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The best one-line review of this movie I could find, from "AnimeWorld", describes it as "either an epic space opera gone horribly wrong, or a babes in outer space flick gone horribly right". Judging from the box it came in, the film definitely aspired to be an epic. After seeing "Terminator" writer Hideki Kakinuma supposedly "vowed to create an equally powerful animated feature film", and the resulting Eternal Story is proclaimed an "instant classic", the first American-style "hard science fiction" work to be successfully animated, and the start of a trend that "led to the creation of such best sellers as Appleseed, Dominion, and Bubblegum Crisis". Wow!--and to think I had never even heard of it until recently. Seriously, though, my impression was that rather than being an epic work of drama, this movie had a sort of silly charm to it--just take a look at the boxtop art! It's hard to take Eternal Story seriously as "hard science fiction" when the charachters are so cute, cheerful, and sometimes seem to be little more than teenagers. Also, it would be a lot easier for me to believe that the film that inspired Kakinuma was Alien rather than Terminator. When the survivors of the Star Leaf's crew reach planet Chaos, I thought things got confusing. For one thing, the "conspiracy" between the leaders of both the Solenoids and Paranoids didn't actually sound like all that bad an idea to me! So, are the girls really doing what's right by continuing to resist being manipulated? Finally, I didn't know what to make of the last scene--should this have been at the start of the movie? (no, that wouldn't make sense) A parallel universe? Does it take place generations later? One thing I like about "American-style hard science fiction" is that I generally wind up with a fairly good idea of what just happened. Initially, I had a hard time choosing between Rent and Watch as my rating. But who am I kidding? There's far too much anime which is far better waiting to be rented, so I'll go with the latter. My favorite line: "You're not exactly like Patty... You're different--down there" 4/04 Last updated Thursday, February 14 2008. Created Friday, February 06 2004. | ||||||||
