lgutmann - 2014-08-26 15:59:19

Oncein a while I sit down and watch and old movie, it could be anime, live actionanything. And these old movies are the type no one cares about, no oneremembers and no one even does any research on it because there was a remake 25years later. Toward the Terra is one of those movies, no one cares about, noone remembers and no one does any research on. But, Did it deserve better? Let’sfind out.

STORY
‘’In the future, mankind's seemingly utopian society is strictly controlled bythe government, and anything that threatens to disrupt the status quo isruthlessly suppressed. When 14-year-old Jomy begins to question the way thesociety is run, he suddenly becomes a target for both the government and theMu, an outcast race with extra-sensory abilities who have been fighting againstthe government for generations. Now, each is determined to hunt him down - oneto kill him and the other to save him.’’
If you couldn’t tell, This movie is a space opera. The thing with space operais that they are very hard to direct, too many locations, too many charactersand too many interaction, but when they are directed successfully, they becomesome of the best any medium has ever seen .The best anime of all time is aspace opera (Wink wink, nudge nudge). But Toward the Terra fails to do this. It’sbasically a very watered down version of a typical space opera. The mainproblem with the story is that when a new plot point comes up, it’s dealt witha few minutes later.  It just starts andends, there is no build up to it. Which in a space opera, is suicide. Thereason if there being no build up is that, this is a less than 2 hour movie,and kind of story would usually take at least 12 hours of run time ( Which isaround  the same length as a 26 episodeanime TV series) . Another element of the story is that it’s full of 70s clichés(You could call them space opera clichés but they were popular in the 70s) Thewhole human vs Mu battle, the character interactions, their personality etc.The Human Vs Mu fight is the classic space opera human vs human struggle. Inthis universe, the mu are humans who posses powers like mind reading or telepathy,but their due to the fact that their minds are strong, their bodies are veryweak( Most are born blind, deaf or mute). Since they have powers, the normalhumans ( Controlled by the Mother System) try to kill them when they turn 14 (All humans take a Adult test at age of 14, and if they pass they are sent tospecial schools were their childhood memories are wiped so they can becomeproper citizens) Jomy ( Our main character) is a Mu, who doesn’t know he’s amu. He’s raised like a normal human boy ( The mother system considers naturalbirth irrational, so babies are born in laboratories, and after that randomparents are chosen to ensure equality) When he takes the test, they try to killhim, but a mu soldier saves his life and takes him to a space station. Then wefind out Jomy is one of the strongest Mus, since he has a normal body despitehaving powerful abilities. So the mu want him to become their leader, and helpthem go back to Terra ( Or Earth, which has been abandoned but guarded by thehumans) And that’s the basic jiff of the plot. As I said before, it’s full of70s clichés, but I really can’t blame it since it was released around that timeand it’s public knowledge that anime creators didn’t understand the concept oforiginality back then ( Not that they do now). It feels dry and rushed, overallit wasn’t handled very well but it did have some interesting points. Theconstant time skips didn’t really help.
So story: 6/10

Characters:
Same as the story, the characters are walking 70s/space opera clichés, whichisn’t a bad thing, but they just don’t have the same depth like the charactersof something like LoGH. The main character Jomy is a good guy, who wants tochange how the mu see the humans, and vice versa. We see his life from a 14year old, to almost a 50 year old man, fighting and leading the mu.
There are only 2 other main characters worth mentioning, Physis, a powerfulfemale mu, who acts as an advisor to Jomy ( Since this is full of 70s clichés,women didn’t play much of a big role in anime back then, most because drawingand animating a female body is much more complicated than drawing a male body, Ishit you not, that is a legit reason) She eventually falls in love with him butwith the 20 plot points going on in the same time that’s quickly forgotten. Thesecond character is
Keith Anyan, he is a young VIP in the human military and eventually becomes it’scommander. He acts as a rival to Jomy ( Another space opera cliché) He’s alsobasically an android, being controlled by the mother system all his life. If I tellyou any more I would be spoiling it, but there really isn’t much to spoil.There was one other character, that got introduced in the middle of the movie,and I fucking disliked this guy. When he got introduced I just started waitingfor the movie to end, I just disliked him.
The side cast isn’t that impressive either, Jomy’s love interest went fuckingcrazy In a matter of seconds. He kid is kidnapped, she starts going crazy,loses control of her powers and stars a fire in a room, runs in there and diesin the fire. I had no idea what the fuck got to this lady.
Overall, the characters are like the story, cliche and lacking depth.
Characters: 6/10

Animation:
This is a 30 year old movie, so the animation is obviously outdated. Thecharacter designs are fantastic but the animation hasn’t aged well. This leadsto some of the best unintentionally funny scenes I have ever seen, the fistfights were always goofy because of just how random they are.
For it’s time it’s good, but by today standards it wasn’t aged well.
Animation:4/10

Music:
There really were no memorable tracks in this movie, everything was easilyforgettable. Which is strange considering space opera usually have amazingsoundtracks.
Music: 2/10

Enjoyment: My personal enjoyment dropped 2 times during this movie, first waswhen we saw the main characters penis. And the second time was when thatannoying guy was introduced. By that point I was just waiting for this movie tobe over.
Enjoyment:5/10

OVERALL: It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. It was a slightly above averagespace opera that hasn’t aged well, there was a TV series remake back in 2007,which I will have to check out.
OVERALL:6.4/10