Jan 19, 2019
Oh man, I'm a collector of train wrecks at this point. Here, we have a masterclass in doing everything you can possibly do to ramp up the carnage. What starts off as poor decisions escalates into a multi-train pileup, during rush-hour, at the busiest station, during Christmas. That last bit sounds like a stretch, but it's plot relevant so just run with it. While you're preparing your suspension of disbelief for a REVIEW of something that will shatter it regardless, I'm going to run with the train metaphor.
It's all I have left to enjoy about this one.
Story: Time travel gone wrong. Okay, how do you
...
screw that up? No seriously, I've seen my share of cobbled together time travel plots. What the hell even happened during the story boarding for this? It's NOT a disjointed episodic narrative you're supposed to piece together. It IS a disjointed Frankenstein's monster of story beats without any of the life and character of the monster. Characters come and go at the pace of bullet trains, one minute you have a villain the next you're stopping at the airport for a scenic garden tour. Just as abruptly a steam engine plows through on the same track and you have a kidnapping plot plodding along with film noir dialogue and espionage tropes. I'm not even going to touch the shipwreck that blasts it's horn at the tracks before colliding with everything at a landlocked train station.
Art: I'm sure someone could pull some decent still frames out of this, I don't envy the level of patience that would involve. There are some neat designs buried in the background, you just have to ignore any characters present on screen and pretend you're looking at specart. None of the character designs are particularly impressive or memorable, and the scary robots that are supposed to be significant tension feel the least bit threatening. Nothing has any impression of weight. Nothing, outside of that metaphorical cruise liner barreling down on a multi-train wreck, rush hour, Christmas nightmare I just finished witnessing.
Sound: Sound is apparently where they put the animation budget. Nothing was amazing or stood out, but it wasn't the ear bleeding cacophony of death, suffering and, dismemberment you would expect from any other description I've offered so far.
Character: Just like the plot couldn't pull of Frankenstein's monster levels of compelling, the characters barely snuff up to archetypes. It's probably due to the terrible narrative directions. Train wrecks are chaotic and disorienting with just one train. You only get to know a few characters in singular moments, before they get thrown off the tracks and go careening through entirely different archetypes and genre tropes. The one interesting character is Donna, and that only works as well as it does because of the imminent landlocked shipwreck that eclipses the absurdity of the Christmas rush hour station multi-train pileup.
Enjoyment: 10 if you're into this metaphor, and need something to watch while absolutely hammered. For the rest...if you're still reading this review I can assume my efforts to dissuade you are meaningless, or I'm enticing you to indulge in some twisted form of schadenfreude.
Overall: Shipwreck, landlocked train station, multiple trains collided, during rush hour, on Christmas.
Whew, this was the most painful thing I've endured since my last review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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