Elysium (2003) User Reviews

Ignore And Roll On

[mattiator · 4/10 · 19 December 2012]

A slow plot (especially in the earliest parts) with a wildly inconsistent tone isn't helped by slow, ugly animation, bad voice acting, and ill-fitting music. The plot jumps from place to place continuously with barely any warning, flitting from scene to scene without any sort of rhyme or reason, leaving the viewer confused as to what's going on, and what (if any) importance the previous seen just had. An overbearing narrative voice over doesn't help with the film's potential for pathos, explaining the feelings of the characters to viewers rather than showing it. A poorly written script is dragged down even further by action that lacks tension (although at points it does have some style, with the same sort of style used in hand drawn animation with a near lack of motion followed by extremely rapid movement. It's hard to explain). The best part is the machine design for the War Mechas, sporting a very rounded, almost fluid-like look.

Elysium is little more than forgettable bargain-bin material. Don't go out of you way looking for it.

A good mecha Anime after all

[Hellsinger · 10/10 · 9 June 2004]

I just got my hands on Elysium and so I decided to watch it being aware that it is a mecha anime. I usually, dislike big robots clashing with each other, but i could just bear it for the duration of the movie.

What I found instead, is great action, and good battle scenes. *SPOILERS* Obviously, the Matrix came before Elysium, and the game Anachronox came before Matrix, so one ripped off the other and so on, Elysium uses Matrix technology in slow-motions, and camera rotations.

In Elysium Four "Knights" are chosen to protect the Earth from what appears to be a mistake and a plan for world domination. The animations are very well done, except maybe for the characters, but it's all a matter of getting used to it really, because by the end, i saw a flawless animation as the three remaining Knights fly out.

Don't expect a perfect computer animated anime though, maybe with a bigger budget things would be better, but maybe they were not needed, hence my rating of 8/10 for a watchable and enjoyable Anime. I never knew they made that stuff in South Korea, thumbs up.

Classic epos in a sci-fi wrapping

[The_Pc · 9/10 · 18 February 2006]

I tend not to like Mech anime and have had some surprises in the past with Korean anime, generally preferring the Japanses ones for story and design... hence my surprise when viewing this little gem.

OK, the story is a classic tale of good vs. evil but that is to be expected in sci-fi anime... aliens buried under the ice on the pole (evil aliens), chosen ones to be knight defenders (hmmm seen it all somewhere before didn't I?), comic robot sidekick, love story between enemies... The combination of all these elements however is quite well done, leading naturally from one part of the story to another.

The 3D animations are superb, keeping it just far enough from emulating reality to keep you rooted in this sci-fi world. OK, they did "borrow" some elements from elsewhere, the general seems to come straight from Moebius and that huge canon, last time I saw that one was in Alien. This does however not diminish the fact that this movie deserves quite a bit of praise.

The designers managed to package all these classic ingredients into an action packed bundle, with coherent storyline and great animation.

An animated Excalibur with mechanized sword-wielding knights, complete with uber-villain and an Arch. A classic in it's genre and recommended viewing.

Now if only they had kept that comic robot sidekick a bit under control!