Vexille - Movie | Toshiyuki Morikawa, Romi Park | Very Good Bioethical Sci-Fi Adventure

Vexille - Movie | Toshiyuki Morikawa, Romi Park | Vexille Takes Anime to the Next Level

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Vexille - Movie

	Vexille - Movie Toshiyuki Morikawa, Romi Park Funimation, 2008 average customer review:based on 75 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very Good Bioethical Sci-Fi Adventure

I am not one who typically watches Anime movies, but I thought that Vexille sounded like it had a very interesting story. I also don't typically like the drawing style used in Anime, but the stills on the product page hinted that Vexille would not be garden variety in this regard either. When the DVD arrived, I found that I had made a good decision in trying something new. Here's what I thought.

PLOT: The story is set in 2077 where Japan has adopted a policy of technology enabled complete isolation. Ten years prior Japan left the UN due to sanctions related to their research and development with androids conducted by the electronics giant, Daiwa. After Daiwa's enforcer, Saito, leads an assassination of world leaders on US soil, the elite military unit S.W.O.R.D makes an attempt to capture Saito before he and his team escape. When that fails, S.W.O.R.D. is sent on an unofficial mission to invade Japan in order to shed some light on the state of Japan's android development. The mission doesn't go as planned, and the majority of the movie is spent resolving the conflict that ensues.

After the failed mission Vexille, one member of the S.W.O.R.D. Team, encounters a group that is resistant to Daiwa and the Japanese government. Maria is the leader of this group of rebels who do not support the direction that Daiwa and the government are taking the country. The question of bioethics drives the plot to its climax and ultimate resolution.

The story moves rather quickly, and I found that I picked up on more details and saw how things fit together better with a second viewing. The good news was that I found it compelling enough that a second viewing was even more enjoyable than the first.

INFLUENCES: While I can't make an intelligent comparison to other Anime movies, it did seem to me that there are elements drawn from American Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Adventure. The climactic sequence lifts heavily from closing battle at the Death Star in Star Wars Episode IV. While it is not an exact replica, the similarities are striking.

There is also a scene prior to this where Maria, the leader of the Japanese resistance group, gives a speech that hearkens to that of William Wallace in Brave Heart.

Finally there is a scene involving the closing of a massive gate that took me back to the scene at the Black Gate of Mordor in Return of the King.

CHARACTERS: There were three compelling characters to me in the movie: Vexille, Maria, and Saito. Vexille begins the story with a very strong anti-robot sentiment; however, we see her perspective change based on how the story develops. She is a strong, fiery character that is easy to root for. Maria is the calm, cool leader with a slight Han Solo personality. However she is rational to an extreme and willing to make and take action based on difficult decisions. Saito is the Darth Vader figure for Daiwa. Ruthless and self confident, he makes a formidable focal point for the antagonist of the story, Daiwa.

RATING: Vexille has a PG-13 label, and I think this is a fair rating. The explicit language is about on par with this year's theatrical release of Speed Racer. The plot is one that is probably too deep and serious for younger children as well. However the story provides fairly rich ground for ethical discussions with kids in the middle and high school age range.

CONCLUSION: There is a lot to like about Vexille. It has a good story and characters that are strong enough to make multiple viewings enjoyable. If you like Sci-Fi/Fantasy animation, your odds are good on enjoying Vexille.

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Vexille Takes Anime to the Next Level

I used to think anime was just another word for cartoon. With films such as Vexille I have now come to realize, anime is an art form in its own right.
Vexille is a female agent with S.W.O.R.D., a unit of U.S. Navy specialists.
Set in the not-too-distant future, Japan has completely isolated itself from the rest of the world. The U.N. had banned Japan's newest technology advances in human enhancement, in fear of the creation of cyborgs, who would no longer be "human". When a body part of an executive of the Daiwa corporation is captured, it becomes apparent that the U.N.'s fear of cybernetic human enhancement is now a reality. S.W.O.R.D. sends a small, covert group of operatives into Japan in order to transmit a signal their computers can decode in order to break down the "barrier" Japan has set up around itself. The S.W.O.R.D. team is ambushed before they can complete sending the signal and Vexille is rendered unconscious. When she awakens a couple of days later, she finds herself a "guest" of the leader of Japan's resistance movement. Vexille vows to help the resistance take down Daiwa before Daiwa can take over the world.
Vexille is a beautiful film. The graphics are simply stunning. The attention to detail is astounding. Water effects, fire & explosion effects, detailed backgrounds and machinery are all amazing. This is one high quality animation. If there were no "people" shown in the film, you might not realize these are actually drawings.
The film features plenty of action and high-tech gadgetry to keep your interest. The story-line is a bit weak and predictable. Still, overall, Vexille is one film that anime enthusiasts will want to watch. It can also make an enthusiast out of a casual anime viewer.

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Suspense, Action, I Never Thought I Would Recommend an Anime Flick, But I Do

Before the movie begins you can click on audio setup and choose 5.1 surround in Japanese, or English. Fearing technological superiority and even dangerous entry into robotics, outside forces try to suppress Japan's progress. Japan responds by withdrawing into its own inner shell, where it can develop advanced technologies including android level robotics.
The movie itself is presented using advanced Star Wars like cinematic technologies. I'm not usually into anime, but this is of such a good quality, that movements of the "actors" are life like. The sound track and "cinematography" are excellent. The anime trade off is that you are losing the real visual actors, but that gives the writers and production designers a license to create scenes that would either be cost prohibitive, or nearly impossible at times, using conventional acting.
Daiwa robotics, the largest corporation in Japan, the creator of the antennae shield, blocking all communications, and radar signals, in and out of Japan, must be penetrated. That is the mission the US envoy is commissioned to achieve. Utilizing the shipping channel, the only port of access in and out of the country is closely monitored and scanned using laser detection. To say they successfully made it through would be an overstatement. The rest of the movie I would have to categorize, suspense, intertwined as an action movie.
All in all I would have to rate this as a good movie. An anime flick packed full of real emotions that is how well this movie is made. I still prefer real actors, though this is about as close as I can imagine to the real thing.

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The graphics can be stunning, the story works but feels a bit rehashed

The first thing to note about this film is that the graphics are (for the most part) pretty incredible and lifelike -- so much so that occasionally I forgot I was watching an animated film. That does credit to the animators, but can detract a bit from the experience because judged as a live action film Vexille is pretty hokey and melodramatic. In my experience I can be a lot more forgiving about odd or stilted characters in an animated film because they feel more like a dream that should be considered on its own merits and not compared to other things. When this film started to feel closer to but not quite like a live action film I couldn't help but compare it to the artificiality and stilted acting that comes up in a lot of ambitious but unsuccessful CGI films. To their credit, the filmmakers chose to render the characters in a way that wasn't totally lifelike (and avoided the strangeness of a film like Final Fantasy, or, worse, The Polar Express), and that took a little of the edge off, reminding me that the film should be assessed as an anime.

As far as the story goes, there are some intriguing new elements mixed in with ideas from Ghost in the Machine and Appleseed. According to the story Japan closed its borders due to increasing pressure from other countries to stop developing its android program. Ten years later they've reached a point where their androids are indistinguishable from humans and are beginning to replace world leaders with their own creations. A covert US group called SWORD works their way into Japan's borders in order to discover what they are up to -- and it turns out that things have proceeded much further than anyone expected. One of my favorite elements of the film were the metallic wormlike giants that inhabited the wastelands -- their structure was obviously an homage to the worms in Dune but they were distinctive enough and impressive enough on screen that they felt original. It is not entirely clear why the filmmakers chose to make this story ultimately one about Vexille, the main character. I guess you have to have a main character, and it may as well be a tough woman with a soft spot for the lover she fears she is going to lose, but the fact that the film is named after her suggests it is about some profound life discovery that is personal to her. It really isn't. The film is mostly about a couple of US military types and some rebellious Japanese trying to stop an insane robotics expert from taking over the world. The subplot, about Vexille's confused emotions and concern about her lover, who seems to harbor dark secrets or regrets from the past, doesn't really come across very clearly and tends to detract from the primary story when it surfaces. This film won't be an enduring classic like Akira or Ghost in the Shell or Paprika, but overall I found this to be an enjoyable flick, and one to watch if you are interested in computer animation or like robot or cyberpunk style stories and fun science fiction.

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Nice graphics, OK Plot and Characters

"Vexille" is both the name of the movie and the title character, a woman in SWORD, an elite American naval taskforce who spend most of their time in robotic combat suits on land. This is the second movie for director Femihiko Sori and he tries to bring in character development primarily via flashbacks which are also used to fill in plot information for the audience. Vexille's commanding officer, and perhaps her lover as well, is Leon, whose ex, Maria, now leads a resistance force in Japan. What is there to resist in Japan? In 2067 the nature, controlled by business giant Daiwa, supposedly isolates itself from the rest of the world over android development. However, Japan is not really isolated so much as hyper secretive because it is trading it's robots world wide. By 2077 Japan decides to make a move on the rest of the world and only a secret mission from SWORD can figure it all out. As I watched this I was impressed with the computer animation though the perfection of the human figures still creeps me out a bit. However the emotional ties between the characters, especially Vexille and almost anyone else felt forced. Just because she's female doesn't mean she'll latch on so strongly to anyone; she should have military training to be more professional after all. The nightmarish world of Japan was well done though it seemed odd that resistance would survive for a decade given what was happening to everyone. "Vexille" isn't a bad movie but it certainly isn't the best movie out of Japan I've seen.

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