天下制覇

56K need not apply.

Impressions:

Huge caveat here… I haven’t actually had a chance to do more than skim through it really quickly (thank goodness for MPlayer’s autocapping) although I did stop and watch any scene that caught my eye. Of course, this means I skipped about 90% of the first half… so… whatever. It’s not like it’s anything new. The movie’s just a retelling of episodes 1-8… and from what I saw, it’s pretty much the same, although there is a huge shift to centralize a lot more directly on Yuuji and Shana. Kazumi was pretty much totally marginalized… aside from a totally gratuitous bath scene, and she was one of the people killed when Friagne attacked at the school, which I don’t remember. They also cut out Ramies entirely (and with him went Kazumi’s date with Yuuji). I can live with not seeing Yuuji blow off his busty ladyfriend to hang out with an old man though. Yukari (the girl whose life Shana took over) had a really nice scene this time around, complete with new insert song (I think) as Yuuji was trying to keep her from fading away.

There were a lot of parts where I have the very real suspicion that they just totally wholesale lifted from the TV series (well… the DVD release thereof). Shana and Yuuji’s first encounter, for example… shared the same halfassed “let’s show a sword flash and then a still instead of action” laziness. Other parts, like the entire second half of the Friagne stuff was totally new. Shana’s fight with Margery was also totally gone, and the two of them fought against a ton of Friagne’s dolls instead. Speaking of the dolls, Friagne only got all the creepier for actually transforming Marianne into a person at one point… she in a bride outfit, him in a white bridegroom suit. Scary. They also added a short sequence at the start between a male swordsman that I didn’t recognize (though using a green flaming sword) and Friagne. I assume it was just a generic Flame Haze trying to kill him and dying.

The end of the arc was also rather different with Alastor’s crazy-ass “burn everything, the city and your dog to ashes” power being used instead of Shana drawing on Yuuji to fuel her flame wings. The very end though, as Yuuji realized that he wasn’t dying and Shana smiled very cutely and then laughed like a little girl at him was pretty adorable… even if she was naked in a trenchcoat while doing it. Even Margery smiled at it.

Anyway, I’m sure you’re not here to see me gush over the 15 minutes I spent checking out the relevant scenes, so here’s more screencaps than you could even hope to deal with. I’m not going to rip out any of the action scenes though. Sorry, there’s just too much going on through the second half and most of them stretch on for quite a while. I will say that I really do adore that ED though (Love Planet 5 – Tenjou wo Kakeru Monotachi). The single’s been out for a while, but it made a really nice segue into the credits and captured the tone at the end perfectly. Now bring on the Inukami movie!

EDIT: WordPress apparently imposes a maximium post length and destroys the entire post if it’s over it, so this has to be split in two. *sigh* The rest of the caps are here.