Dante's Inferno: Uma Animação Épica

High culture collides with low in this anime, a spin-off from the imminent computer game from EA. Whether or not you take to it will depend on your view of Dante, Japanese animation, and video game tie-ins, as well as more generally on the cross-fertilisation between different cultural artifacts - always a contentious subject. Most of those in the target market for Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic will not be over-familiar with the original source, but there's no need to climb on any literary high-horses, though general observations are worthwhile. Purists, however, may wish to stay clear of it.

Dante's original, one of the great epics of world literature, has been the inspiration of much work by writers and artists down the centuries. IMDb lists four or five screen works with the title. Animated versions have been rare, although no doubt there's a comic book version lurking somewhere. Such is the nature of things that this present version appears in a year along with a rival animated production titled more succinctly 'Dante's Inferno' - one shorter in length, but apparently superior to this in its fidelity to the original. The most notable live-action version has always been that of 1935 with Spencer Tracy, an even freer adaptation than the one we have here, in which the horrendous visions are compressed into 10 minutes of a much longer narrative.

By contrast, the present version spends most of its running time on these elements, depicting at length Dante's journey through the nine circles of hell to reach his beloved Beatrice. Perhaps sensing a need for variety between the titanic battles that this progress involves, Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic breaks up the hero's progress with several flashbacks, not in the original, during which the true state of affairs and Dante's real moral stature becomes more and more explained.

The character of Beatrice has been changed as part of this new narrative device, giving her a more dynamic role in the narrative as well as providing the romantic core. Whether or not Dante would have appreciated his ideal love appearing briefly as the bride of Lucifer, or his reflective protagonist-self metamorphosing into an axe-wielding warrior figure more Conan than Christian, one can only conjecture; but a target audience will respond to the changes. Only Dante's guide, the poet Virgil, keeps some of his original quiet dignity.

Given the EA game standing behind the release, it's no surprise that Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic has action and a plot structure more reflective of that more commercial source than Dante's leisurely writing. Much of the moral depth and complexity of the book has been jettisoned thereby in favour of arcs of swift movement. The original contained a more sophisticated and extended version of damnation than the mere nine circles of doom rather simplistically imagined here, each becoming just another test for our hero to reach, then duly pass through. The original's spiritual shock and awe has been replaced by a gamer's inevitable level-creep, where it is never really in doubt that Hell is likely to be overcome. It's a considerable reduction of the medieval original's salutary purpose, even if the ending of the film attempts to have it both ways.

The original Inferno, one part of the three-part Divine Comedy, makes particular use of allegory throughout, in ways an educated medieval reader would be expected to follow. Understandably feeling that allegory is not something that modern audiences will sit through at great length without growing restless, and with the imperatives of a game franchise to support, one imagines Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic was always going to be obliged to substitute breathless action for contemplation, sketched in typical anime style.

Suffice to say that the animation on offer here is certainly vivid even if, by comparison to the Shrek-like pictorial quality of the game (a trailer for which is helpfully included as an extra on the disc), the line-drawn work seems dated in style. Some, incidentally, have noticed a lack of continuity in the rendering of Dante's features. At first I thought each of the nine circles cleverly had its own subtle visual identity, but no: it's just because eight studios and directors from America, North Korea and Japan all had input. It's an inconsistency that's a little distracting; one indication perhaps of a rushed production, tied to release dates elsewhere.

Japanese fantasy anime and manga have a tradition of dealing with the matter of monsters and shadow worlds, often with their own original mythologies and shock tactics - so much so that they sometimes give censors pause for thought. It was one reason why they acquired such a cult following. But there's no tentacle horror intruding here; no stomach-churning changes of form, no real depravity, while the sexual content is reduced to occasional titillation.

Hell, one would hope, ought to be the most alarming and appalling spectacle of all, an updated warning to all who behold it, a moral imperative to reform, a presentation of the most terrible of terrors. But the horrors of Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic leave us frankly un-aghast and un-chastened. Whether or not the creators have been constrained by deference to the august original or just the mass-market demands of their sponsors is hard to say; but for a real walk on the dark side you would be better off with something like the now elderly Devil Man (aka: Debiruman) or, most memorably, the notorious Urotsukidôji.

Writing this review after 12 years is hell alot of time but the story and animation deserves some applause .

I heard there are 7 writers split for each plot so the bodyworks and Armory for dante and virgil keeps changing in each circle. As for the 9 circle of hell it explains everything in short and speedy and there's no way to go deep into it and for a movie past a decade this one is a thumbs up.

I have no idea how to review this anime hybrid. It's all over the place.

Let's start with the good. This anime has good visual art, and is mostly well animated. The audio is good.

.... and it's the only movie I have ever watched were some one back flips while riding a horse.

The plot line is simple, and straight forward, but the way they execute the movie is very confusing.

While our hero ( or is he? ) makes his way threw hell, things jumps out as making no sense, and out of place. Things like character actions, to character design change radically from one layer of hell, to the next.

It doesn't help there is a lot of random plot convenience thrown in.

Who? What? Why did that happen? The presentation of this anime is jarring, and distracting.

It's an OK anime, if you ignore the details, and focus on the action, but for me it's one "What is going on" after the next.

Someone else chose the film, so I expected nothing. I had a vague idea that it might be an animated movie based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It was not. It is actually based on a video game also released in 2010.

That being said, Dante is not looking for God, as in the poem, he is in Hell to find the soul of his beloved Beatrice, whom he betrayed and therefore was taken by the Devil, right after his whole family was killed, mostly because of him. What can I say, the woman bet with the Devil that in three years in the Crusades, her guy never touched another woman. Girls really believe these things.

Anyway, each circle of Hell is animated differently, I guess by different animation teams. The styles are all what I call "American Rock and Roll", though, something like an early offshoot of Disney animation, that then got bad ass and full of anger. I mostly liked the animation and if only for that Dante's Inferno is watchable.

The story is another matter entirely. The guy enters Hell and kills everything he gets his eyes upon, barring his mother and girlfriend, including demons and even Satan (twice! :) ). I was watching the film and I was wondering how could Alighieri have written something that feels like Rambo in Hell. Only afterward did I find that the plot is based on a video game.

So, based on the animation (and on the fact that most animation movies now are crap) I give it a slightly above average. Plot: ridiculous. Therefore the resulting below average mark.

I was fascinated by the story of Dante Alighiere's Divine Comedy, and came the game Dante's Inferno, even with great changes in relation to the book I found the game excellent, then I was very excited by the animation Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic, more disappointed me Very, first the script is weak, it is very rushed, it should be a series or at least a 2:00 movie, a serious problem, the animation is mute, at some point the animation changes, sometimes Dante is strong, Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic does not even come to the forefront of the game, but it's a bit of a hassle. Be bad, but there are many problems, and unfortunately it is not an Epic animation. Note 6.5