영화: Wonderful Days 원더풀 데이즈

Hello, just wanted to share some thoughts on an animated film I recently watched! WARNING: SPOILERS.

A couple of days ago I decided to search around for some animated films, particularly some Japanese ones. I haven’t watched one in a while and I just love the film ‘My Neighbor Totoro‘. After searching for a while, I ended up finding some I was fairly interested in, but after searching some more I came actually across this Korean animated film, named, ‘Wonderful Days‘ also known as, ‘Sky Blue’ and oh boy was I excited! I’ve never watched a Korean film animation before, so this was the first.

After trying to decide on which one to watch, I still decided to go and watch ‘Wonderful Days‘ It sounded pretty interesting, and it was in Korean too, more language practice, I suppose? Haha. The movie is based around mainly on a city named ECOBAN, energy and the environment. Although I personally loved the art and animation (It’s beautiful!), I was expecting quite a bit more on those three things it was based around but instead I ended up wondering about quite a few things in the end. Not only was the story a little disappointing, but the characters too, the introduction looked so bad-ass with some scary Ahjussi and the female lead looked pretty awesome but then it went downhill. Although I’m saying quite a few negative things, it is a movie you can still enjoy watching! It was enjoyable but could have been so much better.

It looked pretty interesting, and after reading briefly on what it was about – it sounded good! Wonderful Days is a Korean animated film released in 2003, the movie was written and directed by Kim Moon Saeng. The film is available in Korean with English subtitles, or one with English dubs. I’ve heard there is also a Japanese sub/dub (?) of it too. I watched it in Korean w/ English subtitles. It’s also around 1 hour and 30 minutes long. The movie based and set in the future and is about how a city named ECOBAN is gaining energy, not from the use of wind turbines and such but instead, ECOBAN has overly polluted a city to harvest their energy from! So, basically they gain their energy from pollution. Throughout the movie you can barely see, or never see the Blue Sky. There are three main characters, Shua, the person who has been trying to stop ECOBAN in hopes of seeing the Blue Sky once again, Jay, the leading lady who works at ECOBAN but is childhood friends with Shua and Commander Cade, one of the heads at ECOBAN. Yupp…you can probably notice what’s going to happen with these three! One of the first interesting parts I noticed, was the beautiful animation/art!

The film has some detailed animation and art, this is maybe one of the reasons I decided to watch it, as many noted that it had some lovely animation. This film has been created with a mix of CGI and the old 2D Cell Animation. It’s really nice to watch. All the backdrops were beautiful even though they were mostly covered with dust haha, the dust was detailed! I liked it very much. The vehicles too, were awesome; these were probably the things that CGI was used for. But they often kept giving close-ups and such on the car tyres, it was feeling like a car action movie or something haha. It was mainly the vehicles that were CGI’ed and the characters were drawn by Cell Animation. I liked how they were drawn, Jay looked cool! Short hair and red too! Shua was nicely drawn as well *_*. Art aside, the story that I felt a little disappointed with, in the end it felt like themes of environment/pollution etc were just there for the beautiful art in backdrops and scenery. 😦

From reading the plot summaries around the internet and such, this movie sounded pretty good. I am quite interested in the environmental theme. As I was really interested in the environmental side of things, I was expecting a bit more of a story around ECOBAN and why they formed that city, how the DELOS system works in aquiring energy from pollution. It would have been really awesome if they showed how their energy was being harvested. I was also really interested on more about the polluted city; the people all looked like laborers, . So I’m guessing ECOBAN was the home to the wealthier, while the polluted city was the home for the not-so-wealthy. But within all this story, it felt like it wasn’t holding up, the characters weren’t holding up either. They all felt very predictable.

I was expecting more out of the characters, more badness and more of a connection between them too. I did enjoy watching the side characters though. I thought the other bad guy, the guy in the higher position than Commander Cade would have more ‘bad’ in him. But he was shown only very little throughout the film, mainly it was just the start and the end when he ended up shooting Jay -_-.

According to Wikipedia there was also a love triangle involving, Shua, Jay and Commander Cade. Shua and Jay had more chemistry when they were younger than what we were shown when they were adults. Maybe it was because Shua said something like (paraphrased), “The Shua you knew is gone.” I liked how Shua was shown in flashbacks to be an energetic, adventurous boy who loved the Blue Sky and dreamed of seeing it once again. I’m glad they all ended up seeing the Blue Sky in the end though, although it would have been nicer if Shua ended up smiling brightly, like he did when he was younger once seeing the sky again. (Or did I miss this part xD) It didn’t feel like Jay was going to choose Commander Cade, here too, was a lack of chemistry in the past and in the present. Commander Cade was basically the reason for Shua’s disappearance off ECOBAN, I don’t think Jade would’ve chosen him due to all his lies and such. Ok, maybe it’s just me who was also disappointed with this; the love story wasn’t the main part to this movie hehe.

The supporting/side characters were neat! Especially the guys Shua’s little brother, Woody hung out with. They all seemed like a family. It was really sad when one of the members died, Zed. That was quite sad. I liked her hairstyle. Why did she have to run to the other side ;_; The little girl with icy blue hair too was very cute!

I just love this song from the OST.

I don’t think it was played during the copy of the movie I watched. It played the English version, I think. If it’s the same song, I really like the Korean version much more ^_^ There is also a music video for this song, which can be found here. More major spoilers though!

Credits: Thank you to wikipedia.com and lilith-ezine.com for the two posters! Thank you to 1.bp.blogspot.com for the lovely backdrop wallpaper! Thank you to wondersinthedarkfiles.wordpress.com and animewallpapers.com for the two images of scenes from the movie.