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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buy | 10 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 9 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:3248#1552] | |
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Empire of Corpses depicts an alternate interpretation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein mixed with several characters from other notable Victorian era stories. Set in an alternate Victorian era England where technology used to reanimate corpses has allowed for England's quick technological advance, corpse engineer John Watson illegally reanimates the corpse of his close friend and former partner, Friday. To avoid punishment for his crimes, Watson is given the mission of retrieving the journal of the famous Victor Frankenstein, whose records have information on potential advances in reanimation of corpses that could allow them to gain free will and the possible restoration of their original soul. Empire of Corpses offers off a great balance of adventure and philosophical dilemmas in its focus on Watson's search for Frankenstein's journal. I'll dabble into the adventure aspect first as that will be more straightforward to discuss over the philosophical elements. Watson's search for the journal with his allies lead him to trek to Russia and Japan in search of its whereabouts. This provides some solid world building to exploring how these countries each make use of the reanimation technology and provide more exploration of what the contents of Frankenstein's journal would mean for the reanimation process. Some shocking plot twists come about with the revelations from the journal, as the series introduces a couple villains who have their own ulterior motives for using the journal's knowledge. One of them will be very familiar to those who have read Mary Shelly's novel and their motives play into the movie's philosophical themes very nicely. The other antagonist plays into more conventional territory with his motives where while a unique twist to standard “take over the world” motives of villainy, still comes off as cliched and less intriguing compared to the other notable villain of Empire of Corpses. The philosophical element that comes into play is regarding the corpses as sentient forms of life. Within the alternate world portrayed in Empire of Corpses, the corpses that serve humanity are regarded as little more than tools, much in the same vain that alternate futures portrayed in sci-fi anime would usually involve human treatment of robots. This is a moral dilemma faced by Watson throughout much of the film as he desires Frankenstein's journal to uncover a means to restore Friday's soul back to his body, yet comes to realize the flaws of such research when he discovers the ethical lines that are crossed when trying to produce a corpse having free will. The dilemma is further complicated by the emergence of one of the movie's villains who faces his own personal tragedy from the society established in the movie and seeks to correct it by any means, even if it risks the fall of humanity to do so. This sparks an interesting debate similar to what is portrayed within Mary Shelly's classic novel if one could consider our villain and the revived corpses to be humans or monsters. The movie ending wraps up this dilemma in an ambiguous matter intentionally to allow viewers to come to their own conclusions over how to justify the treatment of corpses and what defines a living being as man or monster. Visually, Empire of Corpses is an impressive-looking film that depicts steampunk-like settings with how life within the alternate reality of the movie gets depicted. Settings are drawn to be faithfully accurate to the time period in which the series is portrayed while mixed with steampunk elements that include the use of steam-powered technology and automatons that are major components to the world of the movie. The historical accuracy is also passed along to the type of dress that British and Japanese characters have around the time period, with a minor issue being Hadaly's style of dress clashing badly with public decency trends of the time with her cleavage being on prominent display. Animation is consistently fluid throughout the film from the movement of vehicles to the unnatural and disturbing slow walking of the reanimated corpses as they assist their masters and attack intruders or enemy threats. As a fair warning, this film is quite bloody and disturbing at many points with the integration of reanimated corpses into society and some nasty methods of death that take place as more of the plot regarding Frankenstein's diary gets unveiled, thus I would avoid showing this off to younger or more sensitive viewers. But if you have the stomach to handle this film's macabre themes and plot, Empire of Corpses offers an engaging adventure that dabbles into themes from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein in its own unique way and offers some surprising developments that Watson and his comrades encounter throughout their search for Frankenstein's diary. Last updated Sunday, August 14 2016. Created Sunday, August 14 2016. | ||||||||
