DARKSIDE BLUES

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionDarkside Blues

REVIEWS

• 

  carcar435867

  1/100
  It was a poorly executed political allegory that was extremely unsatisfying to watch.

  Yeah it is pretty bad. There were some scenes I thought were kinda pretty but they were all superseded by the overwhelmingly cheap looking doughy animation. The ugly and aesthetically dissonant designs really took away from my enjoyment of the film as I wanted to gag at every new jumbled hodgepodge of a character design that appeared. Even the titular Darkside who is clearly supposed to be this cool suave guy looks absolutely disgusting with his vampire-like cape and cowboy boots complete with spurs. Imagine if Dracula looked exactly the same but was wearing cowboy boots, that's what Darkside looks like. The aesthetics of the films were not clearly defined and in my opinion I felt that Angel's Egg did something similar but better.

  I think the plot was supposed to be about a vigilante group that's fighting a dictatorship / corporate monopoly that owns 99% of the world but the film never actually explains a lot of crucial plot points. Moreover the entire time there's just this floating magical god guy that helps them out sometimes (Darkside)?? He just appears from a flying horse drawn carriage out of a hole in the ground and his motivations for being there are never ever explained. He's just there aiding the main characters at times but this doesn't seem to be his main objective? He "heals" the other characters somehow by reading their minds but again the reason for this is never explained either. There's some skinny brat who may or may not have magical powers that everyone respects for some reason. There were too many characters and all with no likeable or memorable defining characteristics to speak of. They also try to do this plot twist at the end but it made no sense. It was absolute mess from beginning to end and I regret wasting my time watching it. Bafflingly it felt like simultaneously way too much and not enough was accomplished over the course of the film and I felt completely apathetic towards what was going on.

  I can't say much for the music and sound design it was all so forgettable.

  Overall it was a poorly executed political allegory that tried to deal with the idea of "what do we sacrifice in the name of peace?" but it lacked focus. It was poor on all fronts and led to a very unsatisfying watch.

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• 

  megafat

  67/100
  A dark, moody, atmospheric anime that has a disjointed by somewhat enjoyable plot.

  The Persona Century Corporation has purchased nearly every inch of land on earth available. Dissension is not tolerated within the corporation's borders and those who oppose Persona are dealt with swiftly. Of those few places not yet under Persona's control is the free town of Kabuki-cho, also known as "The Dark Side of Tokyo". Within the town, under the leadership of a woman named Mai, is a small resistance group called Messiah. Into this world steps a man who takes the sobriquet of Kabuki-cho: Darkside. Sealed up in another dimension eighteen years ago by Persona Century, Darkside now returns to aid Messiah using his unique mystic power of renewal.

  That description is probably the only time that you will ever see something coherent about Darkside Blues plot. The whole film's plot just moves from one thing to another without much of a proper transition, and without much of an explanation or reason either. And yet, strangely enough, I don't feel like it's too much of a detriment to the movie.

  Darkside Blues has this weird dream like quality to it, much like a David Lynch film, and that extends to most of it's plot. Much like things happening in a dream, the plot, along with characters and their actions, either appear or happen with little to no logic, sometimes to completely disappear. For example, the titular character, Darkside, is introduced by horse and carriage, coming through a painting from another dimension. Yes, it's that kind of anime.

  Sure, there is some explanation as to what's going, as few and far between as it is, but it's more about fitting with the mood of the whole thing rather than everything making sense. Everything that happens fits with the tone and mood that the movie is clearly going for, and nothing about the plot is outright incomprehensible, even if it's plot feels a bit muddled and a lot less polished than a David Lynch film.

  With the plot so disjointed, I actually went back and read the manga to see if they had left anything out or had maybe changed something about the plot to fit into the budget. Well, I can definitely say that the anime is pretty accurate to the manga sans a few minor details, so it being like this is intentional.

  The original manga was written by Hideyuki Kikuchi, who also wrote the Vampire Hunter D and Wicked City series, and his writing style does come across to some degree in Darkside Blues in that, like those other works, Darkside Blues has a similar moody tone and is very atmospheric, much in the same as the Vampire Hunter D and Wicked City adaptations.

  Darkside Blues is is a difficult recommendation. On one hand, it's very atmospheric and has a nice slow moody pace to it. On the other, it's borderline incomprehensible plot is going to turn a lot of people away from it. If you're the type of person who loves a good David Lynch film, enjoyed the adaptations of Vampire Hunter D and Wicked City, or just really enjoy a moody atmospheric aesthetic and don't mind a plot that is a tad less coherent than something you'd normally watch, then this might have something that you like.

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