Review of Blue Remains

Introduction

I`ve not watched any real anime since about 1993 when Channel 4 had a bit of an anime night, with Akira as it`s main attraction of the night. I taped and watched it, and never really got it. I`ve seen a lot of anime reviews where reviewers are falling over themselves about how good anime is, and I thought `Was I wrong? Or has it just improved?` With this in mind, I approached this with an open mind, hoping it would be just like a normal movie with plot and effects but that everything would be animated.

Blue Remains is set in a world laid waste by nuclear war. Amamiku is charged with the task of restoring the earth which sparks a frantic race between the remains of humanity struggling for survival, and the disembodied brain, Glyptofane, a fanatic being, who sees mankind as a plague. He has programmed his robotic army to destroy them. Amamiku must overcome this overwhelming threat, so she can complete her parent`s work and make the earth fertile once again.

I copied the middle bit directly from the news item on the DVD release, as to be honest I would have struggled to come up with a plot synopsis that made sense. This may give you a clue as to how much I enjoyed this film.

Video

An anamorphic widescreen presentation, the picture is a bit of a disappointment for a lot of the film. I`ve always considered that the height of the viewing experience is a sharp and well-defined picture, but too much of this film has been shot in a soft focus so that you don`t really feel you`re watching something well put together. I know it`s set underwater, but using soft focus is lazy in my view.

Confirmed in the interview included, it can be seen that more than one team of animators worked on this film and the differences between some of the sequences is quite jarring. Some of the work, presumably the latter team, is quite lush and has a very lush 3D sheen to it. Some of the other work just looks lasklustre and wouldn`t have been out of place in Battle Of The Planets. This is not to diss BOTP, which was a childhood favourite, rather that animation has made leaps and bounds over the last twenty or so years, but on viewing some of this, you wouldn`t think so.

Audio

The dialogue is clear and subtitled, some of the subtitles contain simple transposition errors and some just change the dialogue completely. The soundtrack is in 5.1, and some of it does sound quite impressive, but there are also a lot of annoyances. The main craft that the heroes use has a series of metallic wings/fins used to move through the water, so you get a constant ticking noise whenever it is moving slowly on-screen. This can get really annoying very quickly.

The music on the other hand is very good. Lush orchestration and subtle melodies make you believe it is the work of a finely tuned orchestra, but it was all, in fact, created by two people using synthesisers.

Features

An interview with the writer/director Hisaya Takabayashi, who doesn`t seem to think he should be called a director. The interview doesn`t focus on the film too much, thankfully, more on the state of Japanese anime and what it is like to work in the animation industry.

Trailers for Blue Remains and A.L.I.C.E

Bio`s for Toshitumi Takizawa (director), Hisaya Takabayashi (writer/director) and Haruhiko Mikimoto (designer). These are just straight forward text.

One of my gripes is that I was under the impression that this release came with a featurette called `Final Fantasies - a history of CGI animation` plus a commentary with Jonathan Clements. Neither were on the disc presented to me for review. I don`t mind missing the second as I have no idea who Jonathon Clements is and certainly don`t think he could have made me rethink what I thought of this film. I was really looking forward to the featurette though and very disappointed it wasn`t here.

Conclusion

The writer/director Hisaya Takabayashi sums this up best for me. In the interview, possibly the best thing about this disc, he states that there was no screenplay for this film and that the writing was done as they came up with continuity sequences. I was afraid at first that something was lost in translation whilst viewing this film, and now I can just see that the total lack of cohesion and sense came from the way it was put together.

The story, a definite misnomer in this case, jumps all over the place and also has that typical Japanese big scale to it that I`ve seen in the glimpes of the cartoon my kids watch. You`ll see the human characters state that 400 Gambons (a direct lift from The Matrix in terms of how they attack) but amazingly the small craft they inhabit has enough torpedoes to eliminate them all. The main attack vehicle of Glyptofane also changes sizes depending on which sequence of the film you are watching. Speaking of which, Glyptofane is one of four beings that appear to rule or oversee the Earth, but despite him going against the wishes of the other three, only Glyptofane seems able to take direct action of any sort. No real logic there in my view.

I`m sure you`ll have reached the conclusion that I didn`t enjoy this, and you`d be right. For me the 77 minute running time is 77 minutes too long. I had some hope that this would be enjoyable and I do think the potential for a good adult-oriented animated film is there, but this is not it. Maybe I won`t be looking to watch Final Fantasy at all now either…