Shaun Watson reviews�

Movie Poster from the Internet Movie Database Ark Written by Jae-young Kwak With the voice talent of: Kathleen Barr Trevor Devall Kirby Morrow James Woods Chiara Zanni

Ah, James Woods. How I enjoy your movies. You are the only man--aside from Edward James Olmos--that can have holes in his face and still mack hot chicks. Your acting style is pretty good, as exhibited in the last movie I reviewed with you in it, John Carpenter's Vampires. I even applaud you not getting blown up by terrorists during 9/11. You are awesome, Mr. Woods. Sadly the last, but not latest, thing I saw you in was Videodrome with Debbie Harry. That was many moons ago. Imagine my surprise when I found a funny looking animation on the shelf at BlockBuster called Ark.

ABOVE: "Oh-no It is Mecha-Tokyo We must run!" BELOW: Cloud and Aeris look over Midgar�I mean, Dr. Aki Ross and�oh, you get the joke.

James Woods plays Jallak, a high-ranking officer for the Queen of the war-torn planet Alcyone. He is a Storrion that fights against the rebellious Ceveans that also live on the same planet, making sure the latter stay as slaves. He is but another soldier in a century-long conflict between the two cultures that has been around prior to the creation of the Ark.
The Ark is a ship that rests on the shoulders of a giant god-robot, kind like Atlas. It was built by a fusion of magic and technology made by the Cevean priestess Aurana. She built it to take the Storrions and Ceveans from ruined Alcyone to a new world. The Storrions stole it from the Ceveans and tried to run off with it, but it won't move without Aurana's help. Because Aurana died while making the Ark, the ship has lain dormant and become the great city of Levane. Little did Jallak know that he would soon find the key to the Ark in his adopted Cevean daughter, Amaranth(Chiara Zanni, Hamtaro[TV]).
A beautiful purple-haired teen, Amaranth has no idea that her life will change the worlds she knows. She soon finds out when she meets Rogan(Kirby Morrow, Brain Powerd), a Cevean rebel. They are drawn to each other with the discovery of Amaranth's true heritage and the interest it has piqued in the royal advisor Baramanda(Trevor Devall, Ronin Warriors[TV]). He wants Amaranth to pilot the Ark, Ceveans be damned! The evil advisor takes her captive, leaving only one alternative: SAVE THE PRINCESS. It's up to Jallak and Rogan, along with Jallak's protoge Prel(Kathleen Barr, Reboot[TV]), to stop Baramanda's mad scheme and save Amarantha from her true destiny. But if her destiny is to fight in mecha the size of large cities during the final battle, who are they to stand in her way�or my path to entertainment?

Written by Jae-young Kwak(of My Sassy Girl fame), this CG animation was a total rip-off. It was in the same vein as Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within�note that James Woods was also in that movie. It all looks like a Final Fantasy game too; all filigrees and faceless soldiers. The proliferation of mecha was ridiculous, almost as if production company Digital Rim cribbed straight from Masamune Shirow's sketchbook for mechanical design and said, "Let's just use everything and say we didn't." This movie came too close for the comfort of saying it was original. The city's destruction towards the end of Ark and FF:TSW was pretty much the same, but Ark had less ghosts. Speaking of spooky things, the similarities to the Ark robot's face and roaring as compared to the roaring and face of the EVA 01 in "Neon Genesis Evangelion"[TV] was uncanny. Based on that, I believe that something must be done about incestuous design in current media trends. It's gotten too bad. How bad? It's so bad that Amarantha's cutesy mascot JeuJeu is robotic like Pen-Pen and looks like a Chocobo with rabbit ears like that new race in Final Fantasy XII[VG]. I think that the most memorable note of the movie is that even though the people who made Ark stole wholesale from better anime, the movie will still entertain.

• The interfaces, the armor and the mecha used by Storrion forces in the movie.
• Giant robots. Can't go wrong with that.
• Note the sneak moves during the mecha battle at the end. Yoink!
• There are no bullet holes left behind when people get shot.
• The execution device is kinda hard to follow, in terms of form. Is it an iron maiden? Is it a complicated guillotine? Does it make crinkle-cut fries?
• One tagline reads "Prepare to be saved." With all the Final Fantasy that weaves itself through the movie's references, I'm surprised that there was no blasphemous thoughts about Western religion.

Pretty as a picture but as original as a Xerox, the CG animation film Ark gets a ReViews rating of 6 out of 10.

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