Many years ago I went to a great indie video rental place and asked for the worst movie they had. The clerk immediately took us to the children's section, gave us a disc (or maybe even a tape), and told us that if we promised to watch it and report back to him he'd rent it to us for free.
That movie was Ringing Bell (Chirin no suzu), a 45-minute anime that spends maybe one-fifth of its runtime with its main character, a lamb, weeping. The lamb's mother is murdered (not eaten - throat slit) by a wolf and the lamb, Chirin, decides to travel to the mountains and kill the wolf . . . only to immediately decide to become the wolf's apprentice instead. It includes such wonderful lines as "Oh, oh, why do the weak have to die?" and "The world I live in is a hell, and death is always close by." Children's programming written by Nietzsche after a bender. We fucking loved it.
Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_Bell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQt8CqVPNC4
Edited to add - to this day this is the only anime that I have ever seen.
I went to Letterboxd to read reviews and there are some great ones there:
Probably the most harshly transformative movie I've ever seen, and profoundly cyclical in a way that most movies can only hope to imitate. It's the children's story you never, ever want your child to see because the depictions of trauma and nature are dangerous to undeveloped psyches. It's the story we weren't told and the retcon of all the others. But you can see it now, it's okay. It is sad, but it is dense with value.
Many years ago I went to a great indie video rental place and asked for the worst movie they had. The clerk immediately took us to the children's section, gave us a disc (or maybe even a tape), and told us that if we promised to watch it and report back to him he'd rent it to us for free.
That movie was Ringing Bell (Chirin no suzu), a 45-minute anime that spends maybe one-fifth of its runtime with its main character, a lamb, weeping. The lamb's mother is murdered (not eaten - throat slit) by a wolf and the lamb, Chirin, decides to travel to the mountains and kill the wolf . . . only to immediately decide to become the wolf's apprentice instead. It includes such wonderful lines as "Oh, oh, why do the weak have to die?" and "The world I live in is a hell, and death is always close by." Children's programming written by Nietzsche after a bender. We fucking loved it.
Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_Bell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQt8CqVPNC4
Edited to add - to this day this is the only anime that I have ever seen.
:order-of-lenin: :gold-antifa:
You dropped these, champ. :rosa-salute:
The lack of pedophilia still puts it in the top 50% of anime
I've actually heard of this.
Queue it up on the cytube already.
I went to Letterboxd to read reviews and there are some great ones there:
https://letterboxd.com/xebeche/film/ringing-bell/
The movie is literally about the realization of "I've won, but at what cost?"