And here’s another widely anticipated movie: the first of the Mardock Scramble trilogy. Finally, Gohands could get in a project that actually showed off their talent, rather than making the umpth bad harem clone. The promo art for this series looked absolutely gorgeous, it had the writer of Fafner and Chevalier behind it. There was a ton of promise behind this. So, how did it go?
Well, that was screwed up. Mardock Scramble is science fiction. It’s based around all kinds of interesting ideas, some of which do not care how sick in the head they can get. There’s a ton of nudity as well, but despite all this it has an style that works really well. Its story is dark and well acted, it takes itself seriously and ends up as a great science fiction character study.
There are multiple characters, but within the first hour of this trilogy the focus went mostly to just two of them, and they got a good dose of airtime dedicated to their backgrounds. They’re both pretty interesting for a one-hour movie. Nothing stellar, but the bond that develops between them is quite engaging to watch.
Beyond that, this movie just oozes with style. The animation and art are both utterly gorgeous, especially the use of colours makes this a visual feast. The action is really well directed and amazing to watch as well, especially during the second half of the movie. It’s one of the strengths of the movie, but also one of its major weaknesses: it’s so busy with this style that at times it forces things along, just for the sake of this. This leads to sometimes rather jumpy editing and character development that may be a bit too sudden.
The meat of the story obviously isn’t in this first movie yet, and whether I’m gonna recommend it is going to depend entirely on the direction that the other two movies take it in. It’s very much a continuous story, so this movie doesn’t really just stand alone (especially when considering its cliff-hanger). It set up all of the building blocks. Now it’s up to the other two movies to use it.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – A bit jumpy, but nicely paced, good dialogue. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – The development is a bit forced, but good background and the bond between the two main characters is interesting. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – Gorgeous; great style, excellent use of colors. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – Lots of neat ideas, though some are just pointlessly gory and are a bit out of place. |
Suggestions:
– Kara no Kyoukai- The Garden of Sinners – Overlooking View
– King of Thorn
– Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance
A lot of interesting sci fi concepts here, does have a lot of dark elements.. another brillant animated film,definitely going to see how this turns out.
That was great fun, when are the other two gonna come out?
I especially like the chemistry between the main heroine and Oeufcoque too.
Yeah, really liked it, it was a great start.
I liked the movie for the way it reminded me more of cyberpunk than the typical sci-fi but that movie alone really isn’t recommendable. It always felt like they started walking but stopped short of going anywhere with it. There was nothing conclusive about this movie even as it did have some progression and some character-development.
But I really look forward to see the other two ones ^^ .