Verdict
Summary
Basically, this is more or less the type of thing fans of the Heavy Metal movie and comic books would enjoy, and even I found myself trying to “get into it,” despite the fact that anime in general has always perplexed and annoyed me on the whole. It’s similar in some ways to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, but not nearly as ambitious or imaginative, but it’s in that vein, and if you’re a fan of post-apocalyptic anime, it should scratch that itch
Plot:
A time traveler goes 10,000 years into the future, where survivors of an apocalypse deal with a false god.
Review:
A space station in the shape of a metal head called the Death Mask has a malfunction and creates an anomaly that literally displaces a portion of Japan and Texas (!?) to another time altogether. In the wake of this sudden and unexplainable event, humanity spends years trying to figure out what happened, and it is deduced (somehow in a very rushed explanation by a guy who’s a dead ringer for Leonard Nemoy as Spock, complete with the Vulcan hairline and pointy ears) that the Death Mask sent those portions of those particular cities 10,000 years into the future. A time machine is prepared, and a young astronaut named Gai is sent to the time and region where the Death Mask displaced a portion of the population and structures, but he is not altogether unpleasantly surprised to find that he has a stowaway in a scrappy kid named Taro, who goes with him and bugs him to no end. The two of them land 10,000 years in the future, a post-apocalyptic wasteland with a fledgling human population that coexists with all sorts of huge mutated creatures, including a fire-breathing dragon. Gai and Taro are captured by wasteland warriors who deposit them in a despot’s gladiator arena, where they shock the despot – a bald, eye patch-wearing villain named Pilar – with their strength. Pilar, whose god is the Death Mask still floating above the atmosphere and calls all the shots on the wasteland earth, has been looking for a mate, and he’s only just chosen a purple-haired spitfire named Prime Rose, but when Gai and Taro show up, they help her escape Pilar’s realm, where she’s taken under the wing of a cranky old warrior, who spends the next few months training her to be a great swordswoman. Meanwhile, Gai and Taro have their own trials and tribulations (Gai loses an eye in combat, etc.), but by the time Prime Rose has gotten stronger (and sexier with a Taarna-style outfit for fans of Heavy Metal), she must fend for herself after her tutor is killed by the dragon, setting the stage for her to use her new skills against the dragon … and Pilar, whom she must face in the gladiator arena. Ultimately, it’s not Gai who saves the day (and the world), but Prime Rose, but the story takes a twist when she’s turned to stone and Gai has to choose whether or not to return to his own time, or stay with this warrior girl he’s grown to love, but because she’s basically become a sleeping beauty, he has to wait until she wakes up (which takes months) from her stony condition.
There’s a lot going on in this anime movie with swords, dragons, mutant monsters, goofball humor, combat, outer space stuff, and typically childish looking animation for a Japanese-produced film of its era, but it gets its wires a little crossed with a splash of rather eyebrow-raising nudity that comes out of left field for the horny teenage (and adults, I guess, I dunno) audience it’s intended for. Basically, this is more or less the type of thing fans of the Heavy Metal movie and comic books would enjoy, and even I found myself trying to “get into it,” despite the fact that anime in general has always perplexed and annoyed me on the whole. It’s similar in some ways to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, but not nearly as ambitious or imaginative, but it’s in that vein, and if you’re a fan of post-apocalyptic anime, it should scratch that itch. Directed by Satoshi Dezaki.
AnimEigo has just released a Blu-ray edition of Prime Rose, and it comes in a full-frame, high definition transfer. Bonus features include trailers, an English dub track, and some dub outtakes.
