Review: Legend of the Millennium Dragon (Blu-Ray/DVD Combo Pack)

[media-credit name=”Sony Pictures Home Entertainment” align=”alignright” width=”221″][/media-credit]Synopsis:
A 15-year-old boy goes 1200 years back in time to find his unlikely destiny as the savior to end the war between humans and demons.

Studio Pierrot is best known for animating long-form series such as Bleach and Naruto, but when given an actual budget with a decent director great things can happen, provided the source material can translate well to the feature film treatment. Unfortunately Legend of the Millennium Dragon is what happens when you take a below average light novel and give it an above average animation budget.

The story starts with an epic battle between the antagonists in the story, the Oni and the good guys in the monks enlisted to fight them. One of the monks, Gen’un succeeds in sealing them off with magic before the story moves forward 1200 years to the present day where we meet the supposed hero in Jun, a teenage boy who isn’t very confident in himself and is easily startled.

The story then moves forward in a more conventional rhythm, with Jun being transported into the same timeframe as Gen’un and Jun being all around a poorly fleshed out character, with a petulant attitude and no real exposition on his motivations other than what the other feudal characters are telling  him what he’s supposed to be while never really elaborating on the reasons for fighting the Oni, other than that they’re evil, until it’s discovered that the Oni might not be the evil beings that the townspeople were convinced were out to kill them.

The biggest problem with Legend of the Millennium Dragon is that it looks really good, but it has no real substance. Director Hirotsugu Kawasaki, who also directed Spriggan had his work cut out for him with this one since the script was poorly developed at the expense of the lush visuals and battle scenes, of which there are plenty. But battle scenes and lush visuals can’t really carry the film, since there’s supposed to be a story tying things together. Where the film really falls apart is nearing the climax of the film where the deus ex machina (a dragon by the name of Orochi) is pulled out only to be rendered useless by a set of mystical suits of armor that were revealed in the heat of battle without any prior foreshadowing.

It’s really hard to recommend a movie where the script and characters are so poorly fleshed out while the visuals try to pick up the slack, because unlike other anime films where the focus is on the animation, like Redline, Legend of the Millennium Dragon sells itself on the strength of its story, a story that is unfortunately one that we’ve seen told countless times before, although not as poorly as in this example.

I can’t recommend the film because the story in its current form isn’t worth $29.99, it’s worth considerably less due to the fact that we only got the theatrical cut, while Japan’s release included the Directors Cut that actually develops the storyline properly with the additional 20 minutes of footage that was cut from the theatrical release and all home video releases outside Japan. If Sony Pictures had gone back and licensed the film with the Director’s Cut from the outset, my opinion might be completely different. As it stands, people should pass on this one unless you like to watch set pieces.

About the only good thing I can point to on this release is the fact that there are seven audio tracks on the Blu-Ray, with a Spanish dub included. All of the titles I review will be based on Japanese audio with English subtitles, but as I have a soft spot for releases with Spanish dubs, I felt it was worth pointing out.

Buy Legend of the Millennium Dragon (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) from Amazon