天下制覇

But where’s Captain Falcon?

Impressions:

I feel like there should be a name for the random-as-hell flashback out of nowhere that reveals that every single main character actually knew each other when they were children. What is Japan’s obsession with it? I mean, it’s not like the movie had a deep and involving plot or characterization aside from that, but it feels like Japan can’t do anything anymore without at least half the cast being childhood friends.

Rant about that admittedly trivial point aside, I can’t say that I’m much of a fan of racing shows or even automobiles in general, so my attention tended to wander more than once. Sometimes it was to question why I was able to accidentally pull off an entire clump of hair off the sheltie, sometimes just to ponder that the creation of yet another Ikkitousen will actually be pushing things towards a more tasteful baseline for anime after certain recent… things. The point is that I am not the kind of person who would view 2 Fast 2 Furious except on threat of crippling pain. I am well aware and accept that I am not the target audience for this.

That said, it is gorgeous. Excellently animated from start to finish and they did a great job in making the world itself seem alive and full of weird aliens. There were a few times that the vocals were completely out of sync with the animation, but that only really stood out because everything else looked excellent. If someone set out to make an F-Zero anime, they’d be hardpressed to do a better job than this. They also nailed the 80s style very well. JP’s hair was simple, but when there’s a guy named Machinehead petting his yorkie on his lap with a lava lamp in the background, well… the only way they could be more 80s is if someone was snorting crack and the bad guy was Reagan.

Like I said though, the characters and plot were weak at best. Their crazy-ass no-holds barred race is planned to go through some secret military facility, so The Man just sends out things to kill them, and when someone crashes into said military facility, it unleashes random monster X… which The Man immediately nukes, letting everybody take a well-needed break to flashback, and letting the antagonist merge with a giant landwhale, at which point he vanished for the rest of the movie. You’d think something like that would be important. That’s really the biggest issue with the movie There’s simply no actual connection between the antagonists and protagonists at all. They’re both off doing their own things and only coincidentally intersecting without even really care about… or hell, being aware of… of the other at all. It’s only in the last ten minutes when they’re trading nitro boosts that any of the other racers even note that they exist. This is made even worse by the big bad being an obviously evil version of JP, right down to having a metal hair spike. There’s also a lot of very obvious padding with the other riders. There’s no reason to care about basically any of them, but each one gets as much, if not more, focus than the protagonists. The last race especially seemed like it’s go 5-10 minutes at a time without even seeing JP or Sonoshee only to check in briefly before going off to see everybody else again.

Like I said though, this really isn’t my kind of movie, so take it with a grain of salt. If you like racing flicks, this one is gorgeously animated, and fairly well scored. It just lacks any kind of sensible plot or characters to tie it together and make it anything more than fluff. If you have even a passing liking for racing shows/movies, definitely check this out. If, like me, you’re not a fan of such, it’s still worth giving at least a look for 10-20 minutes to remind yourself what animation could/should be like instead of the still and speedline infested drek that’s normally shoveled out. It’s 3am at this point and I’ve rambled enough. I may edit this in the morning when I’m a little more lucid.