It's incredible to see a parody of expressionism the same year it broke out cinematically with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. From the opening in which Lubitsch himself sets up a doll world that the camera then enters, everything is heightened to unreality, leading to some of the greatest visual gags the director ever achieved; peep the sudden, Alice in Wonderland-esque distortions of size when seemingly normal sized counters and shelves in the background abruptly look massive when someone sits…

This is a serious contender for the most gorgeous animation any MM/LT had before the end of WWII. The backgrounds are lush enough to get lost in (the depth of the forest layouts is on par with those first five canonical Disney Animated Features). The colors are vivid you’d swear the ink wasn’t dry, and Jones has such a firm grasp of camera technique already that even the off-screen space is gorgeous because you can feel it before the frame…

If there can be no poetry after Auschwitz, there can be no faith after Hiroshima, in which mankind definitively proved its ability to create Revelation without the help of God. Oshii presents a world bleached by atomic fire, overcast in permanent nuclear winter and populated by leviathan skeletons forming building frames, diseased and aimless biomech weapons still marching in a war between long-dead sides, and shadows hunted by ghosts. Through it all are two humans, a girl who radiates frail…