Catblue: Dynamite

A funny and absurd fast-paced buddy crime action movie with amazing style, taking inspiration from a lot of sources: The introduction mixing music and cuts from 70s spy and cop series with a Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs power walk, a mix of Miami Vice and gangster movie characters, and a whole funky Exploitation tone, but with a catgirl because Japan.

If you got the references, you already have a good idea of what to expect. Catblue: Dynamite draws inspiration from the same sources as Gunsmith Cats, Cowboy Bebop and GTA Vice City. It’s just a good, fun buddy crime action flick.

The story starts out feeling like a gangster movie from the 80’s, and then suddenly you see supernatural things about the world like a cat girl and ghosts. It’s interesting to say the least since I never saw something like this before. It took me a while to get into the story because of how really out of control it was but I soon actually liked it. It’s got a very different story line which keeps my interest. There was a joke that did get annoying after a while with the black guy always calling his partner brother and the come back. It got old ... fast in the first episode.

The animation is rather interesting, using 3D with the cartoon-shader. It looks better then most shows like this but still has some problems to me. It just feels way to Miku Miku Dance to me. The textures are nice though when they do have them, not really over bumped. The world around them looks much better then the characters although the characters do look interesting. The camera shakes at odd times, making it feel a lot like a movie. It went a little odd when it went into the floating in the air fight.

The Music and most of the talking feels like the 80’s, which is good since it does help with the theme. I’m not always so found of it but it’s not really all that bad when it works well with the show itself and most of the time, it’s just set in the background. But I don’t understand the little tweeting sound that happens sometimes when they are fighting. The voices actually fit the characters rather well to me and I love that about it. I have to say I think that if it was in any other language other then English, it would lose something.

Catblue: Dynamite is one of those shows that come along that will be memorable to me for how bad it does something. In this case it’s acting and to a lesser degree animation. It also fails as a period piece as well, for reasons I will detail later. In the end though I am left wondering if this was really anime after all?

The story is set in the 1970s American underworld. A pair of buddies is given a tape that later turns out to have more significant meaning later. The two are ambushed in a coffee shop by a mysterious ... smoking woman and armed gunmen. At this point our cat eared heroine appears to save the day. Though at first you’re going to be pretty confused as to why she’s got cat ears and a tail and why her friend walks through walls and people it all starts to make sense in no time. There is lots of gunplay and martial arts style action that will remind you of 70s action films. Uh well bad 70s action films that is.

Catblue tries to bring back nostalgia for the 70s decade. I suppose people who know little about the decade besides the common stereotypes will be snookered into believing this is authentic. Just because you dress the characters up in leisure suits, bell-bottoms, afros, and drop in a few disco balls and classic American muscle cars doesn’t make it the 70s. About the only thing that does feel authentic is some of the background music. Sometimes I don’t even think they even tried that hard either, as some of the dialogue (a J-Lo reference 25 years too soon) is definitely out of place. Even the title is corny, taking a popular catch phrase from the decade, "Dynomite" and just dropping it in the name as if that is supposed to give it extra credibility.

The characters are the sole bright spot if you can call them that. Blue, the feline turned human heroine is fleshed out well enough to be mildly interesting. They tell us how she got to be the way she is and what her motivations are. Though there is nothing ever resolved in terms of her own storyline. The ghost John Doe probably has a perfect name, since we learn basically nothing about him either and is completely unknown from a character standpoint. The two friends Robert and Bill are just as uninspired as their names suggest. They are basically caricatures of Italian and black stereotypes.

Animation... where do I begin? Oh yeah, well it’s really shitty. Everything is CG and I imagine it would have looked fabulous, like 10 years ago. Except this was made in 2006. The motion is pretty fluid and some of the backgrounds and the vehicles look pretty good but characters are very inconsistent to downright bad. The style just doesn’t appeal to me at all and is not attractive. It looks...fake. Now that might seem like a bad word to use to describe animation but well it really shows that this was designed by a computer. That may or may not make sense to any of you but it’s the only way I can describe it.

I have saved the best (I really mean worst) for last. Apparently this anime was only produced in English. I have heard some horrible English dubs before and at first I thought that’s what this was. Since that’s not the case and this was the way it really was intended to be seen then I have to say this is the worst script, dialogue, acting combination maybe in the history of film. I really hope these actors are never employed again... ever. If their performances did not make me cringe so much they would have been hilarious. Nowhere is this more noticeable than when Blue is pulling a metal stake from her body... wow lady you really suck as an actress. Please go back to waiting tables or doing phone sex.

I see nothing to recommend about this anime. If you like CG, catgirls, or even if you’re nostalgic about the 70s don’t bother to see this. Really, I'm not kidding.