I went into this movie with no expectations whatsoever, and came out blown away. If you see only a single movie this year, make it this one.

Mardock Scramble begins brutally, with the rape and murder of a young girl, Balot. I thought at first that Balot would just be a throwaway character to introduce our heroic detective and evil villain, who would be the lead characters in a fast-paced action show. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mardock scramble turned out to be a deeply introspective film examining Balot’s past.

Balot

Balot is one of the most interesting characters I’ve seen in a while. Her first line in the film is “I wish I were dead.” When she is brought back to life, she is asked to visualize what she most wants, and a gun appears in her hand. The doctor assumes that Balot wants revenge against her murderer. But then Balot sets the barrel to her own cheek and pulls the trigger.

Suffice to say that Balot is a very broken person. Half of the movie takes the form of a walk around town with Oeufcoque, an AI who helps reveal her past, with interspersed gun fights and car chases. Initially, Balot is afraid to go to court because her past and her shame will be revealed to the world.

But her budding relationship with Oeufcoque changes her mind. Balot attempts to construct her relationship with Oeufcoque based on what she’s used to. She tells him she wants him to love her, and in exchange she’ll do whatever he wants. Oeufcoque tries to tell her that he isn’t a man and that she should do as she wishes regardless, but Balot has the impression that he wants her to go to court, and does so.

The court scene was my favorite part of the movie. Balot, since she can’t speak, is given three buttons to answer questions with: yes, no, and silence, along with a jeopardy-style writing stylus. The film managed to convey an incredible amount of information and emotion through these three buttons and a skillful use of flashbacks.

“When you were younger, did you engage in sexual relations with your own father?” Yes.
“Why didn’t you offer resistance?” I loved my dad.
“You loved him as a man?” No.
“Your brother offered violent resistance to your father when he learned of your relationship. Do you know why?” He loved me.
“As a woman?” No.
“Do you still love your father?” Silence.
“Do you love your father as a man?” I don’t know how to love my family anymore.
“Do you believe you are to blame for what happened to your family?” *hesitation* Yes.

Now this is a great way to tell the story of someone’s past: through flashbacks which are firmly grounded in the present, both emotionally and cinematically.

The Cycle of Abuse

By the end of the movie, the chain comes full circle, and Balot begins to abuse Oeufcocque, using him against his will to murder the villains. Oeufcocque has also been abused in the past, by the man Balot is fighting, and a built-in reaction makes him reject Balot. But Oeufcocque decides to accept Balot regardless, and fights against the reaction in response to Balot’s tearful apology. Balot is forgiven and cracks are formed in the cycle of abuse. At this point, the film ends on a cliffhanger with bullets approaching Balot. The credits roll and we go into a fitting rendition of Amazing Grace.

I’ve noticed that grace and forgiveness do not seem to factor into anime as much as western media. The focus instead seems to be on building trust in relationships. The only show that immediately comes to mind with a focus on forgiveness is Sola; does anyone else have thoughts on this?

Graphic Violence

Mardock Scramble does not pull its punches. It’s a very graphic film. We have some of the more complete depictions of rape in anime, exploding body pieces, and some utterly grotesque villains such as Welldone the Pussyhand. I thought this was a good thing, but be warned.

World Building

The world of Mardock Scramble is interesting and unique, but the main thing the film does so well is avoid getting bogged down in the details. The show doesn’t even bother trying to explain most of its sci-fi components. The film makes the spectacular seem mundane, because in Balot’s world, it is.

Final Thoughts

Balot’s characterization blew me away. The setting is fascinating and there’s just the right mix of well-scripted dialogue and action. My main complaint is that we have to wait now for the next two movies in the trilogy.

• Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Great script, especially that courtroom scene.
• Characters – 10 / 10 – Ten points here just for Balot. I didn’t even mention the villains, but they’re also quite fascinating (aside from the body parts gang).
• Production – 10 / 10 – A beautifully rendered world. Balot’s voice actor did an especially great job.
• Overall – A-

Recommendations – Ghost in the Shell (for a similar world, if little else), Phantom

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When Redline first came out, there were a lot of comparisons to Wacky Races floating around. If you haven’t seen Wacky Races before, do yourself a favor and go watch an episode now.

I loved Wacky Races when I was a kid. It was in the running with Roadrunner and Coyote for my favorite cartoon (you can probably see a theme here). So I was absolutely pumped for Redline‘s release. Unfortunately, all the hype left me a bit disappointed.

Wacky Races is… well… wacky. In the short segment I linked to, we have stop lights delivered by rockets, lassos, vehicles floating on top of geysers, and cars driven by bears, the mafia, and southern belles. Redline isn’t wacky in the silly way that Wacky Races is. A better word would be crazy— they bring things such as speed and danger beyond the point of ridiculousness. But the film never descends ascends into silliness and wackery. The only point of commonality between the two shows is a no-holds barred race. What is Wacky Races without being funny? It isn’t Wacky Races, that’s for sure. In its essence, Redline is not a film about a wacky race, but a drop of distilled manliness in its purest form.

Problematic comparisons aside, Redline is a fun movie. If you’re looking for an adrenaline-filled action flick, Redline‘s got pretty much everything you could ask for: absurd speeds, manly shouts, guns, girls, eternal friendship, betrayal, explosions, deranged robots, orbital bombardment, and battles between giant space monsters. The race takes place in the middle of a war zone. The film is certainly wild, if not wacky. In the end, the guy gets the girl, and our heroes win the race by literally a hair’s breath, running across the finish line at mach speed while their car explodes in the background.

The visuals are downright spectacular.  But the actual story and characters are decidedly less so. Much of the narrative comes across as an excuse to create explosions (not to imply that there is anything wrong with explosions!).

A few of the characters are mildly interesting, and I did enjoy seeing the relationship between JP, the mechanic and the junk dealer unfold. The spider mechanic coming to the junk dealer’s rescue was my favorite scene. I thought he was either going to defuse the bomb or shoot the junk dealer, not rescue him.

Sonoshee was the film’s weakest link, from my perspective. She began as a strong and independent woman, but ended up as JP’s long lost childhood friend, winning the race while sitting in his lap. Kind of sad. As for the rest of the racers… well, suffice to say that I couldn’t name a single one.

Redline’s an enjoyable watch, but it’s just not my thing. If you love action shows, though, be sure to give this a spin.

• Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – Action-packed with lots of explosions. Don’t watch this for the story.
• Characters – 8 / 10 – The lead and his two friends are interesting to watch, but the rest of the racers are neglected.
• Production – 10 / 10 – In the running for one of the best animated shows I’ve seen. Madhouse spent a lot of time on this, and it shows.
• Overall – B

Recommendations – Dead Leaves, Wacky Races

Since I’m late to the party on watching this, I have the opportunity to share a few interesting takes on the movie by people with better taste other bloggers.

• Yi examines oral sex and lips in Redline
• Animekritik discusses the names, robot writing system and Leijiverse tie-ins
• E Minor explains how the narrative fell short
• Ogue Maniax looks at fanservice and the “man of action” in Redline
• inushinde found Redline a ton of fun, but not a classic
• ghostlightning explains how badass Redline is
• Mr. A thought Redline was “visually splendid” but lacking story-wise
• psgels found Redline a “visual orgasm”, albeit not the best movie ever

Break Blade is a series of six movies following Rygart, a man who is extraordinary because of his lack of magical ability, in a world where everyone can use magic to control quartz and operate giant golems. An ancient golem is unearthed, and Rygart is the only one who can pilot it. He fights in the golem to save the kingdom which is beset by enemies on all sides, but mainly to save the life of his friends Sigyn and Hodr, the king and queen, fighting against their old classmate who fights on the opposing side.

From the description, Break Blade sounds like every other mecha show: boy finds mecha, only he can pilot it, and he does so for great justice, battling with his rival. In this sense, it has been done before, but it’s in the details where Break Blade is so interesting. First of all: these characters aren’t teenagers. There’s no teenage drama or coming of age or whatnot. The characters have already come of age and lived through their share of drama, and part of what makes Break Blade interesting is seeing how they have adjusted to it years later. As one example, this show had a love triangle where there is a mutual attraction between Rygart and the queen, Sigyn. Except Sigyn is married to Rygart’s best friend. To make things even more interesting, the marriage has cooled and the king encourages the two of them to get together. This makes for some very interesting relationship dynamics, to say the least.

The setting is unique as well. Instead of being powered by electronics or steam, the mecha are powered by the magic to control quartz. Quartz-powered mecha don’t have machine guns or laser beams or missiles. Their only weapons are hand to hand or a larger version of a blowgun. This makes the battles more interesting than in, say, Gundam, since there are no laser light shows or naked pink people, and instead we actually get good choreography and action.

Finally, the production quality is worthy of a series of movies made by Production IG. The backgrounds are fantastic, and I can’t praise the music enough.

My only complaint is that I wish it were longer. It had a satisfying conclusion, but I feel like there are more unanswered questions. Cleo especially was kind of left as a cliffhanger, and Rygart’s rival just kind of disappeared. It definitely deserves a sequel, but I doubt we’ll get one, at least not in the immediate future. The manga (which is also excellent, by the way) is at the point where the movies are now, so it’ll probably be a few years before anything else in the series is animated.

• Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Exciting story of the fall of an empire (I have a fetish for this kind of thing, like Simoun).
• Characters – 9 / 10 – Strong love triangle, villainous and interesting villains, and Girghe… wow. Just wow. (don’t want to spoil anything)
• Production – 10 / 10 – Beautiful backgrounds, and some of the best music in anything I’ve seen recently.
• Overall – 9.0 / 10

Recommendations – Simoun, Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari, Gundam

Kujo transfers from Japan to Europe to become a student, at a time when great changes are afoot in the world. At the top of the library tower, he meets a petite girl with blond hair who seems almost like a fairy, named Victorique. He plays Watson to her Holmes (complete with pipe) as she “assembles the fragments of Chaos” and solves mysteries, often involving fairy tales and the occult. Later on, she unravles the story of her own past.

Gosick is a tough series to review, because what I should really do is write two reviews: one for each half. The two halves come across as completely different. In the first, Victorique and Kujo attend class and solve random mysteries. The second half is a set of more closely connected mysteries revealing the secrets behind Victorique’s birth and the future of Europe.

The thing is, most of the mysteries in the first half are plain dumb. It’s painfully obvious who the criminal is for most of them. Sherlock Holmes is a genius, and this is illustrated by putting him on a completely different level from Watson. But Watson is also very intelligent. In Gosick, they try to make Victorique be a genius by comparing her with Kujo. But Kujo is an idiot (at least in the first half). To top it off, the side characters are annoying: the classmate in love with Kujo, the clumsy teacher with glasses, Victorique’s brother who needs her to solve all his cases for him and whose hair is shaped like a unicorn horn.

At this point I was toying with the idea of dropping the show. But then everything completely changed. They dropped the random obvious mysteries, and Gosick turned into a top-notch adventure series, exploring the story of Victorique’s past and her relationship with Kujo. Sometimes shows use the first half to better develop their characters and setting for the finale. But I can’t really convince myself that this was the case with Gosick. The initial episodes added very little. And oddly enough, the ending felt rushed. So they didn’t need to pad for time. I’m honestly not sure what the creators were thinking for the first half.

But the second half is great. The adventure is exciting, all the characters are fleshed out (even the guy with unicorn hair becomes a non-joke), and the mysteries are interesting. We even get some good politics and a bit of romance. Overall, I would probably rate the second half a 9, but the first half only a 7.

• Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – Huge divide between the first and second half.
• Characters – 8 / 10 – Most of the cast is well fleshed-out in the second half. Kujo’s classmates remain fairly weak, however. Kujo is too dumb in the first half.
• Production – 8 / 10 – Consistent (this is Bones after all) but I can’t help but feel even the animation improved in the second half. This may be my imagination.
• Overall – B-

Recommendations – Kamisama no Memochou, Dantalian no Shoka (for more moeblob detectives)

Makoto moves to a small town to live with his aunt while his parents are away, and meets his cousin Erio, who claims to be an alien and walks around wrapped in a futon. He forms a harem with two other girls, Maekawa and Ryuuko, and embarks on a quest to gain as many puberty points as possible.

Denpa Onna is cuteness overload, and this is the show’s main draw. Erio is sparkly and acts like a little kid, Ryuuko more or less is a little kid, and Maekawa’s main task is dressing up in random cute costumes. Makoto’s aunt is also disturbingly cute (see the image below). If you are obsessed with all things moe, you’ll love Denpa Onna.

If you aren’t… well, it still has its good points. It’s a SHAFT show, and Shinbo has managed to tone down his style to levels where it complements the story rather than dominates it.

As for the characters, most of them are excuses for more cuteness. Maekawa, Makoto’s aunt and Ryuuko are definitely entertaining to watch, although they aren’t particularly deep or anything. Erio really annoyed me though. She really starts out as nothing more than a moeblob who gets carried around wrapped in her futon in her cousin’s bicycle basket. She develops some over the course of the story… but not much.

The male lead, Makoto, is an improvement over your usual spineless harem protagonist. For one thing, he can hold his own in a conversation (he plays the tsukkomi). In addition, he’s a bit cynical and recognizes how boring he is in his accounting of the puberty points he earns each episode.

The dialog is fast paced and witty, as expected from SHAFT. As for the plot, we get to see a bit of Erio leaving her shell, but otherwise there isn’t much. The focus really is the cuteness.

• Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – Fast and witty script from SHAFT, not much of a plot.
• Characters – 7  / 10 – Moeblobs, but still entertaining (aside from Erio).
• Production – 9  / 10 – The usual SHAFT stylistic effects, but managed not to go overboard.
• Overall – C

Recommendations – Bakemonogatari, Haruhi, Arakawa Under the Bridge