Venus Wars (spoilers)

When discussing the Venus Wars motion picture, the two words that come to my mind are vapid and gaudy. Now I just came off a casual rewatch of my favorite anime film - Crusher Joe. I really was inspired to check out more of Yoshizaku Yasuhiko's works (I also just rewatched Arion, which I think was slightly better on the second pass.. but eh. maybe i'll talk about it another time). I just love the way he draws stuff, and knowing what i know about the production of Crusher Joe, surely another picture with his involvement would be stellar, yes? No. I have mixed feelings about this flick, and overall they are teetering between apathy and disgust. You'll see what I mean..

• The animation and art is very, very beautiful. One of those every single frame would be a banging poster type movies for sure. The way they do shading, the colors, and just attention to detail is very enchanting. The music is also pretty great.
• This film however is transparently chauvinist, and that becomes much more abundantly clears it goes on. The reporter lady is frequently abused by soldiers and ogled by men in the film.. and it's played for laughs half the time.. and it's honestly disgusting to watch.
• There is a section near the end of the film where the writers try to not so thinly tie homosexuality with weakness. it's honestly irredeemable and contributes nothing to the story.
• The characters are very cookie cutter. The trigger happy piss-pants, the too-cool-for-school friend, the older father figure, the big bro rival, the underappreciated rich girlfriend.. all these tropes and not an ounce of rizz. It's one of those films where the characters ain't really likable enough for you to care about them even though it has all the runtime to try. The narrative execution felt.. clinical.
• the main character is so politically jaded it's kinda funny to see how much of an asshole he is to his girlfriend while he's complaining about war nonsense. ngl he sounds like some redditors do
• the dub is quite nice
• you kinda get the feeling that this is war pornography in a way. The gore really isn't intense, but there's plenty of shots of battle machines clashing and crashing about, and shots of guns blasting away. To be honest, I think this movie could have had the capacity to critique the spectacle of war in a much deeper way than it did.. let me explain. The reporter lady is following this group of youths throughout the conflict, and for most of the film she's really super driven to get the scoop over all else, even to the offense of the party she's moving with. It's only when her boyfriend is killed (while live streaming his footage to her) that she decides to drop the camera and pull a gun on the enemy commander. I think that was a good development, but other than her personal development as a character, it didn't really go anywhere beyond what i just said. it's sad too, because there is a lot of room in this long ass film for a deeper critique of how we digest war as entertainment, but it never really thinks that hard. Vapid.
• Aside from the giant clamoring tanks and the mono-wheel motorbikes everybody rides, this film didn't even really feel like it took place in the future. Again, everything is gorgeous to look at, but with everything I've just said about the film, it's somewhat difficult to digest.
• The use of live footage was probably very cool back in the 80s, and the POV riding scenes a little exciting at least, however in practice it looks kinda shoddy, and near the end of the movie in that last montage it comes across as lazy.
• I don't think I'm the target audience for these manlyman war movies much. I will say that this film is still decisively anti authoritarian, but it still kinda felt like a propaganda piece. I feel like the characters weren't deep enough people to enough to sell this as an anti war film, and that's a shame, since the bones of one are certainly here. I can only wonder how different the manga was tonally.

Venus Wars plays itself too straight. The chauvinist locker-room types, the homophobes, and the dull blades among us will have the easiest time digesting this one. For the rest of us, it's a very simple movie that banks all of its chips on the visuals and war pornography to sell itself. I can say that the visuals ARE among the best Yasuhiko's art has ever looked in motion, though i can't say you'll get much else other than a basic hero's journey and a random dose of homophobia. Watch Crusher Joe, that movie is like what a real fucking movie is supposed to be. For as much as I hated Arion on my first go-around, I will say that I overall enjoyed it much more than this. If it wasn't for the art and cinematography, this film would be offensively forgettable on basically all other levels.