Dragon's Heaven

Wow. If you like big robots and explosions and you are a fan of the sci-fi designs of Moebius and Hayao Miyazaki you have to see this little gem. Nothing too complicated story-wise but the designs are awesome and the way the backgrounds are drawn is really cool. I really liked it.

I found this short film on youtube recently and was surprised it had such a low imdb rating at 6.5/10. The design of the robots, the look of the animation, and the plot are all pretty amazing. The characters are the only thing lacking. It easily could have been adapted into a longer film with more writers to make more dynamic characters. If you like Nausicaa which is visually similar you'll probably like Dragon's Heaven. I'm trying to avoid spoilers but it says my review is too short... I'll add the main female character is obviously pervy fantasy but just kind of in a silly way more than anything "pretty girl in a bikini in a hot tub but IN THE FUTURE". But I like the ending 'Making Of' feature on the youtube video showing how it was made.

If anything, Dragon's Heaven could've been a little longer, or maybe even a lot longer. I was enjoying the world, the art style, and the simple robot meets girl story quite nicely, and then it seemed to end pretty suddenly. I guess it was good for something that lasted a little over half an hour, but I feel like I would've happily watched this for double the runtime if it had kept the energy and style up.

It's most worth watching for how good it looks and sounds. It has that classic 1980s anime film, but goes above in the visual department to various other anime short films/short straight-to-video features I've been watching (and mostly enjoying) lately.