Anime Movies: Good or Bad?

As you know, over the past month, I have seen quite a few anime movies, ranging from Secret World of Arriety to Sora no Otoshimono: Tokeikake no Angeloid, and while they all may vary, from source material, to quality of the movie, and while they all may be anime, I will admit, they are weak in varying degrees. From weak plots, to weak characters, anime movies still have a long ways to go in order to perfect these values.

In my mind, there are two types of anime movies: those based off series, and those that stand alone. They bring different attributes to the table movie wise, both story wise, and character wise, and even art wise. While I may prefer the movies that are stand alone movies, the ones based off an anime series also have their own charm.

First, we shall shall start with those based off an existing anime series. These movies in my mind are very weak, and could easily be pased off as an OVA, due to length of actual plot. While in the Negima! movie, they did use most of the time for the plot development, but it could have easily condensed the movie into an OVA due to the fact that most of it was just them discussing what might happen, and while it was a good showcase for the classmates, it still could have done with out the extra showcases. In the case of the Sora no Otoshimono movie, the actual plot was less than thirty minutes. The part that made me upset was the fact that the first half of the movie was just a recap from the stalker's point of view, and that the second half of the movie was so epic with the action and suspense, but I felt like a lot of stuff was left unexplained to the audience. The last movie I would like to put into consideration was the Suite Precure movie, which overall, was the best out of the three. It had the most solid plot out of the three movies, and it did not butcher the the characters or plot. The animation was fluid and clean. It had its flaws, yes, but compared to the train wrecks known as the Sora no Otoshimono Movie, or the Negima! Final Movie.

As for the movies that are just stand alones, such as Secret World of Arrietty, they are slightly better in the presentation of the material, and the animation is a bit more fluid, however, the characters feel a bit underdeveloped. In the case of Arrietty, they characters just felt two-dementional and somethings just felt like they were unexplained. Also, the characters felt underdeveloped, but they do try to make the best of the time that they had in the movie to present the characters.

Overall, anime movies are either a hit or a miss for me. On one hand, I get to see a full length movie of anime, and the ones based off of series give me a full length movie with the characters I love. On the other hand, the anime movies based off of series tend to butcher to characters, and overall are just dry. The ones that stand alone are decent, but still have their flaws.