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Rating: *½
Genre: Vampires/Sci-Fi/Anime MPAA: NR (Should be R, for reasons I'll get into) Review #: 25 Cast: Kimera...Kim Sevier Osamu...Brett Weaver Kianu...Bryan Bounds Ginzu...Guil Lunde Fender...Phil Ross Gibson...Robert Peeples Jay...Tristan Mac Avery Hunter...Paul Sidello Secretary...Erin Rosarre Soldier...John Swasey Man A...Steve Spurgat Man B...Lew Temple Kimera's Mom...Yvonne Aguirre Jay's Wife...Tiffany Grant Jay's Daughter...Jessica Williams |
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Review:
This OAV is what's wrong with anime. Don't get me wrong, I love anime, but I think there are some real problems with it sometimes. This is one of them. I've said many times that because us Americans love our sex and violence, that's what the companies are more likely to translate. Well, here we have the perfect example. The first thing that will strike you about this one is that the animation style is maddeningly cheap. It's so cookie-cutter simple that I wonder if this studio just hired William Hanna and Joseph Barbara.The other thing is the high quotient of graphic violence. I feel that violence like that is Okay when justified by a really good plot, like in one of my personal favorite movies, Vampire Hunter D. It had such a good plot that it shown through, despite a horrible Macek dub-job. This plot is just silly, simple and the only people who would think it's original and creative are much too young to be seeing this much violence. |
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| This is the story of one guy, named Osamu. He's on a business trip with his friend Jay, when happen upon a battle between the military and some freaky alien. Osamu stumbles upon a "woman" inside of a glass tube, and instantly falls in love. She is taken to a government research lab, where Jay's father just happens to be a higher-up. They are able to sneak their way in, and free Kimera, but not before we get to see that another higher-up is working with an evil alien, who wants Kimera. And when this alien kills, leaves behind completely drained corpses. Kimera manages to get lose into the world, and we have some sequences of the standard "alien girl gets taken advantage of by street thugs because she doesn't understand". This part also includes a graphic gang rape scene. Don't worry, the plot gets more complex, but not by much. |
| It turns out that Kimera is really part of a race of alien vampires who have lost the ability to reproduce, and rely on something called the "mother machine", and a chosen woman, who happens to be Kimera. Well, the bad guy has some major opposition in the form of his brother, who thinks that their race should just die out, instead of destroying Earth. They have a pretty cool fight sequence in a church, and I got real pleasure out of seeing how they turned around the whole vampire/cross relationship in that image to the right. It's too bad that I've seen all of this before. If it weren't for all that glaring violence, I might've been able to enjoy this more, but it felt to me like the plot served the violence, when it should be the other way around. Violence for it's own sake isn't my idea of a good time. |
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| I've heard some really good things about the Manga which this is based on. I've also heard that this OAV is just a hodgepodge of situations and concepts from the manga. I think that explains a lot. This OAV did have it's moments, like the thing with the cross, but they were few and far between. Of course, I can't recommend this movie. It's videos like this that give Anime it's reputation as the "dirty cartoons". No plot, just gore, gore, gore. The only two characters who get any depth are Osamu and Jay. Even though she's the title character, Kimera has no personality whatsoever. In the series of flashbacks that describe the back plot, they give Kimera an interesting personality which is you can care about and feel sorry for. Too bad that she's lost all of that in the present story line. Now she serves as nothing more than a body to fight over, and so you don't really care at all about what happens to her. |
| I know that there are people out there who love this video. I think they need to get their head examined. Still, I bet there are people who say the same about me for my opinion of Vampire Hunter D. If you're a fan of this ultra-violent gory space vampire stuff, rent it, but otherwise, avoid! |
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