Visual Storytelling

Not too long ago, I had a chance to see this movie. An early example of the use of digital sets (much like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) Casshern in a lot of ways, is a live-action anime. Literally. It's based on an anime from the 1970s (called Casshan in the US), even maintaining the mech designs for the robots that appear in the film.

The version of Casshern I watched was the recent DreamWorks DVD release. It's full of over-simplified subtitles, and missing twenty minutes of footage. But what I saw was something incredible. Full of life and color, even when depicting drab death. It's full of imagery concerning revenge, hate, bioethics--everything typically found in seinen anime, such as RahXephon or Gundam Wing. It's very smooth and epic, yet still maintaining a very personal form of storytelling.

I knew I really was enjoying this film when it ended. The final sequence shows a very dreamlike resolution for each character, a resolution involving no words, only two and a half minutes of visuals involving the various characters.

I would hope that any story that tries to balance the line between action and emotion would learn from the example Casshern makes. Highly recommended.