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Highlander: The Search for Vengeance
May. 10th, 2010 02:27 pmI love the idea of Highlander. The Rule of Cool certainly applies- people running about in long coats, with swords and trying to take each other heads off? Hell yes, that's awesome. The TV series was lots of fun (when I could watch it) and I liked the first movie. The second had me going WTF, and the third was a rehash of the first, and I haven't seen the fourth.
It's a story that has had to reinvent itself with each new telling, because no one seems to have come up with a good reason for the immortals to be running around just yet.
So, you know, hey? An anime version? Sweet!
And then I wanted to tear my eyes out.
Highlander: the Search for Vengeance should have been awesome. And visually, it was. Beautiful fight scenes, good animation, good music... It was well crafted.
Except for the plot.
See, this is where I start taking exception to half-hearted attempts to take an American story and remake it into an anime. It was essentially a pastiche of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, only without the blood sucking. Same dystopian future, same long swords, same director. Yet all it did was take a bunch of anime cliches and paint the Highlander concept on top of them. There was nothing interesting about the characters. All of them were cookie cutouts, from the Wise Old Guy Spirit Advisor to Vengeance Crazed Protagonist Needing Bath to Nietzche Wannabe Villain and Recylable Girlfriend.
They weren't applying tropes. It was so damn boring I had to fastforward it. And I hated it so much that even a year later, whenever I see someone say they like it, I froth at the mouth a little.
My other annoyance is the Witchblade Manga. Same problem- they tried to turn Witchblade into Sailor Moon. What the hell, people? What the hell?
Yet I thoroughly enjoyed the Witchblade Anime. Why is that? Because of the character development. The main characters go through highs and lows and you care about the characters- they aren't who they were at the beginning and while it wasn't perfect, it was well constructed. The characters were characters and not walking cliche storms. GAHHH.
Rant over.
It's a story that has had to reinvent itself with each new telling, because no one seems to have come up with a good reason for the immortals to be running around just yet.
So, you know, hey? An anime version? Sweet!
And then I wanted to tear my eyes out.
Highlander: the Search for Vengeance should have been awesome. And visually, it was. Beautiful fight scenes, good animation, good music... It was well crafted.
Except for the plot.
See, this is where I start taking exception to half-hearted attempts to take an American story and remake it into an anime. It was essentially a pastiche of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, only without the blood sucking. Same dystopian future, same long swords, same director. Yet all it did was take a bunch of anime cliches and paint the Highlander concept on top of them. There was nothing interesting about the characters. All of them were cookie cutouts, from the Wise Old Guy Spirit Advisor to Vengeance Crazed Protagonist Needing Bath to Nietzche Wannabe Villain and Recylable Girlfriend.
They weren't applying tropes. It was so damn boring I had to fastforward it. And I hated it so much that even a year later, whenever I see someone say they like it, I froth at the mouth a little.
My other annoyance is the Witchblade Manga. Same problem- they tried to turn Witchblade into Sailor Moon. What the hell, people? What the hell?
Yet I thoroughly enjoyed the Witchblade Anime. Why is that? Because of the character development. The main characters go through highs and lows and you care about the characters- they aren't who they were at the beginning and while it wasn't perfect, it was well constructed. The characters were characters and not walking cliche storms. GAHHH.
Rant over.
