I’ll get to Kyousogiga later today. First I want to talk about a sort-of similar production: Hell’s Angels; a 2008 movie that I finally managed to track down. Like Kyousogiga, it’s got a ridiculous amount of style, and even though it’s not as well directed as the former, it does have its charms to watch.
To get an idea of the style of this movie: it is animated by Madhouse and the character-designs have been done by Nakazawa Kazuto, the character-designer of Sarai-ya Goyou, Ashita no Nadja and Samurai Champloo. Pretty much one of the top 5 character-designers out there. The result is a really colourful cast with a lot of different and rugged looks. It’s not the best character-design work of this guy, but still: it definitely looks good. But what about the rest?
Well, right from the start this movie has one very apparent problem: it doesn’t care about dramatic build-up. It just goes from scene to scene to scene without any sort of introduction or slow moment, it just pulls scenes out of its ass and completely disregards trying to create a good flow in its storytelling. When characters need to be together, they just pop up completely from out of nowhere, even lacking scenes that hint that they might be nearby or are about to arrive. This is a very jarring problem for the first half of the movie. The second half of the movie gets more epic, and this problem disappears a bit, making place for a lot of cheesy dialogues. The strange thing however was that despite being cheesy, I was actually sold on this in that second half.
The plot ended up being surprisingly interesting, taking a few biblical stories and giving quite an interesting spin to them. On top of that, the it knows how to deliver an entertaining climax and i had a lot of fun watching it. The characters really had some troubles fleshing themselves out in the beginning,but thankfully they manage to fix that as the movie goes along (it IS nearly 2 hours long). It is a shoujo story, so there are quite a few clichés, but they’re creatively used.
So yeah, this is a good movie for if you’re having a movie night and want something light that looks good. This series has the style to keep you interested, and it has enough substance to not make this get boring within 10 minutes. It entertained me and even though it’s not among the best movies, it set out and did what it intended to do.
| Storytelling: | 7.5/10 – Throughout the movie, it becomes clear that the creators need to follow a few courses of screenplay 101, because there are a few basic technical issues with how this show jumps around way too much. Later on this gets better and it becomes quite entertaining, even though it can get a bit cheesy. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Good and likable characters. The female lead is a bit of a Mary Sue, but within the context of this movie it does fit. The cast of characters is also quite diverse. |
| Production-Values: | 8.5/10 – Lots of style; great camera-work and character-designs. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – Neat twist on biblical themes here. |
Suggestions:
– Kyousogiga
– Alice in the Country of Hearts
– Hoshi no Umi no Amuri
Where in the world did you find this? I’ve been looking for it for ages and this review has only made me want to watch it more lol.
I’ve been meaning to watch this for awhile and finally got to it. Pretty much agree with everything you pointed out in your review. Really like its youthful energy in its sensibilities. kinda like a Dōjinshi or a web generation animators work. then again thats Nakazawa Kazuto. I did wish the story got a bit crazier, like you said it was a bit too cliche. Kazuto and cliche don’t mix.
On another note it’d be great if more ppl gave this movie a chance. judging by the lack of comments for this movie review post, doesnt seem like they’re too interested in left-field looking animation.