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DVD Review
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| Director |
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Kasuki Akane
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| Cast |
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Haruka Kudo
Kazuya Nakai
Fujiko Takimoto
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| Distributor |
| Manga Entertainment |
| DVD Origin |
| United Kingdom |
| DVD Release Date |
| 19th February 2007 |
| Running Time |
| 150 Minutes |
| Number of Disks |
| 2 |
| Certification |
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12
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Reviewed By
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Stuart Crawford
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Buy this film
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NOEIN - TO YOUR OTHER SELF: VOLUME 1 (2007)
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If I were to say ‘Anime’ to you, what would run through your head? A story of teenage angst and awkwardness, coupled with school work woes? How about magic and monsters? Maybe some extra-dimensional beings engaged in a battle that spills over into our existence? Noein has it all and ,on the face of it at least, doesn’t sound like it’s going to be anything out of the ordinary, well, for an Anime title at least. As this is a series, and this DVD only contained the first five episodes, I can’t give you my impressions and feelings of the entire story start to finish, which is a shame. What I’ve seen so far makes me want to see the rest.
Let me try to explain what’s going on. We start with a handful of kids, two of them being twelve-year old Haruka and her friend Yuu, who, after hearing stories of ghosts being seen in grave yards, decide to do the sensible thing and go and investigate themselves. As it turns out the ghosts are real, well real in the fact that they are actually members of an elite team of soldiers from another dimension. This group are called the Dragon Cavalry and they are searching for an item called the Dragon Torque. Things start to get really complicated however when it turns out that the Dragon Torque is not as you might expect an object that you wear round your neck, but is in fact a little girl, namely Haruka. If that’s not odd enough, it turns out that within the ranks of the Dragon Cavalry there is tension, and this underlying friction between two of the members makes their task more difficult as internal fighting threatens to break up the team. Finally, one of the members of the Cavalry seems familiar to Haruka, but she can’t quite put her finger on why...
That’s all I can tell you as far as the story goes as a) I don’t want to give too much away and b) that’s pretty much all I know. So instead I’ll write about all the other stuff that I’m meant to during one of these review thingies. The animation is good, but not groundbreaking. CGI is used but only sparingly and is intermingled with the more classic animation style in such a way that, for the most part, it is hard to spot. So where films like Karas rely heavily on computer animation, this movie utilises it in a far more subtle manner. The fight scenes are exciting as there is no short supply of special powers and effects on display, and the differing abilities of all the team members lead to some interesting encounters. The relationships between the children is a nice story within itself, with Haruka and Yuu planning to run away from home so that Yuu can get away from his overbearing mother and find his father in the big city. There are also struggles with school work, arguments over boys and all the other things that make teenagers, well, teenagers. I enjoyed watching this side of the film as much as the special effects segments, which offers a good example as to why Japanese animation has developed such a strong following, as Eastern filmmakers ensure to add a human face to the fantastical proceedings.
All in all I really enjoyed the beginning of this series and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the story progresses over the course of the next few DVD’s. I just hope that I start to understand exactly what is going on as the tale unfolds, as I have to be honest and say (even though my earlier description of the story may lead you to believe otherwise), that I was quite confused about everything. Exactly what is the Dragon torque and what does it do? Why is there so much friction within the Dragon Cavalry? There are more questions, and I hope that they begin to be answered soon. Roll on Volume 2!
The extras on this Manga DVD release are spread out over 2 disks. On the first disk there is an English and Japanese sound track, both presented in DD 5.1 and stereo. There is also (deep breath)….2 alternate openings, a textless opening and end credits, original Japanese promos, and a home movie type presentation with the director and original Japanese voice actors on a trip. The second disk unfortunately does not have more episodes on it (I was most unhappy when I discovered that!), but you will find the same 5 episodes this time accompanied by a DTS soundtrack. The extras though are limited to a number of trailers for other presentations, namely Naruto, Ghost in the Shell 2nd Gig, Robotech, Tactics and Karas.
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Score
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7 / 10
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