Casshern - Real Life Anime

I just watched Casshern on DVD rental. Before I rush out and buy it I thought I'd share this piece of design genius with you.

Casshern is based on a 1973 anime movie of almost the same name (Shinzo Ningen Casshân) and one of a crop of movies in the last 12 months like Sin City and Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow to be made almost entirely on a digital backlot using the blue / green screen and real actors.

Simple and straightforward it is not. To say that Casshern is busy with plot detail is a massive understatement. This challenged me but I plead an overdose of Hollywood story-lines that have numbed my comprehension skills. After all, I'm used to a diet of plots that can be digested by everyone, even after a curry and 6 pints of bitter. Casshern might challenge you a little too but believe me, its worth it.

The basic story is science-fiction. After a war lasting fifty years between the European Union and a fanciful Asian Confederation a new superstate of Eurasia is born with a legacy of toxic waste and deprivation. The regime is autocratic and the emotional palette, dark and brooding. A genetic scientist, Azuma, has developed a technology called neo-cells that might be the answer to rebuild broken human beings and heal the world. The experiments are appropriated the ailing oligarchy and the millitary. In an accident they go wrong and new super-beings are created from the body parts used to try and develop usable neo-cells. The millitary tries to destroy the 'abominations' but a small band escape to wreak their revenge on Eurasia.

After the escape of the new beings, Tetsuya, the recently dead son of the scientist Azuma is placed in the vat that the beings were born from and is reborn himself. Mayhem follows as Tetsuya fights the beings in the midst of political and military carnage as the metaphorical re-incarnation of a just and ancient God, Casshern. Hence the movie's name.That's just a minute slice of the full story though. Fundamentally its a morality play with allegorical references to terrorism and war and the human search for peace. It has plot gaps and very un-hollywood leaps of belief sewn in to the fantasy. It fits in a new genre exemplified by the pessimistic nihilism of recent Japanese sucesses like Battle Royal. All that is beside the point though.

The real genius of the movie is the set design and art direction. It switches between almost fairy-tale like, and hugely complex scene rendering and black and white. Evere scene is meticulous in its detail and composition. I sat, absorbed in the art even when the story wondered a little or got too sentimental for my taste in between the carnage. Truly a visual feast and like nothing I have ever seen outside anime. The graphics are poetic and compliment the intense dark emotion of the movie .The computer age never happened in the word of Casshern with the exception of a lonely mobile phone in one scene. Otherwise the world is darkly industrial and reminiscent of the 1930's with references to Nazi germany and the original War Of The Worlds as well as art-deco and retro industrial grime. Gigantic cog wheels and analogue dials are rife. Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is Casshern's poor cousin but they share influences. Casshern is in a totaly different visual league though. Its immersive and all the more amazing as it was alledgedly made with less than $6M with computers assembled by a young crew of CGI artists using PC parts from the famous electronics market Akihabara. So the real credits go to the visual team: Production designer Yuji Hayashida, visual effects supervisors Toshiyuki Kimura and Koji Nozaki, CGI supervisor Haruhiko Shono and the director, editor and screenplay writer, Kazuaki Kiriya (go Kazuaki!).

From a designer's point of view I was stunned by it. The effort must have been stupendous. The outcome is lyrical, beautiful and thought-provoking. I bow before their collective talent and vision. If there is one movie you see on DVD this year to challenge the supremacy of Hollywood in your collection, or introduce you to just how unbelievably good Japanese film-making and anime is then try this for size.

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