The Boy Who Saw the Wind: GeekNights Review

But anyway, it's Anime Day, and we watched one new show. It's not that new, but... It's a movie, actually. Yeah, it's a movie, called, uh, Kaze wo Mita Shounen, or The Boy Who Saw the Wind. I like it a lot. It's alright, I liked it. It's, it, a lot of people think it's a Ghibli movie. In fact, on Nausicaa.net, it's on the page of movies that are commonly mistaken for Ghibli movies. And many VCD bootlegs of this movie have the Studio Ghibli, uh, logo on them. When I first downloaded it, uh, it was pretty much just, I was on the anime ski, and I saw a torrent for, uh, The Boy Who Saw the Wind, Ghibli-style movie. And I said, well, I never heard of this, but I'll get it. And I got it. And we, I watched it alone a long time ago, and forgot most of it. But we watched it all together again, just this weekend. See, it's alright. It's really pretty. Like, it, it looks like it's, uh, it's in a really old style, but the style is really well done. I think it was done in 2000. Or, it's not that old. Yeah, but it looks a lot older than it is. Hmm. And it's just the typical, you know, there's a boy, he has a power, he goes on an adventure to save people. And it's good, but it's kinda simplistic. Like, there's good guys. They're perfect. There's bad guys. They're absolutely, sillily evil. Oh, the bad guy, yeah. Yeah, the bad guy is like, imagine Hitler, only... I think they could've made that a little better if they would've, uh, added some... They could've shown the, uh, the rebellion sometimes in a bad light. Like, look, they're killing people too. Yeah, but no. Because they always had the bad guys with those, like, masks on. So that, you know, when they do that kind of thing. If they would've humanized those guys in the masks a little bit more to make the rebellion seem, you know, not perfect and great. And if they would've had that, uh, evil scientist lady. Not turn insane. Yeah, they should've actually, like, made her someone who is nice and is, like, forced into evil. So you kinda, like, feel bad for her instead of going, ah, she's crazy, not get rid of her. Which is what they seem to start doing right away. And then they just forget about it. And then they're like, alright, she's crazy. They make her crazier than Ritsuko's mom from Eva. Yeah, every other anime seems to do it the way I just described. This one was just like, forget it, it's not worth the effort. But it was still good. It was just, it was really simplistic. Like, every time they needed to move the main character somewhere else for a change of scene or to move the plot along, they'd have him fall from a great height, be knocked unconscious, and wake up in a strange land. Yeah, they did that twice right at the beginning. Yeah. It was great. It happens a grand total of three frickin' times. Yeah. They need, uh, an only hope. They need another way to move the plot. They need an only hope or a trap. It's a trap! Okay. But it's definitely worth watching. I mean, I enjoyed it. And there's a lot of good characters. It's real sad at points. Uh, we can't ruin the end. And I suggest you watch it because there's a twist that I didn't see coming. Yeah, I mean, I'd seen it before and I forgot what happened at the end and then I was like, oh, right, uh. Not like the other ones where there's a twist that it was so strong you remember it. That way when you see it again, you're like, ooh, ooh, ooh, it's gonna happen again. It's just a, it's a, it's a twist you don't see coming. That's really all I can say. I did not expect the movie to end the way it did. It was a good ending. I don't think so. I don't, I don't think there could have been a better ending for what they had already done in the show. Had the ending not been the way it was, I probably would have written the show off because other than that, it was just kind of a typical, predictable. See, that was the worst thing. It was pretty much 100% predictable. Watch it. Other than the twist, every single thing that happens, you can predict from like the previous two things that happened. Mm. And as we, as we were all watching the show, because we watched it at the party when everyone here and it was basically just everyone was yelling out, oh, obviously blah, blah, blah is going to happen. And then blah, blah, blah happens. It's like every time there's a happy scene, there's a sad scene right after it. That pretty much is a direct thing that ruins whatever was happy. So that's a problem though with, with all kinds of things these days is that when you've seen enough anime or you've seen enough movies or television over the course of your life, everything gets predictable and you need to watch really complex or really weird stuff to find something that's not predictable. Yep. The thing is, even they get predictable because the unpredictability itself becomes predictable. Yeah. It's like, oh, he's going to do the opposite of what's normally going to happen. So he's going to do this. Oh, I got it right. Yep. Like we started a while ago, we were watching like Hitchcock movies. We were watching the old Hitchcock movies like early in his career. Like they're, they're good, but they're hard to watch and just old. And like in the first one, I figured out what was going to happen like, you know, right before it happened at the end. Yep. But then later on, I was like saying what was going to happen like, like minutes and minutes before it happened. Because back then, like, it seems like the big thing with movies back then was to put a twist at the end. Like every movie had a twist. Well, no, that's not the big thing back then. That's Hitchcock's thing. And I've seen a lot of other movies from that era. Well, of course. But Hitchcock is like the twist master. Yep. The problem was, once you start figuring out how the twists work, you always predict the twist because it's always just think, what's the least likely thing to happen? Well, that's obviously how the movie's going to end. Well, it's not the least likely thing to happen. The least likely thing to happen is something crazy. The least likely thing to happen that is still possible to happen. It's not really something that's least likely. It's actually very likely. It's just unexpected. It's the thing that is most unexpected to happen, but still makes a whole lot of sense and is very exciting. A lot of times, though, they didn't make sense. Those are the bad Hitchcock movies that no one remembers. Yeah. Like the one, I don't remember which one it was, where they're conflicted. The bunch of characters are conflicted about killing someone, and then they end up not even having to worry about it because a freaking bomb blows up the train they're on, and the guy dies anyway. Yeah, that's just something crazy. But like, 39 Steps is very make sense, you know, and... Yeah. Though also highly predictable. Some of it was highly predictable, but it's one of those things where you can predict it if you remember everything that happened in the movie, because the twist is something that you forgot that happened way at the beginning. But regardless, this movie is highly predictable. If you've seen like three or four other anime in your life, you'll probably just know exactly what's going to happen in this whole show. But it'll still be fun. If you like Ghibli movies and things, then if you've seen them all, and you're looking for more of that, and Ghibli doesn't supply frequently enough, and you're bored, and you want a movie to watch, Boy Who Saw The Wind is great. There's also a really funny, he ends up, one of the times when he gets knocked out and wakes up somewhere, he wakes up in this village. And apparently their sole source of food is hunting these Zabi. Zabi. Zabi are giant ******* man-eating, kill-you-all fish. Like a whale, barracuda mix thing. Like a bunch of villagers die, and they finally take down this fish, and then they have a big feast. And then later, and then everyone in the room with us is like, why don't they just hunt smaller fish or something? This is kind of silly. And then in the show, one character's like, why do we hunt these stupid Zabi all the time? Yeah. That was great. I think they were trying to make a comment about vegetarianism or something, and then whoever made the show gave the message that's not good. Yeah, the moral of the show is really heavy-handed. Yeah, it was like, you're disrespecting the Zabi by not eating it. Like, it's already dead, you know, and we eat it, and it eats us, and it's come, you know, they tried to make a message out of it. That was pretty, not deep in its presentation. Like, the evil dictator at the end, when he, like, I'll try to do this without ruining anything. Basically, at the end of the movie, when the evil dictator, whatever is happening to him, he pretty much is like, oh, I wasn't evil, I was just lonely. Yeah, it's like they say it, like, right out, whereas other shows are more subtle and intellectually stimulating. The show is definitely not subtle. Not subtle at all. It's hard to be subtle when you have a kid flying around, and, you know, a cute little animal going, me-me-me-me-me. Oh yeah, the cute little animal, I totally forgot about that. And then they had the cute little animal babies. Yeah, that was really cute. Too cute. I mean, I've seen cute things, but those little babies were just like, where the tail was more than half the body. Oh my god. I think they were supposed to be foxes. And for nothing else, you should just watch the show to see the cute animal. And that was Geek Nights with Rim and Scott. Special thanks to DJ Pretzel for the opening music. Thanks for listening. 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