My Favorite Anime: Mars Express director’s journey from The Rose of Versailles to Patlabor 2

polygon.com:

Mars Express, the new sci-fi noir thriller from French director and animator Jérémie Périn, is finally available to stream on VOD this week following its American theatrical run in May. Périn’s film is fantastic: a sophisticated, hard-boiled detective story set in a futuristic society where humans and robots live side by side that’s as indebted to Chinatown and The Long Goodbye as it is to Ghost in the Shell.

Polygon recently had a chance to connect with Périn, so we had to ask: What was your first favorite anime, and what’s your favorite anime now?

My Favorite Anime is Polygon’s column dedicated to collecting the stories of the biggest celebrity anime fans in the world, charting a path from their earliest introductions to Japanese animation to the series and films they love today. Here’s what Jérémie Périn had to say.

Based on the manga by Buichi Terasawa, Space Adventure Cobra is a 1982 sci-fi adventure anime about a bored office worker who accidentally discovers that he’s a swashbuckling mercenary who erased his own memories in order to elude a deadly group of space pirates. After regaining his memories, Cobra resumes his life as a mercenary, embarking on adventures around the universe with his partner, Lady Armaroid.

While Terasawa cited Star Trek, the James Bond film series, and the animation of René Laloux as his inspirations while writing the manga, the premise of Space Adventure Cobra also bears a striking resemblance to Philip K. Dick’s 1966 short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” later adapted by Paul Verhoeven as Total Recall.

The other anime Périn cited, The Rose of Versailles,is a historical drama that takes place before and during the French Revolution and follows the story of Oscar François de Jarjayes, the youngest daughter of a military general who raises her like a son so that she will one day succeed him as commander of the royal guard at the Palace of Versailles. Distraught over the plight of the French public under the ancien régime,