Highlander: The Search for Vengeance

I'll be honest and say I never thought the Highlander series had its own anime movie and I recently got into the series when I turn 20 since I watch the first movie and bit of the TV series; both cartoon and live action, still planning to watch the rest, even the sequels.
I found the movie in my local 'nerd store', I didn't think it was real until I did some research and I decide to give it a watch, and I really enjoy the movie so much.

-The story is a basic revenge plot, with a war going on as main character enter the town ... and become involved. Its not bad it is written well, thou you can tell where its going and how its going to end, it keeps your interest.

-I'm glad the made a new character for the movie then using Connor or Ducan. Thou Colin is 'one character motivation'; to get revenge of his clan and dead wife, his determination keeps him going no matter how many times he gets killed.

-The supporting cast done a good job as well, I'll admit I do like Dahlia as the main female character then the others in the movies and shows, I don't hate them they have improve themselves to be more the the love interest however Dahlia is more proactive in action department.

-Marcus is a enjoyable villain, and not insane like some of the Highlander villains, *thou I do enjoy the villain in the first movie* and he did said the truth about the world and society, willing to change it to see fit *into his eyes thou* no complex, however he's very calm and collection villain.

-The action is wonderful, the sword fights are fast-pace and get excited to see more, the animation is flowing and great, the landscapes and backgrounds are great and detail to show how a dis-utopia in the future is too.

-The dubbing is very good, and the accents are pretty descent.

I can't say anything about the negatives of the film; its a fun watch and if any fan of the Highlander or an Anime will enjoy it.

I'll note where there a spoilers in the review

Seeing as its a Yoshiaki Kawajiri movie (director of Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, Vampire D, etc), I came in expecting the usual fantastic art with a mediocre to even hilarious plot attached to it. Can't say I was disappointed in that regard. His films always have that distinct heavy shading style to them, with sharp jawbones that you could cut diamonds with. Which if you are like me and love watching anything with a cool artstyle, that's more than enough reason to give this a watch. The story and characters are probably even worse than Wicked City ... or Cyber City Oeda, so if you didn't like those then certainly don't bother with this.

Now that being said, the art isn't as polished as Ninja Scroll or Vampire D, nor does it have that atmospheric aura that Wicked City or even Cyber City Oedo had. It also has some ugly CGI, that while not totally offensive, is still a big step down from those films.Highlanders's visuals are still top notch, especially faces are what Yoshiaki's works are so uniquely talented at. The second you see even a single screenshot of them, you know who made them. Its very rare to find anything similar to it, maybe Redline comes close, but even then its just not the same (thankfully, its good to be different).

Spoiler Territory:
You know I like the idea of an immortal dude who fights his eternal rival for thousands of years... at least as a shounen battle tv series anyways. This movie is sort-of based on the live action movie (also callled Highlander), which I haven't watched - but I don't think you really have to since the stories are different anyways. The entire of this film's plot is a bit of a mess overall though, the worst aspect of the story was trying to tie into the Scottish highlander thing, where almost nothing about the Scottish highlanders was shown, and originally the MC was fighting Romans in Britain near Stonehenge anyways. One can only assume they made an effort to make this connection because of the film name and the live action version, but its just so rushed and poorly done that it shouldn't even be there. I'll explain in the next paragraph.

So in this Scottish highlander section of the movie - a very small section might I add; you get a Scottish battle scene, a funeral because he died in that battle (Immortality brings him back always, but "death" knocks him out for unknown reasons.), he crawls out of his grave at night and is called a demon (A fair point, "zombie" would also do.), then suddenly his new love interest is there to defend him from his accusers - until they decide he has to leave because he just crawled out of his grave, and the show acts like we should really care that he is splitting up with his new relationship that we've seen on screen for roughly 30 seconds. Its not the worst thing I guess (for this film anyways), except that the entire reason of him fighting for the past MILLENNIA is because he was fighting to have his revenge for his first wife's death. So he spent over 1000 years fighting tooth and nail, dying over and over again, bearing physical pains and horrors over the memory of his first wife, and yet apparently also just takes another woman while continuing that fight anyways? Yes, technically the story tries to justify it by saying that this was is his first wife reincarnated (also happens again in the future), which is not only stupid, but fails anyway since he himself states he didn't believe that to be true. Its just a half-assed story honestly, even Wicked City felt more put together and that was also just basically an excuse for some action and sex scenes.

So yeah, a very long look into just one example of things not really being careful looked at in the story. There is a lot more to nitpick and dissect, but it's just that sort of story, its like porn stories - certainly its exists and could be looked at, but why waste your time when we all know what reason it really exists for? You get to watch a bunch of action scenes spanning different ages for shits and gigs, ignore it and just pay attention to the visuals since they really do stand up well.


Overall: I didn't hate the film, but I'll never recommend it to anyone - unless they watched everything else from Yoshiaki, and if they've done that then they probably don't need me to tell them to watch it.

Highlander is a cult classic film from 1986. It's so ingrained into pop culture that even if you've never seen it you know the basic premise and the classic line "there can be only one." It's also a very divisive film where you tend to either hate or love it and critics are largely in the former camp but there's enough of a fanbase that it spawned multiple sequels, several TV versions and an anime film. Which is what we're going to be looking at today. How did our old friends at Madhouse handle the property?

Story:

Colin MacLeod is one of the titular Highlanders. For ... millennia, he's chased Marcus Octavius who crucified his wife, Moya, long ago when their tribe was routed by the Roman Empire. He's chased him through basically ever major conflict the writers could think of and far into the future.

There are multiple problems with this film. First of all, the flashbacks lose their intrigue really quickly and the number of times Marcus almost finishes Colin permanently only to be stopped by Colin accidentally stumbling into holy ground or by some other interference gets pretty silly. The story f the film is also kind of boring in general. Colin wanders around, fights some things and makes his way to Marcus or we see a flashback where he got his ass beat by Marcus. Sometimes we see a spectre of an old man or hear the old man's voice lecturing him about the pointlessness of his long quest.

Another issue with the film is that a part of its ongoing plot is the attempt to steal some vaccines to save some people who are sick with a serious virus. Why is this an issue? Well, to put it simply, vaccines are not useful for people who are already infected. You see, a vaccine works by introducing a weakened version of a virus to your system. This allows the immune system to dissect it, figure out how to fight against it and build up antibodies so that if it encounters the same thing in future it can easily destroy it so that the infected person only experiences light symptoms or has no symptoms whatsoever. But if a body is already infected and fighting against a virus, introducing a weakened version into the mix isn't going to help.

Characters:

Our main characters are Colin, Marcus, Dahlia & Kyala. Colin is a very flat character. Marcus is the typical smug variant of antagonist. Dahlia is the prostitute with a heart of gold. Kyala is the femme fatale character who serves as Marcus' love interest. They're all really uninteresting and lack even the semblance of chemistry in their dynamics.

Art:

The art actually looks pretty decent. On the down side, the character designs have some of the dumbest attire around. I mean, Marcus and Kyala look like they're going clubbing at a bondage club rather than ready for action and Dahlia wears her working clothes for both infiltration and combat. Because fetishy leather is perfect for both those things. That being said the animation flows pretty well and there are some high energy action sequences.

Sound:

Madhouse actually did get some heavy hitters for this. Hayashibara Megumi, Park Romi, Yamadera Kouichi. The only main character I haven't heard in much is Oguri Shun but he still has some impressive credits like being Mario in Rainbow. However, in spite of the casts' talent, they don't really showcase their skills here. It's yet another case where you take a talented actor and give them absolutely nothing to work with and this, somehow, results in a performance that's very much below what they're capable of. Just like when Hayashibara was in Evangelion and her entire job was to not emote under any circumstances. The music, what little there is, is definitely below average. They tried to copy the kind of shit you'd hear in a Hollywood action movie where they couldn't be bothered to get a respected composer.

Ho-yay:

There's none to be found.

Areas of Improvement:

1. You need some degree of character complexity. Yes, the Highlander franchise is known for its action sequences more than its characters but part of the reason the original has a cult following is that they sympathise with Connor and find him quite likeable. They like Ramirez as a mentor figure and they like their dynamic. Going from that to fully relying on the action is never going to work.

2. The flashbacks get far too repetitive. Colin chases Marcus. Marcus defeats Colin. Colin is saved either because of interference or he reaches holy ground. We could have had, literally, one flashback to explain why he hates Marcus and a brief montage showing him pursuing his grudge throughout history. Instead of spending half or more of the film on flashbacks.

3. You can have characters change their outfits to be more appropriate for what they're doing. I know they understand this because, in the flashbacks, we see Marcus and Colin go through a variety of wardrobe changes but they need to apply it to the film's climax.

Final Thoughts:

Highlander: The Search for Vengeance is pretty bad. Bland, underwritten characters, flashbacks that drag, a plot that makes no sense. Even if you just care about action sequences there are a lot of better anime out there. My final rating is a 3/10.