Shots of the movie flash up in a very slick, well put together montage with the thumping sounds of Leon’s ‘The Transformers’ theme. This evolves into the main menu, with a matrix (Keanu, not Creation) animated backdrop. You can just make out the Autobot logo scrolling down on the left.

Special Features
Let’s talk first about the features, not what isn’t on it but was is!
Your first choice in the menu offers the film, the scene selector, the trailer and the special features. It is the features that we made a bee line for.

There are two special feature in this section, the first being the Takara episode: The Four Soldiers From The Sky’ which is also included on the recent VHS release. The quality is obviously superior here, but the dubbing still bad.

The second feature is something new, a moving picture gallery with music. This is the reason the disc carries a PG certificate. The music featured is a new remix by NRG of their track Instruments of Destruction and it uses samples from the movie of Spike’s infamous line. The remix is great, and is sure to soon be available on many web sites for download.
It should be noted that this mix was part of some work NRG were hoping to finish in time for the 2001 Botcon convention, but unfortunately were unable to do so. Luckily we have a chance to enjoy it here.

The gallery images themselves are all from the movie, which helps… Rhino take note! They are in fact from the Marvel adaptation from 1986 – Transformers the movie comic/poster. This is the comic that TheTF.Net provided for use on the cover art.

The obligatory animated scene selector
Every decent DVD needs animated chapter selectors, particularly if it’s an animated film. This DVD is no exception, and this time the chapters on the cover are spelt correctly. For those that don’t know, the original print of the cover had a spelling mistake that the chaps at TheTransformers.Net noticed and caught Maverick just in time to prevent an embarrassment.

Interesting version?
This version of the film on this DVD is quite unusual, it’s neither the U.S. uncut version or the UK version. It is in fact a hybrid of the two. It features the UK scrolling text and voicover, yet still has the swearing intact. This makes it unique, if not unusual. Is this the best version available?

Theatrical Trailer
For me this is the prize of the features, for although it doesn’t say it on the cover it is actually in widescreen! here are some screenshots to prove it. A 4:3 version of this trailer is downloadable in our video section now, but this widescreen version on the DVD is a beautiful sight.

The Film Itself
OK, OK, no widescreen. I know. Sunbow said that it existed and that they’d found it, but they didn’t come forward with it. This is very frustrating and annoying, particularly considering that the trailer has been unearthed in widescreen. This just wets our appetites even more. Never mind, one day the widescreen print will light our darkest hour… or at least our DVD players, I’m sure of it.

As the film itself, I don’t know if it’s just me but the actual transfer looked a little dark. I thought the same about the VHS version, maybe I’m just picking holes. This film also features a 5.1 sound mix that was created at great expense by those chaps in the USA.

I have to say that I feared the worst with this release. We’d waited so long with so many promises, disappointments and false advertising by retailers that I just felt we were in for a big let down. Those fears however were dispelled with the intro sequence of the disc. It was slick, stylish and professional, far better in my opinion the the US region 1 version from Rhino.

The extras from there were like a candy flavoured topping. The widescreen trailer, ooh bliss. The Takara episode, the NRG remix with my images (ego trip) and even the BBC intro footage. I bet Paul Cannon is well chuffed. This DVD made my day, I just hope that Maverick’s efforts to please the fans don’t backfire on them with people feeling cheated, because you won’t be. believe me.

The really great thing is that with this epic project out of the way, Maverick can now focus on the next Transformers release. A DVD containing five episodes from season 1: SOS Dinobots, Fire in the Sky & The Ultimate Doom parts 1,2 & 3. This they hope will be out by December 31st.

Now if you want this DVD, and you know you do, it’s only available in the UK.
If you’re in the US or any other country for that matter you can order it online and import it. Bear in mind though that there is a US region 1 DVD of Transformers The Movie already available, if you’d rather that check out Amazon. If you’re unsure which one you want, check out our review of the US region 1 version here.

That’s it, the DVD is out, I’m off to bed to dream of Transformers and a time when, well, all are one.

’til then?