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Sep 9, 2012
This is director Ryuhei Kitamura's second foray into animation, and it's not a bad one. Kitamura's more well known for action and horror titles like Azumi, Aragami, and VERSUS (all of which you need to watch right now. I'm not kidding. Open up another tab and order/procure a copy of all of these movies while you're reading this review, and thank me later), as well as the noirish yakuza short Heat After Dark-- which you desperately need to watch if you're a fan of indie films. He also directed the motion capture fight scenes in the Metal Gear Solid remake for Gamecube. His work on
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this OVA is similar, in a way, as the live actors are rotoscoped--essentially painted over in post processing. You've seen the technique used in a films like Ralph Bakshi's American Pop, and A Scanner Darkly. Some of the designs are simple, but others, like an adorable armored space suit shaped like with a big over-sized head, really, look nice in the bubble gum pastel palate.
Kitamura's style places emphasis on slick, fast-paced and clever fight scenes, and you can tell that the plot is mainly gloss to slide the characters to the next fight scene. They're full of energy, and rather inventive, taking advantage of the medium to do things wire-fu can't. If you can get past the initial weirdness of the animation style, you're in for a good time.
A cyborg fight in a space port, and an aerial wrestling match are icing on a pretty thin storyline, but this... biscotti of an OVA tastes good just the same.
There are themes of rebirth, androids, rogue AI, and inverted memories, and some funny dialog to keep the lulls between fight scenes from dragging on too much. The episodes are pretty short, too, so it's not too much of an investment. The initial details about the world are pretty sparse, but it quickly thrusts you into a tale of synthetic lifeforms and interplanetary war in the far future.
Overall, it's a good way to spend an hour or so, if you want to see people getting punched. (you know you do)
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 4, 2009
Too Long, Didn't Read Version: Really, really pretty. Buy the Blu-Ray and some controlled substances made illegal under state, federal,and international law when it hits stores. This kicks the Little Mermaid's ass, Sebastion de Stereotype be damned, mon.
~~
When was the last time watching a movie left you feeling physically weak?
As the sing-a-long ending credits for Ponyo bubbled forth from the theatre speakers, I got up and started to ehad for the door...only to have my knees literally buckle underneath me. I felt light-headed, woozy, and couldn't maintain an erection for several days after. I'd suffered a diabetic coma by way of cuteness.
After manning the fuck
...
up for a few weeks by burning my pubes with a blowtorch, (that I used to light a cigar wrapped with 100 dollar bills rolled by Cuban slave children) getting in fights with Libertarians, and more or less going straight up barbarian and cleansing my mental palate with a bit of ultra-violence, I can finally write a proper review without any psychic pollution:
I LIKE HAAAAAAAAAAAM
Jesus titty-sucking Christ babe in a cradle, Ponyo was adorable. Mind-blowingly adorable. Everything in the movie dripped with color and glee: there was not a dark, edgy moment to be found. Even the fucking CARS looked like they were all kawaii-ko and shit--their headlights looked like little Disney eyes and the wiggled as they traveled up the roads. All of the dialog, acting, visuals, sounds, EVERYTHING in Ponyo seems almost scientifically engineered to psychologically castrate everyone who laid eyes upon it. This feat alone makes it worth watching.
Not only was Ponyo cute, but it was gorgeous. Fucking gorgeous. The first 10 minutes or so (or was it 5? Time seemed to crystalize and melt over, maaaan)are so beautiful and lovingly detailed that they could only be described as sumptuous. It's an almost mystical Yellow-Submarine storybook LSD fantasy wonderland trip through the ocean.
Imagine that Walt Disney had a hand in the funding for the movie and sent a time traveler to gather up the budgets of all of their major features and the revenues from all of their theme parks over the years, gave it to Chibli and said: "Here's a metric fuckton of money. Yeah, that much-I weighed it. Make this movie pretty." And the collectively, the animation department said, "Dude, get out the AWESOME ANIMATION button and some shovels for the money furnaces. We're gonna draw some water."
Water bubbles, wiggles, flows, crashes, and moves in ways I've never comprehended. The ocean water itself is literally alive. Fish and sea creatures are fucking EVERYWHERE. There's maybe an inch of screen that isn't populate by some kind of lavishly-rendered water-color sea animal of some kind.
"My god", I said to my friend, "Why didn't I drop acid before watching this?"
Now, I don't know or care about your feelings on the subject of drug use, it's legality, and anime viewing, but sweet god, if you do psychedelics,you might want to FUCKING DROP/EAT/SNORT/WHATEVER before you watch Ponyo. I *know* this movie would be on my top favorites and would have inspired me to become a marine biologist had I taken some LSD beforehand. Now, I'm not advocating it, but let's just say I'm not discouraging it.
Okay, so, back to the visuals. The gooey water sprites, and the gooey elixirs, and the gooey water energy...
Studio Chibli loves goo and liquid. Think back: Spirited away: mud/goo. Naussica: poison. Princess Mononoke: gooey forest-spirit poo. Even Laputa had goo, and I wouldn't be surprised if Castle of Cagliastro had goo somewhere. Liquids are really hard to render properly, let alone beautifully, and really good liquid/goo is the ultimate "Check out how well-funded our animation department" boast an animator can probably make besides a good fight scene and human movement in general.
But Pony has the fluctuating water-goo hybrid thing and it's just... Oh, god, let's just say the Blu-Ray version's going to be a first-day purchase for me.
So, now that the animation-nerds are already locked into see it, let's talk about the rest of it: the voice acting and the story.
I balked at the names "Jonas" and "Cyrus" int he previews for Ponyo. I was like "Seriously, Disney? Haven't you whored their families out enough?" But the little kids did a serviceable job in their roles, and dare I say it...little Cyrus was...so moe. That bitch REALLY loves ham.
Now, I just about popped a boner when I saw Tina Fey's name in the credits. Yes, Liz Lemon plays the male lead's bitchy yet lovable mom. She doesn't sound that enthusiastic at first, but her voice is perfectly exasperated, and so...cute herself. Oh, why won't you answer my phone calls, Tina?
Oh, and Qui-Gon Jinn is this Magical Naval Wizard thing.. Whatever. His voice is cool.
Now, the story...was decent. At first it seems like a typical Miyazaki "Fuck humans, they need to learn to love the earth" thing, and I was expecting the male lead to fight a giant trash beast after his little quest. i would have been cool with that...but that doesn't happen. It takes a sappy turn, but it's so saccharine you just throw up your hands and say, "Well isn't that just adawwwwable?"
It is.
And it was.
Now, were did I put my spiritual resonance fluctuating in cool moonbreeze from space heaven archaic acid mothers temple of gods pink twilight mothrain thunderstar?
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Aug 2, 2009
Clicking on BIGGU BATTERUUUU was really nostalgic for me.The OVA side-story feels just like an extended episode of Votoms down to the music. Hearing the familiar music and sounds, from the whirring Scopedog "skates" to the episode title jingle, made my heart do flip-flops. It delivers on that promise of a good time that comes with the series, and I wasn't disappointed: The C Team fights a land battleship. Chirico narrowly avoids certain death every five seconds, like he has literal plot armor or something. Gotho is a greedy bastard. Vanilla is a greedy Token. Cocona's pants are too fucking big, goddamn. That Quentian guy
...
gets like, zero screentime.
Big Battle doesn't tread any new ground, and doesn't even offer much else than some padding to make the Votoms universe seem bigger. Thankfully, the OVA's budget doesn't suffer from the constraints the show had, and you can see the main ATtraction with sexy 80s OVA animation. Even with the bigger budget, the OVA isn't shiny enough to make you think it was an OVA, and the art style jives well with the visual precedent set by the series.
I recommend watching it sandwiched in with the rest of the Quent Arc episodes. While it doesn't do anything new, it's entertaining, and gives Votoms fans what they love best: Chirico writing the book on badass.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 21, 2009
In the sci-fi genre, there are few books that can generate excitement for the real possibilities of space travel. They reach into your chest and pull out something small and glowing that many of us felt during our childhoods while watching space shuttles go into orbit or seeing stock footage of men on the moon. These books draw out this pure sense of wonder that makes you want to put them down and look at the stars for a few moments. And as we remember the anniversary of man's first steps on the moon, they become more poignant-almost painful. Something catches in your throat,
...
and your head starts to buzz.
Well, that's how I react, anyway.
Planets is one of those books, and one of the best.
After reading Planetes I got the urge to change majors and learn rocketry. It's that good.
Planetes is in a genre of science fiction called "hard sci-fi" (I know some sci-fi fans are going to kill me for not calling it "SF", or speculative fiction...well, whatever.). Hard sci-fi series are categorized by an almost scholarly dedication to scientific accuracy. Typically, there isn't any FTL (faster than light, not for the lose, smartasses) travel, there aren't giant charged-particle cannons, giant robots, beam sabers...
Starting to sound boring, huh? Well, a lot of hard SF novels *are* boring, or at least dry and didactic, and some (like Ben Bova's Mars, which I highly recommend, as it is otherwise excellent) waste too much time dwelling on political drama in an attempt to make the story more presentable. Planetes avoids this problem altogether, even though it's science fiction at its diamond-level hardest.
Being a manga, it manages to maintain some lightheartedness; for instance, Hachi's dad Goro peppers him with porn to snap him out of a nervous breakdown, and a lot of humor is played off of Ai Tanabe's cluelessness. Thankfully, the humor doesn't go as far as atmosphere-destroying face-faults and huge sweat drops...often. The human stories that play out are so interesting that space seems more like a backdrop for the exploration of themes rather than new sources of energy. However, the writer balances the drama and the sci-fi so deftly you'd think he was a musician, and he plays with the metaphysical while he's at it. The inky black expanse of space (and a few more hospitable locations on earth) serve as a backdrop for Planetes' bread and butter: a love story to existence.
Planetes is deep without feeling pretentious. It tackles some subjects even harder than its science: war and peace, environmentalism and economic disparity, and racism. As in real life, there are no simple answers; characters struggle to find the right thing to do, because even though the "right thing" might be apparent, it's never easy, and the consequences for their mistakes have real weight. Yes, I know what this sounds like, but it's all very accessible. The writer doesn't waste words or space; like a spacecraft in itself, the manga series runs at only 4.5 volumes and expresses its themes with imagery rather than huge blocks of text. The rare soliloquy is short, punchy, and leaves you with something for your head to chew on. When the main character, Hachimachi, talks to god (in the form of a white cat) they share only a few paragraphs, but they have power behind them. I also commend Takimura for looking at the world (and the universe) through a more international lens, rather than one that's wholly Japanese. One of the more touching background stories was about the uncle of Toybox's black female captain (wha? Foreign characters that aren't painful stereotypes, or fanciful half-Japanese hybrids?) Fee, and their summers in the Mississippi forests. It has everything and nothing to do about space and its development at the same time, and it's all the more richer because of that.
It's almost impossible to describe some of the scenes in Planetes with mere words. Sure, you can describe the objects in them: the space debris, an astronaut slowly floating back towards the fragile safety of his spacecraft, and a rose drifting behind him, embraced in an ethereal halo of light with the earth looking silently on in the background... But the image speaks so much more by itself. It's a two-page splash with absolutely no text, and it evokes the presence of sounds by the very absence of them. There's this raw emotion slowly flowing behind the ink on the page, and reading all that went on until that point... It's amazing.
Where other hard sci-fi books fall flat and dull- with their lengthy descriptions of plain white spaceships and speculative technology, Planetes entrances. You don't just read about the hull of the Toybox, you *see* it, and that seeing cuts to your insides instead of rattling in your head. It goes past the limitations of text that novelists face, and Yukimura's technical and detailed art does an excellent job in showcasing the power of comics as a medium. You can tell a lot of work went into crafting the future the books present, and it amounts to much more than typical sci-fi fluff. The characters themselves are very simple-looking (I confused Fee and Ai a few times) but they serve their purpose, emote when they have to, and do it well...sometimes too well. While the characterizations are solid, far too many of them wore on my nerves, such as Ai Tanabe's grating naivete and Hachimachi's harsh personality. Despite their flaws, you'll end up rooting for them all in the end.
What I took away from Planetes was a better understanding of how the universe worked, a better appreciation for it, and a desire to see humanity push deeper into her, and to expand its understanding along with our reach into the stars. I desperately want our governments to spend less money on weapons development and more on exploring Mars, and for our people to turn their ambition away from the dirt and towards the sky. At the same time, Planetes reminded me that even if I never leave earth myself, I'm already in space. We're *all* already in space together, on a spaceship called "Earth". Everything is within space: the blue skies, sandy beaches, icy wilderness, the people and animals and trees and buildings...it's all hurtling through space at frightening speeds. And I should be thankful for being able to experience that much.
And stuff.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jun 15, 2009
If you discover a new particle through a particle accelerator that looks eerily similar to a magic circle, your first impulse should NEVER be to build a giant orbital laser with the aforementioned particle and fire it into the ocean just to see what happens. Just don't do it. I hope to god the guys operating the Large Hadron Collider have a bit more restraint when they're making science.
On that note, I really wish that the creative team behind Demon of Steel had been a bit *less* restrictive on... everything.
I don't feel like rehashing over the story again at all:there's no depth to it. This
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kid comes back to a creepy government base after a portal to Hell shits out a giant biomech. His scientist friend has been acting strangely *possessed* with his work, so he comes over to cheer him up, or at least ask him why the hell this scientist friend sent him a creepy-ass note. The guy turns out to be possessed by a malevolent being from Dimension X or whatever, and he proceeds to kill just about everyone on the island. Whoops. Spoiler alert.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Well, there are demons and shit, right? At least we get some trippy imagery and Megami Tensei-style craziness out of the deal?"
Well, you'd be wrong. I could have eaten a whole sheet of acid beforehand and this wouldn't have drawn out anything more than a yawn. Anime with no plot to speak of and one-dimensional characters can be always be saved by two things: unintentional hilarity and good old WTFness...
This has neither of them. Any potential it had for gag-inducing scenes of people being raped or ripped apart by demons was sadly overlooked for a lot of dragged-out setup dialog that could have been fit into a paragraph spoken by an old scientist who laughs at the havoc he's about to unleash. In fact, it does exactly that, and the movie even summarizes all of the events up until the BIG BATTLE in a 5 second flashback/montage thing!
So, what about that battle?
Like far too many anime series, movies, OVAs, etc., especially ones with totally fuck-rad giant robots, the really good and meaty part is near the end. The cool-looking biomechs from Hell face off in a disappointing fight after a horrible-ass 80's "suit-up" song and montange with even worse engrish lyrics. The song is so bad I don't even want to spend more time complaining about it.
Now, I wondered where I had seen this method before: tons of utterly boring filler for almost 45 minutes of a 56 minute production, and then an anti-climactic mecha fight between two awesomely designed robots... So, I went back to MAL, and what did I see?
Toshiki Hirano.
THAT FUCKING BASTARD.
That celluloid glue-sniffing assbastard (one word, like cockmaster) stole two hours of my life with Dangaioh. On both of the occasions that I tried to watch it, I fucking fell asleep! At least Dangaioh had fanservice, a cool fight scene, and good animation!
Demon of Steel doesn't even have that. The "Good Animation Button" that bubble economy-era OVA production teams love pounding seems to have been broken during the making of DoS, as the framerate and detail barely flares up, even during the anticlimactic fight scene. Sometimes, it feels like you're looking at a college project (which this very well could have been for all I know). There isn't even any fanservice. The main "love" interest is butt-ugly, and when the only hot chick asks the main if she can "Come up to his room, hurr hurr", he refuses. What the fuck? This anime is about demon robots--why the hell would you want to get puritanical all of a sudden?
Ugh.
This movie is made of disappointment, shame, and regret.
Disappointment because I expected far too much of it based on some cool-looking screenshots. Shame, because I wanted to enjoy it, and regret, because I could have spent that time looking at porn.
You'd be better off watching something like Detonator Orgun.
Or pornography.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 13, 2009
I like to imagine that every anime ever was started by reefer-fueled brainstorming sessions among the creative staff. In this session, Go Nagai has just finished coughing after a monstrous bong hit, and he's waving his hands around to punctuate his speech:
Uncle Go: "Okay, okay, dude, get this:... Um, like, so back during the Warring States period, like, frickin' Nobunaga contacts aliens to get special technology like mechs an-an shit, and he augments his warriors with cyborg parts and nukes and lasers and stuff. So like, these ninjas go after his most hardcore cyborgs so like... They fight and shit".
Dude: "And?"
Go: "So like, the
...
main ninja dude looks like Koji Kabuto from Mazinger, down to the sideburns."
Producer: "Christ, dude. I'm puttin' money down for that."
...
So, back to reality. Remember ninjas? The silent assassins that poison people in their sleep, and wear costumes to sneak into enemy fortresses? You know, those cherished fake ninja stock characters? Black Lion has some of the best fake ninjas this side of a Scroll, and they come in spades. No "kah-ghey busshy no jootsues" or goofy furry transformations for these guys. They cut people in half, throw explosives, punch people's heads off, run really fast, and burn marijuana to confuse their enemies... in homage to the brainstorming sessions that created them.
There is no real plot. Sure, Koji- um, the main character wants REVENGE for the death of his clan by the machines, there are aliens, and it plays out sort of like Predator/Terminator (heh) but why do you care? Limbs are severed, the ground is soaked in blood, and heads fly off; it's really cool stuff. You don't need to know anything else, really. The film's strength relies in how ridiculous the whole ordeal is. Hell, it could have been called "Ninja Koji Kabuto Versus the Cyborg Samurai from Space", like all of those so-bad-it's-awesome Go Nagai crossover movies, and it wouldn't detract from the spectacle at all.
Now, the movie's real claim to fame is the copious amount of organ meat spilled and thrown around. This OVA is only 44 minutes long, but they on't spare any time at all: the first FIVE minutes has enough violence to desensitize a small colony of hippie children and Baptist ministers.
I feel like watching it again to count all of the decapitations and bisections that happen (I did. I lost count.). There are so many...inventive ways that some of the characters meet their ends that it deserves a graduate thesis. The fights are fast, brutal, and effing INTENSE. Brains gush out. Ninjas are trampled by tanks. Ninjas dash in a blur of sketchy lines over brush and reeds and rocks in high-pitched battles with absolutely no mercy.
It's a symphony of blood and guts and eyeballs and whirling intestines and fecal matter that takes off like a rocket from the first headstab and climaxes in the most royally epic bisection of all time. In other words, it's really awesome.
Now, after re-watching this with the ENGLISH DUB, and actually being able to pay attention this time, I have to say that this is one of the most profoundly awesome OVAs of all time.
No, seriously. The dubbed dialog is pretty badly-written and acted, despite some good voices. However, it just adds another layer of crunchy ridiculousness to the whole shebang. I can't help but love anything that insists on using the verb form of REVENGE at the most awkward moments.
There are also several whiplash-inducing "whut" moments near the end, and some unfulfilled sequel potential that needs to be addressed.
Whoa. I was so drained for man-freaking over the final battle that I completely glossed this over.
Come on, Dynamic Pro guys. Make this happen.
Black Lion is pretty, pretty ridiculous, has tons of gore and ninjas that don't spend half of the movie weeping about their TRAGIC PAST. I'd say it's worth a download.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 13, 2009
If you find a mysterious box on a truck in your technical college, the best and most obvious course of action to take is to open it. If it happens to contain a suit of powered armor and a manual,only read the passage that tells you how to turn it on and get inside. After that happens, there's no better way to celebrate the activation of your newly-found robot suit by visiting your ex-girlfriend in a crowded tower.
Uh-huh.
Metal Skin Panic Madox-01 (don't you love those old-school robot titles? 'Armored Trooper Votoms', 'Blue Comet Super Powered-Tracer Layzner'...) is another one of those old 80s
...
shows with a plot seems more like an excuse for the directors and animators to cram as many cool fight scenes as they can into an hour of programming. It's a tried-and-true formula that produces morsels of crunchy animated entertainment and doesn't attempt to reinvent or blend any genres or push the envelope, and that's just fine. It's not intellectually stimulating or engaging, but it won't bore you to tears with hours of pointless filler or aimless dialog between sparkly-eyed effeminate men wearing goofy outfits in the pouring rain staring at opposite sides of the screen. Who also happen to be ninjas.
Everything is resolved at the end, nothing sticks out and needs to be hammered down. The fight scenes are fun, the animation's good, the English dub is awkward, and the artists seem to take too much pleasure in drawing little X-wing style flip-up targeting computers...
Seriously. There are like, several of them (I counted 5) and they all work with the same weapon. You'd think the company would have added a digital copy of the manual onboard, but... Whatever.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 13, 2009
Imagine that Onizuka had an older brother who was part genetically modified warrior-part asshole, and that when he suplexed his female students, they suplexed him back. And there's magic. And henshin hero fights.
And awesome. And stuff. Honestly, I don't remember too many details about this show, but I remember that I laughed quite a few times, and wished it had a proper sequel.
I hope that counts for something.
Bio Ningen delivers everything you expect form a good 80s'-era OVA: good animation, fight scenes, schoolgirl fanservice, an ignorable plot (this is always for the best) weird characters, and poofy hair. However, it doesn't have any stupidly-detailed robots,
...
but that doesn't matter in the long run. Bio Ningen doesn't play any of it straight-it's a broad satire of the media in the day, from henshin shows to anime, manga, and even western movies.
...And that's about it. Worth a watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 4, 2009
I saw this movie on a whim while I was looking for episodes of the live-action TV show "Firefly", which I've been meaning to watch for years, and was pleasantly surprised. Horus/Hols:Prince of the Sun (localized under several other titles in other countries) has an amazing pedigree-directed by Isao Takahata , animation credits by the famous Hayao Miyazaki, among other famous names in Japanese animation, and is considered to be the first modern anime film, as it broke away from the typical Disney movie fare that they saw in anime.
That being said, the movie still looks, feels, and sounds like Disney animated classic, which is
...
not a bad thing at all. While it's obviously a children's movie, it doesn't pull too many punches. While both Hols and Arthur from the Disney movie "The Sword in the Stone" get their magic weapons in the same way, Prince of the Sun isn't all kids' stuff. The opening sequence is actually a pretty taut action sequence: Hols, the courageous Norse hero, defends himself from a pack of evil wolves with an axe on a rope. It's very well-choreographed and animated, but doesn't manage to be too violent, or gruesome in any way. Not only that, but the antagonist, Grunwald, wants to rule the world by killing off the human race, which has been forced into a tiny fishing village on a northern fjord. Some of the themes of the movie, like Socialism and xenophobia might be lost on children too.
Another Disney-like quality of Prince of the Sun is the music, it's damned great. The soundtrack has a beautiful and rousing score, and most of the background music follows the motif of the awesome main theme, which basically sings about how awesome Horus is. There's some more singing later on in the movie, but it's not obtrusive and fits the scenes rather well. You won't have to worry about a spontaneous dance number, but the singing that's there is rather beautiful, if mournful at times.
And like any good Disney film, the movie looks gorgeous. While they don't have the same detail as say, a modern Chibli movie, they're still very pretty, and make the movie even more worthwhile. According to the wikipedia, it was behind schedule, and over 30 minute of film had to be cut, and replaced with still images. It's a bit jarring to go from fluid-looking movement to still frames, but it doesn't happen too often, and the rest of the visuals make up for it. The characters have this soft, rounded look to them, but that doesn't make Horus look any less the hero, and some of the enemies he faces, like a giant fish monster with a death beam would probably be nightmare fuel for a little kid. Speaking of Horus, he makes the movie. He has the qualities of any good shonen hero, but with more resolve, and less stupidity.
I'd say that even if you're not a fan of older anime, you'll be enchanted by Prince of the Sun. It made me feel all fuzzy and nostalgic inside, and I can easily see my younger self falling in love with it, and scrambling over the couches with a toy axe to imitate Horus' heroics. If I'm ever dumb enough to have children, I'll be certain to show them this film. It's a piece of anime history, and a great one at that. I totally recommend it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 12, 2008
Stardust Memory is mecha pornography, and I am a total mecha pervert. If you ever got a little hot when you watched Gurren Lagann's combination, aroused by the scent of a Gundam model, or felt flushed after watching Macross Zero's THRUST VECTORING, then you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, you'll probably be able to enjoy it, albeit on a different level. The best thing about Stardust is that the creators know that there is a segment of the human population that are raving mechaphiles (why else would their cheaply made plastic models sell so well...and be so damned enticing...), and the brunt
...
of the episodes (or at least the most that you'll take out of it) are composed of well-animated fight sequences in space, and a clever land battle. The OVA has all of the charm of old-school Gundams and Gundam fight scenes with the sophistication of 80's OVA animation: the mobile suits are dingy and get pockmarked with bullets and shrapnel, and most of the fights are determined by the pilots' skill and wits, rather than a magic Deus Ex Gundam. The space battles are orgasmic, with thrusters flaring about as the characters dodge beam rifle shots over lavishly-rendered backgrounds. All of the fights have a kind of heft and plausibility that some of the newer series just don't have. They are a blast to watch, and I can only imagine how good it'll look in the Blu-Ray release.
The other thing you'll take away from it...is how poorly written some of the characters and scenarios are. Nothing really stands out: Nina's a bitch, Gato is manly and a fantatic, Cima wears too much makeup, Burning is Burning, and Kou hates carrots. Nobody's really worth mentioning, and whenever there aren't beautiful mobile suits on the screen, you want to skip past the aimless dialouge and watch some more giant robot matches. There's talk of conspiracy, and the ineptitude of the Federation's bureaucracy is a lot more apparent here than it was in first. The OVA ties into Zeta Gundam, but the references, and its place in the Universal Century timeline aren't too obvious the first time around, and feel a bit out of place. It's the same kind of problem that the Star Wars prequels suffered from: everything looks shiny and new compared to the older material, and a little bit of text at the end of the OVA keeps it from messing with the continuity. All of that aside, it fleshes out our understanding of the Gundam universe a little bit more, an gives us lots of cool-looking mecha to play around with. And most importantly, more cool-looking mecha to buy as plastic models.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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