A-Li-Ce is obviously one of those. Being an example of early 3D anime made in 1999 it’s hard to expect much but even with that in mind the movie looks like a mediocre PS1 cutscene. Most of the environments are pretty bland and unimaginative, varying from bare bones landscapes and rooms that look like they were someone’s first assignment in 3D software. Outside of obvious technological handicaps like low res textures, low poly models and unsophisticated effects the animators also managed to generate some of the ugliest faces I’ve seen in a while. All the characters look like emotionless robots that on occasion glitch out to try and spook you with some stupidly exaggerated emotions.
Presentation issues don’t end on bad visuals either. When it comes to sound the movie is just as much of a mess. Mixing on the voices is messed up in places which occasionally made japanese VAs very hard to hear. The english dub has some weird volume spikes too on top of just being terrible. Other than that there’s a lot of gripes to be had with the general sound effects. More of often than not the actions on screen are not a great match with their sound with some examples being far more egregious that others. There’s a scene where soldiers cut a hole through a thick glass with lasers and push it in so naturally the movie makes a glass breaking sound yet the glass is just one big slab that awkwardly moves out of its place. Whenever people shoot I’m having a hard time deciding whether they’re shooting bullets or lasers cause the projectiles they shoot out are large spears of light while the guns make both the “pew” of a laser gun alongside clicking of the traditional rifle you might see today. I’m leaning towards bullets though cause whenever enemies in metal armor got shot there was a sound that’s normally used for two blades clashing.
That’s pretty much it for the sound, when it comes to music all I can say is that I hope you like cheesy late 90s techno.
The story itself is a gigantic clusterfuck that only gets worse as it goes on and ends on a comically terrible screw-up that writers seem to have either ignored or overlooked.
What follows is a massive story spoiler, if you just want a spoiler free assessment of it here you go - it’s ass.
The story revolves around time travel. Out main character is Japan’s #1 idol as well as an astronaut who’s yanked out her timeline in 2000 into post-apocalypse of 2030 where a AI killed off most of humans to make the sky more blue (literally). The world is split between two factions, Nero who rules the world with his overclocked PC and liberation army who invested a time machine to hack him. In the harsh world of 2030 she meets one of the worst 3D models in this movie who’s a guy living by himself and a pleasure model android (that also has guns and shit). Together they set out on a thrilling adventure where more and more details unveil until it’s so ridiculous you start wondering if they made the CG first and retrofit a story into it later.
As it turns out Nero is Alice’s kid who grew up without a mother but used her comatose body to power up his top of the line gamer rig just so that he could know what she’s like as a person. It leads to him peering into Alice’s memory and finding out about her friend who killed herself (I think) cause the world is so screwed and polluted (yet it looks pretty normal). This in turn led to trimming world’s population down to 1 billion so that ecosystem could recover (yet everything looks like shit). Liberation army on the other hand tries to break Nero’s battlestation and put him in jail forever for being an asshole.
Roughly in the middle of the movie some merc from Lib army captures Alice and her friends so they strap her in mindhack machine and tell her to penetrate Nero’s cyberspace since she’s the only one who can do it due to having the same brain patterns as her future self. It all goes as planned until the previously useless dude breaks out alongside his pleasure model android and free Alice from the machine. They then all set off for the fortress where Lib army got decimated after cancellation of the hack.
Nero exchanges a few words with his 16 year old mom until leader of lib army shows up and tells everyone how they’re stupid and he will be a god after shooting Nero’s computer. He succeeds and everything explodes but dies in the process. Everyone escapes and our heroes split up as Alice hops in the shuttle with a time machine to go back to the past to fix this whole mess. However we still get a glimpse of what happens to other characters after tower explodes and since nothing changes it’s same to say that either they did a major screw up when it comes to establishing time travel or Alice somehow managed perfectly recreate the events that led to the world going to shit.
I’m sorry for pretty much writing out the plot but come on, who the hell is actually gonna bother watching this?
The movie is just flat out crap. It might sound like it fits into “so bad it’s good category” but the moments where it dips from mediocrity into hilarious awfulness are not nearly common enough for that.
