Legend of the Millennium Dragon @ Amazon
The first thing I noticed about Legend of the Millennium Dragon was the alternative anime style. I’m used to anime characters having larger heads and eyes than their body size would suggest but this movie took it a little further. The drawing style was different too and most noticeable in the way characters’ faces looked. The proportions and details felt off.
I was about half way through the movie, just getting used to the different drawing style when another anime fan walked in and said, straight away, “That’s some weird looking anime”. I never did settle down again.
I can very often put aside surprises with the drawing style once a plot begins to lure me in. Legend of the Millennium Dragon is all about being lured in. The opening scenes are rather good; there’s a village in fear and a dark force sweeping slowly through it. It’s the oni! I actually like the way the shadows and swirls that move around the demonic figures look. The samurai launch an ambush from the forest and we’re soon in a full-blown conflict between two forces.
All seems lost for the brave samurai but a monk appears in time to restore some honour. The clouds part, a ray of sunshine blesses the battleground and holy man takes this as his queue to travel to a different era of time.
Skip forward to today and we meet the school kid Jun. He’s having a normal day in modern Japan until some strange shadowy creature attacks. Sure enough – he’s rescued by the time travelling monk and brought back to the past.
There’s soon drama. Jun adjusts badly to the change. What’s worse – he’s the one who can summon Orochi the dragon and use the great power against the oni. Jun isn’t sure but the bald monk is.
There’s some good battle scenes in Legend of the Millennium Dragon. There’s also a fairly chunky twist in the plot.
The problem? The twist in the plot is let down by the need to care. There are some important characters introduced a bit too late and as a result you’re not really left with any investment in them.
One of the key characters; a troubled but talented warrior called Raiko never quite manages to make it to mysterious anti-hero status when it was really important he did so. The fact that Raiko is one of the oddest of the alternative drawing styles in Millennium Dragon does not help at all.
Look, Legend of the Millennium Dragon passes the time. There’s monsters, magics, monks and some pretty good battles. It just wasn’t as good as I was hoping and must surely fall short of its own ambitions. I put the disc on with the intent of watching closely but soon found myself multitasking on the web while the anime played in the background.
