Anime Week: Black Magic M-66

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Day 3 of Anime Week.  As I am attempting to stick to themes and genres of anime I thought now would be a good time to do a Sci-fi anime.  Yes, with its myriad of mechas, killer robots, star vessels and orbital platforms, science fiction gets a lot of love from Japanimation.   So it should not come as a surprise that this particular flick hails from the cyberpunk sub-genre manga called Black Magic M-66 created by writer/illustrator Masamune Shirow (Black Magic, Appleseed, Dominion, Ghost in the Shell and Orion) with what happens when technology you so willingly trusted with your very life takes a turn for the worse.  With that thought, you can only amaze the havoc that awaits.    This is Black Magic M-66

Sorry ma'am, no John Connors here.

Leaky: You're going after a story on the spoiler?  You're nuts!







With an aggressive android capable of moving at high speeds, agile, lethal in melee combat and packing an assortment of laser based weapons, nerve gas and an explosive core for self-destruct, it gets worse than that.  Imagine a machine capable of independent thought, tactics and strategy and will not be deterred from its objective.  That in mind, a freak lightning storm strikes the armored helicopter transport frying the pilots and causing the ride to go barreling down into a dense forest.  The android units emerge from their containment pods with the only mission parameter they know, which is a mission to find a specific target.  Their redundancy programs establish that this is their purpose for being and nothing stands in that way.   Hours later while the androids are on the move, two hunters in the woods find a Grizzly bear just smashed like a rag doll and even its thick and heavy paws are snapped and broken.   The units trail the men but they have an off-screen death to ratchet tension I suppose.  

Sir, I stepped in an exposition sinkhole.

We now get to meet Sybel, a freelance journalist with the typical anime girl build.  Yup that's right at least a large C to D cup and hourglass figure.  She pipes into a Military broadcast that an operation is underway and she grabs her cameras, tapes and cameraman Leaky to go investigate.  No sooner do they make it to the "toxic" crash site that the whole area has been sealed off by soldiers and cordoned off by trucks and men.

Tensions are a bit high in this partnership.

A Special Ops team lead by the Major, no other ID than that seems cool headed but realizes he is sending his men into a substantial forest against beings that are faster, stronger and many times more deadly than they.   With the use of massive electromagnet, the retrieval teams hope to capture and transport the M-66s with little to no fuss or muss.

I had a few quick comments on the film now.  With its fairly complex story with tech along you kind of have to go with the flow and not let your attention wander with this one, folks.  It is fast paced, hard hitting action and some nail biting moments worthy of Cameron's Terminator.  With 50 minutes on the clock you will squirm a bit in your seat waiting for the next explosion or possibly jump scare.  A fairly enjoyable movie is what it meant to me.

Form Voltron!!