A policeman, Ross Sylibus, is assigned to a unit on a Martian colony, to find that women are being murdered by a psychotic named D'anclaude. He is assigned a very unorthodox partner named Naomi Armitage, who seems to have links to the victims. To stir things up more, every victim is found to be an illegally made third-generation android, built to be almost perfect replications of humans. It becomes a race against time when the government attempts to cover up the existence of the 'Third Types', and eliminate the only ones with the evidence. And even more importantly, why are the Thirds created to be so similar to humans, even to the extent of being indistinguishable from them on every level, mentally and biologically? I watched this a couple of times on the Science Fiction channel, before they became Syfy and now only seem to show the worst movies ever. This was during the day when they used to show lots of animes, granted I realize that anime movies just are not as popular as they were back in the late 90's early 2000's, but they are still better than giant snake monster vs deadly armadillo or some of their rip off movies like "The Day the Earth Stopped". This one had a bit of mystery to it at first and that what was so good about it. These two cops, I think one was a female cyborg or something were doing some investigating. I wish I could be more specific, but it has been a long times since I saw this one. It sort of has a Ghost in the Shell feel to it, but sadly the end of the movie is a strange shoot up action scene that kind of does not fit into the rest of the plot as well. Still, it was entertaining, one of those films that I would prefer to watch in its entirety without commercial interruption and in the original Japanese language rather than the English Dub, though I liked that Kiefer Sutherland did the voice of the dude (was not so wild about Berkely though). I remember this movie in bits and pieces, I sort of remember like a cyborg or robot killer, some strange fight scene involving this giant thing and a scientist. I just can't remember as much as I would have liked. Perhaps I can find this one on DVD and buy it and when I watch it again I can edit this review and be more helpful on the plot. However, I do know that I liked it enough to watch it twice and that the first hour or more of the film is grand while the last bit, while not bad just does not compete with the first part of the film. Armitage is, dare I might say, one of the best anime ever. It covers a number of well-tred themes that anime seems to thrive on such as technical advancement, robots that seem human, humanity spread beyond the grasp of its home planet, and more. It's not the use of these topics that make the movie unique, but how the movie deals with them. Armitage has one of the best -plots- in an anime, people behave like people, not like one dimensional characters (a problem rampant in anime). Naomi Armitage, who first appears to be yet another scantly clad lead female character, instead proves herself to be a truly deep and meaningful character. It is this aspect (the extraordinary plot) which makes the movie such an experience to watch, the animation isn't as great as say, Ghost in the Shell, but this anime the way it was meant to be, a cohesive body of beautiful music, plot, and animation aimed towards a singular goal. As a friend told me once, "Anime should be an experience, it shouldn't go where you can go with simple live-action." Armitage III is an experience.
Heaveespe replied
295 weeks ago