For a more visual review; check out this DTube video:
Status: Finished
Flavors of Youth - I swear, I didn’t just choose this anime because I had to fill out the list with something. The keyword is ‘just’.
Flavors of Youth is an anthology movie that consists of three segments. Each individual segment is about people reminisces their past in a way in their current situation. I watched the international version on Netflix, so if I miss anything that existed on the original version, let me know.
The first segment goes like this: Hi, I love noodles. Noodles was my food everyday when I was little. The noodles in city is stale and pricey, but the ones at my town are pretty good. My grandma loved noodles. Everybody should love noodles. The girl I had a crush on, had long noodle hair. Noodles are life. And if you reject noodles, life rejects your happiness.
Well, they got the flavors part right and it makes you hungry for noodles, even when I ate a pizza. Thank you noodle guy!
The second segment is about models. We see a women dealing with it as her age is kicking in and as how she tries to spend time with her younger sister. We see how she is seems to be replaced by someone younger, releasing how she is replaceable. This is also about her younger sister, who wants to make cloths and cake. Okay, we got some flavour here..
And the third segment is about a man who discovers his old mixtape of conversation with his then best friend, who was a girl, but not really a girlfriend. We see how time passes between as they goes to school and trade their mixtape with each other as they go on their lives. This however changes as they are applying for the entry exam and the conversation becomes less and less. Why they don’t simply talk normally with each other? Because her father said fuck you. None of this has anything with flavour, except for the cookies in the opening.
I want to mention that this movie was a Chinese - Japanese project, which explains why most the locations are based on Chinese cities and culture. Showing these landscapes and having these establishing shot as we see time lapses is probably the best part of this movie. These time lapses makes you feel some kind of nostalgia for these places somehow.
Now my concerned about this movie except for how the character aren’t as detailed as the background, is regarding its subject. Only 1 of the 3 stories as anything relevant to flavours. Sure you can argue that flavours can be more than just food, but do mind that when we think of flavour, we think of stuff eatable!
Not about some kids recording their thoughts on a cassette tape! Okay? Nor how a woman turns into a granny! F.O.O.D! FOOD! I know the original title is Season to Season, yet this isn’t an excuse!
Alright, beside the title being kind of misleading, the plot of these doesn’t make me, that invested. With exception of the first one of course. I was more invested on the background than on the foreground. This goes both for animation and the story itself. The landscapes and the details of the noodles was amazing, yet the character animation was lacking times to times. The personalities and character interaction wasn’t interesting enough for me to not look at the background. The stories are too average for me.
Sorry, I’m just seeing the same problem on what most of these pretty background pictures has. Not a interesting story to back it up. Take it from me, stories ages less than art. What could look great back then might not look great now.
Now spoiler for the third and final segment. So if anyone who is interested, listen now.
So the man-boy studies for the exam so that he could be in the same school as wom-girl. He receives the mixtape but he doesn't have time to listen to it and his mother puts it away. Later turns out that only man-boy passed to go to that school and wom-girl didn’t. He moves away and completely forget that the mixtape even exists, even if he did the mixtape thing regularly. So year passed and she asks him if he heard the mixtape. He says no and she turns away. And now back to present, he finally listens to the mixtape and in it, she confesses that she didn’t want to pass the test because she wanted to stay with him. Wow! Way to go to handicap yourself with a goddamn cassette.
With that said, here is my summary. This movie is nice to have when eating food, but not that great. Nice background but that’s about it. Watch the first part for sudden craving of noodles.
Pease out Noodle man.