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A Korean production, I wish I
could more enthusiastic out of respect for a country's animation industry,
especially as this was clearly an ambitious attempt for wider recognition. Sky Blue, as we got it called under in
Britain, is as far further than you could get from Blue Seagull (1994) and Armageddon
(1996), two Korean animated films which are strange and risible productions
I admit were the first two from this country I had seen, which I admit I found
enjoyment in but are two titles which struggled to come into existence. The
former is an erotic thriller made recognisable in the internet era, the later
one of two Manga Entertainment releases
of South Korean animation in the VHS era that managed to get a 3DO Multiplayer Interactive game in its
homeland, they are films I feel sympathy for the staffs on, especially as Blue Seagull ends with behind the
scenes production footage over the end credits. They were titles which would
have been dogged on by cruel reviewers, especially as Blue Seagull had some questionable content. South Korean cinema is
a rich vein in itself to be admired, whether art cinema or genre pictures, and
whilst there have been some prominent and well regarded animated work, such as The King of Pigs (2011), there is an
entire culture of television and theatrical Korean animation which is not as
readily available still. Sky Blue,
or to use its original name Wonderful
Days, was a prominent title to appear even in a trimmed down form with an
English dub back in the 2000s, and could have been a chance for wider
recognition if it had succeeded, certainly coming with a significantly bigger
scope in visual design and animation than the two films I have mentioned.
There was even a theatrical push
in Britain when it was licensed by Tartan
Video. Tartan Video, when they
existed, were a big name, especially when it came to helping the push for cult
Asian cinema, the people who brought us in Britain the likes of Takashi Miike's Audition (1999), Ring (1998)
and Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003), a huge proponent for how
we learnt of South Korea's rich genre and cult cinema, introducing the likes of
Park Chan-wook to us in the West. Even
with the DVD release of Wonderful Days,
as I acquired cheaply second hand, it was sold on two DVDs, in a deluxe set
with a three hours worth of extras on another disc, in the same way they had
with the likes of Oldboy, pushing it as a big title in the day. It has a
premise which has been readily sold before. Still evoking uncomfortable issues
about climate change, Wonderful Days
is set in a post apocalypse where the environment collapsed, toxic rainfall and
all. The first and only living city, the Echoban, was built to protect
civilisation from this, but even as it stands proudly in the midst of this as a
bastion of hope, there is rife class divide, where the elite live in the
Echoban, and everyone else is outside in the slums, workers to mine resources
for the living metropolis and keep it alive. It is a story told many times
before, and that is not a bad thing, with class war and a romantic triangle
divided between sides, as Jay, a female law enforcer, is connected from
childhood to the man Shua from the slums trying to activate a secret Echoban
system meant to save everyone, all whilst her male superior Cade wishes to
prevent this but also loves her since they all know each other from childhood
before Shua was forced out of Echoban. Add in this a kill crazy superior from
the elite in the midst of this, and everything here can be made into something
great. Truthfully, the biggest problem
is entirely that this is just okay, something we will get into later into this
review, that this just in terms of making a lavish production, and making sure
it has a story which gets from A to B well, was a goal that it cleared but Wonderful Days does not get further from.
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It is staying safe, so much so
with its narrative it is within the slithers of this plot where you see
something more dynamic occasionally appear. I find myself more concerned for
the petty thieves introduced, especially when they are revealed not to be
villains but merely denizens of the slum wasteland who can be sympathetic, like
a tiny rat like member who I had sympathy for over the traditional leads, all
because he was made less a thug but someone who can be scared, be brave, and
when he went from a dubious figure to one with sympathy for when he laments for
his fallen comrades. Whilst it has aged, the film's visual palette even with
obvious use of computer animation is to be admired too. Attempts at blending
this into interesting directions can be seen onscreen, such as a chase into the
Time Capsule in the Echoban, one of the few moments where world building, which
is not as fully seen as it should have been, appears; a museum presuming what
has survived in human culture from before, it mixes live images with the likes
of Roy Lichtenstein and Gustav Klimt's art for a set piece with
idiosyncratic visual choices. The production team were clearly trying their
hardest, and one sequence does suggest what could have been; in context it is
still a curious choice, a nightmarish dream of biblical images and multi-eyed
rams closer to a Ken Russell live
action film, a British director acclaimed (and notorious) for this type of hyper
intense imagery, including actual Biblical images with multi-eyed rams in Altered States (1980). That scene is
disturbing and abrupt in Wonderful Days,
but shows an attempt at characterisation, that for Shua it is symbolic in his
fear for Jay's life, and the state of the situation for him, showing how the
production team for this film, as they continued making films or animated
projects in other formats, could have taken this further. In fact, prominently,
the production was more than just animation of the 3D and 2D form, as
additional work included filming real model sets which the animation was
layered over, even using real shots of clouds and the sky, symbolically meaning
for the film's story, and layering animation over them1.
Sadly, beyond two short films
after this, director-writer Moon-saeng
Kim has not done anything else, and there is the unfortunate sense that Wonderful Days, even with its shortened
length for global release, was a production with many issues in spite of these
clear visual virtues. Even in mind to Tartan Video putting their weight behind
it in Britain, even the esteemed Japanese animation studio Gainax creating a dub for the Japanese market which was less
"alien" rather than merely adapting it to distribute it in Japan2,
Wonderful Days was always going to
struggle with how conventional the plot proves to be. An expensive production1,
all the problems really come from the fact that its story is quite conventional
and not even that particularly idiosyncratic either. With knowledge of numerous
individuals being involved with the writing process, even unaccredited work by Micah Wright, a prolific American writer
for the likes of comic books, and Jay
Lender, a prolific American writer especially in the Spongebob Squarepants franchise, it was clear that whilst visually
the film, even with its aged CGI, was ambitious and is still to be admired, the
production's story needed that much strengthening of ambition. Especially when
some of the more idiosyncratic touches, like the blind girl, are clichés which
really are not that distinct when they have been seen before, this film whilst
having so much still I appreciated also suffers from this lack of personality. Sky Blue as we got it in the British
Isles is okay, a case of a production which just goes to show how much of a
struggle it is just to get an animated theatrical film off the ground, where
the challenges are not just the visuals but even making sure to have something
in its story to tell to last.
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1) Take with a pinch of salt, as
it comes from one perspective for a film, but this chronicle My
Beautiful Korean Movie written by Micah
Wright, for his personal website on April 9th 2003, does raise some
poignant aspects that, if confirmed, do raise up a lot of the issues with Wonderful Days, as an unaccredited
co-writer with Jay Lender, which
undermined it.
2) Gainax
to Adapt Wonderful Days, written by Christopher
Macdonald for Anime News Network
and published on November 5th 2004.