009 Re:Cyborg

Probably my favourite out of this year's Sci-Fi London's anime all-nighter. A beautifully made film, with absolutely stunning action scenes that will take your breath away.

Various buildings have been bombed in capital cities across the world, and the cyborgs have gathered with their creator to find out who the mysterious "His Voice" is behind it.

The story itself is a simple spy plot, with unexpected character twists. The Cyborgs are as human as anyone and demand your affection for their faults, falibilities and heroics.

Besides being a joy to look at, the characters are realistic, funny and very likable. You care about who is still standing at the very climatic, scenic finish, involving stupendous ariel shots of the cities and then the earth.

The ending had a rather odd message but was a through delight. I will be buying this ASAP.

When I glanced through the names of the production team behind this movie, I honestly expected a lot out of it. You have Kenji Kamiyama, who is understandably the perfect guy for this movie, having directed some well-known works like Eden of the East. This was especially so given his experiences in bringing out hidden "human" values through cyborgs in his GITS series. You also have Kenji Kawai, who produced some of the best soundtrack ever heard in sci-fi series.

However this movie felt to me like these guys went back to school, or maybe they were not trying to surpass their previous works. Kenji Kawai's scores this time around had no new tune to them, almost sounded like recycled from his own previous works.

The cyborg characters were bland. The lack of dialogue between the characters was not the problem, but I expected something more systematic instead of jumping through events as if they had no significance to the bigger picture. They were trying to milk out a juice I call "character's thoughts" especially right at the end, which I felt was still poorly executed

There seemed to be a critical lack of interaction of events with each other, And this in my opinion was more serious an issue than the lack of interaction between characters because you need events to correlate with each other well to make difficult concepts in sci-fi materials approachable to the audience.

Overall, A fan or anyone familiar with their works would expect something thought-provoking out of the movie. But this time around, "thought-provoking" was an ingredient clearly missing - like an empty shell.

There were a few chapters of pre-anime release manga that can be easily searched online. The manga chapters had slight alterations to the movie, but then, it makes me wonder if this movie was actually made for the manga or something else, which makes sense because of its second-class quality.

I didn't know anything about this but bought the 3D-Bluray on a whim as I enjoy good fantastical anime (Akira, Attack on Titan) and the 3D-experience.

Worth it!

The very first scene has a spectacular setpiece with skyscrapers crashing down after a bomb attack. We're then quickly thrust into a story which appears to already be in the middle of it. I gather Cyborg 009 is a series, or series of movies? Not sure, but it does feel like this particular movie isn't the first entry.

Despite not knowing the background I still quickly got a grasp of setting & characters. Alongside the fine action I also appreciated the quieter dialogue-heavy sections, which touches upon the idea of 'God' and free will. While not exactly original, the ideas were well presented. Also these moments had sometimes quite striking imagery and dynamic visual angles.

However the film does stumble with its narrative: what is happening, and why, is asked but never satisfactorily explored. The musings about how characters interpret motive isn't enough, we still would like a coherent plot-resolution.

Overall I rate this a good 7/10, as the action & visuals make it a fun experience. 3D is effective. Japanese voice-cast are immersive. Subs are well-written.

Recommended.