Just like Planetes and Legend of Galactic Heroes, English died in the making of this anime.
After a review of a 2006 anime, I return back to the last century to watch an anime that has been stored in my portable HDD for months. Armitage III OVA plus the Dual Matrix movie takes only a day to watch, and here is the mini-review.
Story:-
Set up in the future like Planetes did, a detective from Earth who has just been transferred to Mars is paired with a spunky Martian female detective as they investigate a series of killings involving robots that is classified as ‘The Third’ (no relationship with the previous anime I reviewed of course).
Actually the story is very well done. I can even call it very good. VERY GOOD! (emphasis mine). But the OVA is ruined by one of the worst directing I have ever seen in an anime series. I watched plenty of anime throughout my life and seen various bad directing but this one really takes the cake.
This is supposed to be written in the Animation/Direction section but I want to put it here because the directing really ruins a potentially good story this anime has. The directing failed at many things such as scene continuation, illogical character animations (not frame rates problem), flows of dialogue and the storyline, messed up pacing and many more. I have to pause the anime many times because those patently obvious directing flaws really make me angry.
The Dual Matrix movie has different directors (and made 7 years after the OVA) thus those flaws that present in the OVA largely disappeared. Sadly, the story in the movie is not as good as the one in the OVA.
Character Design:-
The quality of the character design here is mixed; the Martian female detective is beautifully designed while other characters are just average. This anime is a classic example where one character is way too different from other characters in terms of character design, and more often than not, could be a bad thing.
Why is that the English language will always suffer in sci-fi space anime? Is this the sign to come? That if humans managed to acquire interplanetary travel capabilities, people will stop speaking English and speaks Japanese instead?
Voice acting:-
Voice acting in this anime is average, at least for the OVA. I suspect some of the blame can be laid at the door of the director because it improved somewhat in the movie.
Music:-
Probably the only positive aspect of the anime. The OST is good but none of the themes are. The insert song at the start of the OVA is actually what makes me wanting to watch the anime in the first place.
Animation/Direction:-
The animation is just average in the OVA and improves considerably in the movie. Fast-paced scenes are not affected though. The choreography for action scenes is good, but some decision on character animations ruined it at some parts of the OVA.
About the directing, read above for a piece of my mind.
Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Would have got at least 9 if the movie directors also directed the OVA.
At first I thought it was ‘This is Ged’ but very surprisingly, Japan managed to spell ‘God’ correctly.
