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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Rent | 8 | 8 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 0 | Devil Doll | # |
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[Score: 79%]
While the series handles the storyline development over several years, both movies focus on Katsumi and her inner conflict while meeting the AMP for the first time, standing between being used to a normal human's life and facing evidence that there could be so much more - which she hates and fears, yet could open the path for her to finally understand her deceased parents. The story of the second movie is a seamless sequel to the first one. While I missed Yuki in the first movie it now becomes obvious why this is so: Yuki isn't an AMP member yet (unlike in the series). But nonetheless Yuki plays a major role in this second movie, the only important role besides Katsumi. I identified a couple of ideas and scenes that appear in very different episodes of the series and used in a sometimes totally different context. Being a huge fan of the series I wasn't too happy about that, but in the context of this movie it worked well. Basically everything in this second movie is better than in the first one: They made storyline and character development their top priority now, avoided nudity, didn't waste too much time with action sequences, and the musical score (including the nice theme song "Tabidatsu Asa ni" with rock guitars and a female "shouter") now works great as well. Art and Animation are good quality for their time (now judging by the DVD re-release of 2007) even though I dislike the faces of several characters in both movies, most notably Kiddy's. But still, the main problem is that you need to know the first movie (plus a lot of Manga stuff) to understand in detail what is going on here... sigh. One big downside of both movies is that (unlike in the series) you don't get any information about the Silent Crisis that caused the whole scenario; another problem is that all side characters are acting stereotypically and don't have room for development. So what you get here is basically Katsumi's doubts and fears plus a number of action scenes between two opponents both of which make tactical errors mostly based on hybris. Having said that, it's still a thrilling story even though we know the ending already. Last updated Friday, November 23 2007. Created Thursday, August 28 2003. | ||||||||
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