Reviews

Probably an additional 13 episodes were planned. The story ends abruptly without resolution, but is pretty good as far as it goes.

The action is good (not great). The hero is particularly interesting because all of his opponents seem to be noticeably better than him in combat. With minor exceptions, the young girl who is the companion of the hero is treated (by the writer) in a respectful manner and the show is only mildly adult as a result. The villains are "fleshed out" better than is the case with most anime - they have motivation, occasionally insane but usually rational and believable.

The action is occasionally interrupted with long-winded philosophizing from the villains and, occasionally, from the hero.

Well, first: I'm a huge fan of the book. Huge. Additionally, a fan of science fiction in general.

The thing that makes this rendition so boring - so boring that I couldn't finish watching it - is that the story is continually interrupted by long stretches of music. During these stretches, the recorded audience gets to watch the story unfolding on a large movie screen. Meanwhile, WE (the TV viewers) get to look at things like the conductor bobbing up and down in a disturbing manner with an equally disturbing smile on his face, or a several-seconds-long close up of a violin bow, and similar edge-of-your-seat visuals (sarcasm intended).

Perhaps this was wonderful to see in person. It's simply frustrating - *very* frustrating - trying to sit through the recorded version.

4 stars because, unlike most renditions, it largely adheres to the excellent book - that is, in between large swathes of pointless music and even more pointless video. I cannot recommend this even to the most die-hard of Wells or SciFi fans.

Jim

The problems: needless gratuitous naked girl shower scenes and, particularly, needlessly gratuitous lesbian unrequited love situation. The ending is somewhat abrupt (failing to indicate the outcome of the major enemy offensive).

The good: good action, fairly excellent storyline (except for the whole lesbian soap-opera thing), excellent combat animation throughout most of the series.

Overall: this is an action scifi with manned space combat robots ("gunden") - much better than any similar I have seen. The robots are graceful. The plot is intelligent. I liked that the problems of time dilation is near light speed travel are taken into account.

I rate this a 7 because it definitely should be watched - but doesn't need to be watched more than once.

As with most Christian movies, I find myself disappointed by the tremendous amount of fiction that is added to the biblical account, and the tremendous degree to which the biblical account is ignored or bypassed.

First, there ARE some good points to this movie. When a pregnant Mary meets Elizabeth (not alone, as you would imagine, but with two men also present), she pronounces something very similar to the Magnificat. There is no room at the inn. Jesus is born in a manger (the birth, by the way, completely bypassed, and newborn Jesus appears suddenly clean and with a full head of hair).

But then there are the things that don't jive with reason or history. Herod the Great is actually Herod the Great Big Whiner (well-played, despite the poor role). Joseph's friend is named Malcolm - I mean, come on, "Malcolm"? Why not "Chuck"? Joseph is - to put it kindly - not exactly a diligent worker, but manages to build an enormous palace of wood and stone on a remote hill in the countryside for his upcoming marriage. The 3 wise men - yes, Caspar, Malchior and Balthasar - are met tooling through the desert on camels with no supplies other than their rides and the clothes on their backs. They actually appear *before* the birth of Jesus. Joseph brings Mary to Bethlehem for the census, crossing the desert - clearly unsure of the way - rather than taking a road. The list goes on and on.

Probably the *most* disappointing thing, however, was the complete and total dearth of angels. At one point, Mary refers to Gabriel as an "agent" of God. This "agent" is neither seen nor heard by us (just light reflecting from the water), nor is Joseph's dream (which turns out to be a daydream in the heat of the day). From the device used, you would think that Mary and Joseph were hallucinating due to the bright sunlight. The angelic messages to them were simply tremendously downplayed. Likewise the angel's announcement to the shepherds - reduced to a mere disembodied "music of the spheres".

Overall, a decently-acted movie that, in my opinion, very poorly portrays the biblical account or anything resembling historical accuracy of the period.

I've seen worse acting, but not a whole lot worse. The plot lacks originality and, well, the murder "mystery" is only a mystery to the one who was there but *didn't* do it. The fight scenes are poor even for old B westerns. The sounds of two men struggling continue while the struggle is suspended during a rope climb, and then end in the middle of "round 2". Even the mandatory "good guy tackles bad guy from horseback" is missing: the bad guy's horse (his name must be SUV) does a rollover going around a sharp turn. One thing thankfully missing is the cliché rich guy running the rustling operation, but is doesn't matter--(nearly) everyone knows the head bad guy from the beginning.

Bottom line: one of the worst films I've ever seen, and probably the worst western.

The acting in this old Western is sometimes so bad even *I* notice the poor quality. The script is occasionally repetitive. The action scenes are generally horrible - cut away scenes that make the opponents seem as if they are not even in the same zip code, and fight scenes that are typical for old B westerns (read: poor).

But there are some good points. The plot is much better than most. The high-speed chases are not obviously high-*film*-speed. The lack of background/supporting music is surprisingly not a detriment except in a very few scenes. This may even add to the attractiveness of the film.

If you are a fan of old B westerns than this is probably a keeper. But for the rest of you, it's probably not worth the time it takes to watch.