I know nothing of the original mangas, so I came at this totally fresh.
First - it looks good. The design of the world, backgrounds, artwork, everything looks suitably post-apocalyptic and creepy. A giant self-building city has spun wildly out of control and is trying to exterminate its few remaining human residents. Sounds great! And then what happens?
A bunch of entirely interchangeable human characters who we never learn anything about wander around the city, sometimes getting killed. They find a mysterious man with an insanely powerful pistol called Killy. Killy, as the central character, never says anything and just squints around angrily trying to look like Clint Eastwood.
At some point he discovers the functioning remains of Cibo, the one character with any backstory, and the only one of any interest in the plot. She is the only one who can help him and potentially save every one - and he throws her damaged head around like it's a piece of trash. What is this supposed to tell us about him? That in addition to being only able to say the words "...Net-Terminal.....Gene..." he's also an idiot?
The other characters have names but it's hard to tell them apart, as they have no distinguishing character traits and they all wear identical suits where you can't see their faces for 70% of the time. After the first action sequence, we have about an hour of dragging, expository dialogue scenes from them. Sometimes the same, ham-fisted exposition is repeated in its entirety for no reason at all. Musical cues are jarring and mostly horrendously misused, particularly with regard to Killy. It's as if the makers realised at some point that just saying nothing isn't enough to generate his mystique, so they decided to have the piano riff from 'Walking in Memphis' by Cher play every single time there's a close up of his face. That'll do it!
I still enjoyed watching this because of the impeccable artwork, hence my five stars. Ultimately though a shame to see so much potential wasted - the writer and director really should have been fired.
First - it looks good. The design of the world, backgrounds, artwork, everything looks suitably post-apocalyptic and creepy. A giant self-building city has spun wildly out of control and is trying to exterminate its few remaining human residents. Sounds great! And then what happens?
A bunch of entirely interchangeable human characters who we never learn anything about wander around the city, sometimes getting killed. They find a mysterious man with an insanely powerful pistol called Killy. Killy, as the central character, never says anything and just squints around angrily trying to look like Clint Eastwood.
At some point he discovers the functioning remains of Cibo, the one character with any backstory, and the only one of any interest in the plot. She is the only one who can help him and potentially save every one - and he throws her damaged head around like it's a piece of trash. What is this supposed to tell us about him? That in addition to being only able to say the words "...Net-Terminal.....Gene..." he's also an idiot?
The other characters have names but it's hard to tell them apart, as they have no distinguishing character traits and they all wear identical suits where you can't see their faces for 70% of the time. After the first action sequence, we have about an hour of dragging, expository dialogue scenes from them. Sometimes the same, ham-fisted exposition is repeated in its entirety for no reason at all. Musical cues are jarring and mostly horrendously misused, particularly with regard to Killy. It's as if the makers realised at some point that just saying nothing isn't enough to generate his mystique, so they decided to have the piano riff from 'Walking in Memphis' by Cher play every single time there's a close up of his face. That'll do it!
I still enjoyed watching this because of the impeccable artwork, hence my five stars. Ultimately though a shame to see so much potential wasted - the writer and director really should have been fired.