Arion

In mythology, Arion was the name of an immortal, divinely-bred horse. In the late 70s, early 80s there was a manga of the same name by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu. In 1986, Sunrise worked on an anime film based of of that manga. If this is actually starring an immortal horse, that could be amazing but I doubt it actually is. So, let's see what this actually takes from the Greek myths.

Story:

We open with our young and disappointingly human Arion running around when he spots a sketchy looking fellow. This is Hades. Hades has a conversation with Demeter and then promptly whisks Arion away to the ... Underworld under the pretence of helping him cure his mother's blindness. Because when you think of Hades, people being whisked away and Demeter all together, you think of a horse. Persephone who? Hades tells Arion that Demeter's blindness is caused by a curse from Zeus and the only way to cure her is to murder Zeus. Thus begins Arion's training.

The first big issue of this film is that the narrative arc is a complete mess. We jump from Arion being trained by Hades to fight Zeus to him trying to aid father Poseidon to him striking back at Hades and then a bunch of other major turns that barely make sense and have no good story backing behind them. It's like the focus changes every ten minutes. Another big issue is Arion's big motivational speech. Be forewarned, I'm going to have to give some spoilers here. It's the only way I can properly convey how bad this is.

So, we've seen this basic set up in a lot of media. The hero's getting ready for the battle of his life and has to rally his people. So, he gives them a powerful, eloquent speech to stir them up. Or, that's how it's meant to go. In this film, he stammers about how Zeus is hunting him and all he did was kill his own father. Don't you hate it when the authorities come after you for your murders? Also, he really wants to fuck his sister and she's in Olympus. So, he's gotta fight his way over there. Who would be persuaded by that? Besides Brian Michael Bendis and other creepy little weirdos with massive incest fetishes. Having some incest content in a work based off of Greek mythology is pretty much to be expected. Those myths are full of that. But you're expecting us to believe this is a speech that resonates with people and gets them fired up and that is absolutely imbecilic.

Another issue is with the antagonists in general. In a good story, you want an antagonist or multiple antagonists who are threatening in some way. Even if the work in question is aimed at children and you know the villains aren't going to succeed in any major way, you want them to be enough of a threat that it makes you curious about how the hero is going to overcome them. That's a very basic part of writing. In this, the antagonists never seem all that threatening. The one time one of them seems like they could win rapidly results in a major deus ex moment that immediately reduces them to a joke. And that's a big chunk of our climax.

Characters:

Let's be generous and pretend that it doesn't matter that this adaptation's representations of its characters don't remotely resemble their portrayals in any myth. Let's judge them solely based on their appearances within Arion. Even giving them that much leeway, they're still absolute rubbish. Our antagonists are a bunch of one-note evil characters. Our protagonist is an easily led twit with no real personality aside from being a twit. Resphoina is the most generic of bland love interests. The reactions characters have to things, as touched on earlier, are completely unbelievable and stilted.

Art:

The only thing that kind of works in this film is the image of Cerberus firing mouth lasers. Aside from that, the artwork is about as bad as everything else. It's not just the janky animation, poorly constructed action sequences or boring backgrounds either. The entire aesthetic is off. And what I mean by that is that the film combines Greek visual elements with Roman ones. You'll have Greek tunics with Roman armour. Greek triremes with Roman hand held crossbows and stuff like that. They don't look like they belong in the same culture and it results in everything being a bit off.

Sound:

If you want to hear some truly awful performances from talented actors like Nakahara Shigeru & Tanaka Mayumi then this is for you. Honestly, I put the blame on the horrendous characterisation and stilted dialogue but the ultimate result is undeniably that no one sounds good in this film. The music has a general issue of the sound balancing being pretty bad so it'll either be way too loud or have sound effects that are too loud thundering over it. If there was anything happening at any point that was worth watching, it would be annoyingly distracting.

Ho-yay:

There isn't any. Even the Gods who chased lovers of the same sex in mythology, like Apollo, don't show any interest in them here.

Final Thoughts:

I've seen a lot of media based off of Greek mythology in my time. This is easily among the worst. The writing is terrible. The characters have nothing to them. The art is bad. Even the acting ad music are atrocious. This film has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Which is a shame because laser breath Cerberus should be a part of something amazing. My final rating is going to be a 1/10. Next week we'll start a new year off. We've had a lot of themes for January: Hayashibara Megumi, yuri, Studio Ghibli, magical girl, that year we watched one anime connected to each of those prior themes, girls with guns. Well, this year it's anime based off of video games. We're starting next week with Tales of Eternia.

(Warning: minor spoilers but nothing major)

Basically, it's shit. Lol.
But it's fun!

The plot makes little sense and the translations are clunky, the protagonists seems to change his opinions on a whim and time jumps don't make sense. This show kind of seems like it's on one flow and every seen leads into the next which doesn't really make sense because it's over several years and there are quite a few scenes where the protagonist just passes out or falls asleep and wakes up without any indication for how long it's been.
Additionally, the gods (who they call "titans" for some reason, even though, in Greek mythology, they ... are different) don't really scale. The show talks about how Zeus and Poseidon are "as powerful as each other" which is the reason for the war but what does that mean? Is it talking about physical strength? In which case, Poseidon clearly would win, he's huge and actually looks like he could hold up a sword while Zeus is small and frail and looks like an old man (speaking of which, that doesn't make sense since Zeus is younger than Poseidon, something they point out in the show). Is it talking about military strength? In which case, I would argue that Zeus is superior as his army obliterates Poseidon's. This show has no scaling.
Also, for some reason, the god's die with a snap of their fingers, and half of them are killed by the protagonist. Like when Poseidon dies when Arion accidentally stabs him, and we see he does nothing to stop him. NOTHING MAKES SENSE.
And when we find out that Arion isn't a god (or "titan"), it doesn't change anything? Despite the fact that it's supposed to be huge. It makes the gods appear more like a royal dynasty rather than actual divine beings, and they're portrayed that way in the plot too.

The one good thing about this film, and the thing that kept me watching until the end, was the art.
Now, I've seen loads of people insult the art but I only feel the parts of the criticisms that are valid are the ones on the backgrounds (which are very boring admittedly) and also the fact that very little of it actually seems like Greece or Scythia.
But I loved the character design (or more, the monster design) and the animation. The animation being a huge plus for me.
To me, the characters and monsters felt like a cross between the original Dragon ball, old school Ghibli films and just a slight hint of 80s horror anime.
Something about the animation too reminded me of that Ghibli feel in how floaty everything seems to be, but precise at times too. There's a moment where Athena goes to kill a girl with a sword, and she lunges are her with it while charging across a room (the POV being behind a pillar that Apollo is hiding behind, so we see this from behind) and then suddenly she's grabbed, stopped and turned around in Apollo's arms.
I can't really explain this well in words but the way it's done made me really appreciate the animation and, although it's not perfect, I can really see how it inspired the things that Sunrise made going on, namely Cowboy Bepop.

All in all, it's a terrible film but it gave me a nostalgic feeling so yeah, it get's a pass.
I'm going to give it a 4/10

I still can't believe I have ever watched this.
I survived this only because I haven't seen this alone, if I would, I would probably ended up dead.

BUT
If you love bad protagonists, randomly flying and dying gods, sister complexes, stop it right there, this movie is for you!

Let's start with characters !

Arion - Our protagonist, definitelly not a horse. He is pretty strange, has kinks on EVERYTHING, even his sister ( he founds hot, that his beloved is his sister, loses interest when founding, she is not a sister, why the hell not ).. Anyway, in few seconds he can turn ... into super OP guy with power to murder half or the Olympic gods and then ends up crying, that he won't be able to kill some gods. You just killed half of them, boy !!!

Resphoina - I don't undestand meaning of this character being in this story. Useless, does nothing, seems retarded. She is only important as protagonists love interest.

Seneca - I don't know what to think about this character, IT appears, fights with protagonists and then they became BFF overnight, that's definitelly not how the friendship works.

Athena - Every show just needs a tsundere in it, there she is !

Poseidon - BEWARE ! He is a secret Thor !!!

Apollon - I will nickname him Dio ( JoJo fans will know = sorry guys, Apollon really is a Dio !! ) This one is a pretty unique character. He appears totally randomly and then flies away. That's all.

Art
It was released in 1986, so it's pretty old. But art is pretty much good for that year, it was one of the best aspects of the show

Story
I really don't know what this thing was about. Kinky boy with crush on his sister or randomly appearing Greek gods?
Still don't understand.


Altrough I am still not able to understand what the heck did I just watch, I think it was really fun to watch this one. I would score 1, but for two hours of endless fun I decided to give it one point in addition for that fun I experienced.

If you still don't know if you want to watch it ....
DO IT !!
Don't look for the story or good characters.
Do it for funny experience and cringe :)

This review will be a little brief in content due to the situations of watching this film. In truth, it was somewhat of a confusing and sloppy story in comparison to future movies that were made by better creators. The plot, interestingly enough, would create an interesting plot revolving on the kin of the Greek Gods desiring revenge from a supposed curse on their mother. However, this movie fails to bring out interesting character journeys or development with their tale. Even more detrimental is how meandering the story is, going from one setting to another without having any time for the audience immerse themselves. Even ... worse, is the continued points of characters getting killed off really quickly without any feeling of tension or meaning. Apart from the title or some set pieces, it is a movie that one would not remember after expanding one's filmography and other content.