Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Big Wars

Daisenki; Animated Science-Fiction, Japan, 1993; D: Toshihumi Takizawa, S: Hideyuki Tanaka, Hiroko Emori, Yuzuro Fujimoto, Michiko Neya

22nd Century: mysterious aliens invaded the Solar system and conquered planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, while indicating to do the same with the Earth and Mars. Commander Akuh looses a lot in one battle and returns to Mars after a vacation. There he meets his old friend Darsa who comes closer to him. In bed, she even turns out to be a nymphomaniac. Akuh quickly realizes, the aliens have possessed her and kills her in self-defence, discovering a hidden microchip implanted deep in his skin from her. It shows the weak spot of an enemy spaceship, so Akuh and his team get in there and despite hallucinations plant a bomb, exiting just in time before a spectacular explosion.

Sufficient Sci-Fi action anime film "Big Wars" uses the plot from the manga in a outstretched and tiresome way, Japanese comic books that are often the source of original stories but sometimes also of heavy misfires. "Wars" don't have humor, charm or any kind of spirit, while the meagerly atmosphere gets even more disrupted by some hallucinations of the hero Akuh, some of which are rather tasteless (for instance, when he spots his naked girlfriend's dead body decomposing). Director Toshihumi Takizawa doesn't have much to say, but one should praise at least the middle part of the film for it's peaceful romance between Akuh and Darsa on Mars and the fact that the alien invaders remain unshown, even though they all got easily overshadowed by the ton of mistakes that didn't serve justice to the promising, wildly imaginative story.


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