Or not. Despite the 120 minute running time the backstory is nowhere to be found. Who’s this weapon girl and why does her boyfriend under-react when he finds out about her true identity? Clumsy dialogue doesn’t help either. There’s some scenes I didn’t understand when I first viewed the film last summer without subs, but it turned out those scenes didn’t make more sense with subs. Thankfully it’s only distracting at the beginning (with maybe one exception) and you’ll forget about it soon.
The quality of special effects is mostly poor but it didn’t bother me too much. I knew what to expect and obviously some of the visions here are bigger than the budget. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy seeing a high school girl turning cities into ruins, blowing up airplanes and saving her friend from the falling piece of wing by blasting it through the wall and then walking out from the smoke and saying ”Sorry, Shuu-chan. Please keep this a secret.” That’s decent entertainment even with crap cgi, and partly because of it. Just try to get yourself into the right state of mind and you may even enjoy the film.
A couple of very good cgi effects fit in too, probably by accident. We also have the best special effect of them all; Aki-chan, the main reason to watch the film. I love Aki Maeda and here she’s playing just the kind cute and shy character I like. Some people may not like her looks that much and admittably she looks a bit like an elf at times but that makes me like her even more. The male lead (Shunsuke Kubozuka) is okay, too. He’s way too old for the role (born in 1981) and his acting tends to get really wooden but I thought it was fit for the movie. The romantic teen stuff between the leads worked much better to me than I’d like to admit. I don’t know why, because there isn’t really any reason why I should enjoy it as much as I did.
The first time I watched the film I was kinda disappointed with the visual look. The film is indeed very misadvertised with all those anime esque art work and shiny sunset pics. The film is shot on digital video which gives it a more realistic and slightly grainy look. It’s the exact opposite from the epic cinema look I was expecting. Most of the artwork is also completely unrelated to what happens in the film, and viewers may be disappointed by the fact that the movie isn’t quite as large scale as they made it look like. I noticed I enjoyed the film more on the second viewing when I knew what to expect. On technical side the soundtrack is really well done, both the music and the actual sound effects. The theme is song pretty worthless but the rest of the music accompanies the action nicely.
Great dvd by Toei. The image looks pretty good throughout (progressive of course) and edge enhancement is hard to come by. 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks are included, no subtitles. The package of the Ultimate Edition is one of the sweetest I’ve run into. The outer cover is exceptionally strong and the digipac inside is very nice. Extras are amazing, especially the making of and the animated footage. More about the extras in the second post.
dvd package (front / back)
The digipack inside
Collectible card and a 12 page booklet
