Avengers: Los archivos secretos - Black Widow y Punisher

For having so much potential the writing or story telling is simply abysmal. The dialogue is some of the worst I've heard, well... period. The voice acting is solid and the animation isn't bad. Like I said, lot's of potential. So much excellent source material to work with. I have no idea how anyone can write dialogue this terrible.

Not content on dominating the big screen with a connected Marvel cinematic universe, Marvel now aims to create a connected anime universe. Avengers Confidential is a loose sequel to to Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. This time, Iron Man takes a back seat to previous supporting characters of Punisher and Black Widow. Following their debacle in Karachi, Frank Castle aka The Punisher, has returned to taking out organised crime lords. But when one of his hits crosses path with S.H.I.E.L.D, Frank is taken into custody. He has stumbled onto a vast international conspiracy involving an old Russian supersoldier programme and mind control. Unwillingly teamed up with s.H.I.E.L.D agent Black Widow, Frank has to deal with superpowered foes way out of his league while Widow must confront a shadowy figure from her past.

It is an intriguing story. Well written and feeling like it came straight out of the comic books. No surprise there that it was written by comic book writer Majorie Liu. This is a cool way to tie The Punisher into the greater world of Marvel anime characters, themselves already sharing a lot in common with the live action movie universe. In live action, The Punisher's gritty mafia/street crime stories just do not mix with the Avengers' high flying superheroics. If they cannot do it in live action, anime would have to suffice.

Credit goes to this movie for coming up with an interesting reason why the superpowered Avengers remain out of the picture. Since you have a villain who perfected mind control, the last thing you can risk is your most powerful heroes turning against you. So they get plain ol human Frank Castle, The Punisher, and plain ol human Black Widow. Except, the "plain ol human" bit is conveniently forgotten about 10 minutes in where both Punisher and Black Widow are able to go hand to hand with super soldiers, dodge bullets, punch people through walls and take injuries that would kill any normal human.

Now, this being Japanese anime, Marvel has allowed Madhouse Studios (creators of classics like Ninja Scroll, Trigun and the rest of Marvel's anime output) to sprinkle their own eastern touch into this tale. The result......a mixed bag. First is the screenplay, written by Mitsutaka Hirota of Ramen fighter Miki and YuGiOh Zexal fame/infamy. It is a stiffled screenplay, clichéd and lacking any of the wit or character interplay that marvel's live action universe excels in.

This is not helped by the mediocre voice acting from both Japanese and English actors. Punisher growls and grumbles his way through the movie lacking chemistry with Black Widow; herself portrayed more as a straightforward hero with a tragic past romance than a sultry manipulative secret agent whom no one can guess what she is planning to do next. This same screenplay turns our main antagonist into some love scorned brat with a serious inferiority complex who subjected himself to experiments to become a superpowered stalker after his old flame.

Once again, Marvel anime serves as a showcase of what anime always gets wrong. Hyper detailed artwork is ruined by animation shortcuts. First time Director Kenichi Shimizu who watched one too many Michael bay movies peppers this show with shaky cameras, extreme close ups and long lingering shots focused on Black Widow's shiny leather clad chest and bum areas. Nonetheless, the character designs look straight out of Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust with long curvy sharp featured women, square jawed bulky men and a shadow for every nook cranny and crease on a character. They look beautiful.

So in keeping with the usual Marvel Anime standards, we have another visually stunning little movie with a decent story but little else in terms of the script, characters and animation. Better than Iron Man: Rise of Technovore of course, and much better than that CGI atrocity Iron Man/Hulk: Heroes United. Yet no where near DC and Warner Premiere's most mediocre efforts.

Didn't really love this movie! But it was somehow interesting!

Did not like it.

It was more talk than action. I kind of hate it when animation is all talk, what's the point? The animation does not even look cheap it looks like some effort went into it. Enough effort for it not to be just the characters talking for 90mins.

Maybe it would be worth the talk if it was not a story I heard many times. Though the addiction of the Punisher is some-what refreshing, listening to the Black widow and Nick fury defend their occupations as spies is only interesting when Sam L Jackson and Scarlett Johansson do it.

The voice acting was not worthy of all that talk. It was like they were just reading their lines and not really well.

I've seen better action sequences and the character design was weak. When The Avengers finally made it on screen, I was not excited to see them at all.

I do like seeing the villain Graviton done for animation but his appearance was to minimal too salvage the film.

Found it uninteresting.

I read some Punisher Comics and really liked them for their dark atmosphere and more or less discussing that whole thing about if it's OK or not to take justice in your own hands. And guess what? That was not a topic at all in this movie. And why did they have to team up Punisher and Black Widow? I have no idea, they don't really fit together... So the story is basically to stop the evil organization Leviathan from doing a very bad thing. The cool thing is that I liked the idea of this organization cause it was kinda vaguely described and fitted quite well as a placeholder for the Freemasons, Zionists elites, mafia or whoever really controls major crime stuff like weapon and human trafficking in our world. So the antagonist concept worked for me but the execution lacked. The movie starts OK but gets worse and worse, worst point the ending where suddenly some of the Avengers appear and they barely say a word and they are seriously unnecessary for the plot. So that was just a marketing thing I guess. Another thing is why does it have to be an anime style movie? I really don't know but the animation was well done so it's OK yet not the way it should be. This whole movie feels a lot like an 80s action movie and I think that's why I like it but it can't reach the emotional deepness and suspense that many DC animations reached so far - and I'm saying this as a true Marvel fan.