lady-dinobug Oh my God.What a pile of unexplained crap.This movie is one of those where I'm sure the creator knows the secrets and meanings behind everything...and he think he can get away with leaving the unexplained to people and that maintaining their interest...but he's wrong.Darkside Blues begins in a state of confusion and while you expect an answer, it ends in exactly the same point.It's like watching the middle of a movie. You get the meat...but you never know how it started or what ends up happening.Maybe the MANGA is better. I'd try that.Avoid this movie. It is a waste and just utterly useless.

calvim-1 Other viewers have summed it up perfectly with the word vague, but ambiguous can be applied liberally when describing this movie.An excellent point is that the movie begins and ends in the middle, so while the plot is interesting to look at, it is completely secondary to the message being conveyed by the animators. Once you strip away the distorted lense that Japanese culture comes to us, this film is full of messages. If you see past the wormholes and mutant people (no giant robots here though) there isn't enough plot to disguise the fact the animators are trying to tell us something. What that message is, could be just about anything. It is most likely a political or social commentary though. I'll give some examples, but I warn this could become potentially dry and/or thought provoking so skip down a bit if you don't want to think too much.There shouldn't be any spoilers here, just an idea of what themes you might make out of it.. which frankly could come from any orson wells+cyberpunk plot.A cry against globalization. 1994 was around dawn of the internet; the increasing interconnection of knowledge and people. The trade disuputes between japan and china going to the WTO(GATT or whatever it was called then) and about 10 years of the US hating on Japan for having an export heavy trade balance. I don't remember if the Asian market crash was before or after this movie. Probably after, but if it came before this movie I would point at that as a source of resentment towards globalization. Generally international trade creates losers only of those not taking part, but when your currency goes down the pipe you might not be so happy.An Orson Wells approach against unified power. We have the UN becoming a leading world authority by picking up members at a rapid pace, and the Cold War has been over for a few years, leaving the US with a superior economic and military power(Political scientist dub this a "Hegemonic" or "Unilateral" distribution of power, where there is a clear leader, as opposed to the "Bilateral" distribution between the Cold War superpowers, or the "Multilateral" distribution of the many warring countries prior to the modern age) This argument is a weaker one though, since people didn't commonly hate the US until this decade, where we start using that power in the middle east. Oh, Japan had been feeling heat from the US congress in the form of trade barriers, threats of tariffs and whatnot since the 80's, so that could spark a theme against overwhelming economic power. Google a synopsis of the book "No More Bashing" to find out more about anti Japanese sentiments during the 80's. I'm sure there are other ways of finding out, I'm just more familiar with that book.I'm not thinking too hard about it so don't rail on me if you disagree with anything political or possibly even factual that is coming out of my keyboard. I'm getting out of my specialty but it is ambiguous enough that I'm sure anyone with some high school liberal arts can spin some kind of theme about feelings and society. I'm sure if we look hard enough, we could find Christ figures aplenty, and a few characters seem to have little or no plot importance and exist only to be icons or symbols of something or other.Because this media comes from overseas, there are probably references and parallels to Japanese pop culture, history, or old stories that I will never know, contributing to my inability to understand what is going on, but this is a risk that comes with anything that has to be translated to be understood.Anyways, I watched it to see people struggling to survive in a bleak future possibly full of badarse people. While there was some of that, I can only say I was disappointed and unfulfilled by the plot. If I wanted something thought provoking I would watch something else. "Akira" is the closest thing that I can think of off the top of my head and it probably beats this title on every level so go watch that before you resort to watching this.

rbenyakov This is yet another one of those films where if I say I didn't like it, people will say, I didn't get it. But I didn't get it, and it wasn't an entertaining enough film to compel me to watch the DVD repeatedly trying to unravel this mess of hokey symbolism.We never get more than stock characters, a mysterious stranger who might be the key to changing everything, and a band of young rebels who want to tear down the evil corporation that has taken over the world. And even more clichéd the villainess had a pet falcon. Just once I want to a see a bad guy with a pet bunny rabbit or chipmunk. In any event I never got to the point where I cared about any of the heroes. When Darkside Blue tries to add something to this overused formula the result is confusing.

Chung Mo This is a tough one to review. There are bits and pieces that are really striking and a dreamlike quality to the whole proceeding. Actually the film resembles a bizarre dream one might wake from and go, "what was that about?" and then when you try to remember it later you can't. A strange futuristic city not unlike other anime future cities. Weird mutant humans who can shoot rays from their hands. Mysterious moody strangers with super-powers. Cute teenage girls with mega-fighting abilities. Sound familiar? Well it is but it's not as derivative as it could have been. The design is very good and the characters are all fascinating but...I watched it with the hope that it would all somehow come together but it never did. A number of important plot points are hidden in vague dialog references. As other reviewers have mentioned, it's like we are in the middle of some larger story. It's an interesting world that deserved better treatment. However it's not as bad as a number of other pretentious animes and you might enjoy it, just expect a disappointing ending.