rjaskolski - 2016-04-25 20:35:23

I enjoyed this anime greatly... in the beginning. The main problem I have with this show is that it probably would have been far better off as a 12- or 13-episode show as opposed to the 25 episodes it actually is. Although the character are interesting and have great interactions, the entire journey becomes incredibly repetitive. Especially at the very end. By the time I was at episode 20, I just couldn't bring myself to care much about anything but the show actually wrapping up and finding its conclusion.

qgrimes - 2015-03-24 13:36:39

Casshern Sins, is a show that has gotten a lot of flack. It is often called boring, repetitive, and/or generic but that quite the contrary.

Casshern Sins follows the main protagonist Casshern as he is living in a time where humans are extinct and robots are the dominant race. However the robots are suffering from something called "the rust" which can be likened to aging in humans. I won't go to much into the story without spoiling it but the story is one you have to go through once to truly appreciate it. Casshern encounters a variety of individuals in his travels and how they all are coping with losing eternal life is a bit of a poetic tragedy that has many lessons and themes you can relate to your own life. Though it can be a bit..dry at times, ok scratch that episodes can be straight up knockout powder when watching it, It could've done better to in keeping the watcher entertained. I love walking a dialogue more than the next guy but it was just sleep inducing this is the biggest hurdle overcome in my opinion, but the ending of the show really makes it enjoyable.

The animation was very gorgeous, it wasn't the prettiest thing I've seen but each shot in HD was like a well drawn and colored. The fight scenes are very well animated and I didn't encounter anything in the animation that broke my immersion. Same in the sound department nothing revolutionary, I love the opening but after 24 episodes I had enough. The OST is nice but nothing memorable in my opinion.  

The characters aren't flat but they are well done either. The show tries so hard to not go into Casshern himself that it he comes off as flat and to be honest he pretty much is. He doesn't develop much if at all and he really has only two moments in the show. The best characters would have to be a few of the supporting characters that appear that have character depth to distract from Casshern himself. Deo is another character that is well done, as an example of having something consume you to the point that you don't care about anything else anymore.

I had a fun time watching this anime but I could have easily stopped and never picked it back up. In all it was enjoyable but nothing special, but at the same time it is much better than you would think at first glance. An ending can make or break any story and in this case it makes this one.

haley.sabrina - 2014-08-22 19:34:02

All scores are rounded because who needs decimals? Also the ratings are out of 10.

In a culture that seems oversaturated with gritty, dark reboots comes one from a different source of super heroes. While the West's comic book heroes of the past are getting what critics have dubbed the "Nolan treatment," it seemed only fitting that a hero created for a Saturday Morning cartoon from another part of the world would eventually be rewritten in this way. Where did Casshern fall between the spectrum of the overhyped yet wonderfully directed The Dark Knight and the cheesy, confused, and miscast mess that is Spider-man 3?
A Brief Look Back:

Let's begin with the first and most recognizable iteration of this introspective hero. Neo-Human Casshern (or Casshan) was the son of a scientist that created Breaking Boss and his minions. An accident occurred that lead Breaking Boss and many other robots to break out of containment in the laboratory and, despite their intended use of serving mankind, rebel and take over the world. Casshan agrees to be recreated into an android in order to give humans a chance to fight back. Along with his transforming dog Friender and a young girl named Luna, they fight back against the robots on behalf of humanity.

Right off the bat there are plenty of differences between the original and the reboot. Casshan was a normal teenage boy before becoming an android rather than always being one. Friender is a robot dog with the family dog's consciousness inside of it instead of a random, aggressive robot. Luna is not a robot, but a human teenager fighting along side of him. As far as staying faithful to the original, they have taken some key characters and concepts and created an incredibly different story with a very different message. This is a reboot in nearly all aspects, and its a risky move when it comes to a character that people really got close to as children.

Story:

The story centers around Casshern, an amnesiac, who has woken from a long sleep to find the world a barren wasteland populated by few animals and a lot of rusted, old robots. The Ruin is a "disease" that all andriods or robots eventually face that causes them to rust away and fall apart, leading the typically immortal beings to have to come to terms with or fight eventual death. According to those around him, Casshern's slaying of someone named Luna, who he has flashbacks of, is what caused The Ruin. On his journey to find his memories and the truth about why The Ruin doesn't affect him, Casshern meets many individuals surviving in the wastes and learns how they are attempting to coup with the idea of death.

The plot isn't readily apparent at first. This rather slow, episodic story starts out with a brutal fight scene between Casshern and rusted yet intimidating looking robots. This scene gives a stark impression of an action-oriented show the dark themes, which is not quite right for this series. For every episode, there is typically a fairly short fight scene that happens near the end of the episode, while the rest of the 26 minutes is people discussing their lives and their eventual demise. This changes, however, about half way through the series. Two other characters who are seemingly unaffected by The Ruin appear, and this helps to steer the show in an actual direction. It continues to be somewhat episodic for the last half but has more of a backbone in pacing and narrative than it did previously. Dark pasts about characters and reveals are well executed and placed near the climax, but the resolution to this climax was lack luster and nothing new.

---------------------------------------------------------- Score: 4

Animation:

Madhouse pulled out all the stops for this show. The animation is fluid and beautiful, and the designs for the characters and the world are simply gorgeous. Casshern's sleek, brightly colored and clean design stands out against the barren, depressing backdrop of the wasteland and the rusted, fairly generic robots that are shouting to cannibalize him. The characters that are important are brightly colored and have unique and interesting features. While the same cannot necessarily be said for the "bad" robots, since they all look fairly similar if not identical at times, the show knows how to make you focus on the characters it wants you to be paying attention to.

The style is incredibly unique, it was admittedly the biggest thing that drew me to the show. The colors are rich and the style of drawing is both modern but also pulling from its source material back in the early 70's. Although some of the angles/shots are wonky at times (usually on purpose), this is a solid style and talent to tell us this story.

---------------------------------------------------------- Score: 9

Sound:

The sound design overall was descent. The OST, while absolutely fitting to the story, never really stood out to me while I was watching the series. A few key crescendos caught my attention, but most of the time I didn't tend to notice the background music. I seemed to remember a lot of the songs when I go back to play the soundtrack on its own, but again, they aren't incredibly memorable or moving.

The voice acting for the Japanese dub was fine as far as I can judge the talent of actors for a language I don't speak. The English dub on the other hand is mixed. The actors struggled to get into character for the first few episodes and did a descent job for the rest of the series, with a descent song in on particular episode that sounded better than the engrish original, but nothing in particular blew me away. Both the soundtrack and the original voice acting are fine in their own right while not being incredibly note worthy, while the English dub is a bit spotty.

---------------------------------------------------------- Score: 5

Characters:

Our titular character is simultaneously interesting and yet rather bland to watch at first. An amnesiac protagonist is nothing we haven't seen before, and the cliche really turned me off during my first watch. When Lyuze showed up and brought informed both Casshern as well as us of his supposed past, that's when things start to get interesting. Casshern goes on an aimless trek across the landscape in a depression-fueled romp and meets many characters along the way, ranging from a young girl who is happy in the face of The Ruin to a robot who begrudgingly cares for and protects a broken android of young girl despite both of their rotting away. We meet one new character an episode roughly, and learn about how the Ruin has affected them. Each one is quite memorable and their personalities and coping methods are all unique and tailored to their experiences. Tertiary characters are almost as memorable as secondary characters, in the best way possible.

Casshern's concerns begin to shift from just himself to the people around him as the series continues passed the half way point. His arch is front and center, and it is easy to see him move between emotions and coping with grief, regret, and responsibility. It reflects the themes of the show very well as all of the characters have to learn to deal with loss, death, and overcoming their circumstances. The most intriguing and memorable parts of this show are certainly the characters.

---------------------------------------------------------- Score: 8

Enjoyment:

I am a character-centric lover. Deep and intricate plots are awesome in their own right, but if the story doesn't have interesting characters, or at least characters that help mirror the message of the plot, there's no way I can really enjoy it. I can forgive, and often don't notice, minor plot holes and can be fairly forgiving of slight problems in the narrative if the theme is shown to me as more important and the writers are not leaving anything else behind as well. I adore the art style absolutely and on Blu-Ray it's even more spectacular. When I initially started the series, the action scene lead me to believe that the show would be faster paced that it turned on to be, and due to the unforeseen crawl in development, I put it on hold for a while before trying it again and am really happy I gave it a second chance. I enjoyed my ride with the characters as they developed, even if the ending was fairly cliche.

---------------------------------------------------------- Score: 7

The show is, as this site will tell you, licensed by Funimation (the original was Sentai Filmworks, interestingly enough) and this series has been adopted into the S.A.V.E. collection of DVDs and Blu-rays from the company. It's currently hovering around $16-22 on Amazon, and I wholeheartedly recommend it for that price. As someone who has watched a fair number of dark, angry, and depressing reboots of super heroes I loved as a kid, with some much better than others, I hold Casshern Sins in high regards. Not only is it a good stand-alone show, but it does the right things when you are looking for a rebooted hero franchise. While it's certainly slow-paced for what used to be an action show, which will alienate a fair number of its fans, but the emphasis on characters that you can feel for and the struggles they endure is something everyone can relate to.

--------------------------------------------------Total Score: 7

wdavis - 2014-07-14 13:51:16

This review will be short and to the point. I don't need to write a thousand word report and I'm sure you don't want to read one. I'll tell you a bit about the show and give my thoughts on the show as a whole towards the end with a "should you watch". As always, no spoilers.

Let's begin

The story is about an amnesiac android in a desolate world trying to piece together his memories and learn the reason the world is "ruined". They use the term "ruin" as a motif throughout the entire series as he learns more about his past and the world. The world is filled with mostly robots, though humans do exist, and all are in various states of decay, except for the MC himself. He does not seem to be affected by the ruin at all.

Art style is unique. I heard somewhere the creator was influenced by mega man when creating the look of the characters and it shows. The animation is well done and consistent with some nice fight scenes.

The characters are hit and miss. None are especially bad, but other than a handful none are especially good either. Character are by far the weakest part of the series.

Music was fine. Not much of it and the various sounds of decay fit with the whole atmosphere of the series. There a song that is used throughout that is great. It is even sung in its entirety in an episode so you'll know it when you hear it. Opening and ending are above average.

In summation; the show has some pacing issues and can be a bit preachy at times with its concept of right and wrong. The show will appeal to those that like darker psychological anime like 'Another' or those that like the fights in your basic shonen. It has some concepts that can make you think and can even make you become emotional at times. Not much else you could want for a compelling story.

Should you watch? Yes 8/10

And that is it for me. I hope you got something out of my ramblings. Give me a like if you feel so inclined and thank you for reading. (this is my first review here so be gentle)

celia.schmeler - 2013-08-11 20:59:16

Super Heroes by now are a standard part of our lives, being adapted into thousands of films already, we are used to incredibly powerful men and women walking around in weird skintight clothes that are supposed to be their trademark. It has almost been done to death in western media and I myself am not a huge fan of those franchises either, with a few exceptions. In Anime though, while we have quite some superheroes, it is not nearly as much as in the western media and only few of them really rose to popularity in the Otaku Culture. Today I will Review an Anime that is rather unknown to the masses, while still not disappointing in most parts. Casshern Sins is a Spin Off of the original Shinzou Ningen Casshern, which aired in 1974, meaning this show was goddamn old. It aired in 2009 and tells the story of an Alternative Universe.

Story: In this Alternative Universe, the world is almost only inhabited by Robots and the humans that once created those, became rare. This world is shown in a post apocalyptic state, where all the robots, which couldn't die due to them getting old earlier, now slowly ruin away. This Ruin heavily resembles rust and seems to work the same way as infirmity for humans. Here lives our main protagonist called Casshern. He is a robot that is immortal, immediately heals every time he is wounded and cannot decay like all the others Robots. There also are a lot of rumors around him, that if a robot would devour him, he would get the immortality that is Casshern's. Our protagonist though, doesn't know what happened to him and has no idea why he is immortal and where the Ruin comes from.

There actually is not a lot more to say about the plot, as it is rather simple and going deeper into it would result into spoilers. The thing that stands out though, is not the plot itself, but the Setting it is presented in. One thing has to be said though, being that this show is slow! For almost the whole show it moves forward so slow, at points it even gets a little boring. It actually takes the show 12 episodes before it gets a little faster, before it actually goes back into slow-motion mode again and decides that the fast pacing is something it doesn't like, before only getting a little faster in the final episodes. This is something that many people might find to be a problem with this show and something that turns away many. I myself didn't have any problems with that though and actually thought it fit the world rather well, but that is just preference and I can totally see why people might not like that.
6.7

Characters: For the majority of the show, it moves forward in a "Character of the Week"-Style and only goes away from it if it gets to a climax, which happens rarely due to the slow pacing. Every single episode, the show introduces a new Robot or Human, lets them interact with the main characters that are currently present, before either letting them stay, leaving them alone, or killing them off. It's a concept that quite some shows often use in a similar way, being the "monster of the week"-concept. A really popular Anime for this is the Mecha Deconstruction "Neon Genesis Evangelion", which introduces one enemy per episode and let's the three main characters kill them off at the end, before it goes into the actual main plot later on. Casshern Sins does the same thing with it's supporting cast. The thing that most shows that use this concept intend to do is get depth added to their own characters. Casshern Sins does this while also getting a little more into the Setting every single episode and every single episode that is used for a Supporting character in the end helps our main character realize the thing that the whole show wants to tell us, being that without death, life would not be livable
This concept is executed in such a good way, that every single episode we get a new character, that for the most time doesn't even show up anymore at all, that is either really likeable or just amazingly well written. Unfortunately this can not be said about all the main characters. More than once, I had the feeling that the supporting cast would be overshadowing the main characters by far. We do get development for every single one and a lot of depth of course, especially to Casshern, but all this doesn't help me to sympathize with the characters more and I feel like they were way to boring for the most part to actually make for a good cast. Leaving us with an amazing Supporting cast, while the main cast didn't succeed in convincing me of them being really interesting.7.6

Art: The Art in Casshern Sins is, to leave it simple, amazing! It's another show where Studio Madhouse doesn't disappoint in just being awesome. The fighting scenes, which exist at least once per episode, look really good and are completely fluent. The coloring is for the most part beautiful and fits the dark atmosphere really well, while still featuring a lot of colors. The Characters Designs though, are something that I had my problems with, with it being really old school, since the characters were designed in 1974 already for the most part, which is not a style that I really like. That again is only preference and doesn't really matter for the overall enjoyment but rather is something that I didn't like myself.
9/10

Sound: The Soundtrack of Casshern Sins is something that I didn't realize during the first few episode, but that grew on me really fast. It mostly consists of really quite pieces, using a lot of guitar. It is used perfectly for the most part and one of the few songs in the Soundtrack that I actually didn't like was the only one that was not the opening or ending, was the only one using lyrics. The Openings and Endings though, were something that is in contrast to the OST itself actually...rather annoying. While the first Ending song was okay, I could stand neither the first Opening, which was plain annoying to me and the second ending, which I actually didn't watch a lot.

8.3/10

Casshern Sins is a show that is not for all people, featuring a pacing that is a lot slower than the pacing of most, but if you happen to like more than a few genres and are able to take things that are a little different from the usual shows, it definitely is worth checking out.
Now as I calculated all 5 scores that I have given (Story, Characters, Art, Sound and my personal Enjoyment), I give Casshern Sins a 7.96/10 as a show that pleased me, but not as much as others did! It currently is available for legal Streaming on FUNimations web page, if you happen to live in a country where you have access to that particular Stream (Other than me '-.-). It also has been licensed by FUNimation if you happen to live in America, and by Manga for the Europeans.
With that I hope I could help you and I'll see you next time!

abbigail.nienow - 2013-07-24 23:13:45

Casshern Sins was one of the shows that I was introduced to during my brief Toonami experience this year, and one of only two I was able to complete before schedule changes put other shows on-hold. I am actually pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this show is, especially considering that I wasn't as impressed with it at first from what I can remember. While there are a large number of fight scenes, as a whole they were not very impressive or entertaining. What this show does have is atmosphere. Combining a unique and appropriate art style and background music, Casshern Sins creates a very interesting setting, full of gloom and yet also hope. It is this somber yet hopeful atmosphere that I found very intriguing. The characters themselves are also mysterious and intriguing in their own right, in which I looked forward to learning more about them as the series progressed. The series tries to convey a number of themes and ideals, such as what it means to truly live. Unfortunately I did find Casshern Sins a little confusing at times, and some of the sci-fi elements are never really explained, which I found disappointing.Despite those few elements that I wasn't fond of, I still found Casshern Sins to be entertaining, receiving a 7/10 (Good) and a recommendation to at least try out.

makenna.grant - 2013-06-26 00:04:04

Casshern Sins doesn't hide what it wants to convey. Right in the tagline, it says "Death is the salvation of man and machine". The show tries to tell us that one cannot have life without death. The whole series revolves around this idea, and, while overall a very simple idea, the show does this fairly well. That's not to say this message was without fault. There were many contradictions to this idea throughout the series, which may make its message fall flat. Even so, this show was still great, and here's why.Story-wise, the show is very slow-moving for a while, and it seems to be going nowhere. Until about the mid-teen episodes, the show is more one-episode adventuresque, meaning that each episode is its own standalone story. These, while sometimes interesting and entertaining, make the show seem to drag on, and some may outright give up on the show before it gets interesting, which is in the teens, when the story becomes the main focus. In the end, the story ends well with Casshern's goal being fulfilled, however what that goal is and what I mean by fulfilled I'll keep secret, to avoid spoilers.Character wise, this show is amazing. Every character is well fleshed out, even the unimportant ones. Casshern himself seems to suffer a lot of personal conflict, as, despite being an invincible nearly-immortal fighting machine, he wants to die, and doesn't want to kill. He can't stand all of the fighting in the world, and just like all of us, wants peace and happiness. He works to achieve this as time passes, all the while trying to remember his past, as he's an amnesiac, which, while an overdone idea, is done fairly well here. All the other characters are well fleshed out too, and very interesting, but I can't help but think that some of the antagonists, particularly Dio and his partner, were ultimately useless, pointless additions....Ah well....The art in the show is unique and gorgeous. It's very smooth and shining, and somehow successfully portrays a dying world in a beautiful manner. Everything looks unique, and yet, the show also seems to look classic at the same time. Look a pictures and you might see what I mean.The music was relatively good, with the exception of the opening song, which was annoying. The music is often very sad, mixing well with the atmosphere of the show, and it can easily make things even more dramatic and sad when "that one song" is sung. You'll know what I mean if you watch it.As I watched this on Toonami, I think it's safe to say this show has a great dub. The actors did splendidly. Especially Casshern and Lyuze.Overall, this show is fairly interesting, and certainly amazing, however its not for everyone. It's a little slow moving, and it takes a while for it to really pick up, but once it gets there, its well worth the work of watching all those pointless episodes. It's a fairly short series, so it's not too troublesome. All in all, a great show, but not for the action hungry, though the action that is in this show is extremely brilliant and well-choreographed, though sometimes a little hard to see.