Casshern

[benwfelt]

I just finished watching Casshern-- a 2004 Japanese film based on an
old anime TV series. We planned on watching this a while back but
didn't get around to it so I thought I'd give it a go.

I thought the movie was pretty wierd but I assume this is because of
my ignorance of the original material that it's based on. I'm guessing
a lot more would make sense if I were an old-school Casshern fan from
back in the day. I'm not, so it was mostly wierd for me. I can't
decide what to do about these types of movies. I'm afraid that if I
look too much into the original stuff it going to give away the movie.
On the other hand, if I don't look into it beforehand I don't get as
much out of the movie. What to do!?

Based on my limited knowledge, I'd say the movie was like Final
Fantasy, The Matrix, Frankenstein, and Appleseed rolled into one. It
was visually quite cool. You can tell they went into a lot of detail
creating different settings. I expected Casshern to look cooler and
was a little disappointed-- the mask thing flipping in front of his
face is cool the first time but I expected something more. A couple CG
scenes were a little weak but overall, it was worth watching just for
the way it looked.

It seemed to me like the movie was trying a too hard at times to get a
message across. I couldn't decide if the movie was a commentary about
war, scince (genetic engineering), religion, or maybe all/none of the
above. The entire ending seemed like it was trying to finish up the
delivery of this message but I felt like it dragged on for about 20
minutes too long.

I'd recommend this to anime/sci-fi/action fans based on it's visual
merit alone. It's probably best to watch with friends because there's
a lot left to figure out after it's over.

Did you guys ever watch this? What did you think?

~Ben