Ninja Scroll (1993)

Ninja Scroll (1993)

Dir. Yoshiaki Kawajiri

I don't understand why Ninja Scroll is so named. It has a ninja — actually, it has lots of ninjas — but what's the scroll part about? Fuctifino. But what I know for certain is that when it comes to 90s era anime movies, NS is a classic. I've watched it a dozen times over the years and it impresses me every time. It isn't packed with plot like, for example, Akira (1988) or Ghost in the Shell (1995) are, but it has a visceral quality that many of its genre imitators failed to capture. [1]

Somehow, the historical setting enhances the fantastical elements, even though logic says they ought to be at odds with each other. A similar kind of complementary contrariety surrounds the two main characters: a skilled swordsman named Jubei, and a female Kōga ninja named Kagero, who has a special, hidden, devastating talent.

The villains, known as the Eight Devils of Kimon, are a peculiar bunch of freaks with unusual powers, and are all the more memorable for it.

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (2016)

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (2016)

Dir. Kaku Arakawa

A TV documentary about Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. It begins with an announcement of retirement from a man not suited to retirement, and then shows what he does afterwards, which is go back to work.

Among other things, it explores the making of his short film Boro the Caterpillar (2018), including his openness and frustrations of using CGI during the creative process. The handheld camerawork feels amateurish, resembling something shot on a phone, intended for YouTube more than TV,  but over time (and probably more by accident than design) it captures something close and personal, thanks mostly to being present during moments of insight from its subject: an artisan with a lifetime of true experience.

I feel that what we get is merely a lucky glimpse of a larger, unseen whole, but it's still worthwhile viewing for anyone interested in how an animation studio of Ghibli's calibre does things.

Neverwhere (1996)

Neverwhere (1996)

Dir. Dewi Humphreys | 6 episodes, approx 30 minutes each.

Richard Mayhew (Gary Bakewell) is a nice-guy Scotsman who lives and works in London. His fiancée is an asshole. His friends are assholes. If Richard could meet the criteria that he believes constitutes success, then in time he'd become just another city asshole, too.

But instead he meets Door (Laura Fraser), a young woman in need of the kind of help that he in his privileged position is able to offer.

Richard becomes aware of London Below, an underworld with its own laws, both societal and physical, that coexist with the London Above.

The two worlds can interact from time to time, but must inevitably return to their own individual aspects. If Richard is to help himself, then he must continue to help Door, and that means stepping into an unknown world of underground passageways, weird happenings, and (not very menacing) cut-throat assassins.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: TV Series (1995-96)

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96)

Dirs. Hideaki Anno / Masayuki / Kazuya Tsurumaki | 26 episodes, approx 23 mins each

Fourteen-year-old Shinji Ikari arrives in the futuristic Tokyo-3, having been summoned there by a father that he's not seen in over three years.

Shinji's abandonment issues and his father's overbearing (though often silent) judging of the boy's measure puts an excruciating amount of stress upon the youth's inexperienced shoulders.

The emotional tearing that develops from the conflicting hatred of his estranged father and the simultaneous craving for his approval and love is a major defining attribute of the teenager.

But if that wasn't enough to deal with, Shinji is required to take on a task that would challenge even a hardened combat veteran, with nothing less than the fate of humanity on the line if he fails.

It's a situation that puts him directly in his father's line of sight, and increases the fear of failure and sense of worthlessness that the boy nurtures.

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip (2008)

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip (2008)

The Slip does what many of the post millennium NIN albums basically do: it mixes the angry and the serene, and after repeated listens it's the serene tracks that prove to have the most depth musically and emotionally.

It was reportedly created in just three weeks, being an experiment in 'working with a compressed timeline'. It adheres to a mostly paint-by-numbers formula, but at least none of those numbers are (Year) Zero.

The end result does sound kind of rushed, but the enthusiasm for both the music and the project is definitely evident in the compositions and there are some quality tracks to be found.

It was FREE from the official site, released under a creative commons license (although a physical release did follow). Curiously, it no longer seems to be on the official website, at time of writing, but is still available from the Internet Archive in both lossy and lossless formats.

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I – IV (2008)

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I – IV (2008)

The sixth NIN studio album is almost entirely instrumental. It's a work that needs abstract analogies to define it.

I'm respectfully not going to attempt to provide any such things because they'll likely be different for everyone who hears it. Whether intentional or not, the music is like a soundtrack to whatever fleeting thought a subject's mind conjures when it's given free rein to do so. As you listen to it play, you'll create the meaning yourself.

It's split into four parts with nine tracks apiece. There's a specific mood to each of the four parts but they're malleable and can be made to fit the listener's own ideals and anxieties.

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero (2007)

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero (2007)

Year Zero is dark, like peering through a smoky looking glass. It's also dense and overly-layered, but not always in a beneficial way.

Interestingly, it lacks the introspective musings that NIN usually offer up. Instead, it's a concept album… religious / political nonsense… America…year 2022, etc. Boring.

It's noisy and frustrating; you could argue that so was Broken (1992) and I'd 100% agree with you, but Broken was more focussed and knew when to stop. Whereas Year Zero feels like it goes on too long, dragging me down into a state of sensory ennui.

Nine Inch Nails: With Teeth (2005)

NIN: [WITH_TEETH] (2005)

NIN's fourth full-length studio album is the most accessible, radio-friendly work that Reznor had made to date. Lyrically it takes the familiar dip into waters of self-loathing existentialism, but parts of its production are bright and airy, with happy sounding drums and inoffensive instrument distortion.

After repeated spins a large part of it can get tiresome to listen to, but there are just enough moments of beauty and strength rising above the safety net to make a purchase worthwhile. The songs Every Day is Exactly the Same and Sunspots are especially notable. Overall, it's like a NIN starter kit for the kids.

Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days (1999)

Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days (1999)

Author: Neil Gaiman | Illustrators: Stephen R. Bissette / John Totleben / Dave McKean / Teddy Kristiansen / Sergio Aragones / Mike Mignola / Richard Piers Rayner / Mike Hoffman / Kim DeMulder | Page Count: 176

'In her dreams her fingers had become tiny snakes. When she awoke she could not feel her hands; but she could hear her fingers, slithering over the sheets and away from her in the darkness.'

Midnight Days collects together some of Gaiman's earliest works for DC. It's not of his usual comic book standard, and it's certainly not the place to start if you've not read any of his works before. He admits in the introduction that he was still finding his feet.

But it's not all bad news. Some parts of it are worthy of praise. A short piece featuring the wonderful John Constantine is creepy and unnerving, and is without a doubt the highlight of the whole endeavour.

The collection contains six stories in all, one of which came from an unused Swamp Thing script; it was illustrated specifically for the book. It's interesting.

Natural Born Killers: Soundtrack (1994)

Natural Born Killers:

A Soundtrack for an Oliver Stone Film (1994)

The majority of film soundtracks (as opposed to film score albums) are little more than a collection of new or existing songs from different artists bundled together onto one disc.

Natural Born Killers' soundtrack is essentially the same. The biggest difference is that there was some actual thought and care put into structuring them, with custom edits and audio clips from the film itself used to connect the tracks into a more story-style structure.

It was compiled by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who referred to it as a "collage of sound," which I guess is as good a description as any. It's the kind of thing that many of us used to do back when all we had was a double tape-deck, a VHS collection and plenty of patience.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Films (1984-2003)

01. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Dir. Wes Craven

Prior to re-watching the first of the Elm Street movies recently, it had been well over a decade — perhaps even closer to two — since I'd last seen it, but I remembered almost every scene as if it was yesterday. It's because I'd watched it many times on an ex-rental VHS as a teenager. In all honesty, and accounting for nostalgia, it holds up rather well.

If you're not familiar with the set-up, it's the story of a group of teenagers, all of whom reside on the titular Elm Street, whose dreams are haunted by a killer with blades on one gloved hand. The killer's reasons for doing what he does are part of the film's plot, so I won't delve any deeper than that.

One of the movie's strengths is its atmosphere, and by polluting the safety net of the unconscious, by turning a place of retreat into a realm of pure terror for the story's protagonists, it sticks in the mind.

Nine Inch Nails: The Fragile (1999)

NIN: The Fragile (1999)

Five long years after The Downward Spiral (1994), its successor appeared, a double album of two distinct halves.

Disc 01 (labelled as LEFT) feels like another concept album. It's moody and seems initially impenetrable, but rewards repeated listens; like a winter retreat it reveals hidden beauty to those that choose to explore (if you can accept the notion that personal demons are a kind of beauty).

It embraces the fuzzy guitar sound that people associate with NIN, but there's much more to it - it's layered throughout with hooks and a deep resonating bass that pumps like a meticulously slow, pained heartbeat.

Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral (1994)

NIN: The Downward Spiral (1994)

For me, The Downward Spiral is one of the greatest albums of the 90s. It's noisy but it's beautiful. It's textured, multifaceted and multilayered, so you may be hearing things on your fiftieth listen that you hadn't heard before.

It's a concept album in which each song is like a piece of jigsaw puzzle; some of the pieces are more revealing of the whole than others, but when the picture is complete it becomes a darkened mirror that both entices and frightens. It has insect noises. It has film samples. It's the perfect example of creativity born from negativity given form. The production sounds like it was recorded yesterday.

Nine Inch Nails: Broken / Fixed (1992)

NIN: Broken E.P. (1992)

Broken is an angry, audible 'F**k You!' to the stifling conventions and contrivances of the music business, conceived, written, performed and co-produced by Trent Reznor. It's the sound of Reznor the 'commodity' hating on the people that want him to be marketable and make them money.

Ironically, it went on to make a lot of money, but it also saw NIN turn from being syth-pop-friendly to kicking it with the Industrial big league.

It wasn't just a Pretty Hate Machine (1989) retread with distortion, it was a whole new NIN sound that two years later, once the anger had subsided, would further develop into something altogether more mature, resulting in one of the best albums the genre ever produced: The Downward Spiral.

To promote the release a short film was made (but not officially released). It complemented the music in an intentionally non-media-friendly way. See The 'Broken' Movie (1993) for details.

Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine (1989)

NIN: Pretty Hate Machine (1989)

My introduction to NIN was a track that was featured on a UK magazine cover-mounted sampler CD. I can't recall from which magazine it came, I think it may have been a short-lived one, but I'm pretty sure the track was Last from the Broken E.P. (1992).

The same disc had a track by Therapy? from their Nurse (1992) album, and one from Pigface's Fook (1992). Seeing as how all three releases are from the same year, I think it might be safe to assume that it was '92 when I first heard NIN.

The sampler did its job. I wanted more. After buying Broken and its remix album, Fixed (both 1992), I eagerly sought out the début album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989). I acquired it on vinyl and was surprised to find that it was different from what I expected - it was more like Depeche Mode than the Industrial anger of Broken.

Clive Barker's Nightbreed: Complete Collection (2015-17)

Clive Barker's Nightbreed: Vol 01 (2015)

Authors: Clive Barker / Marc Andreyko | Illustrator: Piotr Kowalski | Page Count: 112

"Midian calls to all of her children."

Given the choice, I'd rather have had a sequel novel than a prequel comic book, but a comic version of Nightbreed that's canon is better than nothing at all, I guess.

It's a story set in the present, broken periodically with flashbacks to years before. To confuse matters, the 'present' is the year the film is set (so, yes, you'll need to have viewed the film prior to reading) and the flashbacks are from a number of different perspectives, each one telling the story of how a particular member of the collective lived prior to finding the safety of Midian.

I had a secret hope that the short series would do what the film itself failed to do: flesh out the inner-workings of Midian and deepen the concerns of the creatures, warts and all, beyond just 'we may be ugly on the outside, but humans are morally uglier on the inside'.

The New Adventures of He-Man (1990)

The New Adventures of He-Man (1990)

65 episodes, approx 23 mins each.

Jebus, it's really bad. It's not even funny-bad. It's just shit. If you find it on sale for a few notes and actually buy it, then it's the seller who got lucky, not you. I suffered the twenty best episodes as voted for by fans of the series. It's all I could bear to watch. It would be more appropriate to call them twenty of the least worst. I know because I watched most of it on TV the first time around.

New Adventures' version of He-Man is an imposter with a scaled down physique and a different Power Sword. (He isn't really an imposter, but for my own peace of mind I like to pretend that he is.) It continues the story from the original Filmation series, so you'd expect that to mean it's faithful to the character if not the design. But no, it isn't.

The first episode sets up the series: a small group of humans from a future society travel back in time to Eternia. Their mission is to convince a hero to leave his home and help protect the last humans on the planet Primus from the mutant bad guys of a neighbouring world called Denebria.

Now and Forever (2007)

Now and Forever (2007)

Author: Ray Bradbury  |  Page Count: 240

'For even the thundering rocket, which rips the soul on Earth, walks silently some few miles high, treads the stars without footfall, as if in awe of the great cathedral of space.'

The book contains two previously unpublished Ray Bradbury novellas, both of which are preceded by a short introduction from the author, just a few pages in length, giving a brief but welcome insight into some of the circumstances, people, or locations that influenced each story's genesis and evolution. Thereafter the stories themselves do the work, split into perfectly structured chapters, not too short and not too long.

The first novella is titled Somewhere a Band is Playing, a bittersweet story set in a small town in Arizona. The second is Leviathan '99, set far above any town, aboard a ship in deep space. They're really quite different from each other, but both are thoroughly entertaining.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Dir. Hayao Miyazaki

It was officially released before Studio Ghibli existed but a great many of the themes and techniques that the famous animation studio is now known for were birthed in Nausicaä.

The residents of the titular valley harness the full power of the wind to survive. It powers their post-apocalyptic machinery, but it also carries poisonous spores from the polluted forests and swamps that cover the Earth. So while it supports life, it also carries death.

The relationship between man and nature is a delicate one that's thrown into turmoil when a neighbouring nation pushes their hostile ambitions too far. The Princess Nausicaä finds herself stuck in the middle, forced to weigh her reverence for all life against the need to preserve and protect the innocent.

The three-decades-old animation is less sophisticated than modern Ghibli, but when placed in its own time it really shines, with the compassionate, level-headed Nausicaä on her glider being especially memorable. The ending is a little too abrupt for my tastes but the scenes played over the credits do help compensate.

Nekogahara: Stray Cat Samurai: Vol 01 (2016)

Nekogahara: Stray Cat Samurai: Vol 01 (2016)

Author + Illustrator: Hiroyuki Takei  |  Page Count: 180

"A cat carves his own path..."

Norachiyo, a one-eyed cat with a mean disposition, travels across Japan in search of something personal.

A bell fashioned around a cat's neck signifies that it has a master, that it's a "kept cat" and should be afforded all the privileges that such status brings. Norachiyo's bell is attached to his deadly katana, an indicator that he's a rōnin, a masterless samurai.

It's clearly influenced by Kazuo Koike, both in style and in how the societal aspect of the era plays a key role in the story's standing. If Ogami Ittō was to get his son a cat for company, it'd be Norachiyo.

The action is furious, bloody and violent, although it's sometimes difficult to make out what exactly is going on - but if you've ever witnessed an actual cat fight, then you'll see the parallels make a kind of sense.