Happy Birthday: Inochi Kagayaku Toki

This is one of the most depressing anime I've watched, but in a good way. At its core, it's about bullying. What makes the movie interesting is that it portrays the lives of several people and shows how they deal with their problems and overcome obstacles. At the end, I felt like I understood why some characters acted the way they did.

Some scenes made me really angry and I had to calm myself down since sometimes, despite being a work of fiction, it didn't feel fictional at all. However, there are also a lot of heartwarming moments, like those in which the main character ... gains self-confidence and speaks out for herself or where other people show genuine acts of kindness.

What I didn't like was that there were several instances where characters almost instantly changed their behavior. It felt a bit unrealistic and sometimes cheesy. Part of the movie also dealt with disabled people, but that honestly felt more like an unimportant side-plot because the overall time you see the main character interact with the disabled children was very short and not very significant. Therefore, the movie would have benefited either from being longer or from leaving out some of the side-characters/plots.

I would not recommend this movie to those who dislike sudden character transformations and I definitely wouldn't recommend it if you are easily triggered by bullying scenes.
I would however recommend it to those who want to watch a bittersweet character-driven drama where you might shed a tear or two.

Happy Birthday is an interesting film to watch. We have a lot of these "cryporn" series and films nowadays, like what Mari Okada scripts, Jun Maeda slop, Violet Evergarden, Fumetsu no Anata e, and Loli and the Creepy Dad (I think it's called Somali or something...). HB may be meant as a tearjerker, but I feel it's in a class of its own and is more old-school and traditional and draws from live action film or young adult coming of age novels more than anime and the "cryporn" phenomenon, even if it's similarly manipulative and wants to elbow you in the gut with blunt and ... simple scenes of bullying, raw emotion, redemption, and healing.

Arguably, seeing as the film is poorly animated, low budget, and lacks much nuance in facial expressions, it could be said that there isn't much benefit to this being animated in the first place. It could be live action. The animation is not expressive enough to accentuate the emotion on screen, the writing, or the direction. There is only one scene that's relatively fantastical as well. However, even if the film doesn't look amazing, the use of color is sometimes expressionistic, especially the dramatic backdrops that subtly enhance the tone of the scene, matching the internal state of the characters. There's a certain low-budget late '90s charm to the art as well.

A lot of the character "redemption arcs" occur too fast and with minimal conflict. Technically, a lot of the changes of heart are not unrealistic. For example, the brother is a total asshole to Asuka, but he changes upon finding a soaking wet and sick Asuka who came home in the rain. I think most people have been on bad terms with a person, but once they're upset or hurt, we have second thoughts, especially sans psychopathy and such. The problem is not that it's unrealistic. It can be a good test to ask if x scenario is likely to happen in real life when writing a scene, but even if it is, there is a sort of visual language and pacing of emotions associated with fiction that defies mere realism, and when this is not considered, the work comes across as too convenient, lacking in depth, or a bit rushed, which is oftentimes the actual issue with this film. I'm noticing one other "major" criticism of this film is that your vocal chords aren't impacted by someone saying mean things to you or about you; that's true, but emotional and psychological trauma can take its toll, creating a stress response, and prolonged stress of this type is not healthy. The clinical term for what happened to Asuka is psychogenic aphonia, and there are recorded cases of such occurrences, however convenient the scene in which Asuka "loses" her voice may be.

The film is briskly paced and fairly touching at numerous points, even if it has the feel of an anti-bullying PSA. The solitary first half was more impactful, even if it's using the rural grandparents trope so common to these kind of anime, including many of the newer iyashikei ones. At least here the grandparents are more than just sources of healing, as despite their kindness, they played a hand in the cyclical abuse that formed in the first place. Asuka does have character development, as she becomes a stronger and more inspiring person, and she's easy to be sympathetic toward, but like all of the characters, she doesn't have much depth. Her brother's development is of a similar nature, though his plight is a bit different as the favored child whom the parents shower their attention upon. The subplot with the cerebral palsy girl is seemingly just there to point out how good of a person Asuka is and to spread a message of the value of life and to be kind to each other. That is to say, it's maudlin. The bullying scenes go on and on throughout and eventually there's a reversal and everyone changes their ways and improves. Just once, I think I'd like to see this basic formula used, but to have a character who is unshakably wicked, for some patterns never change, and these feel-good messages can get a bit too intoxicating. Or at least work a bit harder toward their redemption. Predictably, at least one bully has a sob story, to push the cliche drama further.

By the second half, it's still kind of effective in terms of emotion, but it got to where I was roaring with laughter at numerous scenes, whether it was due to the clumsy editing, the bluntness of emotive epiphanies, the crying regret, and the flood of "I'm so sorry for bullying you" dialogue. At one point, the girl with cerebral palsy's wheel chair is sent rolling down a hill, and I was laughing my ass off as she looked so happy and without a care in the world, soaring through the air in what could have led to her death. Another scene has editing so bad that "Germy" was walking off screen, there was a cut, and we see a person sitting on the bench, which, little did I know, was "Germy"! The editing here was confusing and poor, and there are a lot of jarring moments of a similar nature, but the quick pacing, the sometimes decent scenario writing—such as the more complex cyclical issue with the mother, even if it is rushed—and the emotion on display made the film decent enough. The score was kind of cheesy and endearing, so it wasn't a bad fit for this movie. All in all, the lesser Dezaki did his best with not a whole lot to work with, and it's a flawed but charming film. Still, I wonder what this could have been at twice the length, sporting a smoothed-out script, a more generous budget, and with Keiichi Hara directing.

*Warning! Heavy Spoilers!*

Story: 3
Art: 3
Sound: 5
Character 3
Enjoyment: 3
Overall: 3

This will be a review for the anime “Re-Birthday”, a film that so few on MAL have seen yet is considered a hidden gem. Were this film to reach the wider public by some obscure, low-budget, 70s kids anime-oriented youtube channel like “AnimeEveryday” I have no doubt that it would be absolutely beloved by the entirety of MAL. As you can infer I didn’t really enjoy this movie and there are good reasons for it.
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As those of you can plainly see: this anime was directed and animated by Magic Bus, a low budget hentai making studio and the same people who are unfortunately famous for making schlock like Mad Bull 34, Wounded Man, and only around 3 anime to their name that is considered to be of any real value (though nearly all of them were produced in joint projects with Madhouse or Shaft). Most famously of them is Legend of the Galactic Heroes, an anime that is so praised on MAL that it is erroneously considered the single best anime ever and of all time. This of course is the only reason why Magic Bus isn't looked down upon by our beloved MAL Church of Good Taste like A1 Pictures, White Fox, or such. These of which on average not only produce better content on average than Magic Bus but get a worse rep due to sensationalism brought on by our beloved wannabe loli, underage crossdresser fanfiction writing, brony lolcow, bootleg John Lennon looking dweeb Conrad Collins as he watches from behind the screen at his domain of the AniTube downing a bottle of week-old whiskey paid for by his girlfriend among other things. The director of Re-Birthday, in particular, is our very own Satoshi Dezaki who unlike his younger brother Osamu Dezaki, the man responsible for creating some of the greatest anime series ever made, has mostly made low budget unmemorable flicks, OVAs, and a few forgotten TV series as well as the above mentioned Mad Bull.

I would like to mention first and foremost that unlike most people I am generally okay with what other people as pure unadulterated cheese. Some of my favorite anime include Elfen Lied, SAO, Nagi no Asukara, and pretty much anything by Key that is not Angel Beats, etc. In all of these shows, I could probably find one idea that I liked which made me appreciate regardless of whether the plot didn’t make sense or if the characters were generic or unoriginal. Be it learning to share your niche interests with others, learning to adjust to a new place, or just having fun slapstick comedy that most people can appreciate. The theme of Re-Birthday is that “everyone is inherently good” and that all evil actions have a reason and motive behind them. This theme that Re: Birthday has chosen to convey through its writing is not unique as many, many, many anime have expressed variants of it such as One Piece, Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Monster etc. The former all having handled it well as an addition to their own main ideas. Well being a relative term. However Re: Birthday or as I like to call Re:Tarded handles its theme with the same lack of self-awareness that something seemingly innocent show like Captain Planet might handle a serious issue like AIDS or deforestation.

Our story centers around a young girl named Asuka (not to be confused with infinitely better characters with the same or similar names) Fujiwara from an unknown town in Japan who is just an absolute darling, little cinnamon roll, cherub, angel, and paragon of virtue who enjoys going around helping kids with cerebral palsy at the local disabled children's school and protecting her classmates from being bullied without a care in the world. Which goes on through nearly the entire film.

But hold on there's a catch. Later on, it is made clear that Asuka’s mother Shizuyo, has been secretly favoring her brother under the pretenses of her daughter having lower grades than him. Asuka's brother Naoto admits, to her upfront that Shizuyo had throughout her life on this earth never felt even an ounce of affection towards her daughter and that every birthday party supposedly dedicated to Asuka's name was only done so to keep her quiet. Asuka, grieving over her mother's outburst, loses her voice the next day and winds up having a severe fever lasting roughly 2 months. After getting the shit beaten out of her by her mother, the girl then had to be taken by train to her maternal grandparents' farm where she completely recovered from her fever the day after arriving with her vocal cords repairing themselves the following day.

Later on, after returning home from her grandparents' house, Asuka and her friends proceeded to confront the class bully and track down a character named Germy who had been routinely skipping class. They then had to confront her as their classmate is grappling with thoughts of killing herself. The 4 then did the unthinkable, the monumental Herculean task of telling the teacher that Germy was being bullied. All of a sudden a parent-teacher meeting was put in place and everyone who had bullied Germy for the last 2 months broke down into tears and say they're sorry. EXCEPT for the main bully seen at the beginning of the film picking on Germy, the likes of whom was not fazed at all and whom we will refer to henceforth as Caillou. This is followed up by Asuka yelling at her mother who then has a forced change of heart and the movie ends. Notice anything wrong with this? You bet your ass there is!

First, we need to talk about Asuka. She is the blandest character in any anime that I have ever seen but the thing is: I don’t generally expect every anime character I see to be completely original and different either. Most anime characters tend to reflect the trends of the demographics that consume that specific genre in their designs and age groups. Usually, a character can be humanized by giving them defined interests, goals, and plans for the future as well as an outlook on life influenced by the various external factors around her. Asuka has none of that, She starts off as a boring mary sue character or something to that effect whose only traits are that she’s a brunette and she’s an elementary school champion of justice. She feels like more of a cringe PSA advertisement for “everyday heroes” than an actual factual character. Asuka losing the ability to make use of her vocal cords and then falling into a fever because her mother forgot her birthday is probably one of the dumber plot points in this series and the fact that it took only two days to get rid of a predicament that had gone on for 2 months is absolutely beyond me. The power of love doesn’t heal vocal cords Dezaki you putz!

Not to mention that this movie has more face turns than Naruto. I shit you not. Half of the characters in this movie are nigh irredeemable assholes or bystanders who end up not preventing most of the conflict from occurring when they have the power. Asuka's mother has hated Asuka forever solely because of the fact that the girl resembles her dead older sister (which is not even really true since they look completely different). This was the same sister that Asuka's grandparents had to spend more time growing up with because of her sickness and had an apricot tree planted for her instead of Shizuyo, the mother. At her age, she should have gotten the memo a long time ago but I guess not. Then after nearly a decade after Asuka being born and a child yelling at her she suddenly regains her maternal instincts. The brother who was initially in on it with the mother and who was initially cheering her on for her actions suddenly becomes very saintly and kind when Asuka gets sick for reasons that are never explained. He also drops out of school to “become his own man” (presumably under a bridge) and no one questions a thing.

The movie also never goes fully explains why Germy was being bullied…...or why she was even being called Germy in the first place. The whole suicide subplot occurs without any real buildup or explanation. Usually when a bully picks on someone that person has to possess undesirable qualities that one can exploit or has done something to anger the bully. Throughout the film, she has her backpack stolen from her, her desk drawn on, and is prevented from entering the classroom and the teacher doesn't even notice a thing. That same teacher even broke down into tears when Asuka and friends informed her of Germy’s bullying and responded that she thought her class was perfect. With the principal and teacher involved and supposedly taking this very seriously, you would think that suspensions would be issued and expulsions considered at the very least but no! All they do is recite Germy’s suicide letter to the class and the little turds go from talking about how “hot” one of the parents is to sobbing their eyes out and talking about how sorry they are. Caillou, like the brother, goes from being a rotten little bastard who scoffs at suicide letters, bullies his classmates without being reprimanded in the slightest, denies his own crimes in public and beats up Asuka for calling him out then becomes kind after the disabled girl is about to crash and drown in the lake. Then admitting afterward that he was in fact locked in a closet as a child and scalded with hot water by his mother for reasons that are never explained.

Megumi, the disabled girl who Asuka had been visiting periodically, unlike all of the other characters is honestly more of a stage prop. I’m not sure what her purpose in the film was other than to look creepy, smile, and laugh all the time. Even when she’s hurtling towards her death. When the director tried to make me cry and feel sorry when she did die and “live on in everyone's hearts” because of her disorder I didn’t feel as though any of it was earned. The least they could have done was give her a personality and not make her look and act like a clone of my creepy Aunt Nina but to no avail.

When you come to the conclusion that the average panhandler from the streets of Dharavi, Mumbai is spending more money on himself in a year than the budget of your feature-length film you know you’ve done something wrong. The soundtrack (which is too good for a show of this caliber) was pretty emotionally sterile but decent at best. You could replace the entirety of it with an airhorn version of Only Time by Enya and insert it periodically and the end result may end up actually improving the movie slightly. With the ending credits consisting of the Trololo song as a clip of Dezaki laughs at us in the background, doing the windmill in our faces.

The art as you may have guessed as of now is sort of abysmal for the time and doesn’t befit a film with a synopsis such as this. There's an awful light filter that ruins the serious moments like the bullying scenes, Asuka losing her voice and makes any part of this movie that takes place in the daytime look like it was being filmed inside a Gundam space colony that was in the middle of getting pulled a quarter of the way into the sun. Most characters tend not to have more than 4 or so facial expressions which severely lessened the emotional impact of scenes like the ones where Junko is yelling at Asuka to never approach her again. The designs looked like they had been made out of a bunch of amorphous lines and squiggles that were arranged to make a person with no real detail or intricacy. “bUt LaMp ItS JuST a StyLE”. Need I remind you that all of this was produced in 1999, I get that the Summer 1999 anime season wasn't exactly the most promising with GTO being the only somewhat high budget anime with good production values coming out but the thing that everyone has to realize (and probably instinctively knows) is that nearly every noteworthy anime movie created BEFORE 1999 has better animation and art either compared to Re-Birthday or for its time. The art and soundtrack in re-birthday look like they would fit better in the late 70s. But then again stuff like MSG 0079, Lupin 111, and Ashita no Joe have better character art, better soundtrack, and don’t have that god-awful light filter.