I went along to the preview of this at Zavvi (Manchester). I've been interested by its title but didn't know much more about it than what animenewsnetwork said about it.
It was hmmmm.
The animation was good quality, nice colours, well designed characters. I liked thier outfits, especially Toola's one towards the end. Neutral City amazed me, I'd love to see a model of that! So yeah visually it was very well done, not the best animation I've seen, but still good.
The story was nice and fairly well told. Sparrowhawk commented that it was a cross between Princess Mononoke and The Matrix. It definitely had the industry vs nature element in there. I did however feel it wasn't told as well as either of those two though. I think the main thing that has turned me off of it is the dub. I don't normally watch things dubbed (except Hellsing and any Ghibli), and though I was disappointed at the start I thought it was going to be ok. In my opinion the quality of the dialog deteriorated as it went on. By the end I was physically cringing at the cheesiness of it, which spoilt it a bit for me. The sub might be better and I am more than willing to re-watch it to see.
The other thing that made me wince a bit was a bit of the disregard for science. I don't normally have that problem with anime, but this one, well I guess it hadn't pulled me in enough to make me overlook it. It bugged me a bit, that combined with the dialog served to stop me from becoming too hooked as it went on.
One of the things I did really like about this was the music, especially the song playing when it went all 'other worldly'. The fight scenes didn't strike me as 'kick-arse' but they did make me wince for the right reasons which means they were realistic enough to effect me.
Overall? I wouldn't steer people away from this, but I would recommend a fair few other animes before I recommended this one. If you have the opportunity to watch it do. Meanwhile I'll try and get round to watching the sub to see if that helps as it was the dialog that put me off.
Nanashi Moriko *Not an Origins - Spirits of The Past fangirl*
27/05/08
