Shisha no Teikoku

By the 19th century, humanity has cultivated technology enabling the reanimation of corpses. Unable to experience individual thoughts or emotions, the corpses are programmed by humans to act as laborers in various occupations.

This newfound technology, however, comes with a catch. Science may be able to restore the corpses' ability to move, yet it cannot return what every corpse loses at death: the soul. But Doctor Victor Frankenstein, who vanished shortly after his revolutionary work on corpse reanimation, is said to have revived the only corpse in possession of a soul.

In pursuit of this scientific knowledge, London medical student John Watson hopes to fulfill his promise to his late partner, Friday. After being scouted by a government agency, Watson is on a hunt to obtain Frankenstein's notes, which he believes hold the key to the secrets of the soul. During his search, Watson uncovers the harsh realities of the developing corpse technology and the price he must pay to advance his research.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Friday Main

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Watson, John H. Main

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Lilith, Hadaly Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Krasotkin, Nikolai Supporting

Yamashita, Daiki Japanese

Karamazov, Alexei Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Burnaby, Frederick Supporting

Kusunoki, Taiten Japanese

Seigo, Yamazawa Supporting

Saitou, Jirou Japanese

The One Supporting

Sugou, Takayuki Japanese

Holmes, Mycroft Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Wada, Jouji Producer, Executive Producer

Nakatake, Tetsuya Producer

Okada, Maiko Producer

Reviews

Feb 29, 2016

xFatty

Recommended

This review is my very biased opinion. I am a huge sucker for redjuice and EGOiST and it will be apparent in the review.

Let's start with the good point(s).

Art: 10
The art and animation is amazing. Redjuice has provided the movie with some great character design followed by incredible backgrounds, animation of scenes and effects.

Story: 3
The story is hugely inspired by Frankenstein. This might be due to me not being able to understand the story, however it mostly seemed like a mediocre fanfiction which includes major characters from many classic western novels such as Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes books and more. This might be due ... to the fact that this is a movie adaptation from a novel. With knowledge of all the characters (I only knew about 30% beforehand) this might be an interesting approach.
The movie has a lot of plot holes, pretty much nothing is explained or showed (unless this is caused by my lack of understanding) and the story pretty much uses the most cliché plot twists to a point where it's not even surprising at all. In the same way action scenes seemed hollow and seemed to follow some kind of cliché setup taken directly from the worse end of Hollywood action movies.
The events defy common logic and the choices made by the characters makes no sense but this is something you'll see in many old novels (in my very biased opinion).

Sound: 9
Soundtracks wasn't used a lot (unless I failed to notice) which in my opinion was a nice decision which made the movie feel closer to the time of the events (19th century).
I was quite impressed by the sounds the zombies made and the sound effects in general were nice.
The 2 ending themes, Door by EGOiST and another one was quite nice and fit the movie really well, but they were the only clear instance of music or soundtrack (I might be very bad at noticing soundtracks).

Characters: 5
Even if the art of the characters are 10/10 the characters themselves are quite mediocre. The characters don't seem to resemble the source material (how they are in their respective books) and seem to fit a stereotype quite well. Without spoiling too much, the sidekick Barnaby (I'm pretty sure it's Barnaby) is basically random sidekick nr. 1.

Enjoyment: 8
This was quite enjoyable to watch as the art (backgrounds, characters & animation quality) was so good that I could fap to it. The story was interesting, as it used tonnes of references and had some really great ideas, but it wasn't good enough to keep me hooked. Questions I wanted answered during the movie was usually like: How are they going to explain this? The answer was it wouldn't be explained. The characters, while not being unique, they weren't terrible either so just mediocre.

Overall: 7 (I allowed myself to vote 8 on it for bias)
Quite similar to Guilty Crown by having superior art and bad story.
Also had other Guilty Crown feels and elements (Guilty Crown haters shouldn't watch this imo :>)
Might not be the movie you remember as the best but it is definitely enjoyable as you watch it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Feb 25, 2019

AppleDangani

Mixed Feelings

Shisha No Teikoku (The Empire of the Corpses)
By: Ryoutarou Makihara
Dated: February 26, 2019

Overall: 6

Plot: 5/10

"This one looks great, I'm going to watch it." That's the first thing I uttered when I saw this movie. It looks interesting, and magnificent. It looks like a whole new idea that comes to life. But nah, not all expectations come true and it is reaLly disappointing. I don't know if I'm just stupid not to understand what this movie is trying to say. Watching this movie, I can't count the number of times I hope that all the questions will be answered in the end. All the disturbing, ... confusing statements will be explained, but it left me hanging. Well, there is the fact that the story tackles an economy where the main source of manpower is zombies. Interesting, isn't it? The dead came back to life, it's moving but there's no soul in it. Now the protagonists of the story go to an adventure, finding a way on how the soul of a human go back to its body after dying. It's cool, the idea is kind of unique and at the same time, exciting. How the creator used different famous names on this movie is also something. However, the whole scenarios of the movie, in my opinion, will fail the expectation of the audience. It will left them speechless of how confusing it is.

Characters: 6/10

I'm really feeling bad rating an anime low. I love anime but maybe, maybe there's really stories that won't fit my taste. Characters supposed this grow, to justify their actions, to learn, even if a litte. The main character of this movie is cool. A doctor of the dead, someone who know how to bring dead people back to life.But how he focused on a one dead person, who's relationship with him is unknown and never been explained, is unsatisfying. If I were to decide, maybe he's a gay lover of the main character. The other girl did have a purpose all along the movie, additional point on that. Lastly, the one guy who tagged and help him on his journey did not really have an explanation on his actions. Why was he helping him? What does he wanted? What was his goal? It was never explained and will never be.

Sound and Animation: 10/10

In line with sound and animation, it's perfect. It's clean and great. The voices of the characters are strong, steady and will full grasp of the characters they're portraying. The animation is one of the best. Adding the fact that it was filmed in the old era, where the backgrounds are something like historical places are fascinating. There's no doubt since its a newly created movie. Though it is kind of rude, this will save the entire movie.

Enjoyment: 5/10

Do you experience watching a movie or series that you enjoyed yourself by thinking that what you're watching is enjoyable. Something like because you are expecting huge bomb in the end, all the answers to your questions, it excites you. But yeah, it dropped down real flat after watching the whole movie. What I think I've enjoyed on this series is the animation of it when it comes to action part and the way the sci-fi thingy was explained.

Ending: 4/10

Most of the sci-fi stories success really depends on how it ends. How they manipulate the audience thinking and how they'll drop the explanation that will shocked them because of the unexpected outcome. That is what most great stories are. That's what I waited on the whole story. The fact that it failed on this aspect is really disappointing. Though the main characters successfully win against the bad people, what I care the most are the loopholes that need to be taken care of.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 1, 2016

Dikki_weeblitist

Not Recommended

Yesterday I just watched The Empire of Corpses movie and what I got is just disappointment. Let me elaborate my statement with my review.

Story - 3/10
The story is about how Watson (Holmes's partner) discover a way of saving humanity from being zombie. The whole movie is just about his journey of his research and medication. The story itself is quite poor, as the movie itself literally is nothing but a medium to deliver deep messages to the audience. There is no story at all, aside from Watson going to save humanity with dumb and absurd way.

Premise - 6/10
The premise itself is sort of interesting, with ... everyone was zombiefied and become 'Frankensteins'. Government zombiefied their citizens and corpses that are re-purposed with a false soul in order to use them as laborers, are used to improve industrial development. No doubt, the premise is pretty cool and there were symbolism behind it. The whole movie was actually symbolizing those laborers that have lost their soul to the system, which makes them no longer humane anymore. In order to regain the one's soul, humanity needs love. More or less, it's sort of like Guilty Crown, however at the same time, it's same as Guilty Crown failed in delivering the messages. The story and messages were all over the places without any coherence at all. In order words, this movie failed, even though it looks cool by its cover.

Character - 1/10
There is no character at all in this movie. All of them are plot devices in order to move on the plot and deliver deep messages. All of them are pretentious. There are no characteristic at all for the characters in the movie. It completely failed in character's aspect! I like Alexei, Nikolai & Friday though, but all of them are the same too. Plot devices!

Art - 9/10
Wit Studio, the studio that produced Attack on Titans and in Spring 2016 they are going to make a high budget production with cool animation, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. If you have seen the trailer, or watched Attack on Titans before, you must have known the quality of animation the studio could deliver. It's all superb and fantastic throughout the whole movie. It's the only selling point for this bad movie. The animation, no doubt is eye-catching. The textures in background, the control in colours are well-produced. Every second every frame of the movie is so beautiful. Seriously, Wit Studio really did well in the visual part for this movie.

Music - 7/10
Not that bad, not that good either. All the tracks fit the movie well, but there is no memorable soundtracks from the movie. EGOIST's theme song is fine too.

Enjoyment - 4/10
The whole movie is like a boring roller coaster. It gave me so much anticipation on the movie, however it just left a huge disappointment to me. Nothing in the movie aside from the animation impressed me. I won't recommend anyone to watch this movie, even though it might be some "2deep4u" stuff, however the movie failed to handle the messages coherently. It really disappointed to me. Seriously, don't watch this movie, unless you wanna experience the great animations. Moreover, it's 2-hour long.

I really hyped this movie very much along with the other two Project ITOH (Genocidal Organ & Harmony). I hope the other two won't be this bad, seriously please. It's kinda wasted to spend that much of budget on this bad story.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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