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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: archaic
- genre: mecha
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
Perhaps not as old as many other movies in this section, and probably newer than a lot of titles in other categories, nonetheless this movie has aged. The story concerns a young guy who is a member of a elite space trouble-shooter squad. Of course they are all young (16-23 sort of ranges) as befits this type of thing while seemingly skilled enough to be Earths primary (only?) defenders. Anyway, hostilities break out with an evil space empire, led by a darth vader clone with godlike powers, who considers earth dangerous. Our hero is told that he is actually the prince of this empire and that he has been chosen to destroy earth with a giant mecha (tm) with a bomb in it. The evil empire is shocked and suprised when he tells them that he doesn't want to slaughter everyone he knows, leading to the emperor getting really ticked off and declaring him an enemy. Fortunately our hero still happens to have his guardian mecha, and an ally from his past among the empire forces, to help defend the earth.
In other words it's a full on epic space melodrama with huge (combining) mecha in it. There's lots of angst and revenge stuff to give it a human dimension, and an awful lot of epic space battles, but it all feels so familiar. The whole huge space robot thing seems such an anachronism that the movie ends up being somewhat embarassing. Likewise the emotional stuff that underpins the action is so shallow and loud that it simply comes off as corny. It is not without some power, but it is all so obvious and staged that it isn't enough to keep watching through this quite long film. This may well be an extension (or origin?) to a TV series in which case some may enjoy it more. However as an independant product it is only for those who really like this genre or are into retro-anime.
Of course a lot of the problem comes from the fact that it is a very dinky looking mecha. It looks exactly like a guy in a metal suit made from boxes and has this fixation with going hand to hand, which is fine until it starts fighting starships. How it flies, who fuels it and repairs it, these all remain mysteries in the face of some really dodgy tech design. In addition people look strange and the action, both for people and craft, is quite repetitive and less than engaging. The animation isn't that bad, it just looks old and seems to have been made as minimal as possible. Added to this is the quite loud dialog, lots of screaming when someone's mecha takes a hit (not that it is mechanically linked to the pilot though) and some really corny music just when it doesn't need it. The true fan of retro mecha will probably enjoy some of it, but normal people will simply cringe.
None of the sites I source from have a review of this movie.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:19 WST 2009