Gyakusatsu Kikan

*I'm not basing this review on the source material for this story, the change in the production studio, or anything other than the story standing alone on it's own*

Overall this movie is very enjoyable, with great fluid animation, appealing character design, and an overall compelling story.

The story is this movie's strongest and weakest point. The concept is great and extremely thought provoking, and it often makes allusions to other works and ideas which I loved. The world this movie is set in is very well built and established. The characters are often traveling and moving around and there are some complex political conflicts between ... and within nations and groups, which is presented in a way that isn't so complicated that the viewer gets lost. Very well done in that aspect.

We travel through the plot from the perspective of the main character and with him we come to understand human nature in the context of responsibility and freedom. The stance the movie takes on this subject doesn't interest me as much as how the movie simply brings this idea to the table for discussion. That was one of the aspects of the movie that bothered me, I just wish it went full out on the unfolding of the story and the conflict between the characters and the conflict within the characters instead of spending time making their personal commentary on the subjects. Another criticism I have is that there are some plot discontinuities and the actual concept of the "genocidal organ" seems pretty baseless and kinda boring, not that I'm a psychologist or anything. But these criticisms aren't too significant in light of how happy I am with what this movie did right with the main theme of how freedom comes with responsibility that you have to be willing to bear.

I highly enjoyed the characters from their designs to their personalities and struggles. They have flaws, make discoveries throughout the story, and have genuine thoughts and reactions. Their personalities are probably the weakest part because the story focuses on how the characters are relevant in the plot, although there are a few scenes that feature the characters in an everyday normal situation, and those scenes were great for their characterization, I just wish there was just a little bit more of that. All of the relevant characters are memorable, but there are some minor characters that serve as plot facilitators who are not expanded upon, and most of these characters work perfectly fine in the story, only one or two of them I wish were expanded upon a little bit more.

As far as sound goes, they took a relatively minimalist approach to it, not having any outstanding standalone tracks, but simply having tracks that enhanced the scenes without making me wish for more. Overall I had no problem with the sound.

The visuals were almost outstanding including composition, animation quality, color scheme, and design. The only issue I have is that there are a few short shots here and there where the animation isn't as good as the rest of the movie, and are pretty jarring relative to the rest of the visuals. But besides that, the quality is great, and the fight/action scenes are composed and executed extremely well, making the action easy to follow and visually appealing, not to mention that these scenes have substance and meaning that relates to the story and themes, they are not just hollow and visually appealing for the sake of cool fight scenes.

I think the themes of freedom and responsibility as well as the topic of terrorism are relevant in our current world, so I would personally give it an 8/10. It's a great movie that is entertaining and thought provoking, I definitely recommend it.

What a piece of crap. Even Project Itoh's critically acclaimed novel wasn't perfect, but at least it delivered a semirealistic futuristic world with all its pros and cons of surveillance, nanomechanical warfare, etc. But this adaption is a failure in every aspect - whether or not you look at the trouble it went through during its production.

Genocidal Organ fails to deliver a coherent storyline (and makes all the wrong choices through the way). It fails to replicate the detailed world building, Itoh is so well known for (compare with Harmony i.e.). It just scratches on the surface of the complex thoughts, this topic offers. The ... animation is a pain in the ass (it doesn't matter if Manglobe went bankrupt during the process, you pretty much can see were they had their hands on - the quality differs from the bullshit of the so called 'animation' studio Geno made), as well as the character design. There are tons of cheaper shows, that look so much better than this useless piece of junk. And it is not just because of the american characters, it didn't look good at all. Thanks to the crappy animation and production. There were plenty of scenes looking clumsy and awkard, were you couldn't tell that this is a movie from 2017.
Let alone the characters themselves without any personality... except for antagonist John Paul. Unfortunately, his shiny moments were too rare. Just like the nanomechanical warfare and surveillance systems, that helped build a world like only Itoh could have thought of. There were enough scenes showing how practical it can be, but little to less behind that facade. Which is a shame, especially regarding the way how it could have turned out, if the adaption followed its source material more truthfully AND considering the possibilities of anime.

I don't want to compare with the original novel that much, but this adaption lacks of a fluent and reasonable story. Most of the plotpoints doesn't seem to be connected at all; they are more like various stations, which the story needed to pass for its clumsy conclusion.

The only positive thing in here is the cruelty of war shown: childsoldiers vs modern warfare. In all its glory. There's no time to trivialize such things and that's the only strength, this movie shows. Unfortunately, these scenes are kept just like the whole essence behind the thematic: Shallow and irrelevant for the story or the plot, because Genocidal Organ doesn't give much about the complex nihilistic philosophy behind its pristine storytelling. What is freedom worth? Do you pay it from personal freedom or other countries, which can't keep up with the modern world of capitalism?

Genocidal Organ is a political thriller film focused on an American special forces officer named Kravitz Shephard who is tasked with trying to apprehend a terrorist named John Paul who is responsible for a series of conflicts and genocides being triggered throughout the world. As Kravitz digs further into the mysteries surrounding John, he finds that the world he assumed to be one where American actions seem just are in reality a fabrication due to mass psychological manipulation from the various world governments to have the populace conform to accepting a new world order where their thoughts and actions are monitored and manipulated.

Genocidal Organ serves ... as a criticism of post-9/11 times with a number of first world countries turning into surveillance states where citizen freedoms are no longer guaranteed as they are continually monitored, have their privacy compromised, and are continually manipulated by their government and corporate entities, America being quite the offender in this regard with their actions against foreign nations that are a threat to its global influence and passing laws like the Patriot Act that sacrifice citizen freedoms for the so-called War on Terrorism. This is explored through Kravitz's investigation into John Paul's activity as his search for John leads him into Bosnia, a third-world country effected by the recent string of terrorist attacks supposedly influenced by John. Within the world of Genocidal Organ, military soldiers are artificially enhanced into becoming super-soldiers to become more efficient at completing their missions yet at the expense of their humanity. This offers an interesting parallel to real-world events like the 2003 American invasion of Iraq where the American government manipulated its populace and military into believing military invasion of the country was justified due to the threat of nuclear weapons from the country, that were later discovered to have never existed.

The film offers a believable look at how the actions of a first world nation like America could negatively impact life for the citizens of a third world country like Bosnia. John comes to learn of terrorist cells forming in the country that are opposed to the presence and influence of foreign nations on their country's affairs, as well as being considered an unwelcome presence within the country. Again, this creates parallels to real-life events as Iraqi reception of American military presence in their country was largely opposed, a shocking reality for American soldiers who assumed that they would be welcomed in the country as heroes for their actions in overthrowing dictator Saddam Hussein.

Besides the global effect that surveillance states have on other countries, Genocidal Organ also offers a solid exploration of the psychological effects that they would have on its citizens. This can be explored in some of the movie's more casual scenes as Kravitz casually interacts with his fellow soldiers during downtime at places like a tavern that show how desensitized they have become to the violent acts committed in various countries throughout the world. The issue is also addressed during military missions when Kravitz and his comrades casually banter on how drugged child soldiers they gun down are no different from them in how they are mentally conditioned in their actions, showing the detachment they have toward the horrific acts that these children have experienced. Again, this runs parallel to real world circumstances with manipulative tactics like materialistic excesses, information manipulation, and media sensationalism used by corporate entities and government officials to distract American citizens from the reality of their actions effecting foreign nations and having the citizens become desensitized or developing indifference toward the suffering of others due to being more concerned about the needs of themselves or others around them.

While the film offers a solid exploration of its plot and themes, one major thing it struggles with is creating solid and relatable characterization. Characters come off not feeling like real people at many points and instead feel more like shells used by the developers of the film to reflect on its themes through long dialogues. The film appeared to attempt creating some sort of relationship between Kravitz and a Slav tutor named Lucia, though this came off as feeling unconvincing and feeling like a forced attempt at exploring the film's themes. Also, the motives that John Paul had for driving his terrorist acts came off feeling a bit absurd in their implementation and the film ends in a rather anti-climactic matter in resolving how things end up with both John and Kravitz.

In terms of presentation, Genocidal Organ is easily among the best animated of the three Project Itoh films thanks to its use of more lifelike and realistic settings and character designs. With the more realistic setting, scenery designs are believably depicted and characters are drawn with more realistic bodily details and proportions compared to many modern anime titles. There is a great deal of fluid movement depicted throughout the film, especially during action sequences when Kravitz and American soldiers are engaging terrorist hideouts during their missions. The soundtrack consists of typical orchestral scores that don't particularly stick out, but are effective at conveying the right mood during Genocidal Organ's more dramatic and poignant scenes.

In spite of its issues with characters and its ending, Genocidal Organ is still a mostly solid political thriller that strikes parallels to real world events in exploring the effects that surveillance states like America have on other countries in a post-9/11 world through Kravitz's mission to apprehend John Paul. In spite of its flaws, I would still recommend older audiences to at least check out the film once.

While my final rating for the show comes out to a four, I also note that this is because I am extremely forgiving if a show or movie can at least deliver on a decent concept that makes me think for a few moments. Someone less easily swayed will almost certainly view this in a worse light.

Everything besides the premise is a train wreck. The animation bounces between being generic and looking like some of the more clumsy CGI that I have seen outside of a Syfy original. The actual storyline itself is clearly adapted from something that had more time to flesh out motives ... and a world. If it weren't for the macguffin that was "language of genocide" then you would at least be left with a passable near future science fiction story about the dangers of complacency and trading freedoms for security, both themes that were hinted at throughout the movie.

Instead, you have a story that hops between destinations, has seemingly random time jumps, dry characters with nonexistent or nonsensical motives, and a plot that just kind of leaves you scratching your head at the end. It's clear that someone cared about these issues that do have real world consequences, but this wasn't the team to communicate them to the rest of the world.

*Disclaimer*
Just personal scratch.
Advised, possible spoilers.
Opinion & Informal

Art: 7/10. Quite detailed. Realistic style. Attention to small details. Anatomy was actually very very well done. The human figures were spot on and very life-like.

Animation: 8/10 Fluid. Looked a little awkward during some scenes. Everything else was nice to look at. The human movements were believable for a realistic-styled art style. The gun-play and action scenes were few but animated very well. The small mannerisms in both the environment and characters as well as their body languages were noticeable and much appreciated. The action was exciting for the most part but wasn't really enough to warrant the ... movie as being an action one. More of a thriller-psychological with a pinch of action.

Plot: 6/10. Stop this terrorist dude pretty much. Nothing too complex or mind blowing here.

Pacing: 6/10. Good enough to understand what's going on.

Development: 7/10. I liked the big reveal towards the end as well as the twist at the very end. Revealed plot in an understandable way.

Characters: 5/10. Bland, unrelatable, and unlikable. Pretty much only there to voice two different philosophies.

Music: 7/10 Decent. Sound design and effects were spot on. Gun shots, explosions, small details...all spot on.

Action: 6/10. Pretty for the maybe 3 minutes of it that there was. Not an action flick.

Ending: 5/10. Nothing real impressive about the ending. The ED song is cooler than the actual conclusion to the plot.

Overall: 6/10. Could have done more.

INCLUDES SPOILERS

This movie is garbage. The premise is garbage. It's just garbage. It's all propaganda. The protagonist is spewing propaganda. The antagonist is spewing propaganda. The government is spewing propaganda.


A: Oh no, these bad third worlders just hate the West for an unexplained reason, therefore I'm going to stimulate genocides to have them kill each other. Meanwhile completely avoiding the fact that the only reason why these third worlders became involved with the West is because of the Imperialist streaks of Nations like the United States and Russia waging proxy wars in the Middle East. Killing countless civilians and militants. This shit film completely ... foregoes this root cause and just jumps to, “muh 9/11”. Garbage.

B: The government is not in the business of preventing genocides. LOOOOOL! Suggesting that they’re invading these countries in order to prevent them is fucking laughable. They're in the business of war profiteering but this garbage film presents it as, "we're just trying to protect the people from the bad dictators, hurr durr". Meanwhile, "Operation Northwoods", is the norm. Garbage.

C: The protagonists “falls madly in love”, with some broad he knew for like 3 days. This shit makes no sense at all. Why does he care to the degree that he does for a virtual stranger? Garbage.

D: The protagonists actually somehow has a senate hearing. Freaking ridiculous! It would have been accurate if he had been gunned down by the state. And you see a Military General just face palming in an absurd fashion when in reality this trial would never happen and he'd be giving the order to end this whistleblower. God only knows how many soldiers with an intent to blow a whistle have been mysteriously “KIA”.

E: Bosnia has a homicide rate of 1.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. In other words; small, tiny, infinitesimal relative to where the antagonist is from, the United States. Therefore, if his genocidal logic is to be followed, his very first target should be his home country. Not places like Bosnia.

On the plus side, great art. Cool explosions. Williams was funny.

Finally, I watched the only Project Itoh movie I have never seen and that was Genocidal Organ. With watching this movie, I finally could summarize some things about Project Itoh movies in general. And the truth is I am a little bit disappointed with how all of the movies turn out. Before that... Let's talk about Genocidal Organ.

The story baseline itself, in my opinion, is already interesting but from how it is executed, the interesting potential fell into boredom. In the beginning, the idea of word structures that could trigger someone to do a genocide piqued my interest as it kinda reminded me of Captain ... America's best friend who were brainwashed with train of different words in Russian. I always knew that human's basic instinct is to survive and to survive, human could do many things from farming, hunting, working, to even do criminal things. Triggering that basic instincts could lead into many things just to ensure human's own survival. Anyway, I felt sad and disappointed by this movie as they presented the idea with pouring so much expositions and dialogues (even monologues) that left me bored halfway and really wanted to skip the talking. The theme of war is already a good set to explain everything in action not in exposition and that's another good potential being wasted just like that.

After the story, there's the character. While I know that they were trying to make us sympathize with the two soldiers bud, I can't help but not feeling any connection to both of them as they were too focused on pouring expositions than working on something else. There's the main villain, John Paul, being tainted by too many expositions and talking. It made me unfocused and bored.

So, after watching all of the Project Itoh movies, I finally know what is the main problem of these movies and that is too many exposition that is explained by long dialogues and monologues. I knew that these movies are adaptations of novels and I think this is why not all novel (or manga) could be adapted into other media and better stay in the media where it is from. And that is why too, the screenwriter should be braver to defy the original material just to deliver a more suited story for a media (just like the case with recent adaptation of Hanebado!). Not all changes are bad yet not all unchanged things are good. A good screenwriter is someone who make a balance between that and make an already present story suited for an adaptation or even make it better.

Back to Genocidal Organ, I conclude that this movie has a very great potential but wasted with clouding that potential with expositions that made me bored halfway. Should have this anime more actions, I might appreciate this anime.

This felt too deep for me to fully interpret on the first watch but here's my overall verdict.

Premise:
grammar of genocide, an interesting notion that there
is an ulterior motive between dialogue that incites
genocidal actions; relative to but more destructive than PTSD.
This film has a generally intriguing plot set in current day
society where surveillance and biometric technology
populate public spaces as a result of chains of mass
genocide events that took place as a result of what seems to
... have been the grammar of genocide.

This dystopian society revolves around a period of nano-mechanical
warfare and high technological military enhancements which,
give or take can be reflected within the ideals of our current day society.
This also raises questions of whether this is excessive usage of influence.
I personally feel this film offers a lot on the surface level which is
textbook for a film that is 2 hours comparitive to a full blown series.
And as such, it gets a lot of flack for its shortcomings based other intense
works by the author.

In this universe government coverups are frequently performed to protect the
unethical motives from leaking to the public. And as such, the main character
and others in US special forces as well as society are oblivious to the
victims of these wars that manipulate children of third world countries, hunt
species destructively for their important biological components etc.

Toward the end, it seems John Paul's motives inspired one of Clavis' best
mate to suppress John Paul and Lucie Paul in order to prevent it from reaching
the media. This is a surprising turn of events that shows where the trust
really should lie - Both characters within this scenario are fighting for a
specific motion, I feel the US government wants to cover this information up
whereas Clavis wants to release this to the world since it WAS his main
objective (to investigate John Paul and his motives) since the beginning.

Plot:
The plot is very detailed but trails off as it focuses more on Clavis' love affair with Lucie. It begins very promising with a terror attack then eases within a military response which shows a lot of warfare that isn't as tightly connected with the overall premise but includes the possession of John Paul. I'd say in terms of plot, this movie is well deserving of a 6/10 it's either very deep and I'm not interpreting enough of the information it's provided or it's just very vague and abrupt.

Art & Sound:
The art style is seemingly reminiscent of Yuri on Ice (I haven't seen it it just feels like the US characters are similar to the characters of Yuri on Ice. That's not a bad thing, especially when it comes to the action scenes that end up being very detailed and logical. The VA could be improved, however I haven't read the source material so I'm not sure if it's an informed decision to have the characters not be as emotionally conflicted as other similar series. 8/10 seems sufficient for this film considering how much attention to detail was placed in the animation.

Character:
Character development isn't what I really expected from this type of film but it did contain development within the main character Clavis' relationship with Lucie and John Paul. His understanding increased over the second half of the film but I wouldn't personally say it was a creative or intriguing way to develop the characters. 6/10 would seem fair to me since I didn't feel much character connection despite their development as a character.

Enjoyment: Over the entire duration of the film, I feel I only enjoyed the action scenes which contained controversial content but it goes against the grain in terms of ethics. Genocide, advanced technological warfare, Child soldiers, mentioning of human behaviour etc. are what makes this film critical since there's little censorship in what's ethical in society. As such, it was interesting to see a change of pace compared to other films/series that tap into the military backgrounds. 8/10 in terms of personal enjoyment.

Gyakusatsu Kikan(Genocidal Organ) is about Genocide, but surprisingly lacking organs. It's the future, the world is sh!t, and apparently some guy named Jake-oops i mean- John Paul is behind it. The main character,Clavis Shepard then goes undercover as a foreign language student to get closer.It sounds exciting right.To be honest multiply that potential by 0.4 and you got the outcome. The movie has a nice concept of people not having a certain amount of emotion,but about half way through, it turns on the politics and becomes way too smart for it's own good.So much comes from the mouths of characters yet it doesn't correlate with ... the settings. If this is plus, it's kinda similar to reality where people say don't trust the government cuz it'll control your mind,but that won't stop you from eating a cheeseburger. But when I sat down to watch this, I expected a Military,Scifi, not a documentary.I wouldn't even mind if the movie didn't feel so damn long. I wanna say I have bad taste, but I saw GITS and Eden of the East and love the crap out of those two shows. It's because there was a more distinguishable tone with very intense moments and characters full of EMOTION.This show, which isn't even a show but a movie, is full of talking heads and there are some action scenes. but it doesn't help the rest of the movie.I honestly felt like falling asleep at the climax of the movie because I was so uninterested, it may have been my tastes. but I just couldn't force myself to be interested.



This movie has a very interesting story when it comes to production. It was announced to be released by Manglobe, but the studio bit the dust after bankruptcy in 2015. But, in 2016, Manglobe rose from the dead to complete the movie with the help of Geno Studio, the same studio who made Kokkokou and Golden Kamuy. After watching both shows, and this movie, I can easily tell the new studio's strengths and weaknesses,Their strength is have very nice art style and animation. The actual art style of the movie feels more like a comic book than an anime which is very refreshing. Also,the animation is nice and fluid(if there was anything happening)here is so much product placement. It's insane. Their weakness however is working with 3D. In this movie, the 3D is not as bad in the movie as it is the shows, but it makes it look like a gameplay video of COD.Out of the three Project Itoh films, this is above Harmony but it's not as good as Empire of corpses.




The soundtrack of the movie is full of classical tracks that don't stand out.Probably because the sound of everything else is so loud.If there was one song that was definitely a standout was the ending song by Egoist.It's frickin brilliant and offers the amount of thrills that the movie never could.As a fan of funimation, the dub was actual pretty good, maybe since this movie is filled with Americans and Europeans.

Oh yeah, the characters. There is a process in the movie where soldiers cannot have a certain amount of emotion because they will interfere with their duties. The thing with emotionaless characters is without any charm to them, they have to have some depth that puts them over the line.It happens with the Main character, but it's too little too late. Everyone else is either boring or stereotypical. My favorite character has to be one of the supporting soldiers. I don't remember his name, but he's the one who hangs out with the MC the most.He was emotionless but it was in a carefree way. He was super chill and didn't care about anything.Most of the humor came from him(which isn't an understatement since this movie takes itself more seriously than "Rainbow").

Now, if you are reading this after watching the movie, and you enjoy it. Good for you. There may be things that I get wrong, but the point is I do not have the interest to watch the movie again.It's so philosophical, but nothing and I mean nothing pays off or gets my attention. I feel robbed of my time. I can't stand when a Sci-fi movie thinks talking heads is enough.Sure that works in movies like "Spotlight". But that movie is based on true events. This movie takes place in a futuristic society with so much product placement.Out of the three Itoh movies, this has to be the one that I never want to watch again. Empire of Corpses was off the rails insane, Harmony was kinda boring but it had a nice element of surprise and tension. Genocidal Organ doesn't have neither, sure the animation is above average but it never reaches it's full potential. Technically, this movie is not the worst, but it is just so uninteresting ,with characters so intellectually,politically driven that it forgets to do anything else to be interesting and it makes me want to sleep. If you are a pseudo-intellectual, then this movie is for you, but i'm just not a big fan of this.

Overall-5
Oh yeah, Manglobe died again after finishing the movie.

Watching this movie will not be your typical experience. By the end, you will either love it or hate it.
For some, this movie is a bootleg copy of "Ghost in a Shell" while for others the movie is far more than a "deep anime" trying to answer the existential problems of today's world, is a statement.

Before starting the review I'd like to say that I don't recommend this movie to casual watchers. Is a movie with a lot of philosophical, anthropological, and political themes.

With all of that said here is the review:

Part 1. "The Absurdity of the World"

When you watch Genocidal Organ, you will always ... feel a little bit off about the movie and what it tries to convey exactly. Is it a movie about terrorism? Is it about patriotism? Is it about the meaning of life? Maybe it is about the horror of war?
Well, in order to pinpoint exactly what the movie tries to convey, we have to understand a few key details about it first.
You see, my dear reader, this is a movie that follows the philosophy of "Existentialism", and, in the manner of a "Sartrian" work, we can see a pattern of alienating the viewer from the action in the movie. This alienation is what we call "the absurdity of the world". A strange feeling inside us that makes us confused or even angry or afraid due to the fact that we see familiar yet strange things, things that are normal and we take for granted... Yet at this very moment, all of these normal concepts become totally estranged from us. This is what the movie likes to call the "Genocidal Organ" or in popular terms "The Absurdity of The World".

If you want to learn more about this philosophy, you should watch this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bQsZxDQgzU

Now that we talked a bit about the movie we should talk a little about the author as well since his personal life had a major impact on the story.

Part 2. Project Itoh

So who is this person?
Well, Itoh Satoshi was a web designer and novelist, but this is not the important part. You see, Satoshi befriended Hideo Kojima, actually, he was one of the "few people" to understand Kojima. This very friendship started Satoshi's passion for writing Metal Gear fan fiction and later on Genocidal Organ. In 2001 He was diagnosed with cancer. During his cancer treatments, he wrote Genocidal Organ and submitted it to the Komatsu Sakyō Award contest in 2006 (winning the contest). His Metal Gear fan fiction experience combined with his private life problems lead to the creation of a unique story known as Genocidal Organ, something that will kill its own "self", a metaphor for humans and humanity as a concept.
So while you are watching the movie you might feel a lot of Metal Gear influences.

Part 3. The Movie

Considering such an interesting author and source material, the movie doesn't fail to deliver an equally interesting story. With action pack sequences split by lengthy world and character-building segments. Even if the movie is only 114m long it will feel like 4 hours one, not wasting any second with meaningless scenes. The animation

Part 4. The problems and final verdict

The Animation - While the scenes are cinematic and the color schemes are nice. The animation itself feels very "low quality" and outdated for a 2017 anime. Considering that the same studio made Samurai Champloo, Deadman Wonderland, and Ergo Proxy, it is odd that the final product feels so rough. But the problem isn't the rough animation, the real problem is the unnatural mix between 2d and 3d that just sticks out in your eyes.

The Sound - Soundwise the movie is solid, it doesn't have any worth noting problem. With that said sounds and music aren't that memorable.

The Characters - Saying that Genocidal Organ has memorable characters is a huge overstatement. By the end of the movie, I had already forgotten more than half of the names in it (including the main's character). You will not get attached that much if at all to the characters, but considering the theme of the movie, it is fitting, not the best idea but still, fitting enough to not care.

The Story - The story is very similar to Tom Clancy's type of plot. There is not a lot to say about it. The story players out exactly as you'd imagine.

Overall the movie doesn't excel in anything. The art style is pretty common, similar to shows like Jormungand, Black Lagoon, or Ergo Proxy. The animation doesn't impress and the story is predictable offering little entertainment value. So if that's the case why did i rate it 7 instead of 4, 5 or 6. Well, that's the movie does put a lot of accent on details. From military procedures and banter between the soldiers to civilian life and the environment that builds the right atmosphere, in the dubbed version every character has, its own accent based on his native language adding to the flavor and immersion in the story. Oddly enough it manages to deliver the idea of Globalisation better than a lot of movies. In my book that's worth more than 5 or 6. Even if it is on my favorites list, I just can't rank it higher than 7. It is a mediocre movie at worse and a decent/good at best. You either love it or hate it.

Genocidal Organ is a movie that suffered from a drawn-out, disjointed production, something I could tell before I even learned about the story behind its development after I watched it. The movie suffers from an interesting premise burdened by generally flat characters and muddled storytelling that fails to fully develop any of its interesting themes. As an adaption of a nuanced and thematically dense sci-fi novel, the movie had a lot to condense into two hours, to the point of where it would be incredibly difficult to do so without diluting at least one of its themes. Instead, the movie opts to gloss over a ... bunch of different themes. The phrase "wide as an ocean, shallow as a pool" comes to mind here, as each of its attempts to get the audience to think are fleeting and minimally effectual. The movie casts too wide a net and fails to catch anything of interest as a result. However, there are hints at a greater meaning at times, momentary glimpses at something profound. After watching the movie, I don't feel that my time was wasted; rather, I feel inspired to seek out the source material. For that, I commend the movie, for in its failures I feel compelled to improve my understanding of the story and its themes.

--------------------------- Gyakusatsu Kikan Review -------------------------

Story : we follow a super spy/soldier in Eastern Europe who is after a mark, allegedly responsible for sparking conflicts all over the world.

Characters : very classic, nothing surprizing. Almost boring in their cliché.

My main problem : visuals are a matter of taste. I can however say I hated the way the characters look. The colors that were used also. It felt like some cheap rotoscopy (tracing over pictures) with some very poor colors pasted on them. To that, add some CGI which blended quite poorly and my eyes were screaming during the whole movie.


(Possible spoiler here)
...
My second problem : though HINTED, we are never shown even the basics of how the villain actually created the conflicts. There is no resolution. Just very faint hints.

(End of spoiler)

I absolutely did not enjoy the experience.
4/10, would not recommend.

Full of really cool sci-fi/tech/psychological concepts that aren't very well delivered within the narrative but deserve props for being creative and fun. Futuristic tech set in the near future is a whole lot harder to nail than tech 100 years in the future because it has to obviously be more restrained, and this series does a good job of that. I was going to maybe give this a pass after the first 10 minutes of pretty lack-lustre setting and ugly visuals, but then you get introduced to this sub-lingual communication (that they don't explain, thankfully) and I realised it might be worth sitting through for ... the tech alone.
This is nothing to write home about. It definitely tries its hand at trying to be something deep but I think it gets bogged down with too many ideas and concepts and the narrative and purpose gets lost. Don't get me wrong - it's not at all uninteresting - it's just not something I would watch for the story or the experience. If you just like cool tech and sci-fi and psychological concepts then this is pretty good shit, otherwise you're better off passing on it.

This was suppose to be a political thriller with a bunch of high-tech awesomeness, but all the cool high-tech stuff was definitely ruined by whatever plot it had going on. It was hard to engage whatever was going on. The animation is nice, the violence seems to be excessive but without merit for its reasoning.

I'm sure the original book held the reasons for these a little higher.

Basically, it was just overabundance of explaining, say it would give examples that never explained the whole idea. So, you are left with a half-baked answer that is never fully explained.

The whole "it's about the ... grammar" part just reminded me that this movie should have been called "Grammar Nazi" than Genocidal Organ. I'm not sure the purpose of this half-ass plot, but welp, lol.

The music was meh, if you want a real experience, put on Ace Attorney Music behind it and suddenly this is way more dramatic and funny.

The character "Williams" was a highlight tho, only in the dub. He had Monty Python quotes, was generally a hilarious lift to a very boring plot. He did add a little of his Soace Dandy to this, lol.

I don't know anything about the source material and this review only takes into the consideration what's shown in this movie.

Animation:
1) one of the first things I noticed was how detailed the backrounds are
2) the visuals are consistent, fluid and throughout and I didn't notice any particular flaws besides the fact that CGI breaks immersion for me and I'd rather if they had chosen to go "old school" instead.


Sound:
1) There's 2 or 3 seiyuus that I would replace not because they did a terrible job but because I can't stand their voices. I am totally aware this is just a matter ... of personal taste.
2) the soundtrack and sound effects were a good fit for this movie


Story and characters:
1) I was invested and having a great time until the plot took a turn. I won't be able to fully explain why the score is this low considering that I was enjoying the movie without SPOILERS, so be careful reading this or don't read this at all.
2) SPOILERS: John has this super-power of grammar that causes people to become mass murderers. This was really hard for me to accept as a "plausible mechanic" but this isn't the only issue I have.
3) SPOILERS: Shepherd is ambushed and captured by John and his buddies. Instead of disposing of him or trying to understand who he is in hopes of getting ransom money or whatever could be useful, John decides to have a intellectual conversation with him. After that, Shepherd is taken to the bar and once again more talk is happens between him and John's buddies. Nobody mentions what is the plan they have for Shepherd now that he's been captured. Eventually he gets rescued by his military comrades. This was infuriating because it was so unrealistic that it broke immersion for me.
4) SPOILERS: after capturing a few government officials from a foreign country, Shepherd also captures John and once again this "intellectual conversation" happens. Shepherd was aware of this grammar-based super-power that John has and this time Shepherd has the upper hand so STOP TALKING TO HIM ALREADY, TAPE HIS MOUTH, DO SOMETHING CLEVER FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE!!!! But there's more: the helicopter they were using to escape and transport the prisoners gets attacked and crashes. Our heroes free fall from the sky landing in a forest WITHOUT ANY PARACHUTES and they are still alive, no broken bones, all flowers and sunshine. I know they have this system that numbs their pain but that doesn't make them immortal, obviously.
5) SPOILERS: the movie fast forwards suddenly to another country where we can see Lucia in this well-guarded mansion. Our hero Shepherd finds himself in a suite with a notebook filled with sentences. John points a gun behind him and once more they have another "intellectual conversation" about John's real motives for being such a piece of toxic human waste. What we learn is that as long as 3rd world countries are fighting themselves, there's no place for terrorism and so the USA world will always be at peace. Lucia then appears with a gun pointing at John and then there's this stupid remark that she's sinful for sleeping with a married man and that's the way she found to atone for it. It's almost like John didn't cheat on his wife. But the stupidity doesn't end here. Williams shoots Lucia dead, Shepherd goes ballistic (pun not intended) and the besties decide to argue about what's the right thing to do. Williams decides first to say that he agrees with the idea of causing wars on other countries in order to make his country safe and then he backtracks and states that he's just following orders that Shepherd didn't know about. Shepherd gets John to jump off the balcony and hide until an extraction team picks them up... except that another "intellectual conversation" happens. See, Shepherd's goal is to arrest John so that he can be judged for his crimes and justice is served but he still ends up killing John after the talk. This is the part where it's revealed that John's actions have actually been supported by the USA and that's why they wanted John dead if he can't escape Shepherd's chase. So... why the heck did the USA sent secret agents to chase after John in the first place?????????????????????? It completely destroyed the reason why everything happens in this movie. It obliterated the reason why this story exists.


All things considered in relation to the story, a 5/10 might actually seem more than it deserves but I can't forget the fact that it's still 2 hours of entertainment. The story is infuriating but the action is entertaining and that's why it was lucky to get a 5/10 from me.

So... why was my capital nuked? :/
That was kinda dumb and absolutely pointless. The scenes just jump back and forth and some don't even make sense characters have dumb motives (main villain for example) and the whole story is crap. it does have some things well made. like what would happen if the world was or will be like viewers see in this movie. the show seems to have had a great idea but animators probably tried to cut the budget by not adding many scenes. I can tell that much.
either way, its kinda lamely made but still enjoyable to watch.

I watched Gyakusatsu Kikan, also known as Genocidal Organ. Here are my thoughts:

I feel like military-themed sci-fi media such as this is one of the rare things that western entertainment does better than the Japanese (or at least used to).

This movie does an okay job of creating suspense. The pacing is fine and it is competently directed.

There were relatively few action scenes. I was expecting this to be a lowbrow sci-fi action movie, but it was slightly more complex than expected. However, you should be warned that there is a female love-interest character in this. Thankfully she does not suck up much screentime, although her ... presence is influential.

As far as the story goes, it was fairly generic near-future sci-fi. However, I will say that the involvement of linguistics was creative, or at least somewhat unique. Genocide is a significant theme in the story, as you might expect from the title. The movie is pretty morose, and you should expect people dying and a lot of bad things happening. When it does occur, the violence is pretty graphic.

The characters as a whole are pretty generic, and not much character development takes place during the movie. I would have liked to have witnessed more interactions between the soldier characters. The focus on special forces soldiers did appeal to me, and I wish this aspect was examined even more in the movie. This is definitely a reflection of my own biases though (I have been interested in the psyche of SF soldiers for a very long time, and have listened to at least hundreds of their interviews over the years).

In terms of sci-fi elements, there's some cool technology but nothing I hadn't seen before. Some of the futuristic combat technology was sorta neat I guess.

Audiovisuals were adequate. The soundtrack was adequate but unremarkable. Voice acting was at best adequate, although there weren't many opportunities for a VA to showcase their talent anyway. Animation quality was fine, although hardly high-budget blockbuster anime material. Some of the European cities featured in the movie looked okay; otherwise, the visuals were fairly lackluster. Facial expressions were decently animated at least. Also, although infrequent, the action scenes did sound and look decent – not spectacular, but decent. I usually enjoyed them. They are shortlived though, so don't let that be your motivation to watch this.


My overall rating: 5/10
It was adequately entertaining and I never considered turning it off. However, there was nothing exceptional about this movie, aside from perhaps the use of linguistics in the story. There was some neat technology, but nothing much beyond your typical 'future soldier' stuff. As a whole, it felt like a pretty generic sci-fi military-themed movie.

I wouldn't recommend watching this unless you are obsessed with sci-fi or have some strange fixation on genocide. If you are seriously interested in this work, you should probably just read the source material. If you just feel like watching some futuristic combat, scan through the movie and watch the action scenes I guess.

This is the story that you can definitely watch while you're doing something else because it's quite hard for me to be engrossed in it due to how it only displays the top layer of the plot instead of diving deeper into the issue that it is planning to discuss on.

Plot: Holds potential but merely scratching the surface layer. It lays out the idea of genocide via grammar but it does not go into how and why it is capable to do such things. Also, it would be highly interesting if this anime explore the flatliners soldier too. I wanted to see more of ... them; perhaps conflicts of being flatliners soldier or how they 'feel' as flatliners.

Characters: A bit shallow. I want to know about Clavis' background, etc. I want to know when he falls for Lucie. I get it that he is a flatliner but I'm pretty curious at what moment, why, he falls for Lucie. That's only the tip of the iceberg, it'll be too long if I decided to ramble on the lack of information about the character.

Flow: I would say it is pretty stagnant, quite slow if I must add and there's plot holes.

Overall, I watch this anime on a whim as I was interested in it years ago but now I just want to get rid of this on my tbw list. I don't rec this anime. It holds potential but it unfortunately does not deliver.

An idea I’ve been exploring is that anime I really like, tend to have really dumb initial story concepts. Whereas anime I feel confident have excellent conceptual ideas, I end up disappointed as they fall flat on their faces. Genocidal Organ is the latter.

The first ten minutes are a solid hook. There’s fluid action, you’ve got an interesting modern setting, it boasts a slightly-altered timeline, presentation begins solidly, and the music is bangin’. The English dub is completely passable; would put in my personal top 3 dubs, easily. Rivals Jin-Roh’s vocal direction for maturity and realism.

There’s only one hindrance to the opening scene, where the ... protagonist and his victim wax philosophical for an entirely too-long period of time. I justified it as “Well he’s gotta cover a lot of ground in a short minute,” thinking it’d go away. Sadly, that’s your first warning of bad portends to come.

The next forty minutes are molasses-slow exposition. Everyone explains everything to each other just for the sake of the audience. Instead of showing the plot, they tell it. This great, great idea, with its bevy of mature characters, its provocative setting, its unique combat pacing, its presentation through (for the most part) clean rotoscoping: telegraphed to the viewer at the speed of Morse code. The closest comparison I can make to this is American Sniper, where Bradley Cooper’s solemnly dedicated performance of Chris Kyle’s incredible life is hampered by amateurish regard for the film’s audience by SAYING what’s happening. That’s boring. That’s disengaging. That’s poor scripting.

I’ll grant that the pacing is faster than something like Fate/Zero strictly due to the lack of anime grunts rightfully removed from the film. But the wordy, repetitious exposition is equally boring across both anime.

The flow feels like a pulpy American action flick. Some aspects of Western pacing I really think are necessary and long overdue improvements for anime. But the way Genocidal Organ goes about presenting its story has me wondering when Bruce Willis is gonna show up as some hidden supervillain. It doesn’t really feel like “real anime,” if you know what I mean. I don’t see that as a flaw personally, but I think it’s important to mention if you, the reader, feel it’s relevant to whether you’re interested in this movie.

It’s a shame. The gunplay and mature themes (such as child soldiers, heads up) reminded me of Jin-Roh. The socio-political setting felt VERY much like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex’s, and I believe that’s what the creators aimed for here: a world grappling with the trappings of budding technology, reigniting eternal arguments of liberty versus security. But on both counts, Genocidal Organ fails to hold my attention. The story is done better elsewhere, with a script not nearly this incompetent; and the combat and cool military hardware you can find in short compilations elsewhere. It’s not worth slogging through 90 bad minutes for 24 good ones.

At first I though of not even bothering with the review, but as I sat there after suffering for an hour of watching this turd I grew progressively more annoyed and angry with it. In the end of the day it gets a 1 from me, I actually despise it, I actually dislike everything about it and about the ideas it tries to work with in a simplistic manner. I have no idea about the LN it's based on and therefor only measure this as it's own entity.

Straight out of the bag - there are few dynamic, if you can call them that, scenes that ... are far in-between, it had some cruel moments that follow usual conflicts. Besides that you have a god awful art quality that is worse than your shitty average Isekai, where while backgrounds are tolerable but characters and both their quality and animation are garbage.

Animation? Wait.. Was there animation? I forgot as 90% is static and they lead their pseudo philosophical disputes as if I'm back in my teenage years when everyone read their first Kafka book or whatever was popular and suddenly talk deep about topics they know jack shit about. It's like you are trying to watch a horrible version of Monster, where Monster (and it's an insult to bring it up here) actually provides interesting points.

Story is incoherent itself, it doesn't particularly succeed in any meaningful world building beyond the - US is full China mode with scanners at every corner and muh 9/11 and war on terrorism bs. At first I was thinking they will go into the depth of the dystopian reality where made up terrorism (which was literally created by different agencies for that purpose by being funded, trained and taught) lead to massive surveillance over usual citizens with all the negative implications it brings, but NOPE. They are not criticizing or questioning any of this. And I get it the original novel was written back in 2006 when that crap was in full swing, but the studio were working with that a decade later where some things were already different. And maybe LN was better or different in a sense, but I won't bother reading that one, not in the near future at least.

They also decide to go to a poor country that the US and their allies bombed to fucking oblivion and decide to now blow it up with a Nuke. Wtf is wrong with the author? Couldn't you just make some fake Azahdastan loosely based on a real country?

All in all this is trash and it has no redeeming qualities at all. In fact the ideas this story has are completely irrelevant, fake and outdated to follow. It reminds of me of those pseudo-intellectual low budget anime from early 00's which work well if you need to fight an insomnia.

Move along and leave it in a trash it belongs.