[Still Anilogue. Penultimate time.]

Ibara No Ô is the adaptation of the manga of the same name, written by Yūji Iwahara. The movie was directed by Kazuyoshi Katayama and written by Hiroshi Yamaguchi. [Apparently, this movie was shown so early at this festival that there isn’t even an imdb entry for it yet. (I feel so cool right now.) Anyway, a little more info’s here.]

Plot:
Humanity is plagued by a mysterious and deadly virus called Medusa, which turns people to stone. When every other form of treatment fails, 160 people worldwide are selected and put into suspended animation. The story mostly follows Japanese school girl Kasumi, who was chosen but has to leave her twin sister Shizuku behind. Everything works fine until Kasumi and the others wake up, to a pretty much post-apocalyptic world. Strange and dangerous animals stalk them in the facility, but most of all a huge plant with thorny tendrils seems to have swallowed the world. The survivors have to fight for their lives while trying to figure out what exactly happened.

As I wrote yesterday, I saw first Yonayona pengin, then Ibara No Ô. In hindsight, it would have been much better to have it the other way round. Because Ibara? IS HUGELY DEPRESSING. It’s so very sad. It’s also really good, one of the most interesting, fascinating SciFi stories I’ve encountered and beautifully done. But it leaves you with the definite urge to drink. Like A LOT.

The story is rather complicated, and I would really like to see it again (or get my hands on the manga) to get more clarity. It’s not that the plot has holes and the overall plot is clear to me. But it’s more that they imply loads of things instead of downright explaining them [this is not a complaint, I actually appreciate it] and that I think you’ll miss loads of stuff the first time round. [But I won’t know for sure till I’ve seen it a second time.] You know, just the details that really grease the story.

That was a general thing with this film: There is so much to take in, plotwise and visually and quite a few characters (who keep on dying) that it’s really awesome and makes for a richness that’s rarely seen. On the other hand, it’s also a little overwhelming and I felt like I just didn’t get a few things sometimes.

In any case, I don’t mind watching the movie again to take in those details and I trust that I’ll find quite a few things that I didn’t notice before.

Visually, the movie is very compelling. Personally, the idea alone of those tendrils everywhere is very appealing (still talking visually, only visually). And the animals were really very cool. But also the design of the facility… well, let’s just say it was pretty amazing to look at.

So. Challenging SciFi in a visual appealing setting? More of that please.