I really enjoyed Higanjima (2009) it was a surprisingly entertaining little film.
This however is a strange creature and I struggled to make head nor tails of it. Is this a sequel? Is it an alternate version? What's going on?
With a new and pretty terrible cast, some really poor CGI (And lots of it) a medicore story and no actual ending I'm really really dissapointed.
On the plus side it has plenty of frantic action and lots of original gigantic monsters, okay they could have been animated better but still they certainly look the part and make the film memorable.
Our lead protagonist is a mess, he overacts even more than you'd expect from a movie of this type and looks like a pretencious moron who I failed to root for.
Our antagonist? An already effeminate character has been taken to the next level and was neither intimidating nor entertaining, all that was left was annoyance.
As an experience, as a visual treat this succeeds but as an actual story it falls flat and falls hard.
I went into this with high expectations, none of them were met and this has tarnished the Higanjima concept for me a little. It's like they didn't bother to actually write a decent plot or get a competent cast and instead opted for making it look as big and flashy as possible.
Watchable, but outstandingly inferior to the 2009 outing.
The Good:
Great monsters
The Bad:
Dodgy CGI
Lacks the charm of the first film
Miyabi and Akira are both terrible
The pee scene, seriously!?
Has no ending, at all
Things I Learnt From This Movie:
Higanjima could make for a great animated series
This however is a strange creature and I struggled to make head nor tails of it. Is this a sequel? Is it an alternate version? What's going on?
With a new and pretty terrible cast, some really poor CGI (And lots of it) a medicore story and no actual ending I'm really really dissapointed.
On the plus side it has plenty of frantic action and lots of original gigantic monsters, okay they could have been animated better but still they certainly look the part and make the film memorable.
Our lead protagonist is a mess, he overacts even more than you'd expect from a movie of this type and looks like a pretencious moron who I failed to root for.
Our antagonist? An already effeminate character has been taken to the next level and was neither intimidating nor entertaining, all that was left was annoyance.
As an experience, as a visual treat this succeeds but as an actual story it falls flat and falls hard.
I went into this with high expectations, none of them were met and this has tarnished the Higanjima concept for me a little. It's like they didn't bother to actually write a decent plot or get a competent cast and instead opted for making it look as big and flashy as possible.
Watchable, but outstandingly inferior to the 2009 outing.
The Good:
Great monsters
The Bad:
Dodgy CGI
Lacks the charm of the first film
Miyabi and Akira are both terrible
The pee scene, seriously!?
Has no ending, at all
Things I Learnt From This Movie:
Higanjima could make for a great animated series
