Vexille - Movie | Toshiyuki Morikawa, Romi Park

Vexille - Movie | Toshiyuki Morikawa, Romi Park | Love, Pain and Adventure too

DVDs:

Vexille - Movie

	Vexille - Movie Toshiyuki Morikawa, Romi Park Funimation, 2008 average customer review:based on 76 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The best

This is the best anime full-length movie I've seen to date. Fantastic audio, powerful images, easy-to-follow storyline and just all around good entertainment. The chase scene is as different as it is tense.

We were just about to give up on anime when we got this one.

Love, Pain and Adventure too

Vexille is a animated sci-fi action triller set in the future. Brought to you by the creators of Appleseed with original score by Paul Oakenfold.

I am not a huge Anime, but I have to say this one has an in-depth story, along with realistic computer animation, which make this a film that will keep you on the edge of your seat and I would imagine that if you are a huge anime fan that you'll really like this, because I'm not and I enjoyed it. This move has love, pain, adventure, and a love for humanity all wrapped up in it. Prepare yourself for an action packed adventure that you will not forget.

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Quality hardcore Sci-Fi in shiny, pretty anime packaging

"Vexille" is a fantastic pastiche of various science-fiction movies, tales and characters that you've seen before (elements ranging from Dune, The Matrix, Blade Runner, The Minority Report, Waterworld, Judge Dredd comic books, Mad Max, etc.) yet surprisingly is your rare feature-length anime film that actually maintains a coherent narrative from start to finish. While many reviewers have commented that the story is nothing original, I for one found the premise fascinating - a Japan who sinks back into total isolation after refusing to comply with UN restrictions on robotic technology and the subsequent U.S. special forces covert mission to investigate whats behind Japan's robotic curtain. This premise alone provides numerous social commentary talking points in regards to Japan's isolationism after first encountering Western traders, parallels with Japan's Imperialist drive leading to WWII and a good handful of standard sci-fi couch talk regarding Robotics and AI.

But forget the subtext for a minute. The animation is extremely well done utilizing the hybrid CG, rotoscoping and hand drawn style thats becoming prevalent in anime today. Mechanical designs are solid and intricate throughout and characters are all immaculately rendered and animated.

While I would've loved to give this disc 5 stars the lack of ANY special features (except for a handful of short trailers) was surprising. Regardless, the quality of video transfer is excellent and proper 5.1 Japanese and English audio tracks are provided.

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3.5 Stars, worth rewatching

The tone of this anime reminded me of Ghost in the Shell (either the movie or series). As is common in anime, the film has an opening dialog to explain something of where we are in the world. Japan is the industry leader in robotics and produces cutting-edge technology, but the world has an adverse reaction to their development of cyborg technology. The want to make human-looking androids. The UN (in all its power) rules that the production of Androids is illegal, so Japan throws a tantrum and locks themselves in their room. Literally. They use special emitters to diffuse all communication and even visible light that passes the borders. Foreigners were deported and a network created to blocks satellites from looking in. This same network alerts Japanese officials if any traffic tries to enter the country from sea or air without going through the one and only gate they've set-up for imports. When the movie begins, the rest of the world has not "seen" the face of Japan in over ten years.

The film opens with a bang. A government agency (SWORD) is swooping in on a mansion where a big wig from Daiwa Robotics is meeting with US Officials supposedly to get them to back android production. During the raid, one of the SWORD agents gets hold of the Daiwa man as he's picked up by a plane crashing through the building. They are both dangling from this plane when the man brings out a long knife and completely cuts off the leg the SWORD agent is holding onto. She falls to the ground but takes the leg back with her, where it is analyzed. During the tests, scientists find out that the leg is synthetic and made of a kind of bio-metal. This leads to speculation as to whether the man has other robotic limbs, and if the bio-signature they picked up when the scanned the mansion was even real. More stories unfold about androids appearing in America, until finally SWORD decides to sneak into Japan. They send a squad through the border to set up a device that will allow them to break through the network. What they learn is surprising and horrible.

Thought the first scene was exciting, the pace of the film is actually a bit slow. More importantly, it could be very confusing even if a viewer is paying close attention. I was frustrated at times wondering what was going on, but when I got to the end and "all was revealed," I thought the plot was pretty awesome and unique. The artwork was very good. The characters seem to be rendered using cell-shading, whereas robots and scenery are either hand-drawn or computer-rendered. At times this did bother me. Doing two very different styles made the movie look pieced together. Like when someone doctors a photo so the person is obviously not part of the background. Character development is a little strange, but I believe rightly so - there is a scene where the main character and a team member are gazing out over the city they live in and complaining that with the millions of people that live there, they hardly ever see or talk to anyone else as a result of the age they live in. I feel that the slower character development in the movie is an accurate reflection of living in this kind of society, as opposed to some flaw in the movie itself. This may have been what contributed to the "what is going on" feeling I had at times. This is not unlike how many people felt at the beginning of "The Matrix." And that turned out to be fantastic. The music was excellent and perfect for this type of film.

Overall, this was enjoyable and I'll watch it again to pick up some of what I missed in the first viewing. The story was well developed and interesting, and the overall look of the movie good. Recommended.

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Yet Another Anime Rumination on the Nature of Being Human

Nevertheless, Vexille has enough originality to make it worth watching. The basic premise: that Japan would choose to isolate itself from and in defiance of the rest of the world, has obvious parallels in Japanese history.

As our story begins, it has been ten years since Japan withdrew from the United Nations and went into self-imposed isolation in protest of UN sanctions imposing strict limitations on certain kinds of robotics research. Acting on a tip, an American Special Ops force, S.W.O.R.D., raids a secret meeting between Daiwa Corp. of Japan, the world's leading robotics provider, and representatives of the leading World Powers, but they arrive too late to prevent Daiwa from putting its plans, whatever they are, in motion. Still, evidence of the tremendously advanced state of Japan's forbidden android technology is recovered, and in combination with evidence gathered from a previous mission that produced the tip for this one, provides the impetus for a desperate black op. A S.W.O.R.D. team is ordered to infiltrate Japan and transmit a signal that will allow spy satellites to "see" Japan for the first time since an electromagnetic shield was set up in order to hide Japan from prying eyes. Unfortunately the infiltration team is discovered and destroyed before it can complete its mission and all is lost,...

or is it?

Though none of this is particularly original, it is at least recombined in interesting ways. Like virtually all non-Pixar motion capture computer animation, the characters here appear a bit lifeless, a bit inhuman, but that turns out to be less of a problem than you might think.

I wasn't expecting much when I selected this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised.

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