After Mind Game, it seemed a good opportunity to check out another infamously absurd movie: Dead Leaves. It’s interesting to compare the two of them. Both movies are as far away from normal as possible, both are just crazy, both have their own good points, and both have their own bad points.
Let me issue a warning before I continue: Dead Leaves is absolutely not meant for little children. It can and will have a bad influence on them. The entire movie basically is a senseless violence-fest, with lots of maniacal gunfights and explosions whose purpose seems only to entertain the viewer. There’s also a huge dose of foul language in this, so keep this away from your little brother and sister.
One of the most notable differences between Mind Game and Dead Leaves was the fact that while Mind Game had its moment in which the pacing was very slow, Dead Leaves absolutely does NOT have these. The pacing is huge from beginning to end. Especially if you combine this with a couple of hyperactive characters, you’re in for a huge roller-coaster ride.
The story’s like this. A man and women wake up somewhere, unable to remember anything. They’re naked and decide to rob a store, with lots of violence and gunfights. After a huge car chase, they get caught by the police and end up in a mutant prison on the moon. In there, they discover that in this prison, pretty gruesome things happen. Over the course of the anime, some pretty interesting plot twists occur. Overall, it’s a pretty creative story. The main characters are an interesting bunch. We have a hyperactive man with a television as head and a very tough, sarcastic woman. They really are very funny at times. There wasn’t really any point at which I found them annoying.
Still, Dead Leaves does have its bad points. Unlike Mind Game it has some predictable points. Okay, some events are impossible to predict, but during some scenes, you only have to wait for the inevitable to happen. The character art also differs from normal anime. It’s a bit messy. It looks interesting at times, some characters have really creative designs (the television guy, some of the goons. These really looked evil when they wanted to). Other characters, however, look just plain. Another strange thing I noticed was that near the end, the overall animation quality suddenly got bogged down.
The major bad part of Dead Leaves was its infinite amount of action. Gunfights can be very entertaining at times, though a series has to know its limits. Dead Leaves doesn’t. Most of the times, we see people shooting as much bullets at each other until one of them dies. After the twentieth time, this gets rather annoying. The mindless killing also really got on my nerves at times, as they didn’t really add anything new.
Overall, like Mind Game, dead leaves was a very nice watch at times. Some scenes were very creative and amusing to see. Other scenes, however, ruined the movie a bit. Still, if you’re some kind of action or foul language junk, you’ll probably love this.
