Casshern is a 2004 Japanese sci-fi film directed by Kazuaki Kiriya, which is his first film, and adapted by a 1973 anime. It is based in futuristic Japan, where the country has just come out of a 50-year old war with Europa’s robotic army. Due to the chemical and biological weapons, genetic mutation and a mysterious illness have plagued society. Dr. Azuma is trying to resolve the problems that have become personal when his wife gets the illness. The council denies him the chance to do this, but he accepts a secret pact with one of the government leaders.

He develops neo-cells and creates a new human race. The military see them as a threat, so they try to exterminate them. However, some of them escape. These neo-cells have made them strong and practically invincible. They vow to get rid of the human race using the Europa robotic army. Dr. Azuma’s son Tetsuya goes to war and is killed. His father revives him again, and he becomes Casshern, the only one that can fight this new race of men.

The beginning of the movie was a little slow. It dragged to the point that I didn’t want to watch it anymore. However, after Tetsuya dies, it picks back up. The plot seemed to be all over the place. It was obvious that they packed an anime, which probably had several episodes, into a two-hour movie. I had to watch it twice to fully understand what was going on.

The actor that played the new human race leader Burai, Toshiaki Karasawa, was the best actor. He made me feel angry, happy, sad, and pain with his face expressions and tone of voice. Some of the other characters seemed to lack the depth that Burai had. It seemed to be a combination of acting and dialogue.

The scenes were cool because I felt I was watching an anime. The special effects people did a good job of showing the dark and light of the futuristic world. It seemed to reflect the feelings of the characters. Overall, I thought the movie was pretty good, but it should have just been created as a remake of the old anime series to develop the characters and the plot.

This movie is a visual masterpiece. Every frame seems to have been run through Photoshop. The soundtrack is great and the plot is very good. The movie even has a message.

If I were to criticize this movie for anything at all it would be the trailer. From the trailer I thought that this would be a really kick ass action movie. While there was action, it was quite the opposite. It was really an anti-violence movie.

Well done!

Casshern is like an attempt to make a live action anime or video game, highly stylised, every shot is like a picture frame, characters expound tediously for hours, violence is exaggerated to the point of fetishism.

It lacks any sense of coherence and characters turn out to have unpredictable motives or connections which just serve to make laboured, unsubtle points about war and humanity.

We should all try to get along, but only after we’ve single-handedly destroyed a CGI robot army.

It was certainly impressive at times but whoever made this needs to learn about editing, economy of script and action, and knowing that it isn’t always necessary to drench every single shot in filters, special effects, or interminable pauses.