Nemo's bed starts flying through the night sky, and he passes by a train, flies through a waterfall, and over an old, tilted, decaying city. After a clock tower starts to strike, a train shows up and starts chasing Nemo, banging into his bed and risking running him over, until Nemo reaches his house, which is seemingly floating in a void. Inside, he yells to his mom for help, but she won't even turn around, even as Nemo opens the door to see the train heading straight for him. He wakes up in fear.
That right there feels straight out of the 1905-1914 comic. It's also where the similarities mostly stop. And to add insult to injury, it was essentially taken straight from a roughly 3-minute Hayao Miyazaki animation created years before Tokyo Movie Shinsha picked up the rights to this movie, meaning that Miyazaki's superior work was ripped off.
It could be argued that the original comic didn't really have a story - it was just a boy and his strange dreams and the interesting things that happened. But it did have plot arcs. Plots like Nemo being invited to meet the princess (she didn't originally have a name) of Slumberland while Flip the clown would try to wake him up and stop his progress. Or the trek to visit Santa Claus in the North Pole. Or when they got captured by pirates. Those sorts of things would allow for interesting plots while still being surrealist and in the tone of the comic.
The movie does none of that. Instead, the story we get is rather generic. Nemo is randomly invited to be Princess Camille's playmate, and then we get over a half hour of padding. Not even true exploration of Slumberland itself, which would have worked wonders. Eventually, about 40 minutes in, we get a conflict: Nemo, under pressure from Flip, opens the door containing a Lovecraftian horror that abducts King Morpheus, and now he, Camille, Flip and some original characters must rescue him.
Things pick up in Nightmare Land, and I really love its creepy aesthetic, but it's pretty much too late.
Ultimately, most of the movie is padding, and very little is plot or even stopping to show us much of Slumberland. There's very little influence from the actual comic - an excellent dream-like intro, and a walking bed, plus some character designs, and that's it. Generic decisions make up the bulk of the film, and hurt it.
Anime Shows only hints of the artistry of its original form, but fails to capture its charm
Nemo's bed starts flying through the night sky, and he passes by a train, flies through a waterfall, and over an old, tilted, decaying city. After a clock tower starts to strike, a train shows up and starts chasing Nemo, banging into his bed and risking running him over, until Nemo reaches his house, which is seemingly floating in a void. Inside, he yells to his mom for help, but she won't even turn around, even as Nemo opens the door to see the train heading straight for him. He wakes up in fear.
That right there feels straight out of the 1905-1914 comic. It's also where the similarities mostly stop. And to add insult to injury, it was essentially taken straight from a roughly 3-minute Hayao Miyazaki animation created years before Tokyo Movie Shinsha picked up the rights to this movie, meaning that Miyazaki's superior work was ripped off.
It could be argued that the original comic didn't really have a story - it was just a boy and his strange dreams and the interesting things that happened. But it did have plot arcs. Plots like Nemo being invited to meet the princess (she didn't originally have a name) of Slumberland while Flip the clown would try to wake him up and stop his progress. Or the trek to visit Santa Claus in the North Pole. Or when they got captured by pirates. Those sorts of things would allow for interesting plots while still being surrealist and in the tone of the comic.
The movie does none of that. Instead, the story we get is rather generic. Nemo is randomly invited to be Princess Camille's playmate, and then we get over a half hour of padding. Not even true exploration of Slumberland itself, which would have worked wonders. Eventually, about 40 minutes in, we get a conflict: Nemo, under pressure from Flip, opens the door containing a Lovecraftian horror that abducts King Morpheus, and now he, Camille, Flip and some original characters must rescue him.
Things pick up in Nightmare Land, and I really love its creepy aesthetic, but it's pretty much too late.
Ultimately, most of the movie is padding, and very little is plot or even stopping to show us much of Slumberland. There's very little influence from the actual comic - an excellent dream-like intro, and a walking bed, plus some character designs, and that's it. Generic decisions make up the bulk of the film, and hurt it.