Pascoite reviews an old anime movie because why not · 10:45pm Jan 26th, 2018
I don't know at what point they started, but the Sci-Fi Channel (as it was called back then) used to run an event once a year where they'd play an anime movie each night for a week during the summer. It had gone on at least a couple years before I watched it, either because our cable package hadn't included the channel to that point or because I just wasn't aware they were doing so. This was in the mid 90s, and I only caught the last two years of it. And of the 4 movies they played (one was long enough that they aired it over 2 days), 3 of them repeated the second year. So I saw 5 movies total this way, and 3 are so unmemorable that I have no recollection of them. The long one was called "Zeiram: The Animation," and it was actually pretty good! Maybe I'll review that one at some point, but of the two candidates, it's by far the better known. I figured I'd go for the more obscure one, then. After the break!
The other movie is titled "Green Legend Ran," and there are enough places you can find to watch it online, though every copy I've seen has pretty low-quality video. Most of them are probably copied from VHS cassettes, as it was produced before the DVD era, and I doubt it ever got a re-release. What's also notable about that era is that the voice acting was usually very lackluster. A couple of the VAs did their best (at least one is very recognizable and still in the business), but often many of the characters just sound stiff and bored. Ugh, I'm reminded of a show I really did like, The Slayers, that suffers from this as well. Lena Inverse's VA did an enthusiastic job, Gourri and Amelia were kind of half-hearted, and the rest sounded like they were reading the script for the first time. But I digress.
"Green Legend Ran" follows a boy named Ran, appropriately enough, through a somewhat post-apocalyptic world. The plot isn't exactly going to wow you, and the few twists and turns by this point feel like they come out of a playbook, complete with the overblown exclamation of "NOOOOOOOOOO!" So if the plot isn't that original, what else is there? The action sequences are pretty good, so they keep up interest. But the real draw here is the world-building.
Maybe these are spoilers? I usually only consider those to be plot-related, and I'm not going to say how the plot goes. But I will discuss the world-building, so if you'd rather discover that for yourself, then go watch the movie first. That kind of thing usually doesn't bother me, though, as long as it doesn't encroach on plot elements.
This is a world where the planet's undergone an environmental disaster. One of the most precious resources is fresh water, and towns have sprung up in the few places where it's available. They're located pretty far apart, separated by vast deserts inhabited mostly by pirates who look for what few resources are buried under the sand. And they're actually pretty much like ships that float on the sand! Not that it's that thin—people can walk on it. I just liked the idea of these vessels that plow through the sand instead of driving on top of it. However, water is plentiful in a few specific areas, where proportionately larger cities have grown.
In these places are objects that look like massive but mostly featureless sarcophagi, hundreds of feet tall, if not thousands. They are called Holy Mothers, and they can be seen from very far away, and the smooth area where the "face" would be gazes out over the land. They are referred to as greens, and instead of being named like the small towns are, they're just numbered. Not only do they give rise to the economy and government of the world, but also the religion. Each green has a bishop, who seem to be large hybrid plant creatures. They're also completely corrupt.
As the movie begins, we see Ran in his small town, and he knows of a secret water source a small distance out into the desert. He lives within sight of one of the greens, and the Holy Mother sits on the horizon. He also encounters a girl with silver hair, and while he's never seen one, he doesn't regard that as more than a curiosity. However, the soldiers coming after her do catch his attention.
I'll break in here to say that the explanation for all this comes about pretty late in the movie, and if such things matter to you, so do the two fairly brief and minor instances of nudity. I rewatched the movie just last year after not having seen it for close to 20 years. What should be obvious by now is that the world-building is what really stuck with me, but I was surprised to find that I'd forgotten how crammed toward the end it all was. What I've said so far is what you pick up at the beginning of the movie, and you only get a couple more small pieces until the big explanation at the end. So to that explanation, then! Again, this doesn't spoil what happens, but it spoils why those things happen.
The Holy Mothers came from some alien race, and it's never really said why, but they wanted to save the Earth after the environmental disaster, so they crashed down in various points around the planet to provide places where there would be ample water and plant life could flourish. It also isn't explained how the bishops got to be in power, but they're humans who have mutated due to their constant and close proximity to the Holy Mothers. The one that isn't corrupt is the archbishop, but it's unclear why he doesn't do anything about his subordinates. The Holy Mothers sent out seeds long ago, which sprouted into these silver-haired people.
Now, it's a little odd that Ran hadn't heard of them before, because apparently there are people who want to fake being one of them, yet the only two examples we see of them out in the greater world are abused and hunted, so I don't know why that would be a desirable fate. To be fair, the abuse came at the hands of forces opposed to the bishops, but the bishops' own soldiers are none too kind on tracking down such people, either. And the way they're abused is on the interesting side as well. Just being in contact with certain kinds of ordinary metal causes them pain and makes them weak.
The opposition just wants the silver-haired people so they can undermine the bishops' agenda, and the bishops want them because they seek the personal glory that comes from presenting an authentic one to the Holy Mothers. Though so far, they've only seen fake ones, whom they kill. Only the archbishop genuinely helps them, but nobody knows what'll happen if one of the silver-haired people actually makes it back to a Holy Mother, not even the archbishop. So when Ran helps this one get there...
Well, now we are running into plot spoilers, but again, it's pretty much what you'd expect it to be. There's really only two ways these stories go: either some wonderful thing happens, or the shit hits the fan and everyone has to keep it from going down by just maintaining the status quo or turning things around so the wonderfulness does occur.
But hey, even though it has an unsurprising plot, the interesting world-building and some of the visuals came together to make this a movie that I found quite memorable.
I apparently watched this long enough ago that I hadn't yet begun to use the internet as a repository for my opinions on things, so it's just been shoved into the "Anime I don't like" category of the list I keep. :B Can't imagine why I wouldn't have liked it though, for all that it does sound a little done.
I'd be interested in more blogs like this one, should you continue.
Sounds interesting. I never got much into Anime but this sounds pretty neat.
Zeiram: The Animation is awesome.
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I need to watch it again. I think I last saw it around 20 years ago.