Sin: The Movie

This was yet another weak video game based anime like Fatal Fury. The plot had more cliches per minute than almost any other anime I have seen. The animation varied from really quite nice to absolutely terrible. Even the action sequences boring. Only watch this movie if you really have nothing else. I give it a 3.

In one hour you can't see much. It's not at AKIRA's level or close. It's pretty average mostly because is too short. The plot is too simple: mutans going rampage then it stops without a clear ending, something is missing. It's a nice watch if you don't have anything to watch. If they would made SIN: series I would watch.

I played the game back in 1998 or whenever and thought it was pretty good as far as single player first-person shooters went. The world of SiN stayed in my mind so naturally I was interested when I came across a movie version when browsing video store shelves (more of a TV special - got to remember to check the running time when renting anime). On the cover there was a quote from a magazine "sets a new benchmark for game-related anime" which was good enough for me.

What troubled me as I was watching SiN was that the world had been completely dispensed with, Blade's assistant gets killed off in the opening scenes. It became apparent that the SiN character(s) had been grafted on to an independently written story. Blade was something of a detective in the game, in the movie he's just someone holding a gun. Anyone could have taken his place. On its own merits the story is average at best, suitable to be played on TV once and that's it (too boring to warrant being on DVD shelves worldwide in my opinion). Basically a SiN movie has never been made but if you like the look of Blade and want to see his likeness in an average 50 minute anime, then this is your ticket.

Summary: good guy tries to stop evil scientist's mutants. The main feature of Sin was gore and violence. There was a clear plot to the film but constant killing and destruction forces that to the back of your mind, making you focus in the visual aspects. After watching you wish I wish I had known more about most of the characters backgrounds (especially the little girl who everyone wanted to capture). If only ADV extended it for 30 minutes to provide the information, to give the characters more personality instead of portraying them as either cruel, innocent, strong and/or rebelious, this movie would have much more appeal. I give it a 6.

I watched this on DVD and it looked really promising until the end of the opening credits. The prologue before the open credits was really interesting but it seemed to be the only part of the plot in which character was explored. The credits themselves looked vibrantly rendered (CG of course) and very swish indeed... I only wish that the film had come across so well.

From the odd pacing to the strange mix-and-match direction it was a bit of a let down. Though I like storylines that require one to engage brain, I believe this plot was poorly explained. Very little character history was explained and in some places the directorial disregard for chronological order fell short of artful and ended up at annoyingly ambiguous.

The backgrounds are really beautifully painted but in places there are computer graphic effects that fail to be integrated nicely into the cell shading. I cringed physically as I watched the Adobe lens flares fly across the screen and computer effects used where good simple animation would have done just fine.

If you want to enjoy this production I really suggest you check your brain at the door. Contains violence, explosions, mutants and a scantily clad evil bad girl... not really enough to save it, in my opinion. I won't rewatch it in a hurry.