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In this episode, Gerald jazzes up the proceedings by reviewing the 2023 theatrical film Blue Giant, released in theaters, home video, and streaming by GKIDS.
Introduction (0:00 – 42:01)
When we started this podcast, we felt that other anime podcasts spent more time talking about videogames than anime. So naturally, Daryl talks about videogames he’s been playing before the anime he’s mostly not seasonally watching at the moment. There are, at least, plenty of upcoming Animeigo releases (of things from 20+ years ago) and current manga releases (of things from 40+ years ago) for him to dive into, plus he’s finally got the 4K UHD of the (40 year old) Macross: Do You Remember Love? which is…yeah, not great. Fortunately, Gerald and Clarissa are more current. And yes, that is totally future dub voice of Heero Yuy in Gundam Wing, Mark Hildrath, dropping those sick Canadian white boy rapper beats as laid down by future Miraculous Ladybug composer Alain Garcia on a show that had episodes directed by a guy who would later go on to direct that cowbell episode of Utena. (Power Rangers/DBZ dub fans could already tell those were indeed Ron Wasserman synthesizers backing up the Cam Clarke narration.)
Review: Blue Giant (42:01 – 1:23:43)\
Blue Giant is a seinen manga released in English via omnibus editions courtesy of Seven Seas Entertainment, and this theatrical film arrives courtesy of GKIDS. Who else would even know what to attempt to do with a movie like this, anyway? Blue Giant is the tale of a trio of young adults striving to make an impact upon the Tokyo jazz scene, as high school seniors naturally tend to aspire to. And unlike those OTHER anime titles about bands trying to amount to something, these guys don’t just have one song followed by 7 CDs of soundtracks featuring a ton of music you never hear in the anime itself! Blue Giant is ongoing by way of sequels, but this two-hour film adapts the original 10-volume storyline thanks to some deliberate focused decisions on what to skip over or summarize and what to cover in detail.
The trick in question is that the ultra-talented jazz tour de force that is Hiromi Uehara (known worldwide as just “Hiromi”) was a longtime fan of the manga and is the one handling all the music in this movie.
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- Here’s Hiromi performing at Blue Note, the real life version of the jazz venue “So Blue” that is depicted in this story as the ultimate dream gig
- This is Hiromi’s Tiny Desk concert for NPR Music. 2 million views and counting
- Oh yeah, remember the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that had all the videogame music themes to introduce each nation? Remember the very end of it where they did the traditional Japanese performance accompanied by the piano solo? That’s Hiromi doing the solo. Yeah, she’s pretty good at this whole music thing and is kind of a big deal.
The director is Yuzuru Tachikawa of Mob Psycho 100 fame, so expect some really innovative camerawork and animation techniques on display here. Though due to time constraints, there are some very brief uses of 3D CG employed. But how do they compare to the level of 3D CG we just experienced with Berserk 2016? We go into it.
