Reviews for Darkside Blues

The parasitic Persona Corporation has bought up ninety percent of the world, in a future where only small, crowded "free zones" exist for those who don't want to play by their rules. It's in one of these free zones that street toughs Mai and Kenzo rage against Persona, where a wanted terrorist looks for sanctuary in the home of a reluctant woman, and a strange, pale man shows up in the dark side of town, with a gift of renewal for them all.

"Darkside Blues" is an anime with an awful lot of characters and multiple storylines plotted on top of one another that don't all pan out satisfactorily. Darkside, though billed as the main character, is only really a sort of odd, supernatural harbinger of change. The real movers and shakers in the plot are the tough-girl Mai, her rugged pal Kenzo, the renegade terrorist Tatsuya, and the doubtful Selia. Our villain is Guren, a nervous corporate topcat, whose newest technological development threatens to end all resistance to Persona permanently. Add a slew of colorful minor characters, many of whom are more interesting than the central cast, and the focus of the narrative often wavers or threatens to go off course completely. The story, fortunately, is tight enough to keep everything more or less on track. Animation-wise, the picture is gorgeous. Everything is very atmospheric, very moody, but also rich in color and detail. Many of the settings, such as Guren's offices and Granny's hotel are downright ornate. All the characters are human, or at least humanoid, so the style is kept very constant and comfortably quasi-realistic.

I suppose the major problem with "Darkside" is that it doesn't feel complete. We have only the barest of introductions to most of the characters, and there's only one storyline that is really concluded by the end of the movie. We do not get to see a satisfying showdown between our villains and our heroes, and many promising characters, like the albino waif, Katari, and cool-cat Chris the Knife, get little more than cameos. Heck, the most interesting of the villains, Guren's sadistic sister Tamaki, only shows up twice. The recurring themes in the story are of rebirth and change, but the resolutions in the closing scenes only seem to be the pause before the oncoming storm. Though not a bad movie in its own right, "Darkside" nonetheless feels like the setup to a series, another movie, or a missing third act which might have the answers to the questions posed here. If that was the intention, it worked, because I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more of Darkside and his friends.

Warnings for a lot of violence, a few deaths and at least one not-so-brief nude scene. Definitely an action picture, but much more low key than the norm and quite angst-ridden. Created by the same man responsible for "Vampire Hunter D," but I think he did much better job all here.