Catching the eye of every Internet savvy film fan with its addictive trailer, Casshern has built up plenty of international anticipation as the live action reinterpretation of the goofy superhero 70’s anime Casshan. The trailer is crafted marvelously with an emphasis on the film’s visual splendor as it builds up to shots of epic good vs. evil struggles, slick black and white swordfights and dazzling special effects. On one hand, with its variety of action shots, and immersive looks into the world, the trailer does exactly what it’s supposed to do: sell the film. However, viewers will disappointed to find that most of the running time is packed with excessive dialogue and discussion that moves at a tiresome pace—hardly living up to the possibilities presented by its preview.
Director Kazuaki Kiriya significantly updates and alters the original anime to introduce new ideas and relevant themes for the current viewer. In this future world, a costly but victorious war for the Greater Asian empire leads to pollution, terrorist threats, and totalitarianism. Dr. Azuma, a scientist seeking to cure his ill wife, pushes the advancement of his Neocell research, which allows any parts of the body to be rejuvenated or reconstructed. Lightning unexpectedly strikes his laboratory [really?] creating a group of mutants who are threatened by the uncompassionate government and are forced to retreat to a base where they happen to find the resources to construct thousands of advanced robots and retaliate. Meanwhile, Dr. Azuma’s son Tetsuya, who was killed while enlisted in the army, is brought back to his father’s lab, resurrected and reconstructed with a strong robotic body to battle the mutants and return peace to the world.
Kiriya’s strong departure from the anime seems to be intended to make his own personal mark on the story too. As a result, he goes severely overboard by squeezing in as many themes and messages possible, commenting on global issues, war, terrorism, existence, humanity, pollution, government and of course, love. The anime was concerned with robots who simply decide to remove humans from the equation, thus cue the battle for survival. The film, however, complicates the issue by forcing both sides to examine their morality, which should have been a nice substantial update, had it not been so disordered and inept.
Still, for all the downtime the viewer suffers through, Casshern does satisfy with its kinetic action, packed full of exploding robotic limbs and a climactic rock score. The visual style seamlessly transposes staple anime shots into the live action world, complete with those epic moments where the background speedily flies behind lunging characters. The look of the film is really what keeps viewers transfixed for the entire running time. While Tetsuya’s resurrection and his relationship with Luna do make an emotional impact at the most basic level, the character and the plotting generally take a backseat to the power of the individual scenes, and the film’s stunningly, bleak world. Armed with a budget of a mere 6 million US dollars, Casshern’s production design and visual effects team puts most of their competition—domestic and international— to shame with engrossing detail packed into every single frame. Kiriya puts mellow classical scores, bursts of rock and techno and even the faintest hint of Shiina Ringo to round out the film’s memorable mood. The pic’s most magical moments often occur when smart music choices are paired with beautiful shots.
With his music video background, however, it seems odd that Kiriya would struggle so much with overlong speeches and drawn-out scenes. As both the that genre and Casshern’s trailer prove, an image can often say a lot more than ten-minute monologues can. Perhaps he simply never got the chance to write dialogue and just had to see what all the fuss was about.
Reviewed by Tarun
