Today’s challenge gave me a little bit of trouble as I have watched maybe a handful or two of anime movies. Because I’ve seen so few and loved so many, it’s often that my favorite anime movie actually changes depending on my mood for the day. I held off on writing this one as long as possible, but it’s time to pick, and today’s mood dictates that my favorite movie choice would have to be Anthem of the Heart.
A lot of really interesting elements come together for this movie that blends fairy tale and modern world. You’re taken on an adventure through the mind of a child with an overactive imagination and what it means for that imagination to grow unchecked with trauma. It’s the story of several broken people who are brought together by happenstance that help each other heal and grow.
The story doesn’t simply play into stereotypes and expectations. While I think it would be fair to say that everyone gets their happy ending, it’s not exactly the happy ending you’re led to expect for a lot of the movie. Dreams don’t always come true, but they can be a tool to lead you towards a life that’s better than you initially imagined.
Anthem of the Heart makes you feel like you’re along for the journey along with the characters rather than simply observing. While occasionally painful, it leaves you with that sense of emotional fullness at the end. If you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend trying it. If you want to know more about it, check out my full review here.
What’s your favorite anime movie?
I Watched an Anime 
My favourite anime movie is Howl’s Moving Castle, but I also love all of the Studio Ghibli movies.
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My problem is that I have a hard time remembering the ones that I’ve seen. I like the adaptation of Blame! I saw on Netflix a while back.
And I just watched the first Patlabor movie, which was good.
But I think my favorite was Redline. That movie was just a lot of fun.
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I haven’t seen Redline yet, but I think that one just recently got officially uploaded to YouTube to watch for free. I’ll need to make sure I get to it soon.
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Hmm I don’t think I’ve heard of this before, thanks for sharing.
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I’ve never seen or heard of this movie and it does look interesting. Some of my favorite anime movies are Grave of the Fireflies and The Place Promised In Our Early Days.
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Grave of the Fireflies is great, but man is it draining.
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I agree. It is one of the very few movies that can still make me cry. As far as animated works go, Grave of the Fireflies hit me the hardest emotionally.
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I was pretty hype to see this one, and now that I own it (plus watched of course), I can say that it was a bit disappointing. The film was good, don’t get me wrong, but it lacked a certain /something/ that I felt it needed. Not that I could tell you what that was, but having seen a LOT of anime at this point, it just didn’t have whatever that needed element was.
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