Directed by: Masahisa Ishida
Produced by: Daiei Co. Ltd.
Programming genius Joe Takagami is Silicon Valley’s brightest rising star creator of the Rockford Foundation’s supercomputer ROSA and soon to be a Nobel Prize winner. But a chance encounter with an old girlfriend turns deadly. Joe’s past starts to fall around him…. Hunted by unstoppable Inhuman Battle Beings. Joe unwittingly unlocks a malevolent and dark paranormal power within himself.
Nostalgia has a bad habit of making one believe that something is better than it actually is when I first saw Makyu Senjo I was about 8 years. Not possessing much knowledge of anime at that time and indeed not recognising decent art I thought it was rather good. So it’s been about 10 years now and I find myself reviewing Makyo Senjo Volume 1 for Anime Ireland. Needless to say [because you’ve probably guessed by my tone] this is not a good anime in fact it is not even an average anime it is below average appalling even.
This is [another] below standard action anime. It feels tired before the action even begins this is basically the Guyver dressed in new clothes and kitted out with a somewhat elaborate story. However all fun is sucked out of this anime due to the horrible [horrible] animation that’s offered to us by the lovely [and seemingly not very talented] people at Daiei Co. Ltd. I mean the screenshots don’t do this justice [that's why we haven't included any] it’s just so horrible to look at. It’s one of those anime that coaxes you into believing your watching a static manga with colour and voice acting. I literally found it hard to watch. I don’t know what they used the budget for there are some nice light effects present during Volume 1 but nothing so fantastic that it would force the animators into producing something this static and horrible.
The characters never look good they all look silly in proportion and general aesthetics. The art is very inconsistent also although it never gets to a point of being good it drops dramatically at points almost looking worse than is humanly imaginable. Joe [the main character] looks like your average unwilling hero type, small, wears glasses, engrossed in his work etc. His best friend and eventually arch nemesis [for about 30 seconds] Lloyd [Roydu in Japanese] is fairly Arian looking [blonde hair and blue eyes.] If one was being optimistic about the scriptwriters and character designers intentions one might consider the possibility of Joe representing the Jews in WWII but this is digressing slightly so I’m going to stop. Hold on now that I think of it there is a definite WWII reference during Volume 1. Lloyd decides to blow up Joe’s hometown in order to crush Joe’s spirit, the whole scene looks like it was ripped from Barefoot Gen and actually appears to move at points. Hmmm.
The music is fairly 80’s sounding - something that we don’t appreciate here perhaps a more grungy soundtrack would’ve been fitting but what are you gonna do it’s just another thing that propels this movie further down the score board. The voice acting is below par also. At no point does the voice acting seem genuine and at no point does it ever match up with the lip movements I am not going to drop marks for this though because the characters’ lips don’t move anyway!
So if you like to watch anime for nostalgic value only and enjoy jerky movements and poor voice acting Makyu Senjo is the anime for you. Let’s hope Volume 2 has more MPH.
3 out of 10