Category: Anime Reviews

Um. Yeah… about this movie.

It already had an unusual staff behind it. It’s directed by the director of Spriggan, written by a guy who worked on all kinds of series from Element Hunters to Spice and Wolf, the character designs are by the same guy who designed the characters for Ghost in the Shell, Jin Roh and the Sky Crawlers, the storyboards are done by the guys who animated things like Cannon Fodder and A Tree of Palme and it’ produced by Studio Pierrot. Oh, and just a small detail: the animation director is freaking Shinji Hashimoto. If you don’t know who Shinji Hashimoto is, watch this. That’s just a small portion of the talent of someone who is amongst the best animators in the business.

If you’re wondering what good animation is: just watch this movie. The animation here isn’t necessarily flashy, but the fluidity and the motions are just incredible. There are so many visual ideas in this movie. There is so much motion in it, even for movie standards. This really is the first production in more than half a decade in which Studio Pierrot really got to show off their unique animation style if you don’t count a few random episodes here and there that just happen to have the right staff. It is great that producers still continue to give people like Shinji Hashimoto opportunities to oversee the animation of entire productions, because like this movie shows: the result just looks incredible. As for the rest of the movie though….

Look, the problem isn’t with the acting. The voice acting is perfectly fine. The pacing is also pretty acceptable: it’s slow, but it never drags. The choice of music is a bit weird for a series that is about Japan of 1200 years ago, but it ends up working very nicely. The setting is also something that interests me a lot. A time when Jesus wasn’t even a thousand years old yet is not something we get to see often. This would have been a very good movie… if it wasn’t for the story.

Because yes, this is a serious story about the history and heritage of Japan. And yes, it’s about a random boy who gets transported there and gets to command dragons for no particular reason. Whoop-dee-doo.

Now, this alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it all depends on how well it’s handled. Unfortunately, everything just goes too easy for this kid. All he has to do is glow a bit, and then suddenly he can command this huge dragon (who has no personality whatsoever by the way, even though he’s the titular Millennium Dragon). Because of this lack of urgency for him, he starts worrying about morals. The result is that he spends a large part of the movie whining and trying to convince everyone not to fight.

I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that he’s actually trying this, or the fact that the potentially interesting setting was reduced to such a farce to make this actually possible. This movie is completely shallow. At first things the sakes seem huge on this series, but eventually things degrade into a conflict because this kid has a trauma because his parents died. The only things that actually resemble this setting are the images. Apart from that it seems that the writers put in no research whatsoever into the setting they were dealing with.

This is the kind of children’s movie that dumbs itself down way too much, for the sake of appealing to kids. It’s such a shame, when the animation is so good, it just doesn’t have the story to back it up with. There are just fundamental problems with the writing staff here.

Storytelling:	7/10 – Solid storytelling, but there is hardly any substance.
Characters:	7/10 – Well, it has potential, but the main character is just too young and puts the priorities on the wrong place.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Really great animation, a ton of fluidity, a ton of animation ideas.
Setting:	7/10 – Interesting setting, but underutilized.

Suggestions:
– Yona Yona Penguin
– A Tree of Palme
– Kai Doh Maru

For those of you who don’t know, Dai Sato was the one who, a while back, unleashed a rant about the current state of anime, claiming that it’s dying and that fans lack respect for good stories. Seeing as this comes from one of the best writers in the business (we’re talking about the guy who wrote Ergo Proxy, Eureka 7 and episodes of Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell and Toward the Terra, this made some impact.

His next movie is Tekken – Blood Vengeance, and with this I seriously wonder what happened to that statement, and in particular the line “Sato vowed that he would still continue to work on it in attempts to avert that bleak fate.”. My biggest guess right now is executive meddling.

Tekken – Blood Vengeance certainly isn’t a bad movie. However, I went into this movie expecting a lot of over the top martial arts fights and an over the to action-heavy plot. What I did not expect is that this movie got stuck inside a high school for about half of its time. I’m not kidding here: the main character is this high school girl and for most of the movie she’s sent to infiltrate some random high school in order to find someone with special powers. The lengths that these creators will go through to force a school setting in is unbelievable sometimes.

This movie is actually quite funny, albeit unintentional. I wouldn’t say it’s so bad it’s good: the direction is solid, the pacing is nice, and when the action does arrive it gets quite enjoyable. But the plot is just completely silly and over the top, while the characters all take it seriously. This campiness in which the characters just assume that riding a panda or a very ditzy and pushy android are part of everyday life are hilarious. The only really bad part about this movie is the romance, which comes out of bloody nowhere, which makes it even more hilarious.

It also should be noted that this movie assumes that you’re familiar with the rest of the Tekken universe. And don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that it’s full of techno-babble that you can only understand by having played the games. No, this movie just refuses to devote time to flesh out about half of its cast, because apparently, this has already been done in previous installments. Because of this there are points where random characters completely take over the show, especially near the climax. Although the ending was wonderfully cheesy again.

And really, the direction is competent here: 3D animation is still continuing to evolve, and the character models get more expressive every year. The movements still are clunky, but when you compare it with 3D movies of a few years back there is some definite improvement, which much less of the botox-faces syndrome apparent.

Tekken Blood-Vengance is by no means a good movie though, due to all the cheese and undeveloped characters. If you want cheese though, then this is a good choice: this movie knows that it’s cheese, but it tries to deliver itself anyway. It’s enjoyable, though not much more. Dai Sato: get back to write stuff like Ergo Proxy again.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Very camp, but well enough paced and executed.
Characters:	7/10 – Some of these characters are really out of place, and others just assume you’re familiar with the Tekken Franchise.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Solid 3D character animation.
Setting:	7/10 – A high school in an over the top martial arts movie. Why?

Suggestions:

For the first two Towa no Quon movies, I began to fear that it would be like the Break Blade Movies, and just be too dull to really work as a movie series. Movies 3 and 4 managed to prove me wrong with a significant improvement in both its content and characters. Having said that though: movie 4 is not as good as movie 3.

Movie 3 had a very good concept behind it. Movie 4 meanwhile is more straightforward, and is totally devoted to the thing that the previous episodes have been hinting at constantly. The content of this movie isn’t as interesting as last time, which really had me on the edge of my seat. The predictability of this installment worked a bit against it.

Nevertheless though: this movie had some good character development in it. The characters are far from the shells that they used to be in the first movie. There is one particular character who changed significantly in terms of character. The rest of the main cast didn’t so much change, as we got to see much more of why they’re doing what they’re doing, and interestingly enough it’s the side-cast of characters that’s also developing really well. This combination really works, and serves as the backbone of this movie.

Towa no Quon is a series of movies with a really heavy emphasis on ethics and morals. With that I don’t mean that it includes really difficult moral dilemmas; we’re all pretty much supposed to root for the main character. Instead though, this movie, through its main character Quon, devotes a lot of time and effort to show its vision of what’s right. Quon’s present version is the epitome of righteousness, even though some of his actions aren’t the most logical ones. The actin of this series unfortunately isn’t perfect, so this does sometimes lead to cheese. Still, beyond the cheese there also is enough genuinely good drama in this movie to keep you interested.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Straightforward, but well built up.
Characters:	8/10 – The character development is the highlight of his movie, though the characters do get a bit cheesy at times.
Production-Values:	8/10 – This show just doesn’t have your average movie budget, but the soundtrack makes up for it.
Setting:	8/10 – Huge focus on morals as always.

Most studios tend to favor a particular type of series. Sunrise loves mecha, JC Staff often goes with young moe girls, Bee-Train is crazy about series that involve partnerships, Studio Deen has its bishies, Madhouse is there for the dark avant-garde type shows and Hal Film Maker is often into slice of life. Bones though… their shows all are completely different from each other. The only common thread that I can find is that their shows often have action, but that can be said about 50% of all the other studios as well. It’s really one of their strengths, on top of how much effort they nearly always put in their execution. And with this, I bring you Kurau Phantom Memories, a show that is among their top 5 best attempts. Kurau Phantom Memories follows people with superpowers, but instead of trying to be the epic of the year, it is very much character oriented. It’s as much about the use of superpowers in a corporate society as it is about womanhood. Perhaps the latter is an even bigger theme. And as a result, the creators absolutely nailed the characterization of the lead female character. She’s incredibly well developed, and even though this show can get pretty dark at times, she’s portrayed with an incredible amount of warmth. This show is especially brilliant at balancing its heart-warming and cold-hearted nature with each other, with some magnificent results. The rest of the cast is also very well written. Characters all act naturally and the main side characters all are significantly developed into interesting characters throughout the series. The side characters that only appear on one or two episodes before leaving meanwhile do a very good job on fleshing out the world of the series, and even they are multi-dimensional as soon as their airtime ends. The production values play an interesting role here. The animation is perticularly well directed, and even though this show doesn’t have the budget to keep its art consistent, it does know when and where to put effort into its fluidity, leading to some truly excellent and dynamic scenes, on places where it counts. The soundtrack is also just fantastic. It’s not large, but nearly every track that’s there is a feast for the ears and does a brilliant job at enhancing the atmosphere. The acting does border cheese at times though. The dialogue often is very inspired, but at other times the characters don’t get further beyond uttering each other’s names a number of times. Despite these issues though, ti’s got a strong plot with some real moral dilemmas and situations that really aim to get the best out of the characters.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Really well paced, combines animation, characters and setting seamlessly.
Characters:	9/10 – Kurau is a fantastic main character. In fact, if it wasn’t for the sometimes cheesy acting, this rating would have gotten a 10.
Production-Values:	9/10 – The animation isn’t complicated, but it is very detailed and fluid when it needs to The soundtrack is also brilliant.
Setting:	9/10 – Great concepts behind this world, even though it might not appear so at first. Multiple timeskips also work really well here.

Suggestions: – Witch Hunter Robin – Ultraviolet: Code 044 – The Third]]>