| Twilight of the dark
master is a gloomy and gruesome tale of demonic woe. Gore, neo-Tokyo
landscapes, darkness, overpowered humans and clichéd characters abound, making
this journey interesting but nothing new or amazing to watch.
In comparison to some of
the overly gory nonsense that has been released on Manga in the last 10 years,
the level of gore in this film is quite reasonable. Dismembered limbs and
shadowy broken bodies are pretty much all that we are subjected to in this
film. This is a good thing, as the gore is shown to illustrate a point, rather
than being a point in itself. I take this as a positive sign that the director
is going somewhere deliberately with the DVD, rather than just filling in
time.
Pretty much the first
thing I noticed about this DVD was that the animation is dated. This is
apparent in several areas, the foremost of them being the fuzziness of the
backgrounds and the lack of detail on the characters. If you can put this
aside and take into consideration that this was made in 1997, it's not too
bad.
The tale in this feature
centres around four main characters; Eiji, Shizuka, Tsunami and Takomiya. Eiji
and Shizuka are a pair of lovers separated when Eiji becomes a demon and rips
off Shizuka's arm. Shizuka goes and replaces her arm, and then in her shock
from the event, walks into a place called neo-shinjuku and in the process of
nearly being killed, is saved by Tsunami's henchman, Tenku. Tsunami is the all
powerful good guy in this film, with god like powers of flight and the ability
to send out insane firestrikes. He was also the one that razed Shinjuku 30
years prior in his battle with his arch enemy Takomiya. (Tsunami is also the
Japanese term for the massively destructive waves created by hurricanes).
Takomiya engineered the
creation of the demon Eiji, in order to drain his blood, and then he can
regain his true demon form. A few interesting fight scenes ensue, lackey die,
and then finally Takomiya regains his true form.
In the same manner as
the fight scene between Mr smith and Mr Anderson in Matrix Revolutions, the
two fight a few kilometers above the earth in front of a very large moon. This
scene is really good to look at, Tsunami is dwarfed by the impressively
massive demon. It is here that we find out that Takomiya is actually female
(but who can really be sure with these demon types). She then dares Tsunami to
release his full power, but instead he teleports them both to what looks like
the far side of the moon and then destroys the demon.
All in all a nice little
journey, nothing brilliant, but definitely better than your average fare.
4:3 frame ratio. This is a very dark feature, and in some
places you will need to adjust yours screens brightness if necessary. As
mentioned before the animation is dated, especially the demons, they are quite
80s.
English 5.1
Japanese 2.0 with English subtitles.
The Japanese translation into English words is good, and
the selection of voices used to dub for the English version is brilliant.
However if you listen closely to the English words, they are significantly
different to the subtitles given. This is very disappointing as both versions
make sense, but its one of those glaring oversights that really brings this
DVD down.
A very very cool black
and white pencil sketch adorns this cover. Bonus points for this one.
-Creating the cover: a line by line mini feature that shows how all the
shading and line work was done for the cover.
-Art gallery: a good synopsis of the main protagonists -Madman propaganda:
Scryed, Big O, L/R, Beserk, Bio Hunter, Golgo, 13 Queen bee, Psycho diver. | 
