I really wished this movie to succeed - its retro cyber punk world is really interesting and backgrounds do look amazing. Seriously, the retro future titanistic look of the buildings and subterran spaces is really great. On the other hand the characters do look childish and really outdated in style. Think of Tintin characters for example - very naive looking characters with primitive animation in 1920s style. The General himself looks like Mario - seriously. He is just laughable. These characters just do not fit to these great looking buildings.
The story is absurd and seems to drift without any direction. The characters are not believable at all, they are not just flat, but they do behave in a simply absurd manner. Twists and kills are sudden and hard to follow - you just have no idea why something happened and motivation of characters is totally unclear. The most bizarre is the ten year old hit-man (or whatever he is) who is supposed to work for the Baron but not only ignores his interests but he is basically willing to kill everyone in his way like there is no law applying to him at all. The Baron seems not to have any connection with politics yet he simply builds super weapon and has no problem to test it live on his own without consent of Army or state. More or less it is just a roller-coaster of random yet beautiful scenes.
In the end I'm not sure if the authors meant the movie to be full fledged serious cyber punk or just simple movie for the kids. It does not seem to be suitable for neither group. It is just too stupid to be serious scifi fan and too messy and hard to follow for the kids. Lots of empty speech, nonsense scenes, useless characters and even more pointless deaths. You might to try to compare this movie with Steamboy or Castle in the Sky but it is just way inferior to them.
The story is absurd and seems to drift without any direction. The characters are not believable at all, they are not just flat, but they do behave in a simply absurd manner. Twists and kills are sudden and hard to follow - you just have no idea why something happened and motivation of characters is totally unclear. The most bizarre is the ten year old hit-man (or whatever he is) who is supposed to work for the Baron but not only ignores his interests but he is basically willing to kill everyone in his way like there is no law applying to him at all. The Baron seems not to have any connection with politics yet he simply builds super weapon and has no problem to test it live on his own without consent of Army or state. More or less it is just a roller-coaster of random yet beautiful scenes.
In the end I'm not sure if the authors meant the movie to be full fledged serious cyber punk or just simple movie for the kids. It does not seem to be suitable for neither group. It is just too stupid to be serious scifi fan and too messy and hard to follow for the kids. Lots of empty speech, nonsense scenes, useless characters and even more pointless deaths. You might to try to compare this movie with Steamboy or Castle in the Sky but it is just way inferior to them.