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R2 DVD Reviews
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Wednesday, 28 September 2011 00:00 |
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Page 1 of 2
 Answering a lot of the questions that I felt the first volume should have answered, it's time for the second volume of Casshern Sins. And yet, despite all the answers and explanations, I'm finding it hard to really care...
Luna has been located and, with many of the world's robots heading to see her for her healing touch - the one way of escaping the Ruin, it seems - Casshern and his small band join to trek to see her. But the Luna they find has changed, no longer the one who brings light to the world - she's judging, balancing, condemning some of those who come before her, and to Casshern that's just not right. Lyuze, meanwhile, finds that her feelings of loathing towards Casshern have become something else, while Braiking Boss - he who ordered Luna's death and indirectly began the Ruin - make his appearance...
So. The first volume of Casshern Sins didn't exactly inspire me. Too slow, wasting what potential it had, and leaving too much unanswered, I finished the review with a series of questions that I wanted to see answered if the show was to have any chance of redeeming itself:
Who is (was?) Braiking Boss? Why did he want Luna dead? Did he realise that the Ruin would be unleashed when that happened? Where is he now?
Braiking Boss seemed, you see, to be the key to everything. In this volume, he finally makes his appearance, and you get to hear why he did what he did - so in one way, I can't complain that I didn't get what I wanted, and his re-emergence & the arrival of Luna on the scene certainly changes the dynamic of the series somewhat. There are also changes going on in the core group of characters, with Lyuze, Ringo and Ohji all having issues come to the fore that need to be dealt with and that all impact on Casshern in some way or another. On the character development front, there's very little to complain about here - at least in terms of what issues are being dealt with.
The series still falls short on the how, though. It never seems to want to do anything when it can instead have characters stand around and talk, with quirky 'lighting' and camera angles providing what little sense of perspective there is. If there's one thing that Casshern Sins is above all else, it's slow, and I found a sense of overriding boredom constantly sapping my will to watch any more of it - and this is when it's producing some of its best passages of story. Even the occasional, all-too-brief action sequences can't pull it out of its rut - as before, too few given the show's setting, and too short to break the tedium.
I wanted to like Casshern Sins, I really did. I have a soft spot, if you could call it that, for post-apocalyptic shows - when the world is crumbling and clearly drawing to an end, there are usually good stories to be found, and at least in terms of setting this series had oodles of potential to draw from. They way it goes about presenting its story, though, sees all that potential wasted, and instead we get 24 episodes of plot exposition, and while most of the questions I wanted to see answered were, I still can't say I was happy with how things were left at the end of the series.
It has dared to be different, and it probably does deserve some credit for that - when most of the anime scene these days is flooded by shows that require no more attention span than a gnat's, and where fanservice is king, Casshern Sins stands out from the crowd by being thoughtful, having depth, and in requiring that you pay attention to get the most out of it. It hasn't got the balance quite right, though, and that ultimately lets it down. Disappointing.
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