SF Shinseiki Lensman

A young man aims to do something more exciting than farming. His homeland is destroyed by an evil Galactic enemy and he is given super-human powers by which to save the galaxy. His comrades are a sarcastic, hairy alien and a beautiful female in white with a braided bun on the side of her head. Do you recognize any similarities here to an American pop culture icon?

This mid 80′s film has aged pretty well, excepting the CGI which was laughable (though not as laughable as Golgo 13.) I had fun just watching and picking up stolen Star Wars references with a Japanese twist (tentacles!) If you aren’t a Star Wars fan, enjoy a decent sci-fi story and the miners’ disco. read more

Lensman (1984)

[img]http://www.world-art.ru/animation/img/1000/464/1.jpg[/img]

1984 brought many sci-fi oriented stories. One of which was Lensman, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Memories, X) and Shinya Ohira (Gundam sequels, Akira), so there is some strength here. Unfortunately, the script is weak, the music is pretty much absent, and the voice acting (Japanese and English dub) is sub-par at best.

The story is about a farm boy named Kimball whom dreams of life bigger than is country lifestyle. Well, it just so happens that an intergalactic war is going on simply between good and evil. During some battle somewhere, Kimball comes across a runaway spaceship, finds an important guy, and gets this glass-thing called a “lens” transferred onto him. The backstory of the lens is weird and does not seem to make much sense. All that’s important is the lens contains important information on it, and must be taken to the good side. Don’t let the dark side have it, as the dark side will aim to kill you.

Just at first glance watching this, the amount of Star Wars references is astounding. It gets to the point where it might as well be an animated spin-off of it. There is even some incredibly lame CG just thrown in places really just distracting from the above average art style. Whether or not the CG was amazing at the time, in post 2000’s, the CG should not even be there in the first place.

In the end, Lensman has one decent chase scene in a rail car, of sorts, at just past the mid-point in the movie. Unless you are pining for a sub-par anime that is a desperate attempt to hit at the Star Wars hype, Lensman is hardly worth anyone’s time watching. read more