Overview: Previously, my review of Nirvana, which was based on the Region 1 English dubbing only copy started as follows:

All in all a decent cyberpunk flick from Italy, but unfortunately suffers horribly from bad dubbing. The dubbing here is as bad as your average anime dubbing, and unfortunately here in the US, this is all we get. I wish I could get a copy of this in Italian with subtitles - if I did, I’m sure this would shoot up significantly on my cyberpunk list, but alas…

Now that I’ve purchased the Italian copy (which set me back about $30 bucks!), I still agree with my comments above - the dubbing ruined it. Truly. In Italian, the movie has the necessary spark of energy and emotion missing from the dubbed version. The story itself always held up at least decently well. What was missing is any connection to the actors. The Italian version fixes this. The picture below really captures the colorization of this film -we get lots of drab, dirty settings with shocking neon colors intermixed.

The Story: Nirvana is NOT Tron meets Blade Runner Meets Matrix as the cheesy tagline on US version of the DVD suggests. However, Nirvana is a pretty good low-budget cyberpunk flick with a strange virtual reality (VR) angle. Jimi (Lambert) is a computer programmer who is working on a VR simulation game with very realistic seeming characters. Somehow a strange virus infects his game and turns one of his VR characters into a self-aware program. The VR character has to “relive” the game sequence almost in a groundhog day type fashion, only each time he has to figure out how to avoid getting killed so he can progress further into the plot. The game is 3 days away from being distributed everywhere and the program doesn’t want to be duplicated everywhere, and worse, feels trapped in a nightmare. Lambert feels bad for the VR character and starts working to get the program deleted from corporate.

Unfortunately, this involves hacking into the corporation’s corporate system. To do this, Jimi has to go to the seedy part of town outside the barriers to find the expertise he needs. Jimi is also distraught by recently losing the love of his life, Lisa, who left him for still undetermined reasons. Jimi stumbles upon Joystick, a former cowboy (hacker), who has lost his eyesight and now has to rely on failing eye implants to see. Jimi tells Joystick that the corporate system is also home to millions in illegal funds, that can be stolen with the right hack. Joystick and Jimi work out a plan to break into the corporate system. Along the way, they meet up with Naima, a computer expert, who also has a way of bringing Jimi back to Lisa. Unfortunately, the corporate agents are on Jimi’s trail, and want the final verison of the game.

The Atmosphere: The atmosphere is similar to Blade Runner in the sense that its a seedy futuristic setting. More interesting is the Neuromancer-style cowboy hacking that Nirvana embraces. The idea that we can allow our consciousness to “ride the net” in order to break in to data systems is one that currently doesn’t jive with modern computing, but it is very motivating. There are also a number of cool cyberpunk elements in Nirvana, including eye implants, hard drives embedded in people’s brains, etc. I’ve gone ahead and made a few screencaps of this to give you a better idea of the visuals:

The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for a really good low-budget cyberpunk movie, Nirvana is your flick - AS LONG AS you get the italian version. I’m not sure it’s worth $30 bucks, but it’s LOTS better than the dubbed version. Truly, I don’t get US DVD distributors sometimes, but hopefully this trend towards dubbing is slowly changing. Even if you are stuck with the dubbing, which pretty much ruins the story, at least the visuals are more than decent. On top of this, I truly love Lambert, so I was able to put up with it.

PS - thanks again to the comments below that enabled me to find a copy of this in Italian

Overview: Written by one of the most prolific anime writers, Chiaki Konaka (Who also wrote Lain, Malice@Doll, Hellsing, Bubblegum Crises, etc.), Technolyze is a virtual feast of visuals wrapped up in a Lain-style fragmented cyberpunk gangster story. Like Lain, the beginning is almost non-sensical, but creates the foundation for the mood of the rest of the story.

Texhnolyze is the name for the technology to make fully integrated cybernetic limbs like those above. The story follows Ichise, a former down-and-out boxer living in Luckass, a truly disturbed city with the elite rich side and the poor slums. Ichise inadvertently crosses the local mafia (called the Organo), and ends up getting an arm and leg chopped off. But luck would have it that he’s a perfect candidate for a hot chick Texhnolyze’s doctor’s experiments in the latest Texhnolyze research. Ichise carries around a capsule containing his dead mother’s body cells, which the doctor integrates into the limbs. Ichise spends many episodes figuring out how to get revenge for how he changed, but based on discussions with a girl who can see the future, his motivations change as the series moves forward.

This is NOT a kids story. Every episode has LOTS of gangster-like killings. We get lots of guns and a few cool sword fights. We also get some nice Texhnolyze deaths with fists going through faces. Truly, this might be described as Goodfellas meets Serial Experiments Lain. And while I haven’t gotten the last DVD set, I’m guessing this is is NOT going to be an uplifting story.

The Visuals: Unlike Lain, Texhnolyze is as Neo-noir as they come. The use of shadows is amazing. We get lots of stark white on blacks, interesting gray patterns, and lots of yellows and browns. Also, virtually every character is flawed and mysterious. While the anime is truly riveting, you won’t find yourself becoming attached to anyone. The characters simply aren’t sympathetic.

Texhnolyze is a virtual feast of visual textures and palettes. Whenever you look through a texhnolyzed person’s eyes in first person, you see almost a terminator-like display, only the screen is filled with noise. We also get the most incredibly detailed background sets. Truly, you feel like you know this city after watching a few DVDs worth of this. We also get great camera angles, with sweeping shots, extreme close-ups intermixed with psychedelic-like image merges. Top this with a terrific score and wonderful surround sound, and the WOW effect hits you in total.

The Bottom Line: Truly, its clear that the creators of Texhnolyze wanted to make something as overtly cyberpunk as possible. They truly have succeeded. Texhnolyze is not for everyone, as the story is violent, obscure, and cold. It is however, a truly awesome and totally original cyberpunk series!

Overview: If you haven’t figured out by now that I have a soft spot for surrealist cyberpunk films, you will after this review. Malice doll is a terrific low-budget surrealist cyberpunk anime that takes place in an unspecified future, after all of mankind has been eradicated. This surrealist cyberpunk version of a pinocchio story focuses on a group of sex andriods called dolls (not unlike GITS2) living in their whore house who now simply drift through existence without any purpose. One Doll, Mallice, while exploring, encounters this strange tentacled beast who “rapes” her with about 40 tentacles (while one goes between her legs, the rest rip into her pretty much everywhere - this isn’t meant as an erotic scene, at least I don’t think so) and ends up transforming Mallice into a human. Malice then shares her “gift” by kissing all the other dolls and robots.

Malice@Doll is a very deep movie and traces some rather interesting notions. For instance, It challenges the notion that a doll made in man’s image, if given the chance, would choose to become a living organism that looked human - maybe they would choose something completely and utterly different. Simultaneasly, this anime also asks if you would be how you really see yourself, what would you really look like?

Malice@Doll virtually disappeared almost as soon as it opened for a couple of reasons. First off, it came right on the heels of Final Fantasy, a blockbuster anime. While its wonderfully shot, the animation quality simply doesn’t compare with the high budget 3D movies. Also, Malice@Doll is another one of those films that’s simply too wierd for most people, and ends up being categorized as everything from Hentai on down. Truly, this anime is two scenes removed from being a PG anime, and certainly wouldn’t qualify for anything past R. I happen to love it LOTS more than Final Fantasy though.

The DVD Extras: Another reason you want to buy this DVD is for its terrific extras. These include a college film class presentation on digital animation from Jonathan Clements - Co-Author of the Anime Encyclopedia. This is flat out terrific. In addition to tracing the change in Japan from cell animation to 3D animation (and the effects this had on the industry), Clements shows how Malice@Doll is one of those films that actually uses story elements to turn its technical weaknesses into strengths.

For instance, although their capalities for doing high quality stills are there, Motonaga didn’t have the equipment to do fluid movement. He solved this with a “story” solution - he made the movie about android dolls, who are SUPPOSED to be jerky in their movements. For the “human” scenes, they used cell animation as highlights - this makes for a striking difference in the animation (See shot above).

The Bottom Line: Truly, aside from the surrealist story, the reason to watch this is for the visuals. A lot of the visuals in Malice@Doll almost remind you of a Salvador Dali painting. The diversity is such that I could have taken about 40 completely different screencaps here. BTW, while Amazon sells this for 22 bucks, Deepdiscountdvd sells it for $14.