Reviews

Genma Taisen is thoroughly gorgeous. Its visuals are just what you'd expect from when it was made and whose behind it. The animation carries this movie, really bringing a lot of its concepts to life. I wonder why it has a 5.15 on here, though I'd estimate that because while the visuals are well done and interesting, the story probably doesn't hit for most people. I'd say the story here is only just decent, and most of the characters, besides the protagonist, are pretty flat. Still, the movie is a long, winding journey full of interesting visuals and scenes, so I wouldn't pass up on watching it if you're interested in anime movies from this period.

I imagine that Genma Taisen's weaker links are a result of its format. It's a movie, and like many anime movies from this period, it's more then 2 hours long. Also like other anime movies from this period, it's trying to fit a lot more then it can into film's more limited format. While with a series like an OVA or a TV show, you have anywhere from 10 to 50 episodes to work with, movies rarely exceed two hours and twenty minutes, and when they exceed two hours to begin with, there's a good chance they'll start to drag.

Considering how many characters this movie has, and how only one of them, our protagonist Azuma Jo, gets any real development, I believe they just didn't want to cut out anything. They came up with these characters and especially wanted them in place to make the story seem more globally significant, since the other characters are from places like Taiwan, India, New York City, etc... Basically, they had these characters designed and mostly thought out, but struggled to make them do anything but just appear in the story. Only one of these characters gets an introductory scene - the rest are just basically flung into the plot.

But even these weakly developed characters are better then the plot, which is presented in a rather dreary, apocalyptic fashion, but is basic and predictable underneath that prophetic window-dressing. Bad guy energy wants to destroy everything, the universe's life energy intervenes to make sure that doesn't happen, and so our story begins... in the end, something about love being greater then hate; you know, typical feel-good messaging. The movie comes off as quite New Age. The New Age movement is where it gets its psionic abilities, its global nature, and its basic spiritual themes of love conquering all, yadda-yadda. Maybe since I'm normal and don't subscribe to any New Age spirituality, and instead rely on hierarchal Catholicism, this wishy-washy message comes off as boring. Don't get me wrong, pure dualism can be thematically interesting, but not here. The plot itself is a device; a device to give us the movie's stunning visuals and animation.

And since it gives us that, I can't say it's so bad it isn't worth watching.

When we look at anime and even film, half of it is plot, characters, writing, and the other half is visual. A movie can be mediocre on one half if the other half excels. It won't be a masterpiece, but it'll be "good." And that's why I'll call Genma Taisen "good."