Search - Black Cat, Vol. 5 - The Cataclysm on DVD

SHOULD I KILL CREED?

Sesho | Pasadena, TX USA | 07/06/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In what seems like the final volume of the series (it isn't), all of the major players of Black Cat come together for a climactic battle. Sven and the others have joined the "Sweeper's Alliance", an assemblage of elite Sweepers who all want the billion dollar bounty on Creed. The Alliance comes to the verge of collapse when its leader is revealed to be a Chronos Number! All of the Sweepers value their independence and honor and it will take a lot of convincing to get them to continue their mission. Chronos has its own plans to eliminate Creed, as Sephria and other Numbers also prepare to assault Creed's castle fortress. What's Creed doing during all this, you might ask? He's laid up on an operating table, being injected with Tao fluids combined with nanomachines. After the procedure, Creed fancies that he will be a god come unto the Earth. Even after all that's gone on, he still wants to convince Train to come over to his side. If Train refuses, Creed has decided that Black Cat deserves to die!

While you would expect the fireworks to really fly on this volume, it really suffered in the animation quality department. During the fiercest action scenes we are left with still images superimposed over backgronds, sometimes lazily being scooted across the screen in a limp attempt at motion. Or sometimes the characters are distorted and jumpy in an effort to look cool and kinetic. Neither of these techniques worked for me, and really stood out like black eyes. It made the series seem really cheap. But just because the action scenes suffered from a lack of money, I still enjoyed Volume 5 because of the characterization. Train is going to have make a choice in the end whether he should take his anger at Saya's death and turn it into bloody revenge, or should he honor Saya's spirit by letting go of his hate and acting like a Sweeper instead of a hitman. In the end, what was put on the line in the battles and the moral choices that had to be made were more important to me than the quality of the animation."