Manga4life's "Casshern Sins" review!

Hello one, hello all, my name is Manga4life and today I am writing a review of an anime that has struck something of a morbid chord with it’s viewers, this anime has desolate written all over it due to it’s lack of life and it’s feeling of empty space. Today I am going to review Casshern Sins, so strap yourself in Thought Corner readers and enjoy.

Casshern Sins is a series that I have heard about through multiple forums on the web that are dedicated to anime, but since it wasn’t dubbed at the time I really had no interest of checking it out even though I felt the plot behind it was kind of neat, plus when I first saw the trailer for the show I thought it wasn’t going to be my cup of tea due to the limited animation and the design of the main character (Casshern). Boy was I wrong. Once I began watching Casshern Sins it didn’t take long until I was dragged in by just how deep the story was, basically, Casshern is roaming a world that has been struck by the “ruin” and everything is either dead, dying or falling apart, as he makes his way through he runs into multiple robots who are looking to eat him because they feel it’s the only way to stop the ruin from affecting them, but of course once they engage Casshern in battle they are easily destroyed because of his skills as a fighting machine. There is a lot of fighting in this series but I felt it does not take away from the storyline whatsoever, in fact, the fighting often leads to situations where the plot thickens and new characters are introduced while everything begins to take a left turn when the blinker in signaling right. It’s really quite intense at times.

One thing I loved about this series was the supporting cast and how they interacted with the main character and the roles that they took on for themselves, especially Ringo and Ohji, a little robotic girl and her caretaker who follow Casshern throughout his travels and build quite a bond with him along the way, but my favorite supporting character in the series was a female named Sophita, the “Angel of Ruin“. Sophita loved to fight, she loved to fight so much that she couldn’t be happy unless she was engaged in endless battle, in fact, she even tried to kill Casshern because she felt she loved him so much that the only way to express her love for him was to end his life through an avenue that would make her feel happy inside. It was actually quite genius to see unfold before your eyes and the episode she appeared in was really touching, when you get around to watching this series I would recommend keeping an eye out for her as I felt it was one of the best episodes in the entire series. As Casshern makes his way through the world he runs into countless robots that he ends up killing, multiple sad characters that you just want to reach out to and offer a lending hand to, and even a human who kind of puts things into perspective for Casshern to ready him for what could (and would) become quite a journey. If there is any strength to this series at all it would definitely be within the interactions and the relationships built between Casshern and the characters he meets along the way.



Now it's time to discuss the production side of Casshern Sins and whether or not the technical aspects of the series hit a crushing home run like the creative side of it did, first off I think we will discuss the animation within the series and if it stands beside some of the current anime on the market that it's up against. The answer to that would be no. Okay, Casshern Sins is nicely animated and the fight scenes are pretty fluid, but the overall look of the series kind of makes me think that it was animated in the mid to late 90's or something, either that or the animators were trying to make some kind of an artistic statement, either way it's not up to par with other achievements in anime animation that have come out over the past couple of years. With that said, the animation was pretty good and it was probably drawn in a way to make the characters seem as desolate as the world they inhabit, I actually quite liked it regardless of it's limitations and whatnot, I did feel that the character designs were done really good as well. One huge strength that this series has going for it is in it's music, from start to finish the OST in Casshern Sins was absolutely brilliant and the theme used to help bring the story too a close at the end most of the episodes still haunt me and I find myself whistling it from time to time, this anime has one of the best musical scores of any piece of animation I've ever seen (and that's saying a lot). Look up a song called "A Path" from this show and you will see what I'm talking about.

Anyhow, it's just about time to bring this review to an end and to list my usual rating system below, but before I go I just want to say how fun it was to sit down and watch this series, it's really left a long lasting impression on me and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to become engrossed inside of a special anime that will most likely leave you with the same impression that it left me. It's an extremely fun, if not immensely sad series that really deserves to be seen by those who are looking for a wildly touching, yet satisfying anime to sink their teeth into, give it a shot and you may just feel the same way that I do about Casshern Sins.

Art & Animation - 7.0/10
Music & Sound Effects - 9.0/10
Story & Writing - 9.0/10
Fun - 9.0/10
Overall - 9.0/10

As always I want to thank those who took the time to read my blog, it's much appreciated and you can always check me out at www.twitter.com/manga4life as well as TZ and FUNI.

Take care,
***Manga4life***