Search - Blue Gender Movie: The Warrior - Reprice on DVD

If you're not already a fan, this movie won't convert you.

Ana Mardoll | United States | 12/03/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Blue Gender / B000UR9T9Q

It's a common phenomena among anime series to turn out a movie that serves as a condensed version of the series, and whether or not the resulting movie will be of interest to a broad audience or only to the long-time fans of the anime series varies widely. "Blue Gender Movie" will, in my opinion, unfortunately only appeal to fans - if you're new to the Blue Gender franchise, don't start with this movie.

The comparison by one reviewer to Starship Troopers is apt - this is science fiction in which the human race is threatened by strange, seemingly-intelligent giant bugs that messily kill and devour humans indiscriminately. Unfortunately, while the best parts of "Starship Troopers" were truly wonderful for their satirical sting, "Blue Gender Movie" plays much of the same material straight and the movie is not, in my opinion, better for it. The excessive gore in "Starship Troopers" was meaningful not because of the 'funny' or 'gross' factor, but because of the pointed barb that war is horrible, and not a form of entertainment - as well as a dig at the sort of audience that *requires* buckets of gore before they will deign to watch a movie. "Blue Gender Movie", however, pours on buckets of blood and seems to think that doing so will make for good drama - do we really need to see a man's helmet removed, only to find that everything underneath is a melted mass of blood, with two eyes (complete with dangling optical nerves) literally pouring out onto the ground?

Because there is so much plot to condense to movie length, character development is almost non-existent, and the two 'main' characters come across as intensely shallow and one-dimensional, such as when the 'Sleeper' insists that he will stay behind with the abandoned earthlings, protesting that he is a "free man", but when the military rolls out the next day, he's there safely in the cab with him. He keeps protesting how "wrong" it is to abandon the earthlings to their deaths, but no one seems to be restraining him from leaving to join them - it seems like he's just a little too comfortable in his armored tank to follow through on his moral qualms. No doubt the actual series handled these issues better, but this movie is so rushed and hurried that it gets lost in the shuffle.

Bottom line, if you're not already a "Blue Gender" fan, I don't recommend viewing this movie at all. If you *are* a "Blue Gender" fan from the series, you will probably be able to judge whether or now you want to see this movie, but I feel that removing characterization to make room for blood'n'guts is never a good move.

~ Ana Mardoll"