Darkside Blues

Starring:Akio Ã”tsuka, Kotono Mitsuishi, Stacia Crawford, Maki Kachisa, Hideyuki Hori, Akira Natsuki, Rachael Lillis, Scott Cargle, Peter Patrikios, KÃ´ichi Yamadera, Kathleen Kern, Jon Avner, Nozomu Sasaki, Matthew Harrington, Rachel Nanstad
Director: Yoshimichi Furukawa
Studio: Us Manga Corps Video
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

I love dark animes
The Web of Rebellion
so mysterious..
One of the Worst animes I've seen -
Excellent, thought-provoking entertainment

Darkside Blues
Starring: Akio Ôtsuka , Kotono Mitsuishi , Stacia Crawford , Maki Kachisa , and Hideyuki Hori
Director: Yoshimichi Furukawa
Manufacturer: Us Manga Corps Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00007K014
Release Date: 2003-01-28

Customer Reviews:

I love dark animes.......2005-11-05

Such a low rating isn't fair! It was a deep movie and yes, hard to understand but I liked it none the less! It deserves higher than a 3. It had good fighting and great animation in it. I would love to see it again at anytime! I really did like this anime.

The Web of Rebellion.......2005-08-09

This is an unusual anime feature, based on a manga which is largely unavailable in the US. In its multifaceted story of resistance to the Persona Corporation which has come to own 90% of the world, it seems to take no viewpoint, It follows the common Japanese story-telling convention of bringing up the story as an intricate composition of story lines rather than one single driving thread.

Two things trigger the events in the film. A young boy, Katari, flees some troublemakers and falls into a hole into another dimension. Somehow he is rescued by a peculiar doctor driving a stagecoach who will remind you of Vampire Hunter D (Hideyuki Kikuchi did work there as well). And a rebel raid successfully sabotages a Persona control center and only one of them, Tatsuya, successfully escapes and a pretty young gang leader, Mai, becomes involved in his rescue.

The Doctor, takes the name of Darkside after the the place he arrives - the Kabuki-Cho district of Shinjuku Tokyo. There he practices a form of 'medicine' called Renewal. He touches many of the people in Shinjuku, especially Mai and Selia whose fate becomes entwined with Tatsuya's. Darkside has some past with the family who owns Persona, and Renewal has something to do with enspiriting both Katari and Selia so that the opposition to the corporation can continue.

Guren and Tamaki, the owners of Persona are classic villains. She is a sadist who get pleasure from turning people to gold when they are still alike, and he if the cold corporate master who thinks nothing of destroying a Himalayan mountain to kill a few rebels. Thus each character casts a human and an archetypical shadow, and it is not always clear which you are seeing.

And there you have it, a cast of idiosyncratic characters enacting a set of woven storylines to reach an inevitable tragedy and a transcendent moment of hope. All to the background of American blues music. This may turn out to be one of those little known classics which you either hate or love, since it raises more questions than it could ever answer. But it invites the viewer's introspection - what is the nature of opposition to oppression? Are hatred and grief powers, or curses?

so mysterious.........2005-05-11

I had to watch this movie 3 times before even getting the grasp of the plot or what the hell was going on, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't fascinated by it. The mystery of the characters, specially Darkside, is so intriguing. The fact that they don't tell you anything straighforward but instead leave you to figure out what the hell's going on, is fantastic! This is a very complex anime and if you're someone who got bored with "the end of evangelion" then probably you will think this anime stinks. I'm a sucker for weird and different things, so naturally I love this movie. The animation is old school, but it's still very, very good. A very disconcerting, yet perfectly fitting thing was the music sang by the old man with the guitar. At first I was like: What the hell?, but after a couple minutes it felt perfect for the scene, in fact the whole movie.
Regardless of whether it's a slow paced movie, it's still very interesting.

One of the Worst animes I've seen -.......2005-03-17

I would like to give this show zero stars if I could I found it so bad. I can't complain too much about the animation and music score since it was done over a decade ago, but the character designs are horrible. They look like they are in the 1980s, not the future. I also found it very odd that Darkside, a dark being, came out from a mirror on a horse-drawn carriage. There are many quirky things in this movie I could go on and on about, but I'll get down to the main problem- the plot.

A gang fights against the dictator of the world with the help of a mysterious man named Darkside, cool right? Hardly. There appears to be no plot in the movie. Many scenes appear to have no purpose at all in expanding the plot or are unclear why they are happening. What makes things worse is most of these pointless scenes lack any good action; they just makes the plot more painfully quirky. This is probably because they are rushing through the plot, I guess.

I would skip over Darkside Blues if I were you. It is a waste of money.

Excellent, thought-provoking entertainment.......2004-11-26

While this is not one of the most popular anime films out there, it very well may be one of the best. The reason that I didn't give it 5 stars was that to some people the plot may occur a jumbled nonsense. You don't really understant what happens until the very end, but when you reach it, it's quite rewarding.
While most of my friends who read the original manga say it was better, I prefer this version of the story - the quality of animation is quite appealing.
If you're the sort of person who likes strange, original anime movies with memorable characters, sense of style and gothic flair, this is perfect for you, I'd definitely recommend buying this. If you like more solid plots, with considerable amount of backstory and no brain-racking, don't buy this.