Is it brilliant or just plain weird?

Hmm, I picked this one up one a whim. I had an extra 20 bucks and I was curious about this movie so I picked it up. The movie is basically a biography in animated style with cats representing people. It is a biography about a Japanese poet named Kenji Miyazawa. Kenji, was a man, whose poetry and stories did not become popular until after his short life ended. Spring and Chaos is about Kenji's struggles to sell his art and to be true to what he believes in. This movie takes us inside Kenji's bizarre and strange world for one hour.

I loved this movie. It's definitely for people who like artsy movies, because Spring and Chaos is just so weird. It almost seems random. I mean, Kenji, certainly viewed the world from a different perspective and it was really interesting to see. I think that the cats help a bit too. Hell, if the characters in this movie were people, it would be really boring. So, I know it's a biography, how does it make a good anime, you ask? Well, for starters, I read the mini biography that came with the DVD of Kenji and I also looked up some info on him online. The movie represents Kenji so well.

The characterization is certainly excellent. They show Kenji's personality quite well and how he develops from wandering around all day to actually doing the things they he preaches in his poems and stories. Also, some of the events are really unreal and weird, but I think that they add to Kenji's tragic character.

The animation is very nice. It's got some CG graphics as well as hand drawn art. It's really cool. Everything is colorful. The cats are cute, however, not in a kawaii sense, just cute enough to keep you interested in the movie. The music is ok. The theme of the movie seems to be a little too eerie to convey the emotions that this story is trying to show. I think that the Japanese voices fit the nicely designed cats (I love Kenji's hat) very well.

The DVD did have quite a few problems though. First off, the images were a bit fuzzy and the picture wasn't very clear at all. There was one point in the movie, where the image broke up and scrambled for about a second. The most annoying problem is the lagging of the subtitles though. They just are never on time with the character. One cat will be speaking and the subtitles will still be on the cat that spoke previously. It's very irritating, especially, in faster paced conversations. Although, this didn’t detract from the score I gave in any way.

If you are willing to let go of reality for an hour and let yourself be drowned in artsy surreal images, than this is totally recommended. It's a biography done in an interesting way. Although, the movie can be seen by anyone, younger children might not understand Kenji's struggles. Many themes are touched upon in this movie, such as staying true to yourself, following your dreams and never giving up. This meaningful movie is one of the most entertaining biographies I have ever seen. This movie, has, in fact, won a few awards, and after seeing this, you'll understand why.