Anime: Blue Gender: The Warrior

Reviewed as a standalone, so disregarding and not referencing to the Blue gender series.

One day, in 2031...
...A man is torn from what is apparently some form of cryogenic sleep to find himself in the afore mentioned year of 2031.
He has little time to make sense of his situation before he finds himself running from large fearsome demoniacal creatures ,the instant he leaves his cry pod.
The awoken man is saved from his sure death at the hands of these insect-like monsters by a mysterious group of individuals led by two protagonists in Mecha suits.
This group then ushers the "Sleeper" (as they refer to him) into a jeep to safety.
During the drive the Sleeper takes time to inquire about everything he has missed during his artificial sleep. The answers he finds out are not what he would have wanted to hear though. It turns out that the "Blue", which is the name for these insectoid attackers; more or less took over the entire earth whilst he was asleep. To get out of harms way the earth's residents that were able enough, fled to space to create a colony named "Second Earth".
As if the news that life as he knew it on earth no longer exists, he also is forced to find out that this group who had saved him just earlier actually have the mission objective to escort the Sleeper to "Second Earth" at all costs... as a "specimen".

Visual:
The movie starts off in full 3D CG with a camera panning through some sort of arteries through blood vessels and finally out to a 3D rendered eye over which appears the name of the film in 3D... it's quiet misleading really since in the whole movie I saw 1 tunnel chase part where they possibly used CG. For the rest of the movie it's good old fashioned hand drawn goodness.
The style somewhat reminded me of early 90's Animes. The characters well drawn up close and the animation for the most part is pretty smooth. I noticed that often, when characters are at a distance they seem a to be drawn and animated a little sloppily. But that's just a nit-pick.
As the animation is pretty well done, a lot of the fight scenes are very satisfying and at times there are odd scenes that can be fairly graphic. Nothing really over the top or frequent.
The characters seem, for lack of a better word, a little generic. On the other hand the technology is really well done. All the machines seem believably engineered and well thought out. For instance the 'skull helmets' the mecha pilots wear are really cool and most of the tech elements are similarly well designed and drawn.
The backgrounds don't quite have the same amount of depth as the characters but are never-the-less well done and at times create intense atmospheres.

Audio:
The best I can describe the audio as is unexceptional. Nothing to make you jump out of your seat. Neither the intro or extro tracks struck me as being overly memorable and the in-film music is typically orchestral with the odd dip into the more traditional oriental side.
The sound FX suit the on-screen action but again aren't anything special and sound powerful like they do in other movies. The sounds they have for the 'Blue' are pretty well done and the weapons seem very convincing, but all in all you've heard it all before.

Character/Story:
It takes a fair time into the movie to build any kind of connection up between you and any of the main protagonists. I can't say that this movie is all too deep in the character development. As is usual, there is an obvious and shallow love story that adds little to the main story as a whole.
Later into the movie there are a few philosophical questions the movie tries to throw out at you little awkwardly, but it does get deeper later into the movie.
In fact, in the first half of the movie I noticed a lot of erratic cuts from scene to scene. These seemed mostly in parts where the character building would take place but that strangely just seem awkwardly cut out leaving you startled for one moment and trying to fill in the parts you apparently just missed out on, the next. A fair portion of the character building is just skipped and left for you to fill in.
As said, this is remedied in the second half of the movie somewhat.

Overall:

I had no idea what to expect of this movie going into it and that was probably a good thing. The story is such that it also keeps you guessing and surprises you with some plot twists. It will surely remind some, of other known movies such as 'Starship Troopers', 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within' and even holds some very vague similarities to 'Ghost in the Shell'.
At the end of the day this is basically a Mecha/Sci-fi action flick, which doesn't turn out too shallow and can be commended for it's decent story.
This doesn't stop the film from feeling a little long winded in places around three-quarters of the way in, but makes up for that with entertaining action sequences and some surprising plot twists and very cool tech designs in places.
You could spend your time far worse than watching this 90 minute movie. If you're looking for a decent action Anime with a fairly decent storyline then give this a try. If you want something totally out of the ordinary and/or with a really engaging story line looks elsewhere.