Iron Man: Rise of Technovore (2013 Video) User Reviews

It fell between American comics and Japanese manga, and it hit bottom

[siderite · 6/10 · 21 April 2013]

The animation was good, like most Japanese animes. The voices were OK, without them being neither great nor grating to the ears. I didn't even consider the film having a soundtrack until the time of this review, so if it was, it was completely ignorable. What else is there? Oh, yes, the story. And the story is pretty much crap.

I see a pattern here: somewhere between the releases of big Hollywood productions, some low budget animation features appear, usually straight to video, and usually made by the Japanese. Is it an attempt to squeeze more money out of fans or one to bring more American productions to Asian markets? Probably both.

The problem with this idea is that the difference in quality between the big budget movies and the animated features is huge, and not always in a predictable direction. Look at the Resident Evil animated movies; some of them were way more enjoyable than the live acting ones.

So, what am I to think of Rise of the Technovore when the Stark hero is way off the image that Robert Downey Jr. created (let's face it, he pretty much carries the films by himself), the villain is practically copy-pasted from Japanese animes (bad ones) and, as many reviewers observed, the dialogue is boring and pretentious.

So I have to mark it as a failure. Not a big failure, mind you, we are talking about comic book heroes, so the expectations were low to begin with. However, I was kind of hoping for an interesting story that somehow escaped the censure of the Hollywood politburo. Alas, they had an American write the plot and that sealed its fate.

Tony Stark is......Gundam?

[xamtaro · 6/10 · 3 May 2013]

To coincide with the release of IRON MAN 3 in cinemas, Marvel has returned to direct-to-video animation with Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. Yes, everything rises. Machines rise, Apes rise, Guardians rise, prices rise; too bads story standards have not. Iron Man Rise of Technovore has more clichés in it than its title, showcasing all that is good and bad about modern Japanese anime.

Our story seemingly takes place within the Marvel Cinematic universe. The characters look like their live action movie counterparts, and there are references to events in the live action movies. We start off with Tony Stark about to launch a "Big brother" surveillance satellite that will be able to track all criminal activity worldwide. Ooh, intriguing! What are the moral implications for such a move? Will a crime free world justify the loss of privacy? Well, we never touch on these instead moving into an attack by mobile suits piloted by the silly named "Raiders" intending to stop the launch. How original. Iron Man tries to save the day but encounters a nubile teenage boy clad in weird nano-techno-organic armour far more advanced than Iron Man's. Lives are lost, and since Stark is the only survivor, he is taken in by SHIELD for questioning.

Now here is where things stop making sense. Instead of hearing Nick Fury out and joining forces to stop this new threat christened "The Technovore", Iron Man bails out on SHIELD and stupidly makes himself a wanted man. Now with SHIELD agents Hawkeye and Black Widow on his tail, Iron Man has to find a way to defeat this Technovore despite being outclassed in every way possible.

True to modern anime, this movie favours flaire, extravagance and all round coolness over narrative, pacing and the usual things that matter. Take a leading Japanese anime studio, give them an American sized budget and technological backing and Iron Man Rise of Technovore is the end result. It looks marvelous! The CGI (computer generated images) are blended seamlessly with the traditional animation, action is fast paced and in-your-face, character movements are smooth while still keeping an insane level of art detail. Overall, the show is a real thrill with wicked aerial combat and state of the art tech.

For fans of anime, this is truly a visual treat. There are numerous little shout outs to other anime shows, most notably gundam. Yet like most modern anime, the visuals are about the only thing good going for it. As stated earlier, the story makes little sense. Stark could have saved himself a lot of trouble with SHIELD if he just stopped for a bit and listened. But no. Our character of Stark is a one trick egotistical pony, dead set on having things his way. The other characters also come across as flat personalities, more typical anime fodder for fanservice than actual contributors to the story. We even have your typical angst ridden teen out to "remake the world".

All in all, the story bears a lot of similar elements to Steins;Gate and Texhnolyze, 2 other anime series directed by Technovore director Hiroshi Hamasaki. The script is a hodge podge of, again, anime clichés. Thankfully, the voice cast do great job of becoming their characters, both English and Japanese cast. They bring their best performance to the roles, especially Keiji Fujiwara and Matthew Mercer as Tony Stark. This is not Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, which is refreshing; you do not have any of the corny humor that plagues the live action movies. Instead you have a Tony Stark that is not as comedic as the movies but still as snarky; more like in the comics. On a whole, Iron Man: Rise of Technovore is merely superficial entertainment. There is no way anyone can be emotionally invested in any of the characters thanks to the cliché ridden script and story. Character relationships are simplistic to the point when death of characters become a mere passing moment. He's dead, on with the story. Pacing is too slow in many places to the point where it gets boring. Oh and the Punisher gets shoehorned in for absolutely little reason.

Pretty graphics and good acting cannot save an otherwise unimpressive, uninspired, and mediocre anime movie. At best, this is an extremely long showcase of studio Madhouse's animation capabilities when given the right backing. The "Invincible Iron Man" animated movie from 2007 is still a better animated feature than this.

Another example why most Marvel animated series and movies are crap.

[scorp76 · 5/10 · 18 April 2013]

Where to begin? Whole story revolves around super-science bio-nano machines that can reconstitute themselves into any shape and are practically indestructible in this case armour.

The story is so drawn out that the seconds became minutes and the minutes hours. This instalment should have be regulated to a 20 minute episode. A best way to describe the torture of watching Technovore is to compare it to a late 60s to 70s Sci-Fi from Russia.

Then you got the dialogue which is god awful crap. It is so pretentious and boring. Half it sounds like those horrible anime dubs. While we are at it the voice acting also boarders on the same quality of those anime dubs. James C. Mathis III was the only one did a good job.

To sum it up it is the most unrealistic, illogical, boring, pretentious crap. Madhouse has yet to repeat their success for making an animated movie for the English market since Vampire Hunter D and their only good release after that was the Highlander direct to video movie.

Not even worth renting unless you are a die hard Iron Man or Madhouse fan.

Good for time killing.

[Wirxaw · 3/10 · 19 April 2013]

Quite a disappointing movie. Before the conclusion, let's take a look step by step:

1. Story: Empty beginning, anti-climatic ending. Everything in between barely making sense at all. The ludicrousness of the plot reminds of Promotheos(sarcasm intended). But there is a big gap between a deep Sci- Fi movie with upcoming sequels and a DtV anime for the fans. It took me some time to figure on the net, who the heck were the antagonists(beside the story told in the movie). Even then, it has almost nothing to do with their canon comics. Where did Zeke get his powers from? What's about Sasha's DNA?(Wiki says nothing about her powers being DNA-related in particular)Why did the events unfurl the way they did(the final clash)? And why did it end so... peacefully? I doubt these questions will ever be answered.

2. Animation: Cute and cuddly. Would almost like it, if it wasn't cliché to the anime. Looks like I'm watching Iron Man themed Evangelion or something. I guess that's the only reason Japanese animators took this movie - it has android-tech in it!

3. Cliché: Mechas. Androids. Tentacles. Monsters. And utterly ridiculous "suit" of Zeke. Which anime was it borrowed from?

4. Cameos: Okay, Shield was fine. Hawk was too off, but Natasha compensated him. And, wow, Punisher? This deserves a plus.

Conclusion. I had to kill some time while waiting for download, the movie did it's purpose. I did not enjoy it, but neither was I totally disgusted. This movie could be tolerable at it's best, if not for the points 1-3, which I listed. Could've been 6-7 with a better plot and stuff, but unfortunately it's a 3, which roughly stands for "cute, franchise and cameo".

Runs like an Extended Episode

[princexjeo · 7/10 · 5 April 2013]

The Animation is probably the strongest part of this installment of this Iron Man production. The Voice Acting could use some work on the supporting cast though. The story begins as we are placed dead centre in the middle of another technological marvel as Stark is trying to change the world. However bad guys don't take a Vacation. Stark has to fix things before its too late. And that's my problem with this movie. The only sense of urgency seems to come from Stark and its not very convincing because the Antagonist is way too enigmatic. Even when the pseudo-philosophical mechanized angst driven plot unravels you don't really care, assuming you understand what everyone's motives actually are. The Antagonist is dreary, his monologuing is distracting and his intentions in-genuine. However, cameo appearances from a few heroes in Marvel universe make up for this. Overall its a shaky 7/10. It could have been 30 mins shorter and just as sweet.

It Could-No Should Have Been Good

[pkrayden · 5/10 · 19 April 2013]

Iron Man Rise of the Technovores. Art was very good. Lots of experimental animation was used to show the nano based enemy. Designwise it scores high with me. The voice acting was pretty badly synched and delivered. The battles and dog-fights were decent, although some of them are only a bunch of random explosions and exterior backdrops. But the plot made no sense. And even at multiple times during the movie admitted that it didn't know what it was talking about or even getting at. For example, in the beginning of the film the main villain's plan included destroying the all-seeing eye satellite plot device, however as the movie progressed it became clear that the boy didn't know what to do with it; going from destroying it calling it a "transgression," to ultimately trying to take it over. I will say the cameo of the Punisher vigilante was a good part of the film that actually worked,but the sheer amount of plot holes in this could keep me reviewing for days. In the end, the lack of a coherent plot or motive for the insane villain kept the film from moving forward, and kept us scratching our heads at the way everyone responded to his shenanigans. Came in with no expectations, hoping to be surprised? 5/10.

Iron Man Rise of Technovore: Passable Marvel animation

[Platypuschow · 6/10 · 14 December 2017]

Marvels animated history has always been spotty, the fact that each one seems to be animated by a different studio and there is no consistency with the writers probably has something to do with it.

Rise Of Technovore is one of the better efforts I've seen lately and tells the story of Tony Stark on the run from Shield after being setup by a new cyber villian.

Also featuring Nick Fury, War Machine, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Agent Hill and surprisingly The Punisher.

Sadly the Punisher's contributions are rather brief and for a host of reasons I didn't like this version of him. Here he is voiced by Walking Dead star Norman Reedus who I'm not sure was the best fit.

The story is solid, the animation is mostly decent and the films execution is more than passable. It's only let down by some shoddy editing and not the best action sequences (Which is pretty unforgivable for a Marvel movie)

Watchable shlock for the fans.

The Good:

Decent story

The Bad:

Tad dark in places

Not keen on this version of The Punisher

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Authorised to use lethal force? Don't think much of Stark do they?

Seeing Ironman getting spanked did nothing for me

Rise of the Technosnore

[zach-tiefling · 3/10 · 19 July 2013]

The animation is not bad. This is all I can give this movie. Otherwise is this animated feature probably one of the worst superhero adaptations I have seen in the last few years. The plot feels like it has no idea where it is going and doesn't make any sense. The main characters just jump from one part of the movie to the next, with what ever reason they pulled out of their noses in the scene before. The entire story feels like somebody glued one fourth of the "Avengers" movie to another forth of "Akira", set it on fire and passed it in on the last minute. The premise on which the movie started was so bad and ludicrous, that I was actively rooting for the bad guys.  

Even worse: If you would play a drinking game, while watching this movie and down each time a shot, when you see either something pretentious or you notice a overused (anime- )trope, you wouldn't last till the end of the movie.

1) White backdrop and pseudo-philosophical jabbering. Take a shot.

2) Tedious, overly long and pointless dialogues – take a shot - in the face of certain death instead of acting right away. Take a second shot.

3) An insanely powerful, yet mentally unstable teenager – take a shot - who wants to rid the world of humanity, thus making it better - take another shot – but has no real reason to do so apart from a massive apex-predator-complex. Take the third one.

4) The teenagers power spirals out of control and turns him into a monster. Shout "Tetsuooooo!" and take a shot.

5) Hero sacrifices himself – take a shot – in way that looks nearly like religious symbolism – shot – and survives. Shot.

6) A solution to the final 'problem', that comes out of nowhere and was pulled directly out of the movies rear. Shot.

7) A technology so badly explained, that it strains the suspension of disbelief in a movie, where you expect people in super-powered suits trashing giant robots. Shot.  

8) No explanation for important plot points happening. Shot.

...also take a shot each time you think: "I don't think computers work that way."

Conclusion: Avoid.

Mr. Sparkle Meet Iron Man With The Dumbest Plot Ever As A Backdrop

[shacklefort · 22 April 2013]

Did the animators even read there own synopsis? "Iron Man is framed by a technological terrorist, and breaks out to stop him and clear his name." What frame job??? This thing could be the dumbest animated thing I've ever watched and I watched She-Ra Princess of Power when I was a child.

I'm not really an anime fan. Are all imports this badly written and this moronic? SPOILER... So, an unknown agent attacks a space launch on American soil and the first thing SHIELD does is commit a billion dollars in technology and ordinance to kill Tony Stark??? WHAT? It was a Stark launch that killed or wounded 300 of his own people. SHIELD knows it was a foreign agent yet they throw everything they have with "deadly force" at Stark because he didn't stick around to give them more information??? That could be the dumbest thing I've seen in a while.

The animation looked good at times but the action was all just a jarring mess. You couldn't even tell what was going on. This had all the flavor and common sense of The Simpsons "Mr. Sparkle" commercial.

Marvel needs to abandon anime and find someone that can deliver an animated feature that doesn't suck.

A good Tony Stark story, told anime style.

[suite92 · 7/10 · 18 March 2014]

This is an anime version of an Ironman story, late teen/adult style.

Tony Stark is about to launch a surveillance satellite. Someone does not like this. They set about to blow up Tony's properties near the launch, and draw him into a one on one fight. Further, they kill his long-time friend and ally, Rhodes, and many people near the launch.

Fury sends Black Widow to fetch Ironman. They have a chat, then Fury tells him he is in custody. Ironman decides to leave. Fury sends a lot of people after him. Ironman evades most of them, but Black Widow gives him a harder time before he disables her plane.

The bad guys in this film are a small group who think of technology as a set of false idols, and particularly blame those who create more technology. So Ironman is high on their list, and his satellite is a prime target.

Tony meets with Pepper to get intelligence. SHIELD surrounds the place, but Tony escapes. He finds a lead in Pakistan, and meets up with Punisher. They zero on Ezekial Stane. SHIELD catches up, and Hawkeye screws Tony's suit with his arrows. Punisher helps him get away, with Black Widow and Hawkeye in pursuit.

Ironman follows Stane's efforts to China. He discovers more about the powerful weapons that Stane has, namely the technovores, which invade high tech gadgets and take them over.

Does Ironman find the ultimate goals of the enemy behind all this? If so, will he stop that goal from being accomplished? Will Tony make nice with SHIELD and Pepper?

-----Scores-----

Art/Animation: 8/10 Good by anime standards, but occasionally had the washed out look.

Sound: 7/10 The lip synching was not the best. The music's sound level was way off. Most of the time the voice actors' words were clear enough.

Voice/Acting: 7/10 I liked the performances of Norman Reedus, Matthew Mercer, Kate Higgins, and Clare Grant. The work of Eric Bauza and John Eric Bentley I did not care for so much.

Story: 8/10 Rather nice. Had transitions beginning to middle to end that were reasonable to follow. Has some pleasant surprises toward the end.

A typical Marvel cartoon.

[13Funbags · 3/10 · 9 August 2018]

The anime scenes were so boring. 57 minutes in I remembered that it was supposed to be about a satellite. One thing that the other reviewers seems to have missed is that Black Widow swore. That was the most exciting thing about this movie.

An action packed thrill ride

[basato92 · 8/10 · 7 August 2013]

A movie follow up to the anime series by Mad House comes Iron Man's latest adventure where he seeks to launch his newest invention, the satellite Howard. However he and War Machine were attacked by a mysterious bio-tech seeking to wipe out all living organisms. As one of the leading technological geniuses of the world and a devil may care hero, he gets to the bottom of this, uncovering the Technovore with mysterious connections to Tony while saving the world from a machine who has long abandoned his humanity.

The anime format does wonders for the world of Iron Man, as his armor along with barrage of mechs he fights look nice and shiny, seeing them in action is a delight. The only drawback to the art style is that in brightly lit rooms and in the dark the lighting becomes very distracting, it's too bright in the former, and too dark in the latter. Good portions of the movie take place in either and it's far too distracting. However in other environments it looks just fine.

You got Iron Man; the genius playboy we all know and love, but he's not alone as we have War Machine fighting alongside him as well as SHIELD along with the ride which includes Director Nick Fury and his top agents Hawkeye and Black Widow. Punisher also makes a short lived but memorable enough appearance. All are represented pretty well from their characterization to their relationships and conflicts.

Technovore is the main antagonist and is a convincing psychopath with Ezekiel Stane's fragile state of mind as a result of his teen angst meshing together with the Technovore nanotech eating away at his humanity. He's similar to Carnage, in that he's near unstoppable and causes insane amounts of damage. You really feel that the world is at stake with his rampage and proves a difficult obstacle for our heroes to overcome.

Not too much to say, it's a decent enough action packed hour and a half that's sure to please fans of the Invincible Iron Man.

6/10!

[AnnaPagrati · 6/10 · 31 August 2021]

Not a very nice one! I kind of got the plot, but not that much!

The animation and the Punisher aside, this was a big mess

[TheLittleSongbird · 2/10 · 29 May 2015]

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore did have some good ideas going for it, and considering the characters and that a good deal of animated superhero films are good, there was good potential here. Unfortunately, while with a couple of things that keep it from being unwatchable, Iron Man: Rise of Technovore wasted almost all the potential it had.

What saves Iron Man: Rise of Technovore from being unwatchable is the animation and the character of the Punisher. The animation is crisp and vibrant in colour, smooth in drawing and the backgrounds are incredibly dynamic and detailed, with a couple of funky visuals in the action. The Punisher's screen time is far too short, but when he is on screen the film actually is diverting and entertaining.

Everything else just doesn't work however, with the script and story being the biggest failures. Instead of having dialogue that has suspense, interest, wit and emotional resonance, the script manages to be devoid of all four. It is very talky to the point that parts just ramble on and on for forever, and sometimes with no real reason to. Even worse is that much of it also sounded incredibly awkward. The story is one big, drawn-out, incoherent mess, stretching everything(with the rambling dialogue being the offender here) to the point that the running time feels like an eternity. There were some really cool ideas here but nothing ever is explained(hence the incoherence complaint), and the pacing was like trudging through the thickest mud, that's how dull the film was.

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore has action scenes that are the very opposite of fun or suspenseful. Aside from a couple of funky visuals they are very pedestrian in pace and perfunctorily choreographed, complete with some horribly stupid moments. The film does a very bad job with the characterisation, only the Punisher is interesting. The heroes are bland and not always with much personality(Stark is stripped of everything that made him such a good character in the live-action films)- this is unforgivable seeing as when done well they are among the most entertaining superhero characters ever. While the villain is severely underdeveloped, with everything about him screaming of one-dimensional cliché. The voice acting, with the exceptions of a good job from Norman Reedus and a reasonably acceptable one from Matthew Mercer, often sounds like the voice actors were very unmotivated and like their hearts weren't in it. Eric Bauza is especially problematic, he's very monotone here. The music is forgettable at best and lacks energy, momentum or atmosphere, but the poor sound quality doesn't help(flat and distorted).

To conclude, Iron Man: Rise of Technovore has good animation and Punisher is a good character, to a lesser extent too two voice actors fare better than they deserved to, but despite the potential that's all the film has going for it. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Not for everybody.

[nogu-06346 · 5/10 · 11 March 2020]

Reminds me of something that would've been on Cartoon Network in the early 2000's. Norman Reedus does an excellent job as the punisher and he is the second walking dead star to play the character. Also the movie tries to pattern a lot of story point from the MCU.

Boring

[ashfordofficial · 2/10 · 31 December 2021]

A follow up on the Marvel Anime series featuring popular Marvel characters. I felt this film as an insult to the anime fandom, because they made this too slow and boring to watch.

Too Japanese for it's own Good

[swaggimusmaximus · 3/10 · 1 June 2019]

I checked this movie out in hopes of something passable to watch. A different, animated take on Iron Man featuring the Punisher didn't sound too bad to me, I figured why not?

Then I saw the Sony Japan studio name in Japanese letters and I got worried. My worries were founded when this movie turned out to be an Avengers fan-fic Anime, chock full of all the same tropes that make the rest of the genre garbage.

The animation is blatantly choppy in a bid to draw less frames and save money. What little items move on screen move in a choppy manner, or are so far removed from screen that one would struggle to understand what's happening. Characters move as little as possible, with lots of facial panning and stand offs for the sake of exposition rather than quality. Everything's extremely saturated as well, leaving action scenes as incomprehensible with all the light saturation. It's an ugly movie through and through.

The story revolves around Tony Stark trying to beat what is essentially a generic Anime antagonist shoehorned into a crappy rendition of the Marvel universe. Every other line of dialogue is exposition because it's an Anime, so of course everything has to be narrated in long-winded conversations between characters. I can't believe they got Norman Reedus to voice the Punisher, but they did and it's the most bored, dispassionate voice acting I've heard from a familiar name. The rest of the story is...who cares, because it's too convoluted for it's own good thanks to it's Japanese origin. There are a million other Anime movies that are just as stupid but don't pull down the Marvel brand.

In short, skip this off-brand Marvel production. It's an affront to Stan Lee and everyone that built up the MCU, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone with a modicum of cinematic taste.

Marvel anime movie?

[WeAreLive · 9/10 · 26 November 2017]

This movie was very good to watch if you had a very bad day.

At first, glance back in 2015 when I looked at pictures of this movie because it was anime I was put off. I was never a fan of anime at this time.

But when I actually got round to seeing this movie I actually enjoyed it.

The voice acting was good especially Iron Man, War Machine, Pepper, Hawkeye, Punisher, and JARVIS. All though some of the voices didn't sound right or were off.

The designs were good and so was the Japanese animation.

There was one moment which never made sense like what happened to the main villain at the end and who exactly was Sasha Hammer (the girl reading the book) his wife, girlfriend, sister or cousin and I wonder why The Punisher had very little screen time?

It is surprisingly better than The Invincible Iron Man.