Dagger Anime Review: Future Boy Conan

[レバニラ]

The show is literally perfect in every aspect. It's a 13 hour long Miyazaki movie, and it lags nowhere.
The animation is 10/10 the whole way. Background and settings are more detailed than your average renaissance painting. With the exception of about 3 villains every character is 100% lovable.
The humor kept me laughing when it was supposed to, yet even towards the end when I realized that there was no way someone was ACTUALLY in danger I still held my breath and my knuckles go white.
The pacing moved at the perfect pace, slow enough to let you take in everything, but fast enough to never leave you bored.
The world is more real than our own, with a level of detail on every last piece of technology, architecture, and costume to let you know that it's a someone really put some thought into the how's and why's of it.
Movement has weight, the land has life, there's a sense of beauty and dread in every moment that really speaks to the directors vision of our world today. (Or more accurately our world 42 years ago)
In the last few episodes I laughed, I cried, I gasp, and felt several other emotions that I can't express with the same single verb pattern.
Lately I've been really into the technical aspects of animation, and looking through at what work is put in to make the world complete that might be lost on the causal viewer. How shot composition works, setting of key frames, movement arcs, etc. And this show is just polished beyond belief.
Very rarely does a full length TV program show this kind of detail and polish.
Live-Evil has a better translation out there if you can find it, however there's a Blu-Ray rip (which I watched) that has some slightly off subs (8/10 quality I'd say), but has such a level of quality you can't believe.
It might be distracting to some, but it's such a HQ transfer you can see finger prints on the cels.
It's an interesting decision since clearly that wasn't intended by the original artists, but it certainly adds a different sense of realism to the show, and integrity of the remastering staff to not touch up ANYTHING.

One other thought, touching on the message earlier mentioning that it's 42 years old, is that despite it's age, it is still more prescient and relevant than ever.
You really see and understand Miyazaki's philosophy about human nature, society, and our relationship to nature very clearly, and it's almost radicalizing in how well he expresses himself. He creates an persuasive narrative to almost force you to see the world through his eyes, and I love it.