Casshern



Casshern (2004) is a live action version of the classic Japanese animated TV series Robot Hunter Cashaan, a fairly standard post-apocalyptic story about a young man turned into a cyborg to fight dictatorial robots. Casshern takes this plot and reimagines it as a big-budget live action movie with surprising arty and romantic tendencies. The trailer is very impressive, but I’m sorry to report that the movie itself is a lot of sizzle and very little steak.


See no evil, hear no evil, and...

After some sort of huge war the people of the Eastern Federation are dying slowly. A scientist believes that he has discovered a solution in the form of “neo-cells,” cells that can replace or repair any kind human tissue. He goes ahead with the research, while his rebellious son, Tatsuya, goes off to fight in some kind of ongoing skirmish.

A year later Tatsuya is killed by an enemy booby trap. His body is shipped back to his father, and is laid out in front of the research lab. As Tatsuya’s ghost wanders around and visits his mother and his girlfriend, a giant metal lightning bolt appears out of the sky and pierces the roof of the research facility and comes to a halt in the neo-cell research tank. The neo-cells grow out of control and then start combining into entire human beings. Soldiers show up (practically out of nowhere) and begin slaughtering the “Neo-Sapiens” en mass. After the carnage subsides only four Neo-Sapiens survive, and they escape after kidnapping Tatsuya’s mother. (Coincidence – The plot contrivance that eats like a meal.)

After all this Tatsuya’s father still has the presence of mind to take his son’s body and dunk it in the neo-cell tank. Tatsuya is resurrected, but he has to be put in the care of another scientist to recover because his muscles are too strong. Tatsuya is encased in a special armor suit that keeps him under control and is left to heal in a bacta tank.

Meanwhile the Neo-Sapiens have made their way into the wilderness, finally ending up on a mountain range. There they find an abandoned castle that comes complete with its own army of giant robots and a factory for making more giant robots. The Neo-Sapiens declare war on the rest of humanity, sending their giant robot army to destroy cities and kidnap scientists. One of the scientists they try to kidnap is the one caring for Tatsuya. The scientist is killed but Tatsuya is released from the tank as a super-powered cyborg!


Shouldn't this be Casshern: Robot Hunter, not Casshern: Waif Comforter?

Reading this scenario you may have a few questions like the following: Where did the lightning bolt come from? Who sent it? What is its purpose? Who built the robot army? How did it end up being abandoned? These are reasonable questions, I think, and that’s why it’s so incredibly frustrating that Casshern doesn’t bother to answer any of them. Seriously. Even the characters in the movie don’t appear to be very concerned with these questions. The miles long lightning bolt remains stuck through the roof of the lab after the Neo-Sapiens escape and entire scenes take place there without anybody giving any notice to the alien artifact just yards away. An hour after it first appears one character does mention as an aside that they should study the lightning bolt, but that’s it. The robot army is also curiously detached from the rest of the film, which continues to deal with the guerilla war that killed Tatsuya. If an apocalyptic robot army was overrunning your country would you worry about oppressing a few dirt farmers?

If you’ve seen the trailer for this movie than you’ve seen some pretty kick-ass robot fighting action. Unfortunately all that robot fighting action is from one scene in the movie. Seriously. Most of Casshern is an odd family drama, with a couple middle-of-the road actions scenes and one really good one. Casshern has impressive CGI backdrops, but most of the movie is as static as a picture book. I was hoping for more.

Posted: Mon - May 30, 2005 at      

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