Break Blade Movie 6: Doukoku no Toride

All of the Break Blade movies have been incredible and enjoyable to watch! My average score for the movies were usually a 9, which is really awesome!! I absolutely loved them!

So why on earth would I give this movie a 7?
It's simple. Because I didn't love it nearly as much as the other 5 movies.


Story: 7
After the first 5 movies, I expected this one to wrap up everything that was being built up. I wanted to see a final battle between the two nations or kingdoms, I wanted to see Zess fight against his former friends! There were so many things I ... wanted! And what did I get? You guessed it: none of those.

About 90% of the movie was of a fight between Rygart and Borcuse.
Who is Borcuse? Well...he's nobody really. He didn't have much of a build up in character other than being a jerk and killing many innocent people.
Now, the fight between them was awesome! I loved watching it! But as a final battle? I was really expecting more of a plot twist of some sort.

Not only was the majority of the movie just fighting, the ending was overall not very appealing. By that I mean, I was left with the feeling that another movie should be made. There were some questions left unanswered and some new plot development left hanging.

If there were another movie following this one, I might give it a better score because then I would be awaiting more epic battles and answers to my questions! That's the reason why I think this deserves a 7.


Art: 10
I have seen many 'Mech' animes, in other words, robots or large machines fighting each other. And several of them are incredible and nicely done! This one however tops most of those other mech animes, simply because of the art!

The background art is to die for, the details put into it are spectacular and look very realistic! The same goes for the mechs that we watch fight each other. You can see every line and detail on the mechs and see the damage each one has taken, making things much more dramatic and intense.

The people, although not as detailed as the backgrounds or the mechs, are nicely drawn and coloured nicely to blend with their surroundings, in other words, they don't have the usual anime style of bright purple or blue hair and bright white skin. They look like normal people, which matches perfectly with everything else in the movie.


Sound: 8
In most cases, there is music put into the scene just for background noise, and nobody really pays attention to it. With Break Blade, when the music comes on, you KNOW some awesome sh** is about to happen. The music is beautiful and intense. Whoever composed it needs to receive a medal or an award of some sort.
I really felt the need to go get the album after watching this movie. If you watch this movie, definitely pay attention to the mind-blowing music!

So, if the music was so amazing, why would I only give this an 8?
Well, the voice acting wasn't the best.

It wasn't bad, in fact it was good, but still not incredible.

Hoshi Souichiro played the voice of Rygart, and although he is a good voice actor, he didn't seem to have the right amount of emotion and fierceness in his voice that I would have liked. Throughout this movie's battle between Rygart and Borcuse, there was a lot of yelling and shouting of all sorts, as you would expect in a battle, and something about Rygart seemed a little bit off. Maybe Souichiro just wasn't the right voice for Rygart, or maybe he needs some practice as a VA, either way, his performance wasn't the greatest.

Nakai Kazuya did the voice of Borcuse in this movie. Nakai is a very talented VA in just about everything he does, and as many of you know, he is quite famous for several of his roles in other animes. The creators did a good job picking him to voice Borcuse, he had the right intensity and almost insanity that was needed to voice the bad-guy.


Character: 7
As I said earlier, there were some things that bothered me about this movie, and character was part of it. Or rather, the lack of character development was the part that annoyed me. As a final episode (or movie) there should be an amazing or jaw-dropping plot twist that makes you go 'wow! that was amazing!'. But no, nothing was really changing about anybody.

Rygart was the same was always, fighting and not really knowing why he was fighting, and question his own motives for joining the war. If it were me writing the story, I would have had Rygart finally make up his mind about everything and give a nice 'hero speech' of why he wants to win this war! As you can imagine, nothing of the sort happened.

Borcuse was really the only other main focus of this movie, and he didn't do much to surprise me, just like Rygart. We really don't know much about this guy, other than the fact that he was leading the enemies in the war and he doesn't have any compassion for anything or anyone.

If Zess and Hodr had received more screen time, I would probably review their characters as well. But Hodr and Zess both got a total of about 5 minutes in this movie. I had always thought of them as main characters in the beginning, but that really changed overtime and they just became part of the background.


Enjoyment: 7
Even though I had many bad things to say about this movie, I couldn't bring myself to give it an extremely low score. I did enjoy the fighting and the intensity throughout the movie! But honestly, if there wasn't any fighting, I can guarantee I would have disliked this movie.
The characters didn't have much to offer and the story was a bit less than incredible. With those two things being just average, than my enjoyment for it is also just average.


Overall: 7
If you have yet to watch the first five movies, I highly recommend you do so! They are amazingly done and exciting to watch! This movie, although not as great as the others, is still good and if you have watched the first five, then I obviously recommend that you watch the sixth one as well. But if you were expecting the same ending as I was, with a final conflict between Zess and his former friends, you are out of luck. I know that's what I wanted.
But we can't always get what we want.
Maybe in the future there will be a continuation of these six movies. But until then, I have to live with the fact that this movie is the finale, which is not what I would have expected or wanted.

My review is based on all six episodes. But what I First gotta say is that they should have made it a bit more clear that they were moview and not just regular episodes. I thought the 50min episodes were so that the number of episodes were gonna be shorter and I only found out once I came to update my pro.

Any way, I dislike mecha anime. Not any specific reasons but I loved this anime. The mechas drawn in this are not drawn looking all computerised, clean colour and out of place. This was a fast pace action anime. The plot basically is everyone ... has this special power which lets them move quartz (a mineral found in the earth).
Sometimes a person 1 in a million is born without this power which is where Lygart and his brother comes in. Lygart is the main male role. He is called by his friend who is the king to help defend the kingdom which is being under attack. An ancient mecha is discovered and apperantly Lygart can only operate it. And so begins the war, through in moral dilemmas, friends as enemies, blood, greats actions scenes and you got yourself Broken Blade.

Story 8
It would have been a 9 but it felt a bit fast paced which I know is because they were movies but a little more build up would have made a great difference.

This is an overall impression of this movie series. *Clarification if the movies are different to the series I wouldn't know I haven't watched past the 1st episode and I basicaly skim through that episode to see whats different, I don't remember if there was

The dominant thing that makes break blade has such an average score is the subpar premise and story with 90% of the characters pitiful and feels like their more filler talking dolls than anything of significance to the story.

- the premise is pretty bland already, boy with lesser qualities than rest of the people suddenly meet situation where he is ... now the special chosen one [break blades case: Rygart (main guy) doesn't have ability to do magic unlike the rest of the popolation, but wait suddenly miraculously finds this ancient mecha that is more powerful than the mecha that is in existance (why is some manual relic able to outpower these magic powered mechas I don't get it)]. Yeah I heard this song and dance before it's pretty shounen fair. However that could be overlooked if they can make the story exciting and interesting with compelling characters and their's the war setting so everything should be high stakes and action galor right?

The story- Break blade has amazing action I can give it that which is the only thing from the show that I can easily recommend. The more inferior aspects of the movies: I don't like the way break blade handles its war element. Politics are spat out, terror insuses in battle, people die; everything feels dull and inconsequential, even when there's high stakes, after they fought against a kingdom I was not sure what they were suppose to be accomplishing. The friend vs friend thing in the plot was really predictable and was not really settled at all. the running line in this anime is 'omg look at this mecha it's so strong' then they get assaulted. A whole lot of plot holes too (wtf was with that ending). I wasn't invested at all watching this which is a bummer, it looks so cool on picture.

Characters- Underdeveloped, forgetable bunch. Eccentric villians, sometimes characters say some amusing things, that's it. Rygart feels a tad hollow but he is the only character I want to see on screen. All characters have one archeatype to associate them with. Sometimes they have sudden "personality switches", they are just really bland.

There is good things about this show, it looks GREAT. Production IG with Xebec I don't think I expected anything less. Extremely detailed backgrounds and mechas, animation is great in action scenes. Battles are also well choreographed which pumps the action up considerabaly.
Also Death note composer comes and brings a hollywood score for break blade. His music is chaotic and serene that is probably one of the best soundtracks in anime. I listen to it often.

"WATCH THIS FOR THE ACTION" your welcome