I have placed a thing on you that you must throw.
I'm not ignoring the poll, but I had already decided to watch Harmagedon (aka Genma Taisen) for this Thursday. Back when I bought it, I had heard it was bad, and thrown it into my cart in the hope that it would be amusing.
Yeah, no. If I had planned this to torture y'all (which might have crossed my mind), it backfired spectacularly.
Starting the movie a day early saved my butt. When my eyelids kept sliding closed, I knew I wasn't going to make it through the movie in one go. No matter, I thought, I've at least put a dent into it -- I must have watched at least an hour!
I had not watched at least an hour. But I was determined to make it to that mark so that I could feel accomplished. I stood up, bounced around a bit, and took off my necklace to start twirling it around and around my finger. Starting the movie back up, I kept checking the time. 50 minutes...53 minutes...56 minutes...is it my imagination, or is this scene getting slower? 58...59...finally! I impatiently waited for Jo and his older sister to fly into the sunset (not romantic, nor (I hope) intended to be), and then shut it off.
Today, I tried to figure out where I left off from the chapter menu, and finally selected "The End Begins". Yeah fucking right -- the end was over an hour away.
I should probably explain the story, such as it is: Princess Luna of Transylvania receives a message for an unworldly entity warning her of Genma, a force that will swallow Earth completely, as it has done to countless other planets. With Vega, a cyborg from one of those worlds, she must assemble six other psionic warriors to fight this global terror.
If this sounds like a generic sci-fi quest film, that's because it is. There isn't anything this movie does well, and very little it does competently. Sound effects are frequently wrong, animation utilizes as many shortcuts as possible, voice acting is flat for the most part (and certain voices are definitely miscast), characters are horrible stereotypes, and the pacing. Oh my god, the pacing. It has to be experienced to be believed. I honestly thought that Jo would be the leader of the psionic warriors, since he gets more than 40 minutes of backstory. That would be understandable in a TV series, but not in a movie that is 2 hours and 15 minutes.
This movie is so bad that Jo saves Bambi...twice. This movie is so bad that a cop shoots a roller skate off a kid's foot without damaging the foot. This movie is so bad that the psionic warrior from India is named Yogin -- and yes, he is a yogi. This movie is so bad that there is a No play-like witch in the beginning that babbles out the plot, and the animators recycle her lengthy animation later in the movie. This movie is so bad that the most interesting part was when Vega accused Luna of being racist. This movie is so bad that there is a Psychic Wave Massage used.
This movie is so bad that it should have been something that I was laughing at for two hours. Instead, I was yawning and pausing the movie to do other things. A lot.
I watched the interview with director Rin Taro because I wanted to learn the secret to why this film was so shitty -- was it source material, creative differences, executive meddling? Alas, the "interview" is less than two minutes long and has Rin Taro saying that the movie was a success because it was realistic.
Cue face falling neatly into palm.
When I think back on this film, I don't think realistic. I remember something so disasterous that it should never have gotten out of the planning stages. Someone should have understood what a pile of dreck that this would become. (Perhaps there is an answer in the director commentary, but it will take a stronger woman than me to find it.)
The only good thing about this entire disc is that it has a preview for the Revolutionary Girl Utena Black Rose Saga, which is awesome. I wonder if this was the way fandom discovered that CPM had picked up the rest of the series?