Memories (1995)

This was a collection of three short animated films, produced by Katsuhiro Otomo, who directed Akira (which I should probably get around to watching one of these days.)

Otomo also directs the third of the films, "Cannon Fodder", which is the most distinct-looking of the three, if the least interesting. The art style feels more European, with characters sharply outlined against their surroundings by thick black outlines, and dark, narrow triangles used for shading. The story is about a city where everything is centered around enormous cannons which daily fire at some unseen "enemy" in a "moving city". The father of the small family works on a loading crew, the mother in an armaments factory, their son is in school, dreaming of being the great leader (who dresses like some Prussian cavalry officer) who has the duty of firing every cannon. Life in an endless cycle centered on a war conducted for reasons no one knows.

Of the other 2, "Stink Bomb" is more of a apocalyptic comedy, about a guy who works in a pharmaceutical lab and takes an experimental drug hoping to be rid of his flu. Instead he produces some sort of stink cloud that puts everyone to sleep. The company higher-ups ordered him to bring all the research to them (as a C.Y.A. maneuver), not realizing he was the cause of the outbreak. So there's an extended sequence of people trying to get him to turn around, then the military trying to kill him before he reaches Tokyo. Except the gas he produces also screws up electronics, so no targeting computer can lock onto him.

My favorite was the first, "Magnetic Rose", directed by Koji Morimoto, is more of a horror story, though it might not seem that way at first. An outer space salvage crew responds to an S.O.S., and finds a seemingly derelict ship belonging to a long deceased opera singer. Initially, it's a sad tale, this woman who withdrew from life after the death of her lover, to live among her memories out in the depths of space. Memories and mementos which are forgotten or crumbling to dust. I'm not sure it's sadder than "Cannon Fodder", but it's less bleak, certainly, than the story of a society living their entire lives under and in service to, the gun.

Maybe "Cannon Fodder" was a little too much like looking into a mirror.

The longer two members of the salvage crew explore, the more concerning things get. The loverboy of the crew keeps seeing the singer, and his partner is forced to confront a personal loss he's tried to bury. All the while, the derelict's magnetic fields threatens to overwhelm their ship's meager shielding. I'm not clear how the ship is able to learn about the crew well enough to endanger them, but it makes the ship less of a monument, to more of a tomb, one haunted by a presence determined not to be alone.