Anime: Siu Sin

Glory to the People's Republic!

Superb film, well told story and several nice touches to bring this into the realm of Noteworthy.

Animamation is great, and if this is the standard to be coming out of China in the future, we are in for great things. A cross between standard Japanese Pattern and something from Don Bluth, the whole animation exercise is carried out with high grade professionalism. Character designs are unique to the individuals, allowing a lot more personality to be placed just by the fact that each character is so individual. Backgrounds are well rendered, but stay in the background, contributing a refined sense to everything.

Sound, sadly, is its failing, but it is excuseable to a point. This is because the film was desinged specifically around doing both Cantonese and Mandarin, but oddly thats not where the failures are most apparent.

Cantonese: This audio gives a less harsh/serious rendition of character voices, as the flow of dialogue sounds more like singing than talking. Music is esentially the same.

Mandarin: Far more serious, the best example is the introduction of the first two ghost hunters, as you can hear the extra work gone into dramatic (arcane) echo.

Unfortunately, the effects fail the whole sound experience, they are, entirely, stock. I know for a fact that explosions from the Command and conquer series were used, as well as numerous other games and even films.

The story is singular, and you need to really keep up to follow the Chinese mythological references which you are expected to know, other wise you miss out on a great deal. The dramatic aspects are well held, although very often the sound intrudes on a well animated tense moment, ruining the whole experience.

This has value in that it holds a standard by which any other Chinese animation can be judged by it, and though it is rewatchable at least twice (to hear both audio tracks), that is about all.