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2001 Nights (Fumihiko Sori's TO)

Review Date: 2011 September 03 09:49

Reviewed by: therealspratt

Released by: Manga Entertainment UK

Age Rating: 15

Region: 2 - UK

Length: 128 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English 5.1 Surround
Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1

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Summary

Join the acclaimed director, Fumihiko Sori (Vexille, Ichi) and the producers of Appleseed and Halo Legends for an epic journey to the stars told across two stunning sci-fi fables. A crew returns home after 15 years in space. While they have only aged by two years, everyone they know is now fifteen years older. One hundred years have passed and mankind presses on ever deeper into the solar system. But far from establishing a new world order in space, man has brought the same old rivalries and conflicts with him. A war erupts as the race to colonize a new Earth intensifies.

Review

Based on Yukinobu Hoshino's eighties manga series, TO is an adaptation coming right at you from the creators of the 2007 movie Vexille of two of the stories from Hoshino's love letter to the hard science fiction classics from the likes of Arthur C. Clarke (the title a fairly blatant reference to his magnum opus 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Unsurprisingly for those familiar with Fumihiko Sori's prior works, TO is an all CGI production in the same vein as Vexille, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and the 2004 Appleseed movie. This, despite all the features I've listed here, is an uncommon occurrence when it comes to Japanese animation, very much unlike here in the west where 2D animation is living its final days and PIXAR for the last decade and a half has been bigger than sliced bread and the bible combined. But not so much in Japan and this ends up acting to TO's detriment because the vast majority of CGI work done then in Japan is in the videogame industry and there is a large overlap between the two workpools and the result of this is that the visuals of most CGI anime end up looking like they've been ripped right out of a modern JRPG, if not as quite as high budget.

TO however does make some attempts at differentiating itself with somewhat stylized character designs and artstyle with a general cel shaded look to the characters. It is quite a pretty movie in the high levels of detail in the mechanical designs and doubly so on the Blu-ray review copy Manga sent to myself, but where it falls apart is in how everything moves. Quite blatantly not motion captured as one has become accustomed to in 3D animation these days, characters move stiffly and faces appear lifeless, which leaves the viewer with a strong feeling of the uncanny valley. It also doesn't help that with the dub selected the out of sync lip movement is far more off putting than with conventional 2D animation due to that uncanny valley effect which resulted personally in making TO nearly impossible to watch with the dub track selected.

To say the least about the plotting of the two parts of TO it is generic at best. To say a bit more, out of the two stories the second, Symbiotic Planet, best described as Romeo and Juliet in space, was the more entertaining, that isn't saying much though. Whilst the great bard's tale has been iterated upon innumerable times over the last 400 plus years, the tale of two star crossed lovers against the background of a conflict between two rival colonies was more engaging than that of miners returning from a distant planet after 15 years to a space container shooting supply satellite only for it to be attacked by terrorists. To tell the truth though both of the stories aren't particularly engaging, whatever opportunities they have to add a bit of depth they squander and what results is, as I've said beforehand, are two fairly generic sci-fi tales which are about as shallow as a kiddies' swimming pool and are about as satisfying as swimming in one too.

What really makes TO fall flat though is the characters, it is very much possible to have a positively dire plot acted out by interesting and nuanced characters and enjoy every second of it. Unfortunately in TO however the characters are so forgettable that I almost forgot about writing about them because to tell the truth for the most part they amount to little more than vehicles to convey the story.

When it comes to extras provided TO is fairly generous with a pair of interviews featuring the director Sori as well as various well known cast members such as fan favourites Jun Fukuyama and Aya Hirano, in addition to your standard fare of promos and theatrical trailers. If it's just super sensitive old me and you can look past the lip flapping, the dub itself is workable, as one would expect from an English audio track in this day and age but it is probably the Japanese track that's the one worth listening to, if only for the top of the pile voice talent they've made a point of bringing in.

TO is something which lies in that horrible grey area of neither hatred nor love for myself, the type of show a reviewer hates to come across. I don't resent having to watch TO, I would in fact say that I'm happy that at least someone out there's still trying to make some sort of hard scifi but this isn't I feel something that I can recommend a reader to go out and buy.

Rating: 5/10

Notes

This review is of the Blu-ray edition of 2001 Nights (Fumihiko Sori's TO).

You can also get this title on DVD in the UK.

Buy the 2001 Nights (Fumihiko Sori's TO) UK DVD from Amazon.co.uk

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