Darkside Blues

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: ダークサイド・ブルース

Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 8, 1994

Producers: Akita Shoten

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: J.C.Staff

Source: Unknown

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Psychological, Sci-Fi

Duration: 1 hr. 23 min.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 6.29¹ (scored by 2,698 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score. Please note that 'Not yet aired' titles are excluded.

Ranked: #6111²

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

Popularity: #4117

Members: 5,582

Favorites: 15

6.29

Ranked #6111Popularity #4117Members 5,582

MovieJ.C.Staff

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Episodes: /1

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Synopsis

The Persona Century Corporation has purchased nearly every parcel of land on earth. Dissension is not tolerated within the corporation's borders and those who oppose Persona are dealt with swiftly. Of those few places not yet under Persona's control is the free town of Kabuki-cho, also known as "The Dark Side of Tokyo". Within the town, under the leadership of a woman named Mai, is a small resistance group called Messiah. Into this world steps a man who takes the sobriquet of Kabuki-cho: Darkside. Sealed up in another dimension eighteen years ago by Persona Century, Darkside now returns to aid Messiah using his unique mystic power of renewal.

(Source: ANN)

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Background

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Related Anime

Adaptation:

Darkside Blues

More characters
Characters & Voice Actors

Darkside

Main

Ou, Natsuki
Japanese

Kenzo

Main

Ootsuka, Akio
Japanese

Mai

Main

Mitsuishi, Kotono
Japanese

Katari

Supporting

Sasaki, Nozomu
Japanese

Hozuki, Tamaki

Supporting

Katsuki, Masako
Japanese

Enji

Supporting

Yamadera, Kouichi
Japanese

Hozuki, Guren

Supporting

Hori, Hideyuki
Japanese

Old Woman

Supporting

Chris

Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro
Japanese

Jingo

Supporting

Yanaka, Hiroshi
Japanese

More staff
Staff

Sekijima, Mayori

Script

Ou, Natsuki

Theme Song Performance

Hamasaki, Hiroshi

Animation Director, Character Design

Kikuchi, Hideyuki

Original Creator

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"Paradise Lost" by Natsuki Ou

More reviewsReviews

Jun 24, 2010

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 8

BlackMagic (All reviews)

24 people found this review helpful

If you are a fan of 90s anime, then I'd recommend taking a look at Darkside Blues. If you haven't seen many anime from this time period, then this is a fairly good example of the visual styles of the 90s. However, most people will probably find the story somewhat mediocre and maybe even confusing.

Darkside Blues is a nice little gem from the 90s based on a manga by Hideyuki Kikucho who is one of the most respected horror writers in Japan. Often called the Stephen King of Japan, many of Hideyuki's novels have been adapted to anime such as Vampire Hunter D, Wicked City, read more

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Jan 23, 2017

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

CynicalXperiment (All reviews)

4 people found this review helpful

Darkside Blues was the first big project by J.C. Staff, a relatively stable anime studio nowadays. Despite their current success, it is evident that this is not the film that started it, as their production studio in 1994 was unable to do Hideyuki Kikuchi’s world any reasonable sort of artistic justice. Ontop of that, a very confused screenplay doesn’t save much of its remains, resulting in a peculiar mess of a movie.

The setting of the film is a walled-off section of Tokyo, the only patch of land on earth that hasn’t been bought out by the big bad business with headquarters in space. A resistance to the business tries to create a change in the system while a mysterious man in a flying horse-drawn carriage arrives in town to open up a service to look into people’s dreams. Still with me? Okay, good. This odd sci-fi synopsis is just the tip of Darkside Blues’ iceberg of unrealized themes and unfocused storylines.

The movie drops you into the world without any exposition or main protagonist to focus on, instead leaving the audience to piece together many bits of information from a plethora of sources. That may seem like arthouse praise, but a lack of incentive or investment follows when not one of the many characters are particularly interesting. While the disconnected developments of the characters gradually intertwine without effective emotional impact, it does at least build the setting better than the art could hope to depict it.

Speaking of, the animation gap that J.C. Staff conjures up isn’t something that an animation company should be proud of. Select shots of movement look perfectly Ghibli while other cheap scenes make Inferno Cop look reasonable. The background work also varies from rather impressive detail to pathetically stale renditions. The bipolar animation prevents our immersion in the film’s world, especially when Darkside Blues came out between two animated sci-fi giants like Akira and Ghost In The Shell. Consistent attention to how the setting was presented turned out amazing results in both films, while Darkside’s tighter budget doesn’t allow the possibility of competition. Outside of that arena, a middle ground ought to have been reached to portray the world with consistency, but Trigun wasn’t out yet for J.C. Staff to take notes.

Musical expectations rode on the title itself, and to be fair there is one decent blues song during the opening credits. Aside from a pleasant energetic organ piece, everything else in the soundtrack was forgettable. The voice directing in the English dub is awful, producing dozens of awkward deliveries and painful stuttering. Partnered with a bad script adaptation and it’s easy which voice track to choose for this one, not that I recommend this movie regardless of Japanese or English voices.

Yup, time to take a look at Darkside Blues’ messy narrative state. The movie opens by presenting initial ideas through lazy one-liners, in which characters talk normally until a sudden piece of philosophy manifests from the established tone of street bum dialogue, never to be mentioned or explored until the script brings it up an hour later. The subject matter is more focused by the third act and the topics explored are worthwhile, like the justification of violence as a suitable means for change or when peace itself becomes corrupt. These come to fruition at the end in the form of two female leads who ended up being the narrative focus after hours of audience guesswork.

However, the simultaneous focus on people like the man with the flying carriage who looks at people’s dreams introduce other themes that go nowhere. A large portion of focus is on the man’s ideas of unfinished concepts passing to other people and how it becomes reborn in a way, but this isn’t fleshed out beyond a few repeated phrases of dialogue and it has nothing to with the other main themes as they converge without it at the end. Was it J.C. Staff asking for help on the movie? Did they want to give the project to a more capable studio to be done better and this was their cry for help? Another oddity was a reoccurring little boy who doesn’t do anything in the film but sit and look at the camera for a couple of scenes. He opens and closes the film without doing anything meaningful. For such a seemingly important visual, nothing specific can be attached to him and the studio ends up wasting animation on empty symbolism.

Darkside Blues is never able to present itself consistently, taking too much time to focus in on character development and failing to refine its topics. I admire that there is definitely some worthwhile substance, but it is crippled too much by sluggish narrative and poor production. Whatever constraints that J.C. Staff had were obviously too much to do anything impressive with the movie, causing it to suffer on all fronts and become completely underwhelming.

Darkside Blues:
4/10

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May 15, 2010

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 9

Jaloyoloti (All reviews)

9 people found this review helpful

True to the manga, Darkside Blues is a little gem for the mid-90s with older looking art but it really goes well with the atmosphere of the story. There's a particular part my friend had pointed out to me during a fight scene when one of the men has a lit cigarette and as he's moving around there's a streak of red following the cigarette's movement. Sounds nerdy, I know, but it's things like that that makes good movies and anime REALLY good. If you like mysterious sexy men riding a horse-drawn carriage check this one out.

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Aug 13, 2013

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

bedheadred (All reviews)

6 people found this review helpful

The evil Persona corporation dominates most of the earth with their iron fist, excepting small resistance movements, one of which is located in the free town of Kabuki-cho, also known as “The Dark Side of Tokyo”. Here a group of juvenile delinquents known as Messiah dwell. For a fee, they shelter and assist a terrorist who opposes Persona.

I really wanted to like this movie because it was based on a manga by Hideyuki Kikucho who also wrote Vampire Hunter D. You can see the similarities in the animation (which is superb for its time,) supernatural themes and mysterious, romanticized character of read more

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