Search - Odin - Starlight Mutiny on DVD

Tristan C. from DRESDEN, ME
Reviewed on 6/28/2010...

This is the single worst anime ever made. Well, maybe not, but it's pretty close.

Makes 93 minutes feel like four hours

Daniel Jolley | Shelby, North Carolina USA | 08/13/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Odin: Starlight Mutiny is, in a word, boring. The story is relatively weak, the animation is dangerously close to awful, and the music is just weird and annoying, making this a film you suffer through rather than watch. It seems interminably long at 93 minutes, and this English version of the film is actually the short version. The original features an additional 45 minutes of action (or lack of it) - I really don't think I could have made it through 139 minutes of this sleep-inducing space tale.

This film goes back to 1985, so I didn't expect the animation to be on the same level of much more recent anime features. I did, however, expect it to look better than cartoons made decades ago. This film has a washed-out look that renders its color basically colorless, and there is no fluidity of movement to be seen anywhere. Watching this film is like flipping through an infinitely long book of still images - the kind of book that makes it look like the individual static images are actually moving. The modern marvel of spacecraft, the Starlight, looks like it was stolen from Christopher Columbus, featuring actual sails (that work with some kind of neutron-something energy or some such nonsense). The ship basically just sits there; to let us know the ship is actually moving, the artists simply bathe it in a yellow or blue glow.

This ridiculous-looking ship can travel many times faster than any ship ever made, and we join it on its maiden voyage. Reacting to an SOS call around Neptune, a strange white-haired female is found alive and brought on board, and she provides the key to the events that come next. A crashed flying saucer is discovered on a moon of Uranus, and the Starlight sets off to discover the origins of the alien intelligence. On the way, the crew travel through a magnetic field, encounter several sets of seemingly robotic fighters, get their ship pummeled time and again, and stubbornly keep going. There is plenty of battle action - all of it quite boring - and that's about it. Well, there is that mutiny, of course, and I guess I should mention the fact that the aliens decide to attack Earth while all of this is going on - but that's pretty much a given in unimaginative space epics such as this. As for the Odin reference, it seems that the unknown aliens may in fact be the gods of Nordic myth.

This film's major weakness is its animation. The terrible graphics undermine the story and everything else associated with the entire movie. I don't know a lot about anime, but I'm pretty sure Odin: Starlight Mutiny qualifies as an oldie but definitely not a goodie."

Sleeping through Odin...my love!

iansomniak | USA, Planet Earth | 04/13/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Now you can finally cure your insomnia without the use of potentially habit-forming pills, and with no side-effects whatsoever! Just pop this disc in your DVD player, plop yourself down in a comfortable chair (or even an UNcomfortable chair) in front of your TV set and push PLAY. The producers of Odin: Starlight Mutiny absolutely guarantee you'll be sound asleep long before the credits roll. If, for some reason, you want to remain conscious long enough to see the end of this film, please remember to drink an entire pot of your favorite caffeinated coffee (preferably black) just before viewing and have a friend standing by to pinch you every fifteen minutes or so.

From what I could gather between naps, Starlight Mutiny is set at the end of the 21st century, at a time when spaceships that resemble ancient sea-sailing vessels travel all over the galaxy within the solar-powered laser beams emitted by relay stations strategically placed throughout the vastness of space. The newest of these crafts--sometimes referred to as "photon sailors"--is the awe-inspiring Starlight, the product of twenty years of development by the United Nations Space Development Agency. The Starlight is equipped with an experimental gravity-control system that will theoretically allow her to travel one hundred times faster than any other ship in existence, and will hopefully carry her all the way to Jupiter. The captain of the Starlight is a grandfatherly white-haired gentleman by the name of Takeshi Suzuka. The crew is made up of an innumerable gang of Speed Racer look-alikes in snazzy red and white uniforms who like to jam to one particular heavy metal tune that goes something like, "Sensation...ooh baby....FIGHT! FIGHT! Gotta FIGHT!" Shortly after the start of their journey, they are unexpectedly joined by a hotshot Fighter Corps flyer called Akira (not to be confused with the famed anime film of the same name). Curiously, Akira bears an uncanny resemblance to the Starlight's pilot, Mamoru, aside from the fact that he's a little shorter and dresses entirely in red rather than red and white, in a weak effort to avoid confusing listless viewers like me.

As they make their way along the crimson-lit highways of the infinite cosmos, the Starlight sailors are surprised by a frightening distress call from the transport ship, Alfred (obviously named in honor of Batman's butler). Moments later, the Alfred is torn to shreds by an exceptionally violent magnetic storm. Amid the wreckage, a life-pod containing a white-clad, white-haired woman is recovered and carried directly to the exam room of the Starlight's resident doctor--whose beard is as white as the mystery woman's hair, apparently by sheer coincidence. The colorless female turns out to be an amnesiac who, unlike most amnesiacs, remembers her name--Sara Cyanbaker--but nothing more. Sara is subsequently afflicted with a nasty migraine, which culminates in the shouting of the word "ODIN." This leads to a lengthy discussion of Nordic mythology and a whole lot of technical mumbo-jumbo (which is enough to give anyone a nasty migraine) and Akira and friends ultimately decide to set sail for the Canopus planetary system in search of a 20,000-year-old alien race.

Something about the limited color pallet, the soft blue strobe lights in the starry blackness of space and the predominantly gentle background music (aside from the aforementioned heavy metal song) makes Odin a uniquely relaxing animated feature. If relaxation is what you're looking for in an anime, go for it. Otherwise, try something like Crusher Joe instead.

"No matter how far the journey, our souls can travel to the ends of the universe.""

Odin--Unusually Entertaining Old-School Anime

Justin A. Swartz | 12/02/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I first saw Odin when it was aired on the Sci-Fi Channel's "Saturday Anime" back in the 90's. I was fascinated with the ship design and the classic shading-style animation, plus I was like, what, twelve? So I watched it.

Now that I'm twenty-four, I appreciate this movie a lot more than normal. "Odin" is the story of a ship that discovers the mystical planet named Odin, protected by a giant supercomputer called Asgard (leave it to the Japanese to screw up Norse mythology!). Along the way, the crew develops various makeshift weapons in order to combat the dangers of space, which makes the film interesting (sending a ship with no weapons into space is something I personally wouldn't do, but oh well).

I suppose the theme of Odin that everyone seems to overlook is the transitioning of power and leadership from one generation (the command staff) to another (the younger, more brash shake-down crew). Yes, Odin can drag in some spots, but if you stick with it, you'll be pleasantly surprised that Odin is a clean, enjoyable Anime that hits any sci-fi fan's buttons just right.

Plus, they have a chick with white hair. Gotta love that. :-)"