Casshern

Year: 2004
Running time: 142 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: Japanese
Screenplay: Kazuaki Kiriya, Dai Sato, Shotaro Suga
Director: Kazuaki Kiriya

Starring: Yusuke Iseya, Kumiko Aso, Akira Terao, Kanako Hiquichi, Hiroyuki Miyasako, Mayumi Sada, Jun Kaname

Better times.

I’ve been struggling to think what to say about Casshern for some time. I have been trying to decide whether I like it or not, or more precisely, whether I understand it or not. My first thought was simply to have ‘Eh?’ as the entire review, but on reflection, there is more to say.

First off, unless I’m incredibly stupid there is one very simple message behind Casshern and all of its complexities, and that is that war is bad. Really bad. Not good. At all. Many stories make a similar point, but I guarantee you that no film has made the point in quite this way before. Adapted from a 1973 anime, the set up is truly great, if complex. I'll try to cover the basics. The world of the future is simply a seemingly endless war between two superpowers, and even when that war is technically over after 50 years, the victor is struggling to suppress pockets of resistance and, more urgently, the human race has been brought to the brink of self-annihilation, and is unable to repopulate the planet. Cue scientist Dr. Kotaro Azuma (Akira Terao), who is developing a way to rebuild humanity using techniques involving rejuvenating the body parts of the dead that are rather dodgy, ethically speaking.

All hail the victor.

An unexplained and inexplicable bolt of lightning (which seems to become a solid structure) causes life to emerge from the raw material in the lab (whole humanoids, not just parts, somehow), life which is promptly destroyed by the military, apart from Akubon (Hiroyuki Miyasako), Sagure (Mayumi Sada) and Barashin (Jun Kaname), who manage to escape. Dr. Azuma then brings back his son Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya), killed in the aforementioned war, who makes use of a newly designed super-suit to become the superhuman Casshern to fight for humankind against the robot army randomly discovered by Akubon and co. But remember, war is bad. So there is less distinction than you might think between which side is supposed to be good, and which is bad. Because war is bad, which means each side is as bad as the other, and the true heroes are the ones that finally realise this and are able to stop the killing and forgive the wrong that was done to them. Of course, they usually have to die for this to happen. The story is actually far more complex than that, but I don’t want to spoil the fun of working out for yourself exactly what the hell is going on.

The place where Casshern falls down the most, I feel, is in the one on one fight scenes, where the two opponents try to out-pose each other first while some awful techno-rock is playing, then when the fights start they have that Pokémon / Beyblade look, and when Casshern is running up buildings and the like, he looks rather like Sonic the Hedgehog, only not blue. Obviously, the filmmakers didn’t have the hugest budget, but I think that these moments are a little over-stylised – to the point of being cartoony, and not in the cool Manga way I think they were going for.

Casshern, being dramatic.

However, it's not all negative. The moral, although being a tad simplistic (ironic considering the ridiculously random complexity), is an honourable one, and the consequences of humankind’s insistence on forever being at war with itself are appropriately tragic. The price that all of the characters pay for their deeds is truly devastating. But the thing about Casshern that will undoubtedly bring me back to watch again is that it is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Excepting the fight scenes mentioned earlier, every frame, every background, every moment has an astonishing mix of colour, style and CG wizardry. In particular, there is a scene in which Tetsuya and his love interest Luna (Kumiko Aso) converse where different visual styles are used to portray each character's viewpoint which is spellbindingly gorgeous to look at.

So, on reflection, I think I did like it after all.

Score: 7/10

Scribble King liked it more than me, but the Massie Twins weren't particularly impressed.