Whew, finished Robot Carnival. I think I took finishing it too seriously, I wanted to go to bed after about 30 more minutes since it’s late (3:34 AM as of me writing this). I stopped before a particularly sad story the other night. I’ll do my best not to spoil anything here but I am inclined to share the music from that particular part. If you don’t want to spoil the music for yourself until you actually watch the film/segment that it’s from then please feel free to ignore the video below.
Composed by the all-star himself, Joe Hisashi! He’s responsible for many of the incredible soundtracks you’ve heard from Studio Ghibli films, I thought this felt familiar. A lot of the music in Robot Carnival had this interesting recognizability within it.
I’m glad I finished it. It probably would have been more fun if I wasn’t so tired, maybe should have treated each segment as episodes I could watch at different times but… oh well.
I miss hand drawn animation like this. With the painted cels and such. They don’t make the paint for that anymore so these really do seem like precious artifacts now. This anthology had a lot of visual quirks from the traditional process in it. Paint falling slightly outside of the lines and visible grain on the separate cels. Love seeing that stuff. Really dense and visually bombastic but a little rough around the edges in a good way.
I plan on watching Mononoke next. No, not Princess Mononoke. This one appears to be a short series with some really yummy looking art direction. Very different but it reminds me of Gankutsuou which utilized a lot of stunning art nouveau influence and intricate collaging/layering effects. Not sure if this show will have all those same things but they made me think of one another, we’ll see.
Now I’m playing one of the albums from a random Japanese composer that came up in my youtube algorithm in an effort to relax and fall asleep. It doesn’t usually work for me if the music is compelling and nice enough to listen to. But I’ll also share it, reminds me of a lot of great video game and anime music I admire. When I say that I mean the particular flavor this music imparts.
It’s really pretty and soothing. Oh, and speaking of flavor and wet lands… I’m realizing the roasted mate I bought reminds me a lot of coffee. It’s obviously different, but if you were looking for a substitute that matched the richness in flavor and toasty, roasty-ness… I think it does a great job offering something in the same vein while still being unique. I’ve tried dandelion tea, Pero, Teecino… and while I enjoy those things this seems to really come close to the depth of flavor coffee has that those don’t quite reach.
Anyway, I was happily sipping on it during the movie and I probably shouldn’t have. I imagine some of the caffeine gets cooked out of it when it’s roasted but despite how tired I am… I’m not able to fall asleep. I’m instead occupied thinking about all the things I want to do but am physically too tired to accomplish at this moment. I had a list of chores in my head for the morning but it’s difficult to remember what all of that was. Really wish I knew how to meditate at all so I could quiet my mind and doze off.