Cyberpunk Review » Galerians: Rion

February 27, 2006

Galerians: Rion

Year: 2004

Directed by: Masahiko Maesawa

Written by: Chinfa Kang

IMDB Reference

Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: Medium

Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: Low

Rating: 3 out of 10

DVD Cover

 

Overview: Galerians Rion is a a low-quality animation - meaning video game quality with a semi-coherent story. Unfortunately, the story too plays like a video game. The star of the video game is a boy named Rion, who wakes up in a bizarre dystopic version of his former world. It turns out that this crazed supercomputer named Dorothy is attempting to become a God and only Rion can stop her. To do so, he needs to find his sister Lilia, who, along with Rion, has been given a virus that combined, can destroy Dorothy. As most RPGs, Rion’s powers grow as he fights the Galerians that Dorothy throws up to block his journey to finding his sister. You can tell the end of the segment, because, um, Rion fights a boss character. Yes, you really are watching someone play a video game here!

 

The Bottom Line: While I am impressed that Maesawa was able to produce an anime on such a limited budget (I’m guessing a game environment was used to make most of the visuals other than Dorothy), they just aren’t good enough to make for compelling viewing. The visuals are rather fascinating in places - Dorothy (see above) is pretty cool for instance - and certainly are cyberpunk, as is the story, but there just isn’t enough here, either in story or visuals to make this worth recommending. I will give it a point for attempting to do a full scale anime without a budget.

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Comments

July 21, 2006

Zero34 said:

You guys really suck at reviewing movies you need to just stick with your day jobs.

ETM said:

Well that was terribly productive of you, Zero. Thanks for the insightful comment.

July 22, 2006

SFAM said:

So Zero, I’m guessing you’re thinking that 4 stars is too many? Hmm…I might agree with you. I really did think of giving it 3 stars if that helps. ;)

November 12, 2006

BlightedEdge said:

The cinematics of the game were subpar. The story was cut and dry.

As a game I gave it a .5/10 mostly because the original had some impossible to get around without game shark glitches and a difficult to avoid Game Over from your own mind collapsing from it’s own weight.

As a video that most likely was put together of mostly cutscenes from the game I’d barely give it a one. It wasn’t very good at all. Hinted towards some cyberpunk-ish themes, but overall wasn’t very intriguing.

November 13, 2006

SFAM said:

Hi BlightedEdge, in retrospecting, I agree with you. Three stars is a more accurate score. Changed accordingly. :)

February 11, 2007

Lr said:

Lilia is not Rion’s sister. She’s his best friend.

SFAM said:

Hi Lr, thanks for the clarification. :)

March 2, 2007

rion said:

hey rion is my name

April 4, 2007

ChEeSaY ChIcKeN said:

Its awesome u ppl have no taste 4 movies. havent playel the game though.

May 13, 2007

Taokitty said:

Ori? Was not Rion and Lilia childhood friends, for do they not have seperate sets of parents? Or is there something I missed in the game? I don’t recall them ever saying they are siblings. o.o *Is confused*

SFAM said:

Hi Taokitty, my apologies if they were just friends and not siblings. I haven’t played the game -just watched the movie.

May 15, 2007

thoghtful186 said:

I love galerians,and galerians: ASH and the movie. But Rion and Lilia are childhood friends. Because their fathers created Drathy together, and were friends, Rion and Lilia became friends, so Lilia’s the most important person to Rion. In the second game Lilia says she loves him. Just gthought I’d clear that up^^

July 5, 2007

Taokitty said:

xD Tis fine though, I watched the movie first, and I was aware they were only childhood friends and not siblings seeing Lilia is Lilia Pascalle, Rion is Rion Steiner, and there are two fathers… *Sweat*

Though the movie doesn’t have everything in the game, you can still get a good piece of info from it. =^_^=

Fotf said:

They are not reviewing the movie guys, they are reviewing them for Cyberpunkness, not goodness.

February 26, 2008

Ryan said:

I think they should have gone in more on the story and on the other galerians. That would have made the movie a lot more better.

March 5, 2008

Lilia said:

You gave galerians rion a bad review it is a great movie

March 14, 2008

blah said:

i didnt even know this was a game until like 10 mins ago. i was in iraq and borrowed the movie from a friend. i thought it looked good animation wise since it came out in 03 and was a low budget movie. in the movie, they were siblings; i never played the game so i dont know their official relationship.

May 4, 2008

Hannah said:

the movie is good!!!!people who say it’s not sucks!!!

May 12, 2008

Rodney Armstrong said:

I realy liked the movie i hope yall make another galerians: rion movie

Mr. No 1 said:

I played Galerians when it was first released for PSX and I loved it. I found it absolutely Cyberpunk (did anyone see certain similarities between those pills/powers and Akira? ;) ). I remember I loved the CGI.

I shall watch the film and get Galerians: Rion when I have a chance.

As I said, I didn’t watch this but, SFAM, maybe you could review the film again after playing the videogames? Perhaps it would make more sense then? Dunno.

May 16, 2008

Claire said:

In the movie they had different last names and fathers, so I think in both the game and movie they are friends.

June 21, 2008

Liliaprogram said:

I think you rated it far too low, and rating it on Cyberpunk? that’s poor you should rate things by story, music and acting etc, this rating just puts it to shame.

I’m a fan of the series and i can admit the movie was not amazingly great, it was too short and needed more depth into the story because a lot of things from the game were missed out.

graphics were okay for me, enough to feel and get into what’s going on in a scene (not a final fantasy top graphics but who wants copycats xp) backgrounds were wonderful, and the models on the characters were just beautiful, Rion has a real improvement from the first ps1 game, his appearence is vunerable yet has a darker side to it at the same time suiting for his role since he’s considered a darkangel, if you like Gaara from Naruto then you’ll like him :3 the other characters also look brillent from their make over from the ps1 game, ^_~ guys will like Rita, and fangirls will drool over Cain’s design as well, he’s hotter XD

Despite the graphics looking wonderful, sometimes there were minor slip ups (like how a character’s footing was a little off but this is rarely seen) this never really effected me much because i was paying too much attention to what was going on, it’s never been a main issue to me.

music, there’s two options actually, the original japanese music or the new english version, the jap one has a darker horror feeling to it, and the english has rock band music, you notice on the ending music as well, one will sound scary in some ways (like you’ve won but lost) and the other version will sound upsetting and can make you cry. they’re both great ^_^

voice acting, same options, you can listen to the japanese version of the movie or the english, all the voice actors to me did a great job an wasn’t that swayed by any, Rion’s english voice actor suits him 100%, although Birdman should have been more to the original ps1 game, and Dorothy i thought could have been like the ps2 game voice actor for her RainHeart was spot on, Lilia’s sounded right the same with the others.

in all it’s really great, it has this anime design and feel about, i wish the creators would do an Animated series for this because it would be amazing.

if you’ve played Galerians on th ps1 r into other series such as Akira, Parasite Eve, Dragon Ball z, Resident Evil, you’ll like the movie, it’s dark it’s violent, has action, and can make you cry if you’re a softie, in all you should watch it or give this series a try, you’re insane not to!

August 22, 2008

1 said:

bought that dvd because i played the ps1 game back in the day.
the movie isn’t much more than the game’s cutscenes.

play the game, that’s the real deal.
man, i loved that game.


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