Rating: 8.5/10
Genre: grungy sci-fi/action
Running Time: (of what I watched) - an hour
Find it at: Veoh TV (online)
Rating: 15(probably) female nudity [+sex refernce] - big ol bloody violence
I was reccomended this as a guide for good ol' 80s style anime shading, and I actually enoyed the anime itself. The setting is a massive, grungy scarpyard, where it seems that almost everyone are cyborgs of some nature or another. Hovering above them, dumping down all this garbage is the (apparently utopian) city of Zalem (although we never get to see what it's actually like.) It seems that most people down below are desperate to get to zalem- one way or another.
Enter Ido - A cybernetic Doctor and ex-Zalem dweller, now performing repairs on all the cyborgs down here: in fact he's the best cybernetics doctor the world has to offer. Without giving away too much, he's more than he seems (that produces some cool results).
Ido seaches the scrapyard for spare parts to get forhis clinic. While looking he finds a whole female human head and shoulders [cyborg]- still alive [see bottom pic]! He takes her home and rebuilds her, giving her the name: Gully.
Gradually Gully discovers that she has impressive powers, and that her memory (long gone, of course) can only truly start to be unlocked by fighting. So: she registers herlsfe as a bounty hunter- and lots of action ensues.
This could so eaisly be one of those sci-fi action beat-em-ups. But it has anotehr layer in it. It seems that this Scrapyard world is full of deception and decit and twists at ever corner. As well as this, underpinning it all is a river of hope, loss, expectation with respects to Zalem, and -as we watch- we see Gully develop as a person, and fall in love.
The result is both touching and tragic.
The animation is great (albeit it pretty gory at times), and the characters are well drawn. My only provblem i sthat they haven't seemed ot make more of thsi anime film- because it ends pretty open-endedly. However, at only an hour it's immensely wtachable and carries itslef and the plot along briskly.
Definately worth a watch, i think :3
8.5/10
