Kai Doh Maru (2001)

"Kai doh maru" is an animated 45-minute film from almost 15 years ago. It was directed by Kanji Wakabayashi, who is an experienced animation filmmaker and also contributed to the pretty successful "Steins;Gate". Writer Nobuhisha Terado, however, is not even close to Wakabayashi's experience and this also shows here I guess. The style and animation all isn't bad, the voice acting is fine too, but I just never really could get into the story, which was a mix of supernatural elements with problems that exist in the real world as well, such as greed, corruption and murder. The whole think looked rather bleak, but this is not necessarily a criticism if the atmosphere and story comes in the same tone as well. However, as a whole, this is not a disastrous watch, but also not a good one. Thumbs down.

I recently bought Kaidohmaru on DVD and was really disappointed with it. You see...i'm a fan of Manga entertainment (more specifically, old school Manga e.g. Street fighter, Akira, Ghost in the shell, etc. )and i found Kaidohmaru's animation very bright and grainy. I also had a problem with the way this film had been edited. Every time a scene had ended and a new one began, it seemed like it was edited by someone fresh out of university. I did like the story (it's not all bad). The storyline was good, but it ended half way through the story (Kaidohmaru ends like there's more to be said), this feeling is made worst by this film lasting under an hour.

First let me say: the plot idea is actually extremely good and interesting.The problems I had with this anime is that it was very very slow and it actually wastes a lot of time BUILDING UP ON NOTHING. There are a multitude of unnecessary pauses topped off with horrible dialogue and poorly scripted fight scenes (excpet one, the carriage scene). Oh, it was also WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too short, which left potentially amazing facets unexplored.If you also have a keen eye you can see, in many instances the animation tags. These are used to help the editing team sequence the film during production and are meant to be totally gone in the final film. They're not absolutely obvious. But a sign of sloppy editing.This anime relies on its so called look of "antique Japanese art filmed through gauze" to pull up an interested crowd. They actually added this feature digitally. Lazy animation team? If anyone actually knows or has watched actual antique Japanese art films. You'll be left wondering, "Why would you apply that technique to an animation of this type?", It just doesn't make sense. You end up losing a lot of detail for nothing. And no, you can't save it by saying it's an artsy original manga anime. It's not. It has a quite modern animation design theme, and it doesn't touch on any deep philosophical or emotional sources. Ruling it out as an "art film".The only good thing about it? is the plot. Although the plot is more for people aware of the ancient general courts system.A total disappointment. A movie cannot be saved by the last ten minutes of it. Which is what this tries to do. But I do applaud the plot once more.If you want an anime with a deep story like this one failed to bring out, have a look at => Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, Ghost in The Shell {both} and Tokyo Godfathers. Just one more suggestion => House Of Flying Daggers. If you like Anime you will absolutely LOVE it.

The animation is very good, though a bit pale in places. I can get into the storyline fairly well, but the English dub is so stilted, it makes it difficult to get into the story. Also, it would have been better to refer to characters as -san rather than Mr -insert name here-. Honestly, it flows better.A lot of this may have to do with the Western habit of doing dub work with the actors in a room on their own, with no one to play off. The Japanese practice is to have the actors all in the same room, where they may act off each other's performances.I'd be interested in seeing a reworking of this with a different dub performance.