Wednesday, June 15, 2011

[Ended][Movie] Broken Blade


After almost a year, with the release of the 6th installment of the series, we finally reached the conclusion of this high jumping mecha saga. While this concludes the major conflict introduced in the beginning, it's nowhere near the end. There are quite a few loose ends left.

Personally, I'm not a fan of mecha anime, mostly due to the fact majority of them tend to overemphasize on slow-mo mecha battle and cut corners on the actual plot. In my opinion, there are two types of mecha animes: animes about mecha, and animes have mecha in them. Broken Blade is definitely the latter. While there are no lack of slow-mo mecha battles (in fact, I think they slightly over did some of the slow-mo scenes, but they're still in acceptable range), this is not an anime about the hunk of moving metal, or how someone could get their hands on them. There are many complex inner working parts of the plot, and mecha is merely a tool.

The setting of the story is somewhat unique, at least among the all mecha animes. For one, it has gotten away from the mecha being a externally powered mechanical device and went with mecha being powered purely by the driver. The one that isn't powered by the driver in the story actually being call the freak of nature.

As I said earlier, the story is nowhere near complete. There are so many underplots that were introduced but not resolved. Most importantly, the war is nowhere near ending. This 6 movies only completed the first major battle.

I think this series (of movies) achieved a relatively good balance between advancing plots and fulfilling mecha fans lusts for some metal on metal action.

Final Scoreboard:


Drama: 90 (multiple climax)
Comedy: N/A
Action: 88 (Slow-mo mecha battles)
Art/Animation: 85 (Typical)
Sound/Music: 93 (Love the theme song)
Character: 91 (well developed)
Plot: 89 (Interesting)
Ending: 87 (At a stop point)

Re-watch value: 75 - May still get some more detail out of it

Overall: 88 - One of the better mecha animes

Recommendation:  Whether you're a big fan of metal on metal action, so long that you don't have a hatred against mecha, you would find this series enjoyable.

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