Tentacle-Free Anime: "Lady Death" (2004) Review

- by Kazekun, 13 October 2014

October is here! And that means it is time for some dark/horror-related anime. This year I got a couple of interesting ones for ya, starting with a movie based around an American comic. I find anime based around American material to always be rather interesting, due to cultural barriers and what-not. It's just fun to see how they end up as the finished product. Now, on to the main program.

"Lady Death: The Motion Picture" (2004); 
Episodes: 1 (movie); 
Director: Andy Orjuela;
Studio: A.D. Vision;
Rating: PG-16

Summary: Based on the Chaos Comics. The origin of the legendary Lady Death. When Hope finds out her father is Lucifer himself. She is condemned to Hell , and a legend is born. [AnimeNetworks.com]

Like I said before, it's interesting to me to see films based off of American comic books, in either an anime-style (which is mostly what Lady Death is) or as an official anime. Like, what draws the studio to the idea of doing that series or character? Or is it the people who made the character or title that approaches the studio? And how much creative control does either one have over the project? It's all just very fascinating.

Movie poster. (click to enlarge)

But that's never an excuse for allowing a property of any kind to be bad, and I'm not gonna start this review off by saying the film was bad. On the contrary, I thought it was pretty decent. Just on a general consensus, that kind of stuff is never an excuse. That being said, Lady Death does have quite a few problems, and having never read the original comic book series there is nothing I have to compare it to.

The movie boasts a length of 80 minutes, but feels much longer. This is probably because a lot of stuff happens. This film is a prime example of cramming just a bit too much story into your story. The film begins with Lady Death leading an army against Lucifer, the devil, in the throws of hell. These aren't angels, but other demons who've basically had enough of the Devil's shit.

Then we turn back the clock to when Lady Death was but a mortal human girl and we get to see how she became who she is. This is where things begin to seep in and you realize you're kind of watching a clip show rather than a full movie.

Lady Death and Cremator.

Few scenes flow very well into one another, and other than Lady Death herself, and her eventual second-in-command Cremator, very few of the characters actually get developed. Lucifer is simply evil for being evil. We see him as a human first, and it's never explained what he's doing as a human. It's also shown that he keeps from his daughter the fact that he's the devil, and allows her to worship God only to get upset with her over it later.

It's pretty messed up. 

The acting is choppy too, with Lucifer & Niccolo (Lady Death's old human lover) getting the worst actors to portray them. Lucifer is portrayed so laughably 1-D it's ridiculous. Cremator and Lady Death are actually portrayed very well (by Rob Mungle & Christine M. Auten respectively); I enjoyed watching their chemistry at work.

Lucifer.

The story is a revenge tale, with Lady Death wanting to take down her father for all the pain he has made her suffer in both her mortal life and her afterlife. And that's okay, story premise wise I thought it was pretty sound. One of the scenes in the movie that sort of begins her hatred for Lucifer is her burning at the stake, where we see Lady Death, otherwise known as Hope at the time in her mortal guise being boiled alive. The animation of that scene is graphic and one of the most powerful scenes in the whole movie. In fact, though there are times when the animation seems like it was made in flash, there is a great amount of detail put into the scenes themselves.

During a training sequence between Lady Death and Cremator, we see time elapse and Cremator's sword go from perfect to battered and then eventually broken. Getting to see it step-by-step in battle is something I don't think I've ever seen in a battle montage. If anything, I think Lady Death's greatest strength lies in its massive attention to the little scene details that take place.

And what does this movie have to do with horror? Well, it's not exactly “horror” but this movie does dabble in the demon/darkness side of things. Taking place almost completely in hell for 90% of the movie. The creatures are original looking, and the battles are gruesome as they should be. There's a lot of simply dark happenings in this movie as well; we see a young woman being tortured and then spiked to death just because her tormentor thought it'd be fun.

Hope burning at the stake.

This movie isn't really all bad, like I said: it's almost like a bunch of cut scenes put into one movie, but in each scene there is attention to little details that simply astound me. The story was interesting enough to keep me watching, and while it definitely could've been much better, what the final product ended up being is something that makes me interested in reading the original material.

I'd call it an average film at best.

Final Score: 3 Damned Souls out of 5


Have you seen "Lady Death"? How did you enjoy the movie and the review? 

Tagged: Tentacle-Free Anime.

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