Monster Of Frankenstein

I have to admit that I don’t watch as much anime as I probably should, but I blame it on an ex-girlfriend who used to drive me insane with crap like Ranma, Naruto and Hellsing. I got to the point where I couldn’t stand to watch Japanese animation. Still, there is some of that stuff that I enjoy, particularly the works of Hayao Miyazaki, and individual films like Akira and Perfect Blue. Hell, a few months ago I gave a review to an anime adaptation of Marvel’s Tomb Of Dracula that was pretty damn cool. I also like the Vampire Hunter D stuff, and when I found out that there had been a Frankenstein adaptation in anime form, I hunted it down as quickly as I could. What I got was this, a very disappointing movie that nevertheless has things to recommend about it. For starters, the story. It’s nothing new here, with the doctor Victor Frankenstein creating a monster that craves vengeance against his creator. We get very familiar elements, such as the blind man that is in most incarnations, the little girl, similar from Ghost Of Frankenstein, and the creature looks like the Karloff monster on steroids. Seriously this damn monster is almost fifteen feet tall! And like the Universal films, it’s the monster that’s the center of the story. Of all the characters in the anime, his is the only one that goes through a change, first starting as a bloodthirsty killing machine, and slowly becoming more and more friendly when he finds the little girl. It’s a nice twist on the story, since normally he’s either a monster or a creature of sympathy, but never really both. The animation style is very similar to Vampire Hunter D, with some very realistic artwork and backgrounds. Sadly that’s all that I can recommend about this particular film. The thing that hurts this movie the most is it’s pacing. We start off great, with a very original and well-done ‘birthing’ sequence for the monster, but when the plot kicks in the story drags to the pace of a snail. It gets especially slow when the monster starts getting civilized. By the third act we get a cool action sequence involving a forest fire, but by then the main focus of the story seems to go apeshit. Seeing the doctor on the shoulder of the monster screaming it to hurry up reminded me more of Gigantor than any Frankenstein story. The voice acting is pretty bad too, but you can already expect that from 80’s anime. In total, this is an interesting new take on the Frankenstein story, and I’m sure a lot of people will get a kick out of it, but I’m not one of them.