Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm taking a look at an animated OVA from 1987. That movie is "Black Magic M-66".
Now, I don't know a ton about this movie. I do know that the manga that this thing is based on was created by a man known as Masamune Shirow. If you don't know who he is, he is best known for creating "Ghost in the Shell". Which I tried to watch one of the television series years ago, and it's really not my thing. And I think it's because the story was not all that engaging to me. I even tried to watch the live action movie that came out a few years ago, and I also found that movie to be rather dull.
Now from little information that I did look up on this movie, the "Black Magic" manga is also the very first thing that Masamune Shirow ever published. So I'm getting to see what his very early stuff was like before he moved on to "Ghost in the Shell". And I also know that this movie is really short. It's only 47 minutes long. So, on the off chance that this movie sucks, at least I know that it won't make me suffer too much.
But I don't know if this movie will either really suck, or turn out to be surprisingly good. But I am going to find that out now. And the only way I'm gonna do that, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Black Magic M-66."
11 minutes later
Well, guys, I can tell you so far that the animation in this movie is really cheap. I totally understand that this is a late 80's animated film, but I've seen late 80's animated movies that looked far better than this. This just looks...kinda ugly.
10 minutes later
By the way, guys, not only is the animation cheap, but the mouth movements on most of these characters are not timed right. Now this might be because I'm watching the movie on YouTube, but it's still really noticeable. Mind you, the story here is OK. It's just the animation and technicals are kinda bringing this down a little.
7 minutes later
Hold on a fucking second here. So the M-66 just sneaked past the military. Mind you, the only thing thing it's wearing is a blue robe, and it has long white hair and it's left eye was glowing red. Are you telling me that no one else noticed it while it was walking by? If so, then...oh, never mind, now it just destroyed a police plane. OK then, I guess now the people around it will finally take notice of it, now will they?
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Black Magic M-66". I'm gonna shut that off...OK. Where the hell to even start? Actually, I do know where to start. I need to talk about the copy of the movie I watched on YouTube.
When I decided to cover this movie for Reaction & Review, there were at least several copies of this thing available. Two of them had the Japanese dub. The only difference between those two versions was that one of them had Spanish subtitles, and the other had subtitles that were captioned in English. And the other version was the one I watched, which had the English dub. Why did I choose to watch that version over the other two? Mainly because I don't speak Spanish, and captioned subtitles are questionable, at best. So that's why I opted to watch the English dub. And after watching it, I feel like I should've gone with the version that had the captioned subtitles. And I don't mean that as in the English dub was terrible. Though admittedly, some of the acting kinda sucked, but I'll talk about that later. No, I mean that this version I watched is very out of sync.
Mind you, it started off fine for, like, the first 15 minutes or so. And it didn't start going out of sync up until around the 17 minute mark where the mouth movements were not matching with any of the dialogue. Now when I commented on the mouth movements earlier, I thought it was because it was just a really poor English dub put out by some amateurish company. But I can't really use that excuse, because I'm not totally sure if that's how it was when this movie was put out on DVD. And you know what? The out of sync version wouldn't have been so bad, except the dialogue and sound effects in later scenes was off by about 3 seconds. I counted them, because I was keeping track about how poorly the scenes were out of sync. Now this might be entirely my fault for not knowing how awful the out of sync quality was in this version of the movie. Perhaps if I had switched it over to the captioned subtitled version, I might've had a less painful experience watching this movie. But again, I stuck with the English dub, because I don't know how accurate, if at all, those subtitles are.
Now even with all of the issues I had with the version of the movie I watched on YouTube, the writing in this movie is really weak. Why? Because there really isn't a whole lot of story to work with here. So we have these two M-66 robots who escaped from their pods after a plane that was transporting them crashed. We then later see one of them target the granddaughter of this scientist, which was programmed to target and kill her. Why was it targeting her? I couldn't tell you, because this movie doesn't really explain shit. We also have our main character for this movie, Sybel. She is a freelance journalist who gets a secret military transmission and decides to check it out. Probably because she wants to sell this information and get it to the news networks, as do most freelance journalists do. She later gets wrapped with the scientist's granddaughter, Ferris. And she eventually ends up having to protect Ferris from the M-66 that's out to kill her. There's also this other journalist named Leakey, but since he's barely in the movie to begin with, there's really no need to talk about him.
Now the story here, as I mentioned earlier, is OK. But it would've been better had this movie gone on longer. In fact, one of the biggest issues I have with this movie is the runtime. Now I'm going to assume that the manga that this thing is based off had more character development and more of a plot than this movie did. Because this movie had none of that here. We don't get any development on Sybel, or her background as a freelance journalist. We don't get any depth on the M-66, other than how it can be detained and destroyed. And Ferris's role was only to be pursued by the M-66, and that happens in the latter half of the movie. And again, this all hinders on the movie's very short runtime. There's no way anyone could tell this kind of story and stitch it together within 47 minutes. It's just not possible. Because there is a lot of potential for a story like this to be stretched out to, maybe, an hour and a half movie. We could've gotten something amazing. But unfortunately, this is what we got stuck with.
So the writing here is crushed by the film's short runtime. But what about the acting? Is the English dub worth checking out, despite the out sync version? Um...kind of. I wouldn't necessarily call this dub shit, but some of it does suffer from off kilter acting. And again, the dub probably would've been more watchable, had the movie decided not to go out sync for most of the movie. But I'm going to try to stop talking about that. Now I do hope that this movie's dub doesn't have these problems on DVD, Blu-ray, or even VHS. But again, I don't know. The acting here isn't great, but I've heard far worse dubs, so the acting is going to get a bit of a pass here.
Now we get to the animation. I mentioned it when I was watching the movie, but the animation in this thing kinda sucks. Because a lot of times, the animation isn't really that fluid, and some of it has to do with backgrounds. A big example I can think of is one scene where these two hikers, after witnessing a bear getting killed, they start running away. And as we get a shot of them running from a back view, the background slowly starts to move. But what's really strange about this is that the pace they are running at, doesn't match in any way of how the background is moving. The hikers are running pretty fast, but the background doesn't seem to move with their running speed. It's just really odd.
I also mentioned that this is one of the ugliest looking animated movies I've seen in a long time. And I've seen Japanese animated movies from the late 80's, specifically, that looked far better than this did. Three big examples I can think of are "Robot Carnival" "Vampire Hunter D", and "Transformers: The Movie". Now technically, two of those movies are more mid-80's, but still, I felt like counting them in. Now, perhaps, maybe this movie had a lower budget than those other movies I mentioned. I don't know. I don't know, because, when I was looking up information on this movie, the budget was completely non-existent. But setting aside the movie's budget, perhaps the movie could've looked better had some of the animation gone through a couple of more animation tests and flowed a little better. But the animation, overall, is one of the least impressive looking movies I've seen in a long time, especially coming from the late 80's.
I wish I could say the sound-mix was competent. But unfortunately, the version I watch didn't have any of that. Well, no, the first 15 minutes sounded fine. And then after that, the sound-mix started to go south and made the dub almost hard to watch. Music and sound effects are pretty good. They're nothing amazing, but they do, in theory, work with the sci-fi setting of the movie.
Ultimately, guys, can I recommend "Black Magic M-66?" That's kind of a difficult answer for me to give out. I almost want to say no, however, I can't really do that. If you guys seriously have to watch this movie, find it on any home video format. Be it on DVD, Blu-ray, VHS, whatever. Find it, pick it up, as long as it's cheap. If there's a proper copy of the movie online, go ahead and watch it there. I would prefer the subtitled version, assuming that it doesn't have any syncing issues. Your best bet, right now, would be to find the captioned subtitled version on YouTube. But I would be wary about the subtitles themselves, assuming they are, at all, accurate. I want to recommend the English dub. I just can't recommend the version of it I watched on YouTube. And even then, there are far better sci-fi animated movies you could watch. Such as "Robot Carnival" and "Transformers: The Movie". In fact, after I'm done putting this review together, I'm probably gonna go watch my VHS copy of "Robot Carnival". Mainly because I love that movie.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.
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