As I watched it - I couldn't help but make parallels between it and one of my favorite works - Hiroyuki Imaishi's Dead Leaves. They're both ridiculous, over-the-top action stories about criminals who solve problems with hyper violence with a unique art style to them, after all. So, in this review, I'm going to be talking not only about AWS itself, but comparing it to a work that does what it attempts to do in a way that I would think is better, and why I think AWS falls short of that.
STORY - 5/10
AWS has a rather interesting concept to it - in a world where defecation can be used as a source of energy, how would you gain a reliable source of energy? That's simple - by creating a reward. In this world, that reward is Juicy Bars, which a group called the Diaper Gang has become addicted to, as well as the many people on Earth. This creates a sustainable source of energy in their society, but also causes a ridiculous amount of addiction, which makes the world fall into chaos and disorder as people try to get their hands on this addictive substance.
However, this is only the backstory of the true plot. The plot itself is rather generic, and the biggest problem with it is that the two main characters - Aachi and Ssipak, of course - have no ability to act on their own in the grand scale of the plot. It feels like everything in this world is happening TO them or AROUND them. Neither Aachi or Ssipak themselves are the ones who impact the plot in a way that is relevant or memorable. This causes the story to feel aimless at times, and annoyingly contrived at others, with things just so happening to work out in a way that benefits Aachi and Ssipak without they themselves doing anything to create this sort of impact on the world.
To top it all off, this is a full-length movie - an hour and a half long. The silliness of the scenario and the loud and bombastic stupidity of the world that they live in gets sort of grating after a while, and due to the fact that Aachi and Ssipak don't really do much themselves, it leads to an hour and a half of contrivances and random happenings that just so happen to benefit our protagonists. This also leads to there being, surprisingly, big problems with pacing. For some reason, the movie felt it was a good idea to put what felt like an entire music video into the movie at one point, which really felt odd when compared to some moments where we suddenly cut to big climactic areas or cut back to plot points that feel out of place during the finale.
To compare this to Dead Leaves, the latter is half of AWS' runtime. While it's similarly batshit insane when it comes to the choreography of combat, the ridiculousness of the plot points, and the strangeness of the world, the 45 minute runtime makes it so that it doesn't get annoying like AWS does. In return, Dead Leaves has a much less developed plot than AWS does, but in return for this the main characters themselves are the driving force of the story. The characters in Dead Leaves always felt like they had a purpose, a goal, a destination, or a strength, while the convenience-filled plot of AWS makes it feel like the characters have none.
ART - 7/10
Definitely the most striking part of AWS is its art style, and it's what I enjoy the most about it. The strange proportions, street aesthetic, ridiculous moments of squash and stretch animation during intense combat scenes, and bright neon characters against dingy greys and browns of a dystopian world make this movie pop. It makes the movie quite fun to watch even if it has some plot problems, but unfortunately it doesn't really have a 10/10 look to it.
The biggest problem is that, in the latter half of the film, there were a LOT of uses of 3D. This 3D is poor. Really poor. My immersion got sucked out of the movie as I saw set piece after set piece of 3D backdrops that were obviously CG, and looked too generic and ordinary behind the interesting and stylish look of everything else. There's also notably poor animation in moments that aren't combat scenes - they obviously blew their load in this department, because outside of the action scenes AWS has a lot of moments that feel stuff or uninteresting visually.
I don't even think I need to bring up Dead Leaves in this topic - Imaishi's art style is too striking, beautiful, and enjoyable to watch to even compare to AWS.
SOUND - 4/10
I will say right now that I watched the English Dub of AWS because it was the easiest thing for me to get my hands on, and let me just say if I were to put that as a point here on my score it would probably be closer to a 2 or 3. The dub is notably poor - even if there are moments where a joke or two may make you laugh in the dub, that doesn't excuse the absolutely terrible attempts at lip sync in the movie, and the majority of the jokes in the dub fall flat. There's a lot of puns about poop and crap and butts, and that's about it.
The OST is also pretty boring as well. While the first 10 minutes or so get you hooked with an intense action scene and a banging dubstep song to bring you into the insane dystopia of this setting, the problem comes when you watch further into the movie. AWS' soundtrack feels like it's only one or two songs. If there are multiple dubstep songs in the movie, they all sound practically the same, and it gets kind of boring, especially when two tracks begin back to back - at this point I am literally giving the movie credit that they were multiple songs, because they all sounded the same to me.
In Dead Leaves, there's a slew of multiple different types of music that back it during it's half of a run time. While it is mainly electronic, the OST can be somber, quiet, or even a short and chill rendition of an opera track! This gives the movie itself more of a pop as it continues to change and introduce new songs as the movie plays, unlike AWS which plays a slew of songs that all sound the exact damn same song.
CHARACTER - 1/10
These characters are the worst. There's nothing enjoyable at all about the ridiculously unfunny, annoying, and irredeemable characters in AWS. They start the movie bickering and they bicker throughout the whole movie. I never felt a sense of camaraderie between them. These characters were absolutely annoying to follow because they never seemed to give a shit about anything but themselves. While the side characters may seem to have interesting quirks, they quite frequently are brushed aside or turned into one-note jokes that get old the first time they happen.
Comparing this to Dead Leaves, while the characters are similarly irredeemable criminals in jail for a nonsensical crime spree, what's important is how these characters interact. They grow closer, get feelings for each other, fight to save a group that's behind them, and most importantly they feel like they can do things themselves. It's not like in AWS where the protagonists are strung along by conveniences for an hour and a half.
ENJOYMENT - 5/10
There were some issues I had with the editing and some times it felt a bit nonsensical and poorly focused at times, I did really, REALLY enjoy the animation during fight scenes. That, and there were some times when visual gags or jokes were legitimately funny to me, so it wasn't all bad. It just had a problem with pacing, escalation, and character urgency that I couldn't shake.
Dead Leaves is one of my favorite works of all time. Again, why would I need to even talk about it in this section?
OVERALL - 5/10
It isn't a total crap-chute. There are times when it can be funny, and the animation is really enjoyable in the action scenes. The world that has been built is interesting and fun as well. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, though. It has a lot of problems with pacing, its tone gets grating after too much run time, the characters are annoying and lack agency, and the soundtrack is pretty repetitive. If you think you can enjoy an hour of crude jokes for 20 minutes of cool animation, you should probably go watch Dead Leaves instead because it's way more enjoyable than this for a multitude of reasons. However, if you're really starving for hyper-crude and hyper-violent animation, you MIGHT want to look into this.
