Vexille

Ranivus★ 6

Set in the year 2077, this cyberpunk thriller starts off with a bang and unfortunately goes out with a wimper. The story evolves around roughneck yet beautiful girl named Vexille who works for an elite military force codenamed: S.W.O.R.D. In a nutshell, Japan has elected to become an isolated country and decides not to play ball with the rest of the world. A semi interesting story ensues... Fortunately, as soon as the movie starts you are well treated for some nice visual eye candy. As you would expect from a CGI heavy movie, everything is rendered with utmost detail. But almost immediately you will notice thatthe characters are altered slightly than what you would normally expect. They appear to be more styled in a cel-shaded way. A little minor gripe with cel-shading is that sometimes theres a little TOO much 'shading' on the characters. The style may look a little weird (semi-simplified characters over an extremely detailed background) but you will most likely grow used to it after a few minutes. There are a few flaws in the animation but thats proof of how beautiful this movie is. You'll be actively searching for things in the artwork to nit pick. A great thing about a cyberpunk universe is understanding the universe itself. The back story and technology throughout the movie will most definitely do its job in to pulling you into the Vexille universe as all the technology is pretty believable (for the most part) and cool to look at. Unfortunately what pulls the story down a few points is that the actual plot is very unspectacular. When the viewer discovers the plot, seasoned anime viewers will notice how cliche' the whole move is from the climax to the ending. Which disappointed me so much since they could have easily gone a unique route but decided to take the safe (and unimpressive) route. With a weakening plot, unfortunately the characters have to suffer as well. As they are near replicas of other cyberpunk characters. It also means that the characters faces don't show emotions very well for some reason (i.e. happy, sad, etc). To add more salt to the wound, the characters don't speak as much which is good and bad. Good as in usually when they're not talking some kick ass action sequence is going on, and bad as in the character chemistry is virtually nonexistent. If you have been following any of my reviews, chemistry is what makes a good anime great. Don't get me wrong, this movie was for the most part, pretty good and I am most likely going to buy the dvd when it comes out, but the storyline and characters started to wane (or letup) further into the movie. If they only kept its intensity and uniqueness all the way to the end, this would definitely be a 9, but this movie deserves no more than a 6.

Beatnik★ 7

Vexille is in the same vein as cyberpunk thriller franchises Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell. There is excellent animation and world/mecha design on display, with great music by Paul Oakenfold. The story is intriguing and has moments of awe, but is overall generic and subpar. The premise of having the main protagonist from America and treating Japan like current-day hermit North Korea is very cool but not expanded upon creatively. Vexille settles for obligatory action setpieces and clichéd villains to fill the running time. All stuff straight out of the Rebels-Fight-Empire 101 textbook. A textbook that is in need of a new edition,I think we can all agree.