This series is tagged with words like vague, ambiguous, obtuse, etc, but the really important one is INCOMPLETE; it's not easy to tell if something will remain vague until the work is complete. but it's true that few ideas are adequately explored or explained. Furthermore, both Kikuchi and Ashibe are in their 70s and there doesn't seem to be any plans to continue, and it's questionable whether or not they would care to return to something they dropped in the early 90s.
The work, indeed, bears some similarity to VHD: an enigmatic and asocial main character who is meant to be an overpowered badass; lots of quirky antagonists with unique powers; supernatural elements; elegant or gothic imagery; style over substance, though this time there's a bit more of an arty or pseudo-philosophical veneer that accompanies the flashy animation. I'd say this occupies territory somewhere in-between the two VHD films. It doesn't have the budget to compete with Kawajiri's souped-up visual spectacle, but it's far more polished than the mess that is the original VHD.
There is a strong synchronicity of sound design and visuals to create a compelling atmosphere, as well as the entertaining pulp of its well-animated action and set-pieces. Even if the ideas and storyline are a little half-baked, it's certainly more compelling than your average action sci-fi romp, and its clear that a completed work with the same level of production quality and more fleshed-out and, most importantly, COMPLETE script could easily be an excellent work of art with a great deal of potential. The ambiguity, the strange illusory nature of Darkside's tenement building, and the dream aspect are especially intriguing.
Of course, it has its flaws other than being unfinished. Some of the events seem pointless, and there are too many characters to have very in-depth characterization and development in the span of just 80 minutes, so there really isn't much there. It can definitely seem a little cheesy or b-movieish, and this definitely isn't a cinematic masterpiece. Many of the events don't flow together so well or can be a bit jarring.
The story seems alright—it's a kind of dystopic/cyberpunk sci-fi with a dark, somber atmosphere, sometimes leading some to lump it into the horror genre. Themes of globalization and new world order are explicit in the Persona Century Corporation (PCC), which owns pretty much the entire world. There are the expected groups of rebels who oppose them.
Where everything becomes a bit more speculative is with the character Darkside. He acts as a catalyst for many of the events that will come, reminding me of the mysterious man in Texhnolyze who creates chaos in the underground city to "further human evolution."
For those who are interested, I'll provide some details that I gleaned from both the manga and the anime. Most of the remaining portion of this review will summarize or clear up a few events and make comparisons between the manga and anime:
There's a device called the Mirror of Arbis, which seems to be a portal to another dimension. For some reason, Darkside was placed in this dimension by PCC when he was 3 years old, and he developed rapidly into a full-grown man with incredible psychic powers. At the very beginning, he rides out of a wormhole from the fourth dimension on a flying horse and buggy. Why he was sealed away, the nature of the dimension, and what allowed him to leave is a complete mystery.
Darkside assists our protagonists against PCC numerous times, and he specializes in some sort of dream therapy that allows people to be "renewed." This is all very unclear, and while we can't known what the creators intended for this renewal process and its importance to the plot, it can be seen as a sort of psychotherapy, but much more direct, allowing him to enter into the subject's mind and dramatically reenact his or her memories; he even uses what appears to be the same process against Enji, so it was probably going to be used to "renew" both commoners, heroes, and villains alike.
The source material consists of a 380-400 page condensed manga, and if you read this with hopes of finding out more... spoiler warning, you won't find much else. The anime is a pretty faithful adaptation, with a few scenes cut, added or reworked. There is a sort of elegance to much of Ashibe's art, with some of the more elaborate scenes reminding me of artists like Suehiro Maruo; however, the backgrounds are often rather simple, other than establishing shots and more stylized sequences; unlike, say, an adaptation like Berserk, where the anime is inadequate at adapting the technical precision of Miura's art, Darkside Blues is an adaptation that is mostly superior. The imagery is improved, and it benefits greatly from sound and animation. Most of the changes in the anime were actually for the better.
The ending is about the same in the manga, but the man with the mask (who I think may be a distinct character from Guren in the manga) is revealed to be Guren at the end of the anime and there's a confrontation between him and Mai, which partially develops/resolves a subplot... kind of. This isn't in the manga, but it makes the anime feel more well-rounded. The nature of the dialogue between Selia and Tatsuya about peace and tyranny is pretty much the same, but possibly expanded a little bit in the manga. Near the end of the anime Enji is ordered to kill Darkside, beginning an interesting sequence where a whole city block is turned to stone, although Enji's fate is... left open to interpretation; this never happens in the manga either, and may have possibly been more of an invention by the adaptation team to give the appearance of more closure and to shoehorn a nice fight scene in at the end.
Another difference is a very strange one: during the scene where Tamaki tortures the rebel, she is holding a replica of what appears to be the fake control center that the rebels bombed while thinking it was the real one, and a scene is shown between two workers, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, and when the girl's body is turning into gold, Tamaki rams the replica into one of her wounds. It's very weird and may have been seen as too graphic for the adaptation.
Other than that, Katari is changed up a little bit and actually has a few short lines of dialogue in the anime, compared to his effeminate and mute character in the manga. The little sphere he holds isn't in the manga, but it's a good symbol to represent Darkside's opposition to the current order.
