Asylum Session

Title:Asylum Session
The Asylum Session
アジール・セッション
Overall:Watch
Keywords: , , ,
Notables: Animation - CoMix Wave
R1 License - Sentai Filmworks (ADV)
R1 License - Subtitled Only
This hour long 3D computer generated film is set in a distant future in which society has stagnated. The runaway teen girl Hiyoko takes up residence in a tent city nicknamed “Asylum” and becomes involved with the other young residents that launch a street culture festival called “The Asylum Sessions” to counter the plans of profiteer-minded police.

The film will screen at one theater in Osaka beginning in June, and one theater in Tokyo beginning in July. The character of Hiyoko will be voiced by Aya Hirano (Haruhi Suzumiya, Konata in Lucky Star).

[source:AnimeNation]

New movie to be released in Japan in July '09.
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Watch 6 6 6 5 6 6 Ggultra2764 [series:2128#1552]
This one's an oddity. Set in a seemingly corrupt future, Asylum Session is focused on an aspiring art student named Hiyoko, who bonds with the residents of a tent town called Asylum who have set up their own society and are under threat of eviction by the town authorities.

Before I go into the story and characters, let me first address the rather obvious issue with this film that comes in the form of its CG animation. The rendering of it is quite rough with characters looking rather crude with how they look at many points in the film and animation looking just as crude with stiff, awkward movements and attempts at creating special effects like paint being sprayed and smoke looking quite fake. This is perhaps the worst implementation of a fully CG-animated film that I have come across with an anime.

Moving onto plot and characters, these areas are a bit of a mixed bag. There is enough time to offer up basics to the plot with the conflict between the tent town residents and authorities. It is unique from your typical corrupt society title in that the tent town consists of residents who are heavily inspired by the arts as they try to organize a festival to defy the authorities and one resident, Akira, is the strongest in resisting the eviction thanks to his cyborg implants and having an interest in tagging. The anime takes some time to show Akira and Hiyoko strike up a sort of bond together where more of the former's beliefs and origins are revealed.

However, the anime does suffer from lacking enough depth in exploring more about its world to allow it to have more than a basic plot. There is little revealed about the corrupt elements of the futuristic society and what led the residents of Asylum to take refuge in the tent town. Also as a lead character, there is not much fleshed out on Hiyoko's character beyond her being a runaway from an argument with her father, as we don't get to know what drives her to like art and what type of relationship she had with her father before running away.

Setting aside its horrible CG animation, Asylum Session offers some unique story concepts with its futuristic society that it sadly doesn't take the time to further flesh out beyond some basic direction. It felt experimental in what it attempted to execute for its premise and sadly, the effort is a mediocre one as a result.

Last updated Sunday, January 01 2017. Created Sunday, January 01 2017.
Watch 7 7 6 6 7 7 Dreamer [series:2128#2279]
The artwork is the first thing you'll notice about this one. Very strange. As for the rest of it....

Art, Animation & Character Designs
Artwork is a hit or miss. You're gonna either love it or absolutely hate the hell out of it.... or both in progression. I hated it to start.... but then after sitting through it for about a good 15 minutes or so, it sorta grew on me and I got use to it. Believe it or not, it's all CG. But the characters seemed to have deliberately been left out of serious animation, and quality control. They lacked details, were pretty stiff (think South Park), and frankly ugly. Being the case, I'm really inclined to believe it was intentional.

Music
The soundtrack had odd mixtures of bagpipes, trumpets and the like. Actually, that was pretty rare. There wasn't really much music to speak of throughout. Then we have the ED, a techno euro-beat style. Very urban with a touch of Irish bagpipes.... ?? Ya, odd.

Series and Episode Story
This one was a strange one. Aside from the unusual animation style and characters, the story itself wasn't too bad. It was basic, but still fairly enjoyable. As well, there wasn't any character development to speak of.

After watching it through, and contemplating over it. I came to the conclusing that this was nothing more than an expression of art. Too many things point to this conclusion... such as the unique characters, plethora of artistic backgrounds (artistic graffiti), the fact that our protagonist happens to be an artist and how the movie concludes.

Overall, odder than hell but still somewhat enjoyable. It's definitely an acquired taste.

Last updated Saturday, November 13 2010. Created Saturday, November 13 2010.

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