The Good:
The set decoration. Ooooh yeah. I've seen plenty of manga with this Nazi/Shanghai-deco look, but few live-action movies that have realized it so well. Some nice details, like the cellphone ringing with the sound of an old-fashioned bakelite telephone and the creepy plane with the head of the Supreme Commander.
Use of grainy, tinted, and high-contrast film effects in "ordinary" scenes both sets the mood and helps to disguise cheap computer animation in SFX scenes.
Cool, video-gamey rock music during some of the action sequences.
Hey, now there's something different--a scene where the (helpless) heroine runs, towing the (even more helpless) hero behind her by the hand. She's in heels, no less.
Yes, I'm a sap, but I got misty at the end.
Damned fine-looking casting all around.
The Bad:
Hello, plausibility? Granted, I may have missed a few explanations due to the language barrier (my Japanese is weak when it comes to technical and military talk), and I learned to accept some it as artistic license, but still, I advise you to try not to think about the movie too much while you're watching it.
Despite some surprisingly effective usage (see "The Good"), the CG isn't _always_ believable. The brief cuts to 2-D animation in the marching-robots scene really didn't do anything for me.
The first big fight scene (Casshern vs. Sagurey) was shot and edited in such a way as to be almost incomprehensible. (Other fight scenes were better, though--I particularly liked the Casshern vs. Barashin duel.)
Other Notes:
Lots of violence--was the director making a special effort to distance it from the old kiddie-cartoon version? Includes one very bloody assassination, three impalements, and many, many shootings of innocent civilians.
The village doctor's dog was a nod to the old cartoon series, IIRC.
The set decoration. Ooooh yeah. I've seen plenty of manga with this Nazi/Shanghai-deco look, but few live-action movies that have realized it so well. Some nice details, like the cellphone ringing with the sound of an old-fashioned bakelite telephone and the creepy plane with the head of the Supreme Commander.
Use of grainy, tinted, and high-contrast film effects in "ordinary" scenes both sets the mood and helps to disguise cheap computer animation in SFX scenes.
Cool, video-gamey rock music during some of the action sequences.
Hey, now there's something different--a scene where the (helpless) heroine runs, towing the (even more helpless) hero behind her by the hand. She's in heels, no less.
Yes, I'm a sap, but I got misty at the end.
Damned fine-looking casting all around.
The Bad:
Hello, plausibility? Granted, I may have missed a few explanations due to the language barrier (my Japanese is weak when it comes to technical and military talk), and I learned to accept some it as artistic license, but still, I advise you to try not to think about the movie too much while you're watching it.
Despite some surprisingly effective usage (see "The Good"), the CG isn't _always_ believable. The brief cuts to 2-D animation in the marching-robots scene really didn't do anything for me.
The first big fight scene (Casshern vs. Sagurey) was shot and edited in such a way as to be almost incomprehensible. (Other fight scenes were better, though--I particularly liked the Casshern vs. Barashin duel.)
Other Notes:
Lots of violence--was the director making a special effort to distance it from the old kiddie-cartoon version? Includes one very bloody assassination, three impalements, and many, many shootings of innocent civilians.
The village doctor's dog was a nod to the old cartoon series, IIRC.