Shisha no Teikoku

Yesterday I just watched The Empire of Corpses movie and what I got is just disappointment. Let me elaborate my statement with my review.

Story - 3/10
The story is about how Watson (Holmes's partner) discover a way of saving humanity from being zombie. The whole movie is just about his journey of his research and medication. The story itself is quite poor, as the movie itself literally is nothing but a medium to deliver deep messages to the audience. There is no story at all, aside from Watson going to save humanity with dumb and absurd way.

Premise - 6/10
The premise itself is sort of interesting, with everyone was zombiefied and become 'Frankensteins'. Government zombiefied their citizens and corpses that are re-purposed with a false soul in order to use them as laborers, are used to improve industrial development. No doubt, the premise is pretty cool and there were symbolism behind it. The whole movie was actually symbolizing those laborers that have lost their soul to the system, which makes them no longer humane anymore. In order to regain the one's soul, humanity needs love. More or less, it's sort of like Guilty Crown, however at the same time, it's same as Guilty Crown failed in delivering the messages. The story and messages were all over the places without any coherence at all. In order words, this movie failed, even though it looks cool by its cover.

Character - 1/10
There is no character at all in this movie. All of them are plot devices in order to move on the plot and deliver deep messages. All of them are pretentious. There are no characteristic at all for the characters in the movie. It completely failed in character's aspect! I like Alexei, Nikolai & Friday though, but all of them are the same too. Plot devices!

Art - 9/10
Wit Studio, the studio that produced Attack on Titans and in Spring 2016 they are going to make a high budget production with cool animation, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. If you have seen the trailer, or watched Attack on Titans before, you must have known the quality of animation the studio could deliver. It's all superb and fantastic throughout the whole movie. It's the only selling point for this bad movie. The animation, no doubt is eye-catching. The textures in background, the control in colours are well-produced. Every second every frame of the movie is so beautiful. Seriously, Wit Studio really did well in the visual part for this movie.

Music - 7/10
Not that bad, not that good either. All the tracks fit the movie well, but there is no memorable soundtracks from the movie. EGOIST's theme song is fine too.

Enjoyment - 4/10
The whole movie is like a boring roller coaster. It gave me so much anticipation on the movie, however it just left a huge disappointment to me. Nothing in the movie aside from the animation impressed me. I won't recommend anyone to watch this movie, even though it might be some "2deep4u" stuff, however the movie failed to handle the messages coherently. It really disappointed to me. Seriously, don't watch this movie, unless you wanna experience the great animations. Moreover, it's 2-hour long.

I really hyped this movie very much along with the other two Project ITOH (Genocidal Organ & Harmony). I hope the other two won't be this bad, seriously please. It's kinda wasted to spend that much of budget on this bad story.

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This review is my very biased opinion. I am a huge sucker for redjuice and EGOiST and it will be apparent in the review.

Let's start with the good point(s).

Art: 10
The art and animation is amazing. Redjuice has provided the movie with some great character design followed by incredible backgrounds, animation of scenes and effects.

Story: 3
The story is hugely inspired by Frankenstein. This might be due to me not being able to understand the story, however it mostly seemed like a mediocre fanfiction which includes major characters from many classic western novels such as Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes books and more. This might be due to the fact that this is a movie adaptation from a novel. With knowledge of all the characters (I only knew about 30% beforehand) this might be an interesting approach.
The movie has a lot of plot holes, pretty much nothing is explained or showed (unless this is caused by my lack of understanding) and the story pretty much uses the most cliché plot twists to a point where it's not even surprising at all. In the same way action scenes seemed hollow and seemed to follow some kind of cliché setup taken directly from the worse end of Hollywood action movies.
The events defy common logic and the choices made by the characters makes no sense but this is something you'll see in many old novels (in my very biased opinion).

Sound: 9
Soundtracks wasn't used a lot (unless I failed to notice) which in my opinion was a nice decision which made the movie feel closer to the time of the events (19th century).
I was quite impressed by the sounds the zombies made and the sound effects in general were nice.
The 2 ending themes, Door by EGOiST and another one was quite nice and fit the movie really well, but they were the only clear instance of music or soundtrack (I might be very bad at noticing soundtracks).

Characters: 5
Even if the art of the characters are 10/10 the characters themselves are quite mediocre. The characters don't seem to resemble the source material (how they are in their respective books) and seem to fit a stereotype quite well. Without spoiling too much, the sidekick Barnaby (I'm pretty sure it's Barnaby) is basically random sidekick nr. 1.

Enjoyment: 8
This was quite enjoyable to watch as the art (backgrounds, characters & animation quality) was so good that I could fap to it. The story was interesting, as it used tonnes of references and had some really great ideas, but it wasn't good enough to keep me hooked. Questions I wanted answered during the movie was usually like: How are they going to explain this? The answer was it wouldn't be explained. The characters, while not being unique, they weren't terrible either so just mediocre.

Overall: 7 (I allowed myself to vote 8 on it for bias)
Quite similar to Guilty Crown by having superior art and bad story.
Also had other Guilty Crown feels and elements (Guilty Crown haters shouldn't watch this imo :>)
Might not be the movie you remember as the best but it is definitely enjoyable as you watch it.

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Story: 7/10

This story is heavily influenced by Frankenstein. The whole plot revolves around the possibility of reanimating corpses infusing them with their "souls". These corpses prove to be very useful after time and they're used for different works. Watson is hired to retrieve some notes that would help to recover the souls of the corpses, but there are some conflicting opinions. Some people think this process is awful, and some others want to take advantage of it. Watson will find himself in the middle of this situation and will have to take a decision that will affect everyone.

This story is a re-reading of Frankenstein and the moral conflict it arises from the use of corpses. There are some changes, like the technology used, but the similiraties are there.

Art: 10/10

The art is stunning. The characters are absolutely beautiful and very different from each other. The details in the backgrounds are simply amazing. Visually, this movie is a masterpiece.

Sound: 7/10

The music is nice and it fits with the situation of the movie but there's not any remarkable song.

Character: 8/10

Okay, this may be my favourite part of the movie. All the characters are based in literary figures. If you've read the works it's funny to see some similarities between the characters with the original sources, like how Watson is actually studying medicine, for example. For me this was a very nice touch, but I admit that if you don't know the works this little details are going to pass unnoticed. Either way they're not necessary to understand the main plot but it is a nice touch either way.

Enjoyment: 8/10

I think this movie is pretty enjoyable. It can be confusing at times but it is interesting enough.

Overall: 9/10

The animation is amazing, the characters varied and the story is interesting enough to keep you entertained. The only problem can be the fact that the plot is not that original but a re-reading of Frankestein and that it can get complicated at some parts.

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Shisha no Teikoku (The Empire of Corpses) a movie from the Project Itoh, so this entire movie was some how confusing, I enjoyed it, but I had problems understanding part of it maybe with a re-watch in the future I will understand more, part of the reason it's hard to understand is the characters since they are from different novels/books and without reading them you may not understand some characters decisions so moving on:

Story- 6/10

On the paper, Empire of Corpses looks like the coolest thing ever. Seriously, a movie about zombies who become part of society and are used in our daily lives in a Steampunk London with famous characters from various novels? Fuck Yeah but as always the sad part is, the movie promises you lots of things but has trouble to keep them. The story looks simple at first sight but it’s actually way more complex that you think. The first half of the movie is pretty good but it falls apart in the second half, the ending will leave you with lots of questions that will never be answered nothing is explained multiples brains had to work together on this movie to understand it well i guess that’s something.

Characters- 8/10

The characters are almost all from various novels/books or are real people that I believe lived in London during that century. But that doesn’t really matter actually. Aside from little references that made me smile like “ooh look it's Frederick Burnaby” the characters being named after famous people has no influence on the story whatsoever.You have the Main Character Dr. Watson (sidekick to Holmes) Hadaly Lilith (from the book The Future Eve) and many others so are they well developed? I’d say meh i guess without reading those books you can't know how much alike they really are or different they are, the character designs are great.

Sound- 7/10

Really nothing big to say here, the OST had nothing memorable but it was good enough to set good moods for action or drama.

Art- 10/10

Now this was the best thing from the movie, the Art is amazing, Wit studio has done a great job once again the movie is eye candy for anyone from snowy cold landscapes to the noisy, full of corpses city of London, corpses exploding and fighting scenes everything was detailed, well draw and animated.

Overall/Enjoyment- 8/10

Should you watch it? well if the movie sounded cool you should check it out, I know I’m kind on this one, but the Art saved this show, I also liked the characters and the story of this movie i belive there is more to it than what i understood or what you can understand watching it only once it’s obvious that it could have been better handled and executed with maybe more explanations on the incentives of the characters and the story as a hole. Anyway it's a good movie and i don't think you lose anything from watching it :)

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