ネオ・ヒロイック・ファンタジア　アリオン

NEO HEROIC FANTASIA: ARION

MOVIE

MOVIE
Dubbed
SOURCE
MANGA
RELEASE
March 15, 1986
LENGTH
120 min

DESCRIPTION

In a far-flung time when Gods and Men walk the earth together, the child Arion plays in the rolling hills of Thrace. His mother Demeter is troubled by both a curse - blindness - and by the secret of Arion's birth. A mysterious stranger spirits Arion away, and seeks to shape the growing young man into an assassin, a secret weapon to tilt the balance of the war between Zeus and Poseidon. But Arion won't be manipulated easily, nor will he submit quietly to the hands of adversaries like the tenacious Ares, the intelligent and fierce Athena, or the elegant and scheming Apollo. Only his tremendous strength, a forgotten weapon forged by Prometheus, and the love and loyalty of his allies can carry Arion forward. To discover the secret of his destiny, Arion will have to storm Mount Olympus- and face down Zeus himself!

(Source: Discotek Media)

CAST

Arion
Shigeru Nakahara
Lesphina
Miki Takahashi
Seneca
Mayumi Tanaka

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REVIEWS

ci30cr
85/100
Some great battles and something I personally really enjoyed. But it may not be for everyone and is far from perfect.
Spoilers!!

So I genuinely enjoyed this, and by the few reviews I read and the rating, it seems I’m in the minority on that. It captured my attention quickly and kept it throughout the film. Arion moved on from one idea to another fairly quickly but still was able to develop the ideas and characters thoroughly while not feeling rushed. The pacing was definitely something I’d compliment it on. The battle scenes managed to take up enough time to keep me engaged and sorta remind me why I’m here in the first place whilst the characters continued to be developed and the story moved along smoothly. Large scale anything is an instant positive for me, I love stuff with the plot happening on a larger scale. Something like Berserk and the final arc of Monster are two of my favorite examples of that, when everything is just bigger and more grandiose. Like, when x thing could determine the fate of the world or like in Monster when there are constantly different ideas and scenes feeding off each other for this giant web of events created leading up to a final moment. The first battle with Poseidon got me pretty hyped. I loved seeing the giant armies all going at it with like a hundred boats and tens of thousands of soldiers charging. When I saw like 60 boats in the ocean coming towards Athena and the Gang, I kinda instantly knew I’d really enjoy this. The character designer did a lot of other stuff, like various Gundams, Crusher Joe, Venus Wars, etc. so the designs were solid of course. He did the directing as well which was nothing special but did it’s job and I thought looked solid throughout. Especially the scenes in battle, he was able to effectively display the grandiosity of them. The art and aesthetics were solid, it really shines in animation, you can definitely tell they had a solid budget for this movie. I had some gripes too, of course, The incest shit was plain weird, like what the fuck. I get it, it’s greek mythology, there may be a bit of incestuous shit but like, they were presenting it in a way where it felt like they were more like “Oh no, it’s his sister! But he still loves her!!!” in a sweet or romantic way, not in a “oh shit, it’s his sister” way. His speech to hype up his troops before them getting fucked on the way to Olympus was pretty hilarious as well, and from the few reviews I’ve read most other people noticed it as well. His speech to hype the troops revolved around him wanting to fuck his sister REALLY REALLY bad and how he killed his father but like who cares about that. Which brings up another point, is it his sister? There were so many random twists like “Oh it’s some cute girl and they’re falling in love, oh she’s his sister, oh she’s not sister”. I did genuinely enjoy the ride it took me on and kept me interested with all of the random shit happening. My biggest gripe is something probably not something really expected and rarely a huge negative for an anime, especially nowadays. But the music probably was the most awkward thing in there, everything else was pretty great and the production was top tier. Thing is, I say this, but the music’s great, Joe Hiashi’s a great composer. The problem was the lack of it at times rather. This happened quite a few times, the examples that I still remember a couple hours later is firstly, and the worst one, right before the charge to Olympus. We get this big speech, and despite laughing my ass off at the speech previously, I was still hyped for this battle. Like battles like these is exactly what I look for in anime, so when were they preparing for the charge, getting their soldiers ready, that stupid lighting thing put together and Olympus was preparing and it was so silent I thought my TV broke, it was a little disappointing to say the least. It felt so awkward, just like the small noises of moving a little bit from soldiers and absolutely no music. My hype was like 0 at that point, even though the battle was still great and I enjoyed it, my hype came back as the battle happened, but the awkward silence and the slight movements of soldiers was pretty laughable. The second one being the dialogue between Apollo and Arion when fighting over Lesphina toward the end. Similar to the other example, it just felt overall pretty awkward and the lack of music made the silence feel really long. All in all, this movie’s messy, it has its flaws and quirks of being a late 80s anime movie, but ya know I liked it anyway. It’s something kinda made for me since it has a lot of things that appeal to me specifically in anime. It has plenty of good moments, it gets convoluted at times, but when I finished, I left with all the hype scenes, a genuine liking of most those characters, actual interest in their fates and still consumed in the story, it made me wish a little in my heart I could get more than 2 hours with those characters and more battles like that, so yeah I’m happy I watched it.
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