Anime: Venus Senki

The art is amazing.

And that's basically all it has.

The story is dull; the characters are flat. You watch it and you don't really care what happens to anyone. It would definitely have been better as a series with more content to flesh out who the biker gang kids are, who the plucky reporter is behind her stereotype, what the sweet girlfriend's prejudiced father's backstory was, why the various regions on Venus are fighting, and over what. You get basically zero information to string you along. Just battle after battle, some cool moments of live-action background footage with the bikes and tanks racing each other, and lots of technically impressive art. But as a movie it doesn't hold together.

The soundtrack is very early Joe Hisaishi (of Ghibli fame), so that's disconcerting: to hear Totoro-ish themes while things are exploding.

VENUS WARS

This movie is a film about a civil war on Venus and a teenaged biker gang who fight back after their city is taken. It's amazing for it's era, story and animation wise. This voting system, here on anidb is useless. For people to get any sort of idea about an anime they can't rely on these votes, prompting me to correct the travesty of Venus War's rating. This is a great war story, sci-fi style set on Venus. It has real human stories, great animation and is very enjoyable. The story wraps up well, there's a hope for the future. The main biker guy learns responsibility and realizes his love for the girl from the upper social class. Great flick for it's time, still a lot of fun to watch if you like guns, explosions, tank vs motorcycle action and a human level look at war and conquered cities. This movie Akira, Robot Carnival, A.D. Tank Police, it's what we watched on Sci-Fi's anime block in late 90's. A lot of the greats (Ira Zeram the Animation) of that time and Venus Wars is solidly in there with those films.

Ratings for sound and animation are given for what they'd be when compared to peer movies animations of the time.

FIN :thumbup:

I have seen many anime. I have seen those few pearls, that were constantly good. I have not yet seen anime that would be constantly bad, but I guess someday I will. Those worst I endured, were at least interesting from times to times, they 'had their moments', so to say.

Most often I have encountered anime that had their moments of greatness, or even brilliance, and generally, were much, much weaker. Like I said, I have seen many anime. But! Prior to watching Venus Wars, I could not say that I have seen so evenly made anime. From the very beginning, to the very end, Venus Wars is executed evenly, and does not stray one iota from its level. And thus, it ends being totally mediocre.

Everything here is balanced. If animation has its moments of greatness, then sound drags occasionally down. Story can be a little on plus, but characters are the same amount in the opposite direction. It makes me really wonder if the creators were by any chance, running around it and measured it? Were they trying to fit some mysterious, enigmatic form, and were afraid what would happen if they stray too far, from safe 'mediocre' level? Because it came as measured to the last inch. It seems like people who made Venus Wars deliberately aimed for the dubious title of "the most mediocre anime in all history".



Animation and Art[/b]
Animation has aged decently, but never shined in any way, with possible exception of character designs. Some characters were even drawn well, like earth reporter, Heero, or few others. They had distinguishable faces, their silhouettes and clothing were all right. To my liking I found that their clothing changed on different occasions. That was nice touch.

Vehicles designs were OK, but nothing more, bikes, jeeps and tanks were decently drawn, but nothing about them made me interested. Neither their movements nor look were in any way special, I take it that perhaps envisioning in 1989, how will future combat vehicles look like, was difficult.



Sound[/b]
Sound unfortunately went straight downhill. First of all, I laid my hands on dubbed version, and whilst it was not half bad, it was not half as good as normal Japanese seiyuus are. Meaning, that all the usual was included - high-pitched or squeaky voices of those girls who are supposed to be cute, and supposed bad-asses got those voices one might hear from a shady thugs in a bar, frequently featured in third-rate Hollywood productions.
Second of all, BGM asked to be forgotten while playing. I cannot recall one tune from the whole movie, and I have seen the movie this week.



Story[/b]
After watching this, I do not even have the slightest idea about the title. Yes, the action is taking place on Venus, and we have two fractions fighting for control over the planet. Why Venus? No clue. For those, who might have expected interstellar war, or spaceships battles, or even war in different atmosphere since Venus has got different atmosphere I haste to straighten any misconceptions. There is no interstellar war, WHOLE thing is taking place on Venus; no spaceships either, and battles are fought by big tanks and bikes. Nothing really 'space' related. And in the opening sequence we find out that atmosphere on Venus had changed due to its collision with ice meteor (or asteroid?). Why Venus then? Why not Earth?

Perhaps creators tried to show us that no matter what the settings, people stay the same. If so, they should have tried to expand the characters, giving them backgrounds or so. Certainly they should not leave them so blatantly. After a while, yet another 'wannabe bad-ass, but good guy inside, with I don't care attitude problem' gets boring.

Story introduces nice set of side characters, and few interesting sub-plots, and those are its main aces. There is nothing more here, main plot is predictable, there are no twists, characters are bland to the point of being rock-solid - they do not move an inch from starting places, and main villain is really ordinary and I forgot his name already. Luckily, he is not the type who would run and scream around, and laugh like madman. He also is not obsessed on world domination, and he can talk well, like the scene with reporter shows us.

That is the problem with Venus Wars, there is quite a lot things I like, but they are all minor. Nothing really big happens here what makes my enjoyment bar jump, on the contrary. Everything plot related dulls the edge, and puts me to sleep.
I liked more little side stories about chief and how he lost his leg, or the way resistance was created, or how lady reporter met her contact, or how the general handled the accusations etc. Those little things were carefully played, and luckily here I could see some nice details done right. Invasion was done in a way that was convincing, the way the occupied city looked like was all right, besides the sleep-inducing main plot... I liked the story. Which is main reason for my mark here.



Character[/b]
Anyway, since it is mediocre anime and story had its moments, characters had to bring the thing down. And so they did by being tripe. Hackneyed bad-ass lines, dialogues that were cool in 80's, and behaviors that are screaming "You've seen me thousand times before" really try hard to bore the hell out of You.

I cannot tell anything decent about characters. Also I constantly had the impression that all the things are a bit rushed, like I am missing half of the story, which happens in-between the cuts. There are few really interesting dialogues, like the one Heero has with his girlfriend, or the one featuring general and reporter, but too few to make a difference; You will not care for characters, You will not engage in their problems.

After anime ends, I like to know few things about characters it featured. In Venus Wars I am deprived of it. Majority of the band is not even memorable enough for me to be able to LIST them. I think there was the fat guy, who got berserk when given a gun. I think there was the guy who commented on blond reporter's panties. Hmmm... I think. Speaks volumes on characters depth, and how big their roles were. The best turn the direction took was when all of the band were taken of the screen. I felt relief, at last they stopped distracting me.

Few memorable characters are not those main ones. Those are earth reporter and chief, who happen to - respectively - develop and have backstory. Grrreat. But there is more! Villain is given little screen time, and he is an ok character - that is enough for him almost to steal the show! And to make it even worse, main protagonist is given love interest because? Because what kind of action movie features the cool guy as a loner! Generally, I have yet to see so unexplored (not to mention undeveloped!) characters since serious kick-ass movie... like Tekken. :P



Value[/b]
If I were to describe Venus Wars in one word: mediocre. If I were to use more words for it, I would say this. No character development, no character backgrounds, lots of action and 'wannabe bad-asses'. Cliche to the point of being painful, with few redeeming moments, that rarely are related to main plot, and rather are completely irrelevant to the way story goes. Dated in many ways, and only in animation it can be described as passable.

If any anime deserves the palm of average action anime, I just found it.

I'm gonna keep this pretty short, since this anime does not appear to be, or deal with, anything complex.

Visuals:
This is an anime that was produced when filmakers still cared about pushing the technical envelope. As a result, the visuals are superb. For some reason it's hard to find animes nowadays that can create a level of atmosphere similar to the late 80s animes like Venus Wars. Whilst indeed obviously dated compared to the modern-day animes, it has some awesome battle sequences and animation, with mostly if not all hand-drawn stuff rather than CGI. It is brimming with little visual details that make the excellent environments and structures seem very well established and a joy to watch.

Sound:
The sound doesn't hold up so well in the present time as it did back when the anime was released. I personally hate the 80s music and don't much care for the other melodies on the soundtrack, and the overall quality is dated. It has some nice sound effects however, and can churn out some atmospheric music when necessary. The voice acting isn't really anything major to comment on since I found there wasn't as much chatter in the anime, but it isn't bad nevertheless.

Story:
The story isn't really bad, I just wish it had more. There's much premise for lots more events to happen, and I feel this could have been explored. As it stands, there isn't actually a plot - it's all just battles. But because of this, there aren't really any major boring parts. It's the future, and Venus is inhabited. But there are conflicts of interest amongst the people. Let some battles ensue. We mainly see the hero either escaping from carnage and destruction, or taking an active role to help fight against the opposing force. There are no real plot twists or arcs.

Characters:
The characters are crud. They keep the anime moving, but none are memorable or worthy of attention. Everyone seems to have been treated with an expendable thought, and there is no real character development. I know it seems harsh to give the characters "1", but I don't mean it lightly - they really are terrible. When I say there is no development, I mean NO development. The focus is so much on the action that very little care has been given to the characters - they are simply there to keep the film flowing from one scene to the next. I can't even remember the names of any of the supporting cast.

Value & Enjoyment:
The replay value is above average, due to the superb animation. This is pretty much a no-brains action film, which I feel I can watch without thinking about any of it too deeply, and instead, just be entertained by visuals. Even if the film has flaws in the other departments, it's still suprisingly entertaining, and I enjoyed it overall.