3 minutes. That's how long it will take You to see what Demon City Shinjuku is. Hell, even one minute should be enough. When one sees a guy with a sword on top of the skyscraper facing the other guy armed likewise, and their fight begins with a jump AS high as said building than it is quite easy to tell the genre, now is it not?
Well - for me it was.
In this fight Shinjuku (district in Tokyo) becomes Demon City Shinjuku and the victor of the fight - Levih Ra - becomes it's ruler. Until one year later he is challenged by some brave ones in order to do what? Of course, save the world. Because like You did not know, world must be saved by beautiful girl whose skills are incredible as far as diplomacy and giving official dinners goes, and one guy who knows how to swing boken.
Nothing saves the world better than official dinner with some bokken swinging, I kid You not. Army? Why - after all, what can a pistol or even a chopper do what good boken wielder cannot...
So I think You know what to expect. Now here is this little thing: HOW they actually pulled this through and if this is WORTHY of You watching it.
Well they SOMEHOW pulled it through and it IS NOT.
Onto details then.
Animation[/b]
There are not many characters here - so I could not take one for the other. If the cast were bigger though...
However there would really be no problems in noting who is Good and who is Evil, no problems at all. Once again Standard Evil Army is used by the animators to awaken fear in our hearts - and once again SEA fails completely to do so - in my case all that was 'awaken' was a mere yawn. Hardly fear-inducing monsters threw themselves at main hero's bokken and he just dealt with them making me slightly more bored with each passing monster.
So there are GOOD GUYS - human looking figures - basically GUYS. And we have EVIL GUYS - (no shit?! Really?!) non humans that's for sure. Pretty standard fare, nothing to really make one interested, with exception of the fights. These I found better drawn than in Samurai Deeper Kyo.
Luckily from close ups faces were faces and facial expressions were ok, it's quite another matters that it annoyed me as it annoyed me because those were wrong facial expressions at wrong time (like later told in character section).
Sound[/b]
I cannot remember even single tune, and I don't think it is a good thing, therefore my rate. I think the VA were OK. I may be wrong. In fact, it all was plain vanilla, VA, BGM, OP, ED, SFX - ALL.
Story[/b]
Well - story basically is just a pretext here to show You "cool" fight scenes. Unfortunately I do not find them cool. They are ok, some even are good. Cool? If this gets 'cool', Kenshin goes through the roof and blows up the scale.
This is the story which one can label like:
there is this bad villain, /in a menacing, gloomy voice, full of silent threat...
but there is this main hero!! //praising voice full of proper respect and merry
This is simple and dated bokken action flick - same formula like all those old karate/kung-fun/whatever one hour movies. What do You expect here?
Characters[/b]
Not characters.
- NO. You do not expect good characters here.
- NO. I do not expect good characters here.
- These are not the characters You are looking for.
- These are not the characters...
OK, on a serious side, one line to summ it up for everybody curious: Your average fighting anime character fare, including mad-laugh villain, 'I don't care for the world' adept who kicks ass with (laughable and trite) attitude and noble girl (read: damsel in distress).
Remeber when I mentioned evil guys in the animation? Always somehow deformed EVEN when taking human form, one can tell them clearly by looking even from far away. Now we have our main heroine entering Shinjuku with perfect knowledge what she will find there (monsters, abductions, rampant violence etc.) and what does this girl do there? She wants to save her father of course. How? Good question! I never got around to (some) answer and I must confess, I watched whole movie, yes, I know, shame on me. I guess she planned on charming the villain with... eee... something, I guess. Now now, she would not be so stupid as to go there emptyhanded, now would she? (Chorus: yes, she would!).
I mean here this nice and well brought up girl goes on the quest to save her father to demon city (very badly rumoured place) and when she is caught there she is oh! so surprised - what the hell?! What did she expect actually? Nice welcome and party?
SEA doesn't count for characters, so there's nothing more here.
Value[/b]
Nothing to keep You remember this, nothing to want You own it, not even a thing to make You keep it, if somehow it landed in Your hands.
Nothing stucked with me after seeing this, nothing, not even animation, not to mention all other parts. Same as with all these movies where the protagonists is just some martial artists who's supposed to show how his style kicks ass by making a sort of 'demo' movie.
