Dokkaebi Bangmang-I

Do you enjoy anime that has six frames a second, jittery frames, awful characters, and terrible voice acting? If so, you might be able to watch Dokkaebi Bangmang-I, known as The Silver Twilight. The film revolves around an incredibly obnoxious boy, his talking bear onii-san, some random village girl, the prince of monsters, and a dumb fat villager. They go about trying to solve the mystery of why some people have been going missing in the villagers’ village, but the prince of monsters loses a magic mace, which falls into the hands of an unsavory group.

This film is awful, but unlike most low-budget films made ... in Korea in the 1980s, actually has a legible plot. You can understand the plot. There are even stakes involved, as both the villagers and the monsters don’t want to go to war over each other, while the unsavory group has their own goals of.... well, riches. I’m not saying the plot is good, only that it is sensible.

The characters in this film all suck, and I honestly don’t remember the names of them, save the villager girl, Clara. When I went to rewatch the film, I realized that they all only used each others' names once, so I guess names aren’t actually important.

Anyway, the brave boy is an abusing little snotball. He constantly abuses his “big brother,” the talking bear, calling him names like, “fat lazy bear” nearly constantly. Of course, he also abuses everyone else constantly and gets into the habit of shanking people in the butt with a stick later. Even worse, the dumb villager, who is only known for his stupidity, copies the brave boy, showing that abuse is contagious. The talking bear is actually useless, but as the random villager girl says, “he has a big heart.” Cliché and useless. The villager girl is useless and doesn’t actually serve a plot purpose. Last, the prince of the monsters is just annoying, but he’s not abusive. He’s like an annoying kid. By the way, the girl that is on the poster of this film doesn’t matter. I challenge you to point her out when you watch this film. She’s in approximately 80 frames, twice.

With a set of awful characters that have literally no redeeming qualities and a plot that can only be called “sensible” as a positive point, well, you’re not watching The Silver Twilight for its story. In fact, I don’t know why you’d watch it, but if you are, you’re not watching it for the story.

They made this film in Korea in the 1980s, a time when some studios in Korea pushed out low effort “anime” in the name of profits.

I do not know how well this film did in Korea, but based on its English dub, having watched it 35 years after it was made, I have to imagine that this film did not do very well, and the stats on MAL indicate this.

The animation of this movie is awful. There are a lot of still shots, minimal animation, and reused backgrounds. It is very obvious. Besides this, the English dub is so bad it’s humorous. And not humorous like Ghost Stories is, but humorous to laugh at. Even though it’s animated, the acting and choreography of this film is just atrocious.

In short, this film has no redeeming qualities, but it is certainly better than most low budget Korean anime that came out in the 1980s, such as Micro Teukgongdae Diatron 5 or Roboteuwang Sseonsyakeu. Unlike the other two, The Silver Twilight doesn’t completely reuse scenes, and it has an understandable plot without plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.