I give Memories four stars. However, if I could rate each of the three vignettes separately, I would single out Cannon Fodder with five. The first short, Magnetic Rose, is a pretty straightforward ghost story in space. Directed by Koji Morimoto (Animatrix: Beyond), it is perhaps the most feature-film-like of the three. With all of its visual flair and futuristic melodrama this piece is perhaps the most accessible to Otomo fans from Akira…however, in my opinion the least noteworthy, mainly because it relies too much on the special effects and out-dated CG to carry the story. Stink Bomb is a slapstick comedy about a man with an accidental gas problem. Its humor depends not on the typical exaggerated anime humor (think Slayers, urgh) but on the ludicrousness of the situation. If you are familiar with the political tension between Japan and US you could in fact view this as a political satire: all the fuss and finger-pointing and power-jostling between Japanese and American parties over what else, a cloud of stench. In terms of graphics, Cannon Fodder is the most stylistic of the three—it looks European rather than anime. An art -buff friend of mine pointed out that the style of Cannon Fodder is very reminiscent of German Expressionism, as for me the style resembles the children’s book Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. All the characters have grotesque features without looking grotesque, which humanizes them and make them look silly and pitiful at the same time. The premise about a day in the life of a city that’s built around firing immense cannon balls at imaginary enemies has anti-war allegory written all over it. A great anime short in a collection of top-notch anime shorts.

Yes indeed we are all on the path to sal-VATION!. Surely this knowledge cannot be denied. There’s no need to alla-analize. Oh my god I’m treading on thin ice here—your politically correct brain portion speaking of the mis-spelling. If, perchance, even so very slightly for a nanosecond of the emotionally content insert here. What I was saying was this: if you're PC complex also has activated from the first three sentences of this paragraph, then you're missing the point. The Southern Baptist's way of celebrating their faith is somehow, at some level, sacriligious, the mere mentioning of this very idea mentioned thusly, is in fact sacriligious in itself. If meanings can be distilled from the symbolic meaning of

Sometimes, if you think about it, the only reason to enter academia, medicine, law, or otherwise equally or surpassingly esteemed professions, is to have colleagues around, collegue as in "I am about to meet my collegue."
"That's depressing."
"That's why I didn't want to do it."
"Oh. So what are you doing?"
"Nothing. Living in constant fear of the moment when having colleagues might not sound so bad to me."
- tribute to clerks