Ok move over Blood, or Ghost in the Shell. you have now been officially blown away in terms of production value with this Korean anime.

Yes it’s Korean and it looks sooooo good!

Wonderful Days

It’s set in a world where pollution is now part of life. At some point there was a system created by Ecoban: the DELOS system which feeds on pollution and ensures the survival of Ecoban. But Ecoban people are in the same world with beings called Marrians, which are I guess the native beings of the world. And both groups are in constant dispute, and even war.

Marrians act like rebels because of the mere fact that they are poor as compared to Ecoban who feeds on the pollution that puts the former into more misery.

The story follows Shua, an ex Ecoban member who now lives with the Marrians and has dedicated his life to the downfall of the DELOS system. As a kid, he was told by a certain Dr. Noah, that beyond the pollution, there is a blue sky… and he and his friend Jay (a girl) were able to get a glimpse of that sky as kids. . . which is why Shua will never stop until he sees that “Wonderful Day” again.

Jay is part of the Ecoban security team, and encounters Shua after years of separation… that’s where the story develops from. There are a lot of other nuances that are not worth mentioning here. So suffice to say, it has a decent enough plot to watch.

Very environment/society-friendly story. The pollution is merely secondary; I think the real parralelism here was how Ecoban mirrored the upper classes in any social system which robs the poor of the little that they have – just so the rich can live luxuriously. I think the lesson the movie tries to convey is that equality is always better. Becuase it is a given there is a blue sky, but Ecoban continues to produce pollution because it’s more profitable that way. Yet techincally, Marrians and the Ecoban can live together under one sky if it’s “living conditions” we’re talking about.

More than the lessons or the story, the real impressive feat here is the production value. The animation/CG is superb. I kept thinking “this is how anime and CG should be used hand in hand” We have a lot of anime mixing the two media already but none come close to the sheer detail done in Wonderful Days.

If Blood: The Last Vampire, with its lousy storyline, still merited a viewing because of the sheer beauty of its animation, then Wonderful Days is infinitely better in every aspect. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.