Sunday, February 27, 2005

Casshern

Doc Put This On Me To Prevent Me From Lickin My Wounds...

Also pronounce as "Cashaan".

In the early 70s there was this anime series called "Shinzo Ningen Casshern". Casshern, a cyborg hero who fought to defend human race from his father's robot experiments that went wrong. The anime's pretty much your standard good versus evil type. You know, evil robots comes out, Cashern defeats them, repeat in next week's episode.

The movie however is totally different. The only thing that is the same is having Cashern fighting robots. 50 years of war between Europa and the Eastern Federation, Earth in its current state is plague with diseases, genetic disorder, and contamination. Professor Azuma is experimenting on reegenerative cells called "neo cells". Meanwhile, the professor's son Tetsuya is killed in the war.

A freak lightning bolt hits the professor's soup err I mean "neo-cells" and out came a-walking mutants, who after the military fires at them, decided to annihilate humanswith an army of robots.

The professor revives his son, Tetsuya's corpse with "neo cells". Hence, Tetsuya is reborn in an invincible body that must wear a newly designed suit, that prevents his body from bursting itself by itself. Overly developed muscles it seems.

You can watch the trailer here: Casshern movie trailer. Needs Quicktime to view.

Don't be mislead by the trailer. It's not just a sci-fi actioner. The movie is full of anti-war messages. Would you fight just because of the reasons that is given by the government? Is everything appears as it is? Does the end justify the means? Would you leave your love one to do what's right? Why are we here?

I can't believe I read on the Net that the movie was nominated for one of the Worst Movies of 2004 in Japan! The movie is deep. Soundtrack is good. The special effects is just mind blowing. The CG effects blends quite well with the actors. Camera work is done in music video style, in which I thought was pretty cool. After all, the director is Kazuaki Kiriya. Whotf is this guy? He's a director for J-Pop music videos.

I just wished it's a lil shorter. Some scenes were done quite confusingly for some people, but not a problem for me.

If they have done it exactly like the anime, how hard could that be? It would be just another sci-fi actioner.

You can download the movie from this Boxtorrent link: Casshern torrent. I don't want to link it to the Boxtorrent page as someone posted a spoiler there. But for credit's sake, an unclickable link: http://www.boxtorrents.com/details.php?id=11984 . Of course you need Bittorrent. Preferrably watch it on the big screen. I hope that it would reach Malaysian shores so that I can watch it again, the big screen experience.

Casshern the movie, definitely worth the time.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Applegal said...

Graphics look very chun, I recognised two of the actors from the Japanese drama series White Tower :D It's very anime-ish, I wonder whether the Japanese rejected it because it looked sci-fi. Like how we reject HK sci-fi flicks :P No English subtitles, shame, if not I would have watched it :(

6:35 PM  
Blogger Kawa said...

Not really. HK sci-fi flicks down right sucked.

From Anime News Network, which reposted from Yahoo! News Japan:

"The Kiichigo (raspberry) Awards, a Japanese version of the Razzi Awards (given every year for the worst in American movies), were announced last week's issue of Fumihara Weekly.

The Kiichigo (raspberry) Awards are determined by a panel of 20 judges, consisting of movie reporters and film critics.

The overwhelming majority agreed that the worst Japanese movie of 2004 was, by far, Devilman. "Radish-like" acting was given as the reason for Devilman's dubious honor.

Casshern, recently licensed by Dreamworks and due to be released in North America this year, was voted second worst movie of 2004. It was referred to as, "Nothing more than a promotional video for Hikaru Utada's videos." Casshern was directed by Utada's husband, Kazuaki Kiriya."

The link: http://animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=6080

The reasoning doesn't sound reasonable enough. Though Japan Times did include Casshern as one of the Top 10 of 2000.

erm, it's with English subs. The trailer isn't. Though you might need some codecs and a new player to play it though.

Locally you can find the VCD in chinese subs. Heard some places you can find the DVD already with English subs.

12:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ugh, it's horrible. Honestly. The graphics are noteworthy, but it's like watching Last Exile (steampunk, etc) in RL with all of the flashiness and none of the great storyline.

I left the cinema only wanting to listen to that song Utada sang at the credits, so the judges at Kiichigo were right.

7:30 PM  
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8:52 PM  

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