“Memories… Memories aren’t an escape”

The classic 1995 anthology of three very different generes of anime, each intriguing in their own right. Winner of the 1995 Oofuji Noburou Award at the Mainichi Film Awards.

Magnetic Rose (彼女の想いで, Kanojo no Omoide), directed by Studio 4°C co-founder Kōji Morimoto and written by Satoshi Kon

Stink Bomb (最臭兵器, Saishū-heiki), directed by Tensai Okamura and written by Otomo

Cannon Fodder (大砲の街, Taihō no Machi), written and directed by Otomo himself.

Memories is an anthology composed of three shorts, each made by a legendary anime filmmaker.

All three stories are adapted from manga comics by Ôtomo. Memories is one of several anthology films that Ôtomo has been involved in, alongside the likes of 1987’s Robot Carnival and Neo Tokyo.

The first is Magnetic Rose, directed by Kôji Morimoto (The Animatrix). A pair of engineers on a freighter ship in deep space respond to a distress signal coming from a seemingly abandoned space station, where they are haunted by a famous opera singer. With a Madame Butterfly soundtrack and an effective mix of sci-fi, horror and romance elements, this is widely regarded as the strongest of the three stories.

The second short is Stink Bomb, directed by Tensai Okamura (Cowboy Bebop: The Movie) and, incredibly, loosely based on a true story. A lab technician takes what he thinks is flu medicine, but turns out to be an experimental drug that reacts to the flu medicine already in his body, causing him to smell bad – really bad. As his odour increases, wiping out huge swathes of life around him, the Japanese and US military try to contain the threat.

The third and final short is Cannon Fodder, directed by the great Katsuhiro Ôtomo (Akira). Animated in a single long take, we observe a family working in a city permanently at war, whose livelihood revolves around the constant firing of cannons at an unseen enemy beyond the walls.

All three are worth your time and it’s not often you get such legendary greats of anime collaaborating on a signle project.