Modest Heroes Review

Hello there anime fans long time no see I know that it's been a while since we last spoke but that doesn't mean I haven't been on the look out for anything to review or talk about far from it it's just that I haven't found anything to talk about. That was until this morning when I was on my daily search of some anime and movie streaming sites and I found out that the film i'm about to review for you all has come up online and so here is my review of Modest Heroes.

The film is anthology film and so it has no real plot line to it but unlike all of the other anthology's i've reviewed there are only three shorts to this so i'll just give you a quick rundown of each plot. In the first short titled Kanini & Kanino the titular duo are humanoid siblings who live underwater in a stream and one day there father gets swept away and the two have to go and rescue him it's a really good storyline but there is an issue i'll bring up later on tho.

The plot of the second short which is called Life Ain't Gonna Lose a boy called Shun is born with a deadly allergy to eggs and so his family and school mates protect him everyday. I'm not going to give away the full plot just because plot wise this is perhaps the strongest one and what happens should remain a secret but out of all the shorts featured in this film this is the only one that I could see becoming a full series.

The third and final short is simply titled Invisible and it follows a man who is both figuratively and literally invisible. Plot wise there's not really much to this one hence the short summery but I will say that the idea of someone who is both figuratively and literally invisible is an intriguing idea it's just a shame that the segment really isn't that long and so it doesn't really explore it as well as it could have done. 

The cast for this film includes Fumino Kimura as Kanini , Rio Suzuki as Kanino , Joe Odagiri as Invisible Man , Machiko Ono as Mama , Min Tanaka as Blind Man and Sōta Shinohara as Shun. For once while reviewing an anthology movie I was able to list every actor who's in this movie and I have to say that the acting isn't really that bad alot of the actors really do put in a great performance but then every so often you'd get a line delivery which is a bit off or that could have been said differently but the vast majority of the acting is really good.

Now here is where we reach one of my issues with the film and i'm sure if it was just the version of the film that I watched but nothing from the first short was subbed outside of the title and oddly enough the end credits. Which meant I have to pay alot of attention as to what was going on on screen and that to me is a huge issue just because when i'm watching movies on my laptop as I was doing here I like to get started on the review but here I couldn't do that because my attention had to be focused on the film and that doesn't work for me.

This was the second film to be animated by Studio Ponoc and is also there shortest to date clocking in at just about fifty four minuets. In terms of what I thought about the animation it tells me that this new studio is going to be a force to reckoned with because this film is beautifully animated and I hope that they continue to make great animated features in the future because we need to show the world that there's more to anime then just Studio Ghibli.

Speaking of Studio Ghibli there was going to be a fourth short directed by Isao Takahata but he died I assume before he could start working on it. Since this is an anthology tho that means we have a few directors each contributing to this film the first short was directed by the great Hiromasa Yonebayashi , the second was directed by Yoshiyuki Momose and the third was directed by Akihiko Yamashita. This was the first film that Yamashita has directed even tho he's worked on other projects mostly as animation director and I have to say that I hope to see more films from this director as they have a very interesting style to them.

In my mind this is like when PIXAR release a bunch of there short films except here Ponoc is releasing them as an anthology film where as PIXAR usually release there's straight to DVD or with other feature films. Now if that's the way that Ponoc wants to release there shorts which given that this is the first volume in a series on anthology films it could very well be the case and I hope that in future releases they at least make an effort to make the stories of each short worth it.

What I love about each short is that they could very easily fit into a different anime sub genre like for example for me the first short is an adventure film , the second is slice of life and the third i'd say is a drama but it could very well fit into a slice of life. In all honesty I think that it's great that they could have these different sub genre's since it gives the directors a chance to show that they can direct something for any of those genre's of anime and still make a good product.

There is alot of heart to be found in all of the shorts but i'm not going to say that you need to have tissues ready since there's no moment in this where you'll be crying. That for me is a huge let down because I love anime movies that can make me do that and some of my favourite anime films are the ones that can make me cry and I think that alot of the reason why you won't be crying in this film is because none of the stories are really long enough to make an impact each story is only around twenty minuets and that's not a lot of time to get to know the characters and to tell the story.

In all honesty the only short that would come close to getting that sort of a reaction from people is the second short Life Ain't Gonna Lose. Which even then it's because you can really see this story working better as a twelve episode series but here is one short it's not going to get that kind of a reaction from people altho I will say there's a scene near the end of that short which I think is pretty gruesome to see play out.

Overall this wasn't a bad film but it's not as good nor as heart warming as Mary And The Witch's Flower it it still a good film but one that could have benefited from maybe having a longer run time as it is tho it gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.