Continuing in my series of reviews unearthed from my notes page, here's one of a popular Anime series. Starting with the scores:
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed, The Far-Away Dawn, 2002
Script/Story: 3
Acting/Casting: 2
Action: 8
Combat Realism: 3
Humor: NA
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 7
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 4
Overall: 3
I can't point you to quite what I saw on this DVD, since it doesn't seem to exist on IMDB. I think
I saw this one, but the box cover is different and the plot summary doesn't quite match up. There are about
70 other Mobile Suit Gundam titles on IMDB too, but none of them match the title exactly.
At any rate, I was pretty disappointed in this one. I'd long heard that
Gundam was one of the better mech-based anime series, and when I saw a movie-length title at the library, I snapped it up. This wasn't any good, but it was somewhat entertaining. In any event, at least now I know better.
The box cover of this DVD said it had all new footage, which I took to mean they were squeezing in a bunch of footage from the TV series and supplementing it with a few bonus scenes in an effort to plump out a cash cow DVD release that fans would have to buy. I couldn't tell what was new and what wasn't, but it all looked about the same animation quality, aside from a very few short bits of pure CGI, which always stood out in contrast to the hand animation.
The film played like a greatest hits of an existing series, since there were dozens of characters, none of whom had any sort of introduction or background given before they appeared on screen. I had a hard time keeping them straight, and I'm sure a fan of the series would have gotten more out of this than I did, but that was far from the biggest stumbling block.
My biggest annoyance was the acting, or whatever you call it when its animated. Almost all the lead characters are high-strung, overly-emotional 16 y/o's, who are of course entrusted, without any supervision, at the controls of the most powerful war machines ever created. The movie is essentially a long series of crappy robot battles, broken up by scenes of more or less identical blue-haired teenagers screaming at each other and crying. It's not unwatchable, but I only made it through the dialogue with generous use of the fast forward button.
The battles aren't much better, as they consist primarily of lots of small planes and missile installations being destroyed by the first mech to turn towards them. You have to wonder how they're finding anyone to man the guns or fly the fighters when their survival rate in any battle with a mech is about .01%. Surely they could be automated more efficiently and cheaply? Nevertheless, every battle is filled with shots of soldiers diving for cover and screaming as fireballs engulf them, courtesy of some 15 y/o busy having an emotional breakdown, mid-battle, from within the complete safety of his/her mech.
As for the overall story... who knows. It's something to do with alien invaders, who are called ZAFT or "the Coordinators," as they battle against the Earth forces who are also called "the Naturals." The aliens look exactly like humans, so I'm not sure if they're actually aliens, or just humans who moved into space some generations ago and then turned on the home planet. I also don't see any sign of coordination between the invaders, or any reason the earthlings are called naturals; it's not like the invaders are all Borged out with cybernetics or anything.
They're fighting, at any rate, but it seems a fairly one-sided war, as ZAFT launches one raid after another on earth's defense headquarter locations. They're not just nuking cities, kindly enough. Adding complexity/confusion is a third power, an earth nation called the Orb. (Not for their shape either, as far as I saw.) Orb tries to remain neutral in the war (if that makes any sense when their planet is being attacked), but they have kick ass guns of their own, sort of like a well-armed Switzerland.
Complicating things are background relationships of the leads. One of the leading ZAFT mech pilots apparently was best friends with some of the leading Earth force pilots. They knew each other in military school, or something like that, though it's hard to see how when they're all like 14 now. It's not an Ender's War kind of brilliant child war movie either; they're just flighty and hysterical and pouty and all the other stereotypes of teenaged behavior in most animes -- they're just piloting multi-billion dollar death machines while they do it.
Some pilots nearly kill each other, but eject just in time, and regain consciousness in a hospital on the enemy ship, but they're really very friendly in person, and then some ZAFT scientist has a super new mech but he thinks the captured earth pilot should get it since he's a nice guy, and his daughter likes him, but other people don't understand, and then it's treason, and then Orb is suddenly losing, and then mechs show up at the last second, and then Orb is sending out some space ship with their young and talented in it, and ZAFT is trying to stop them, and it just goes on and on.
If you knew the series and the characters and such, you might enjoy it. I was mostly confused and disinterested as one pack of flighty teenagers after another had a shouting argument that ended in confusion or was interrupted by another inconclusive space battle. Plus, since this is all an extension of the TV series, there was never any introduction to the characters or their situations. The scene would just cut to another group of characters we were supposed to know and care about already, since the movie didn't give us any info about them or reason to give a damn what they were doing.
It's pretty much prototypical anime, in other words. If you don't get it you don't know enough about it, and if you don't like it then it's not for you.
Labels: anime, movie review
