Mardock Scramble: The First Compression

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Mardock Scramble: Asshuku

Japanese: マルドゥック・スクランブル圧縮

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Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 8, 2010

Producers: Aniplex, Starchild Records

Licensors: Sentai Filmworks

Studios: GoHands

Source: Novel

Genres: Action, Sci-Fi

Theme: Psychological

Duration: 1 hr. 9 min.

Rating: R+ - Mild Nudity

Statistics

Score: 7.42¹ (scored by 28,501 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #2157²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #2512

Members: 73,251

Favorites: 172

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Synopsis

Rune Balot is a down-and-out teen prostitute in Mardock City. One day, she's picked up by an ambitious casino manager named Shell who gives her everything she could want. Renewed by a false innocence, a false past, and now the false life Shell has given her, Balot feels grateful. However, she can't help but be curious about why he's done so much for her, so she does some research about his past on a computer. This turns out to be a mistake which will change her life greatly. When Shell finds out what she's done, he attempts to burn her to death by blowing up her car.

Due to the high crime rate in Mardock, a new law called "Scramble 09" has given police carte blanche to take extreme and otherwise illegal measures to revive crime witnesses. With this in mind, they allow a professor to bring Balot back from the brink of death by reassembling her entire body with reinforced synthetic fiber. When she finally wakes up, her confused mental state eventually turns toward revenge as Shell is revealed as her killer.

(Source: Nippon Cinema)

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Mardock Scramble
Sequel:	Mardock Scramble: The Second Combustion

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Balot, Rune

Main

Hayashibara, Megumi
Japanese

Penteano, Œufcoque

Main

Yashima, Norito
Japanese

Welldone the Pussyhand

Supporting

Tanaka, Masahiko
Japanese

Septinos, Shell

Supporting

Nakai, Kazuya
Japanese

Boiled, Dimsdale

Supporting

Isobe, Tsutomu
Japanese

Medium the Fingernail

Supporting

Wakamoto, Norio
Japanese

Dr. Easter

Supporting

Touchi, Hiroki
Japanese

Mincemeat the Wink

Supporting

Miyake, Kenta
Japanese

Flesh the Pike

Supporting

Waki, Tomohiro
Japanese

Rare the Hair

Supporting

Kanai, Mika
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Nakanishi, Go

Producer

Kishimoto, Reigo

Producer

Kudou, Susumu

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Foster, Steven

Script, ADR Director

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Opening Theme

No opening themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an opening theme here.

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Ending Theme

"Amazing Grace for Balot (アメイジング・グレイス for Balot)" by Minako Honda

Reviews

Nov 7, 2019

mouthpiece

Recommended

Review up to the second movie. Will edit as I watch more.

This trilogy of movies had a rough time while getting green light for production. It was originally planed to be animated by studio GONZO, but after its almost bankruptcy the project was handed over to a new studio on the block, called Go Hands. This studio and the director haven’t made any good anime so far (their roster is full of crappy ecchis) but the final poject can’t possibly be any worse than that piece of shit that is GONZO. So I like this change.

So what is this show about? It is based on ...

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Nov 25, 2022

DewDue

Mixed Feelings

My 3 AM thoughts on this 3-star movie that I watched 3 months ago.
This review is written out of boredom.
____
I randomly got the urge to watch "Hellsing Abridged" (not to be confused with (Hellsing Ultimate), and during that scene in Seras' backstory, I got reminded of this movie's beginning.

So, in the most generic cyberpunk-ish dystopian advanced civilization, we follow this particular big shot with an underaged girl wrapped in his arms on a perfectly dark night in a perfectly isolated automobile in a perfectly isolated woodland, doing what the night asks except it's far from romantic. After a few minutes of doing his _thing_, the ... guy gets out of the car, locks the girl in, and then... BAM! The car explodes after a very graphic depiction of a young helpless girl frantically fighting to rescue her broken life.
This is insignificant. What counts is that an unaffiliated third party comes to her aid, despite the fact that he had been closely studying everything prior to the explosion with his heat vision goggles. They only save her psychologically by implanting her with an artificial fiber body, which completely messes up her mental state and nearly kills her, due to some law that allows the police to resuscitate the criminal witness. Now, this befuddled cyborg must defend her 'innocence,' as the mistake known as "Her Past" haunts her on both a societal and psychological level. Fortunately, she is being supervised by a professor com' scientist com' gambler and an AI resembling a rat, but how much can they handle this psychologically unstable cyborg while evading a hunter appointed by the villain?

TL;DR,
What if Batou was actually a villain and Kusanagi was actually a confused teenage girl in an edgy Ghost in the Shell rip-off?

One clear thing while watching the movie is the over-saturated colors. The entire movie is bright and shiny everywhere and every time, which is both a plus and a drawback. Plus, in the sense, it's ✨bright✨, and drawback in the sense, that it's so bright that it makes me avert my eyes. There are, however, some slick gun animations with some good camera usage and choreography. This is something that appears throughout the trilogy, so if anything, it gets entertaining eventually. Why eventually though?

Because the story is just edgy and pretentious (This goes down the lane as you progress into the trilogy). Not even in the entertainingly edgy but in the most boring sense. Like the court where our mentally complicated victim can only answer in a Yes/No/No Comment throughout the trial, or the whole irrelevant gambling plot that happens in movie 2, or whatever the fuck happens in movie 3. The story progressively degrades from being a mildly mind-bending character study, into edgy bullshit drama. As a trilogy it really fails, because you don't feel like you watched a coherent story unraveling character pasts or decisions, but 3 separate films with 3 different plot lines got superficially intertwined. You are better off spending those 3 hours on Ghost in the Shell 1 and 2, even as a rewatch it would be a better experience than this.

While 2 & 3 movies are definitely not worth the time, the first compression, however, is definitely worth experiencing because of this mildly mind-bending (I'm using this word for the 'Intelligence' effect. Don't take it too literally) character study between Balot and Oeufcoque. _Balotto_ is a confused cyborg who already has a damaged mind and past as a human being. Oeufcoque, while being an AI, shows genuine human emotion upon hearing this emotionless girl asking for its love, a cute & tiny rat-looking AI's love, and the movie does a surprisingly good job by not making this weird but making their interactions, endearing.

But that's all the credit I give for the movie in the writing department. Anything and everything else is just a poorly written edge fest with very little damn giving to portraying themes or invoking drama.
____
Who should watch this?

If you want Ghost in the Shell but edgy, then watch the entire trilogy.
If you only want good parts and don't want to waste your time, then just watch movie 1 and leave it there. Or
If you want to see a pretense adult film with an overly sexual animation of a r*** victim, then go ahead and satisfy your kinks for all I care.
____
Not a good trilogy but not a bad introduction.

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Aug 9, 2022

RyanSpring

Not Recommended

This review is for the entire three movie trilogy, not just the first movie, as they are essentially one giant movie broken up into three parts.

I purchased the DVDs for all three of these after watching a trailer and reading the base premise. Dark, hypersexual and hyperviolent? That is about as up my alley as it gets! Unfortunately, I think that representation is significantly overblown and there's not nearly as much of any of those things as certain reviews would have you believe.

I didn't like this series as much as I'd hoped I would. It has a lot of problems that there just isn't any ...

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Mardock Scramble: The First Compression

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Characters & Voice Actors

Balot, Rune

Penteano, Œufcoque

Welldone the Pussyhand

Septinos, Shell

Boiled, Dimsdale

Medium the Fingernail

Dr. Easter

Mincemeat the Wink

Flesh the Pike

Rare the Hair

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Mardock Scramble: The First Compression

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Synopsis

Background

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

Recent Forum Discussion

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-