Anime Meta-Review
Crystal Triangle
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Title Info
- alias: Kindan no Inoku Shiroku Crystal Triangle
- type: movie
- grade: flawed
- made: 1987
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
I thought the title was going to refer to some sort of romantic triangle, but boy was that off target. Instead the story goes that when god gave moses the ten commandmants he also gave him a rather important ps. on the end of it. Sadly that information has been lost for thousands of years, despite the resources of a great number of interested parties. Of course some swashbuckling archeologist just has to go and discover a lost relic which causes all sorts of chaos.
It is a sad situation where I can criticise an anime for failing to hit the high targets it sets itself, but that's life. Basically this anime is determined to `wow' you and present epic scenes, but the less than perfect writing lets it down. As it goes on the action becomes increasingly `large' and increasingly unbelievable. Of course the signs are there from the start, with the hero being remarkably calm about being attacked by all sorts of things. It is also interesting to watch him make discoveries by virtue of completely trashing every archeological site visited during the movie. Of course given that all sorts of powerful forces, both political and mystical stand in his way perhaps it is best that he just puts his head down and gets on with it. Some of the character work is interesting, but as the power level climbs they become more and more irrelevant. Even one particular relationship, which is a fairly cool twist, doesn't quite manage to work. This is partly due to, or at least not helped by, the rather questionable ending. In effect there is just too much, too fast and with too weak writing to pull off the `epic' movie the creators were clearly aiming for.
The animation is older, but actually still has some impressive moments. I suspect this was done with a reasonable budget, as some of the animation is still complex by todays standards. The character animation for the main characters is really quite good, but it drops off sharply for lesser characters. A similar thing happens with voices. In addition there is both some english and some russian in the movie, and all I can say is I hope the russian sounded better. Is it really that hard to find a native english speaker in Japan? In addition the general weaknesses in writing also extend to the dialogue, which is fairly flat. The action, barring the weak technical design and general improbability, has its moments and is quite acceptable. Indeed some of the flight sequences are suprisingly ambitious and actually done quite well.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:16 WST 2009