Back to Merril's Profile Merril's Profile

This movie is artistic animation. It does not have caricatures of people, use stereotypes to aid character development nor is there enough dialogue for easy digestion of characters feelings. The picture is thick of emotionally charged imagery and reflection, more clear and direct than can be done in live action. For example the fire bombs at the beginning and the reaction of the officers, the tears on Kei's face and breath of Fuze after running all cause connections with the audience instead of the usual detraction anime has.

Things like what Fuze is brooding about constantly are shown as glances into the character, ... you really have to be following the story to understand anything about the characters. Motivations and subterfuge are the grips of the story after viewing.

The animation is dry, on a color scale you would say that there are no 'warm' colors. Much like done in The Matrix or Gladiator, the lack of color is definitely intentional but still loses marks for art rating (made up for in char/enj).

Then there's the story, its very simple yet extremely complicated to piece together as-you-watch-it. I had particular trouble with understanding the back story, its not necessary and only briefly covered by prose. As the watcher this creates alot of interest to me, I am not given the required information to understand the entire situation going on in the government but still take blind leaps of faith into the characters, trusting them as genuine. I do not know if the good guy won in the end or if the country is worse off. But this isn't to say I felt a lack of resolution, I am very content in the story.

The character development is extremely interesting in this story, the use of imagery to portray characters as heroic, frightened, or animalistic in nature is wonderful. To play into the red riding hood theme you can clearly see at times the animation giving birth to wolf like qualities, or with the girl showing true meakness, frailty and confusion. The short dream sequence is quite graphic and horrible to fathom in reality, but shows the truth behind the story setting and how things felt to Fuze.