this review first and most foremost regarded in 2005 at Anime Jump. Like Fragment 1, the DVD is currently on hand at good buy costs and you must always utterly procure it.
It’s tricky for me to seem at this movie objectively. It’s an integral allotment of my slack teenage psyche. I wasn’t an especially introspective 18-yr venerable, however there were two things I became once certain of – I cherished punk tune and I cherished Jap cartoons, and MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 blended them both in a package deal helpful sufficient to stay within the pocket of your trenchcoat and provoke your fellow slack-80s early life with at any gathering.
And why no longer? It’s a Jap frigid absorbing movie starring punk rock young of us on motorcycles who defy the police with machine weapons and big robots in a fight to listing the huge fraud that underlies their very society. The movie obsesses over slight print cherish beer cans and cigarette packaging and stars doppelgangers of the “Like A Prayer” Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and feminine pro wrestlers, and in establish of the trojan horse-eyed, melon-headed peep that segregates most anime to the aid of the visible arts bus, MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 stars recognizable human beings with nostrils and scars and sex lives. It’s about to this point as it is probably you’ll perchance also procure from SPEED RACER and smooth be a Jap frigid absorbing movie.
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| I reflect I went to excessive college with these guys |
I will’t reveal PART 1 alive to me overmuch; the Mikimoto personality designs looked cherish former MACROSS, the Garland motorcycle-robotic became once utterly too purposeful, and on the total I became once extra drawn to staring at VAMPIRE HUNTER D or DIRTY PAIR. PART 2, on the different hand, became once an absolutely assorted story, and I imply that sincerely. It didn’t peep, act, sound, or smell something else cherish the first MEGAZONE. In actuality it didn’t peep cherish something else we’d ever seen, the least bit. You may perchance perhaps perchance reveal perfect away – by Yasuomi Umetsu’s no-nonsense personality designs – that this wasn’t some young of us’ TV frigid absorbing movie tarted up for an instantaneous-to-video commence. Hell, within the first two minutes there are about six misdemeanors and eighteen felonies contained in a scene of mayhem and property destruction as wild if no longer wilder than something else Hollywood or Hong Kong would supply that yr (1985!!) And this isn’t outer-trouble flying saucer nonsense – these are true existence Tokyo neighborhoods being overrun by 80’s punker bosuzoku.
With the exception of they’re no longer: this Tokyo is a counterfeit, a prop, a stand-in. The true Earth’s been destroyed and the human bustle is contained within the Megazone, a mighty trouble ship huge sufficient to withhold entire cities and thousands and thousands of of us, some of whom know they’re dwelling out one in all science fiction’s hoariest cliches and others who never wonder why no person they know has ever in actuality been, , out of doors the city.
The unbelievable truth
Our hero Shogo Yahagi would smooth be one in all those brainwashed proles if he hadn’t had the sense of appropriate and fallacious to procure fascinated with the hot motorcycle industry. Appears to be his stolen bike became once a top-secret reworking huge fight robotic designed to fight aliens in outer trouble, and that his entire existence has been spent inside a mighty trouble establish, whose predominant computer systems are managed by an man made intelligence who moonlights as an idol singer known as EVE. While investigating this thriller- smartly, okay, he became once committing big theft big reworking robotic motorcycle, all perfect? -Shogo winds up accused of abolish and on the bustle, and that’s the establish PART 2 begins.
Holographic or no longer, the gals all cherish Shogo
Reunited with his biker pals, Shogo rekindles his romance with Yui and works out a conception to fool the authorities and uncover once and for all what’s of course occurring. Meanwhile his reverse number within the authorities, the enigmatic B.D., can’t use too great time searching for Shogo, for the rationale that homely trouble aliens that attacked the Earth have chanced on the Megazone, and are kicking ass on Earth spaceships with weapons that remind us uncomfortably of Roto-Rooter Long gone Wild.
Naturally the predominant to all the pieces is finding EVE. Aren’t most of existence’s mysteries solved thru communion with idol singers – especially computer-generated ones handiest a slight extra artifical than the specific thing? The incongruity of seeing total punk rockers going gaga over easy-listening top-40 pop tune takes the threshold from PART 2’s realism. On the different hand the punks of 1988 were going apeshit over the “swing revival” ten years later, so something else’s attainable. When EVE isn’t singing, the Shirou Sagisu soundtrack ranges from moody 80s synth to a couple moral moral depart metallic guitar work.
conventional anime membership meeting circa 1985
After a working fight thru “Tokyo” between the motorcycle punks and the law enforcement officials and the all-out trouble assault by the sicko aliens, B.D. and Shogo prevail in detente of forms, though it’s academic at that level as a consequence of EVE has activated A.D.A.M. and that methodology that the Megazone is destroyed in a total rotoscoped-from-atom-bomb-test-photographs sequence that smooth appears to be like handsome impressive. At this level it is probably you’ll perchance also either build some dangle of cherish-pants biblical reference about Eve giving Adam files which drives them out of Eden (Megazone), otherwise it is probably you’ll perchance also build a shaggy dog story in regards to the Coleco Adam, presumably the worst house computer ever marketed to a pressured American public. The different is yours.
Not to give something else away (I reflect the spoiler warning has expired in a 20 yr venerable movie) however MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 ends its drained science fiction cliche of of us dwelling on a trouble ship so huge they reflect they’re on Earth with yet any other drained science fiction cliche of a slight neighborhood of survivors left to repopulate a brand recent planet. But that’s OK; you additional or much less want a smartly-recognized ending after the A-bomb test photographs. Besides, must always you’re staring at MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 and aren’t centered on the visuals, you’re lacking out, for the rationale that darn thing appears to be like big. There’s quite quite loads of rotoscoping and serious attention is paid to gentle and shadow and color and hair and attire. There’s none of the fakey shorthand stuff so in overall seen in TV anime. Not that there aren’t outer-trouble huge robotic laser gun battles in this movie – there are, and hundreds of ‘em – however there’s a true strive to convince us that the excessive-tech and the low-foreheadexist within the the same world. The animation’s attain customarily exceeds its establish shut, however even the much less competent scenes have a punky enchantment.
eat hot lead, fascist pig reworking robotic!
The dub pedigree of MZ23 2 is iffy; an English notice by Intersound (the Robotech of us) became once incorporated on a Jap LD, on the different hand it never purchased an ethical US commence. I didn’t procure my bootleg video pirate copy unless 1988! ADV’s recent dub ditches many of the earlier version’s extra shimmering moments; no longer fabricate machine-gun toting punk chicks shout “EAT HOT LEAD FASCIST PIG!” while lights up a police helicopter. On the different hand, the ADV script does in actuality acknowledge the existence of a PART 1, something the 80s version glossed over utterly, and dodges one of the necessary manufacturing pitfalls of the earlier incarnation (hint: when a personality complains about noise, it helps to even have noises within the background). The enlighten work is level-headed – almost too level-headed at occasions for the characters, who, on the least, are unemployed squatters with scandalous personal hygiene – however total ADV’s version is expert and absorbing the total methodology.
Not all of a sudden, within the face of the movie’s climax, the heroic stand of the motorcycle early life in opposition to the grownup world of authority winds up being handsome meaningless. Upright cherish true existence. Still, as director Ichirou Itano says within the accompanying interview, the specific message of the movie is the you must always ascertain shut defeat gracefully and transfer on to the following danger with out a regrets, as a consequence of you did your most productive and it’s no longer your fault the arena is stuffed with phonies, Holden Caulfield.
BD bulks up, gets vogue sense, punches Shogo’s lights out
The interview is allotment of one in all the disc’s extras, a fold-out poster. Itano, the inventor of the now-ubiquitous “missiles flying all over” visuals venerable in most SF anime, became once given carte blanche to watch his bliss with MZ23 2, and the consequence is an anti-authoritarian tale with a heart and sharp as hell appears to be like.
most productive consume of multiplane digicam rack-center of attention zoom ever.
Possibly you’re perfect searching for some Eighties revival anime, or must always you repeatedly desired to witness the anime establish shut on the Sid Vicious peep, or if your jones for excessive realism by Jap frigid absorbing movie personality build wasn’t gay by AKIRA or JIN-ROH. If you make a selection to have anime with shimmering and recurring characters, cosmic storylines, and hundreds of property injure and beer, then MEGAZONE 23 PART II is the establish you will must be.
-Dave Merrill
Subsequent: potentially no longer reviewing “Megazone 23 Fragment 3 Fragment 1”, as a consequence of that would involve me, , having to leer it.
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