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What a unique and interesting movie...

Jin Roh tells two stories. One is the one where the main character becomes the center key to a dispute between the police forces. The second one puts the protagonists in the shoes of the characters of an older and darker version of a famous story. While we are watching the first and main story, we are slowly taken through the second one. The stories to not clash, they combine and depend on each other to exist. The second one is easy and provides most of the character development, while the first one provides the setting and the introduction ... and development of secondary characters. Although not bad at its roots, the movie makes the story over complicated and doesn't manage to fully fledge it out. The amount of information we receive during 100 minutes is too unequally places and vast. It doesn't help that the major opposing factions have similar names. This does not help the characters either. The ending is very good and deep, yet unable to fully give us a conclusion. We finally see the truth about the main character and the second story comes to a conclusion, while the first one is somewhat left hanging.

The style of the animation makes the characters look very realistic and less anime like. It's a win or lose situation as the style may not appeal to every viewer, but it was an excellent thing to do. It also looks old, but once again it does not stand out as a bad thing. Both of these things add to the visual experience, and truthfully it is hard for me to imagine this movie using a different animation style.
I found it interesting to note that there are almost no bright colors. The movie shifts back and forth from washed out exteriors, to the dark sewers under the city. The only brighter color is the one from the 'eyes' of the Panzer Cops.

The sound was very good. Most of the background music was well places and did its job perfectly. The voice actors were nothing spectacular, though well chosen.

There is something else about Jin Roh, that doesn't feel right though, something that keeps it from being an excellent movie, yet rising it up to being an above than average movie. I cannot explain what it is... This is one of those movies that I need see only once and be able to forget it by the time I start watching something new, yet still remember it and its most shocking moments when the right time arises.

Is it worth watching? This depends. It requires quite a bit of patience, understanding, curiosity and a liking of the genre, but watching it will definitely not be a waste of time.

There is not much to say about a story here, because there are only 30 minutes worth of it. Although nothing amazing at first, it provides a decent plot. It has a few really funny moments (without going overboard or risking making the characters OOC) and it gives a couple of good laughs. The characters are the same that we came to love (or hate) from the previous Full Metal Panic series and some of them receive some good placed character development. The VA did a great job, as usual, voicing them, so there is nothing that can be complained there.

Sound wise, the music is ... barely noticeable and doesn’t help enhance the atmosphere. It’s just there, well place, and subtle enough to be ignorable without distracting us from the story. What was more annoying was the ED, or rather lack of it. The instrumental score that was used while showing the credits was boring, and the whole arrangement of pictures next to the written credits was too slow to be interesting. After the first seconds I just fast forwarded to the end to see if there was anything after it and to my disappointment, there wasn’t anything.

There is nothing exceptional to say about the animation except that it’s good, but there is nothing bad to say about it either. It was nice, the same as the one from FMP: The Second Raid, although the previously mentioned series had, animation wise, some more memorable scenes.

Fans of the Full Metal Panic series, especially of Fumoffu, will probably really like this OVA. Other than that, there is no real reason to check it out as there is nothing special about it.