It
looks as though Toei didn’t appreciate the change in the series art style
opting for a cleaner and ultimately uninspiring art style that’s similar to
the first three OVAs. This is by
the numbers stuff – take an antagonist, a protagonist, sprinkle with violence
add some nudity and boil for just under an hour. This has been the formula for
the whole series. At no point does it digress and at no point [bar the first
chapter and the third] does the series show a spark of creativity or talent on
the parts of the production committee. Crying
Freeman 5 is no exception to the above with one exception the pace has been
toned down slightly while there is the usual mix of ultra violence and eroticism
on show but it’s all very slow. It
takes forever for anything to happen in this volume and when the highpoint of
the action arrives it’s hardly worth enduring the rest of the movie for.
Mentioned
in previous reviews of the series the character designs are again faithful to
the original manga and while they may look all right in static form the
animation only helps to show off their extreme level of ugliness.
The sheer lack of quality animation is the thing that drags this show
down to a watery grave. I could stick the bad story, uninspired characters and
meaningless nudity if it all looked decent – I mean it could be funny in a
tragic kind of way but instead it’s tragic in tragic kind of way. The music is again poor and the sound effects are dirt the
one thing it has going for it is the voice acting.
The overacting on display perfectly complements the poor story and makes
it all seem like a violent soup opera. At
least it would if the characters had any amount of depth to them.
Trying
to flesh out and push along the characters and their development. Characters are
reintroduced from previous volumes [tying random plot holes together] and we are
granted a look at Freeman’s inner workings for a brief second at the start of
the volume, while this should ideally help us unravel the complex psyche
of a callous killer it only serves as a bit of filler dialogue to take up space
between the next sex scene or fight. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again this OVA does
nothing new – it doesn’t surprise and has already become very tired very
quickly if it’s average action your after served up with some sub par sex
scenes then Crying Freeman 5 is the one for you.
However if you happen to be sensible you’ll steer well clear.
5
out of 10
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