Film — Avalon

Having had to resort to amazon.co.jp to find a DVD of Mamoru Oshii's Avalon after deciding to look for it to see again a while back, it arrived today after surface mail transit.

It is a tribute to the commonality of UI design that with only a little translation, I could work my way through the shopping process on the Japanese site.

The film is a bit of a sleeper - the first time around when I saw it in the cinema in summer '02, there was a lot of "what the hell is going on here?" - later, with more exposure to Oshii's work, and knowing what the ending was, I could see what was actually going on on the way to the ending. This made it a lot more satisfying.

I'm still amused by the complete use of D&D terminology - save for Cleric => Bishop - for a modern small unit tactics VR game...