|
|
DNA Sights 999.9
Coming of age, mutant-style
 |
DNA Sights 999.9
|
|
Urban Vision
|
|
$29.95 Subtitled
|
|
$19.95 Dubbed (Reviewed)
|
|
60 Minutes
|
|
|
Review by Tasha Robinson
 he year is 2024 and Earth has been devastated by a massive meteor
shower that smashed urban civilization and left humanity holed up like
animals in the wreckage. While the planet reels, an organized,
technologically advanced military group called the Trader Forces rises up
to take over the world. It seems unlikely that any human group would have
this much machinery left to work with, considering that Earth's surface is
a wasteland. But the Traders have off-planet backing in the form of
a woman named Photon.
She's not the only alien involved. A second woman, named Mello, "casts
her cosmic consciousness" to Earth, where it lands with a fiery crash
similar to that caused by falling meteors. A local boy named Daiba
comes to investigate the crater, finds Mello at its center, and promptly
passes out. A Trader vessel finds him and, acting on Photon's suspicions,
tries to bring him in for questioning.
But when Daiba wakes up, a voice in his head tells him he has the
knowledge and power to escape. He quickly proves it right, baffling
himself, the Trader Forces, and his Terran friends all at the same time. The appearance of
a second gifted youth, a young girl named Rei, begins to clear things up.
As Mello explains, Rei and Daiba are part of the next phase of evolution on
Earth, and Mello herself has come to safeguard them and make sure they take
the next steps up the ladder. First they have to find the third Terran
who's evolved like them--which won't be easy, because Photon's determined
to control or destroy them all.
A tidy little story
DNA Sights is another tidy little story from writer/animator Leiji
Matsumoto. Like his Galaxy Express work in particular,
this is a look at the process of maturing from childhood to adulthood,
placed in a metaphorical SF setting that turns the transition
into a profound leap for the entire human species. It's well-paced and
neatly executed, with a cast of familiar Matsumoto archetypes and a
comfortingly familiar visual style. But unlike much of Matsumoto's work,
this is straightforward storytelling without the endless rhapsodizing and
breast-beating that clogs so many of his pieces. For once, his characters
are displaying emotions instead of explaining them, and this leaves a lot
of room for a quickly moving adventure.
There are a few complaints to be made here--at 60 minutes (with titles
and ads), the story's too brief and some of its potential is wasted. In
particular, "the underlife"--a fluid race of apparently voiceless
creatures who live in Earth's mantle--are fascinating and provide some
superb imagery, but they're given short shrift as they surge silently back
and forth between one controller and another, disappearing when no longer
convenient. And Captain Harlock's deus-ex-machina appearance at the end is
a cheap way of slapping artificial closure and sentiment on a story that
was creatively executed and moving along fine under its own power.
But overall, this is an unusually lively and balanced piece for
Matsumoto. Arguably it's intended for a younger crowd than his more famous
work, as its emotional themes--trusting people and growing up are hard
but necessary--are on the lighter end of the scale than his usual
sturm und drang about freedom and self-determination. But as a
simple adventure, it's more watchable than a lot of his work, without
necessarily being dumbed down.
Okay, so it does have a cute talking cat that's begging to be made into a
plush toy. But compare this to the crumpled-dishrag cute cat of Queen
Emeraldas, and then tell me this isn't a better work all the way
around.
-- Tasha
Back to the top.
Queen Emeraldas
Repetitive, repetitious and redundant
|
Queen Emeraldas
|
|
A.D. Vision
|
|
$29.95 Subtitled
|
|
$19.98 Dubbed (Reviewed)
|
|
60 Minutes
|
|
|
Review by Tasha Robinson
 iroshi is an unwanted child who has faced rejection and violence for so
long that he has nothing else to offer to the people around him. When he
stows away on an interstellar freighter and an old man attempts to make
friends with him, he reacts like a rabid dog. His one goal in life is to
get to the distant ghost-town planet Diabaran, where he heard that an
Earthman named Tochiro once used the local materials to assemble a
legendary, powerful ship called the Arcadia. Building such a ship,
Hiroshi reasons, will give him the power to live freely and keep everyone
else at bay.
While his unwitting hosts' spaceship is in transit, it's attacked by an
aggressive fleet of Afressians displaying a death's-head insignia. It
briefly seems Hiroshi and all those around him are doomed to death or
slavery. But suddenly another ship displaying the same insignia intervenes,
careening untouched through a massive onslaught of firepower and almost
wiping out the enemy forces. Hiroshi lands safely, but his new life as a
sullen Diabaran bar scullion is soon interrupted, as the Afressian
commander comes threateningly into town to find out who captained the
rescuing ship.
It quickly develops that the ship is the Queen Emeraldas, and her
pilot, the legendary privateer Emeraldas, coldly announces that only the
Arcadia and her own ship are allowed to bear the death's-head; if
the Afressians don't back down, she intends to destroy them. The Afressian
queen takes offense, decides there's one queen too many in the universe,
and sends her fleet to destroy Emeraldas. On the face of it, the conflict is
irrelevant to Hiroshi, who just wants to be left alone with his dreams of
power and solitude. But fate and the malignant Afressians intend to
intervene.
Hurried fights, foregone conclusions
This 1998 addition to Leiji Matsumoto's Harlock universe makes pointed
references to Captain Harlock and Matsumoto's Galaxy Express
999, but is markedly different in style and tone from either of them.
The Matsumoto females, with their rectangular eyes, impossible waif bodies
and improbable floor-length hair, are notably in attendance, but apart from
the updated-but-easily-recognizable visuals, this looks like a mutant
stepchild with a few chromosomes missing.
Most notably, Queen Emeraldas replaces the wistful nostalgia and
nonstop angst of Matsumoto's earlier work with a dumbed-down fast-forward
mentality that rushes from one confrontation to the next. A series of
vague, trite internal monologues ("I am Emeraldas. If there indeed exists
those who are bound together by fate, the Queen Emeraldas and I are
such a pair. No matter how difficult, no matter how far, we will complete
our journey and keep our promise. I am Emeraldas.") provide about the only
pause for thought, which never goes much deeper than the incredibly
repetitive "I am Emeraldas" tagline. The predictable plot, whereby Hiroshi
befriends a cat and learns the meaning of fellowship, is dribbled in
between (admittedly fantastic-looking) space battles among characters
with the flexibility and emotional range of ironing boards.
Emeraldas can be exciting to watch, particularly as she doesn't seem to
remotely belong in this universe--laser fire literally bends around her
ship, no weapon threatens her personally, and her unlikely
height and hair make her more alien than the local ETs. But her
empty-headed opposition isn't even vaguely in her league. Dedicated Harlock
fans might find it fun to watch a favorite character slap down an entire
galaxy without once breaking a sweat, but most people prefer a conflict
where the outcome--for Emeraldas or the one-note Hiroshi--is at least
briefly in doubt.
Musings with no thought, conflict with no tension ... and a lot of flashy,
poorly integrated computer animation as both a distraction and a
detraction.
-- Tasha
Back to the top.
|
