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Digital Devil Story
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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: flawed
- Other elements of this title:
- This title has been commercially released in Australia.
- This title may offend the sensitive.
- made: 1987
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
This could be a potential entry for the new `dumb fun' genre, sadly it's not much fun. The story starts out with a computer nerd seeking his revenge. However the nerd character is not accurately represented because a new female transfer student tries to talk with him and he snubs her and warns her off! (sacrilege) For that matter the computers aren't believable either, because his revenge is to use computers to summon up a `digital devil', complete with the archaic but very visual tape drives whirring in the background. In other words it is the familiar buckets of Goo and Gore Japanese monster movie with a thin shell of `tech' to try an make it look modern. Needless to say the monster goes rogue, allowing both the nerd and the girl to realise they have inherited magical powers. This leads to a long magical fight in another dimension which tries hard to be visually epic but largely fails. This may seem very spoiler full, but the story is so simple and fragile as to be irrelevant. This robs most of the depth from the movie's attempts to be tragic or horrific, leading to a empty and disconnected experience. The animation is fairly old, and shows some signs of budget restraint, which limits the attempt to be visually impressive. Given the virtual absence of story and the silliness of the plot this really does mean there are few reasons to see this movie. There are one or two moments that show promise, and you do sense that the creators wanted to produce something of value, but these just highlight the many flaws contained within this short anime. The reasons for it having an Australian commercial release escape me, the action and gore are very average, and there is little in the way or erotic content. Oh, and serious negative points for calling your demon from the deepest pits of darkness `rocky' (japanese Loki?), very hard to take seriously. Apprarently Megumi Hayashibara has a credit for "Kanou Fuyuki", which must be something of an embarassment.
None of the sites I source from has a review of this title.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:17 WST 2009