AgentGunman

Reviewing this series is quite simple, so I'll do it. If you're a fan of fighter aircraft, with dogfights, ground attacks and all that, then rejoice. Area 88 is for you and you must see it! Every aspect is highly detailed, from the position of the guns on each aircraft to the jettisoning of external fuel tanks when they enter combat. The music used for the action scenes, made by Rank 1 among others, is always appropriate and I swear it will stick in your mind.

The story as two themes: the power of love and the way war affects the minds of human beings. The main character, Shin Kazama, was a happy man who was about to join a major Japanese airline as a pilot and was going to marry the daughter of that airline's President. However, his greedy best friend decides to get rid of him and tricks him to join a mercenary squadron in a fictional Middle East country in the late 1970s, where there's a civil war.

The mercenaries are fighting for several reasons. Some saw so many things during the Cold War that they just can't go back to a normal life. Others are there for the adrenaline of air combat or simply because they need money. Kazama becomes the squadron's best ace because he's fighting to gain enough money to leave and see his fiancée again. He's the only one that has something waiting for him after the war. Life on the air base is pretty regular, for a mercenary squadron. But that changes with the arrival of Makoto Shinjou, a war photographer who loves to take photos of people in special emotional moments and seems obsessed with Kazama.

The story is the weak part of the show. The previous paragraph is basically it. There's absolutely no information whatsoever regarding the status of the civil war or the political ideology of both factions. All we know is that the rebels are probably supported by the Soviet Union, since all their aircraft are Soviet (Migs and Bears). But then again, we never get to see what the national air force uses! Sometimes, one episode will be centered around one of the support characters, but character development for everyone except Shinjou and Kazama is very poor. There's one episode where they go a bit further with Mick, but since he's the American ace there, it was probably done to please the American audience.

The animation is state of the art, both for aircraft and characters. The voice acting is also brilliant. Shin Kazama is played by the great Takehito Koyasu.

I haven't seen the original OVA, but I can tell you that the Shin Kazama of this series doesn't cry as much as the old one, nor whines about killing other human beings.

Overall, worth watching. Imperative to watch if you're looking for action. Just be ready for some disappointments on the story.

This is the only Saint Seiya movie I've watched so far. It's basically the classic "Saori/Athena is the damsel in distress, race against time" plot condensed in a single movie. Fights that would usually last at least two episodes only last five minutes in this movie.

What sparked my interest in this movie, and I bet there are other fans who felt the same, was the return of the dead gold saints. Will they fight different opponents? Will they have their revenge against the bronze saints who killed them? My interest was crushed during the movie. Shura and Camus have almost cameo-like appearances. Deathmask looks more like the kind of villain I expect to see in American cartoons.

Aphrodite actually shows he learned with his death and was quite ready for Shun. Unfortunately, just like in the Hades saga, Aphrodite is demoted from one of the strongest gold saints to a second class villain.

I would recommend this movie to Gemini Saga's fans, however. Nevertheless, it seems that these five saints were put in the movie simply to make people watch it.

What annoys me the most is this: if you watched the Poseidon saga, the last 20 minutes of the movie will be boring for you. In fact, they will make you feel like you wasted your time by watching it.

Some positives. The animation is clearly better than in the series. Very good acting from Taichirô Hirokawa, Keiko Han and Tôru Furuya (although I bet he didn't like saying "Saori-San!" so many times). Overall, you can live without this movie. And maybe you should watch this before the Poseidon saga. At least you'll have Shaina in the series to make it better.

Basically, Edward Norton represents a slave of the current consumist society we live in, a guy who buys all kinds of material goods that you order by phone only; who has a office job in a corrupt car company. We have the kind of person that all the big corporations want people to be. And then we have Tyler Durden, which represents what someone like the narrator would want to be and do but can never find the courage to be; the guy who works at night doing things we need but nobody cares who's doing it (or how it's done).

This movie strikes every single bad capitalist thing in society! The Fight Club is like a refuge, where people can get away from society and unleash their fury against society on someone else.

You'll definitely see the world in a different way after you see Fight Club, I can assure you that. This movie would have probably received an award, if it wasn't for the violence, but that's what Fight Club is all about: being different.