By the 19th century, humanity has cultivated technology enabling the reanimation of corpses. Unable to experience individual thoughts or emotions, the corpses are programmed by humans to act as laborers in various occupations. This newfound technology, however, comes with a catch. Science may be able to restore the corpses' ability to move, yet it cannot return what every corpse loses at death: the soul. But Doctor Victor Frankenstein, who vanished shortly after his revolutionary work on corpse reanimation, is said to have revived the only corpse in possession of a soul. In pursuit of this scientific knowledge, London medical student John Watson hopes to fulfill his promise to his late partner, Friday. After being scouted by a government agency, Watson is on a hunt to obtain Frankenstein's notes, which he believes hold the key to the secrets of the soul. During his search, Watson uncovers the harsh realities of the developing corpse technology and the price he must pay to advance his research. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Yesterday I just watched The Empire of Corpses movie and what I got is just disappointment. Let me elaborate my statement with my review. Story - 3/10 The story is about how Watson (Holmes's partner) discover a way of saving humanity from being zombie. The whole movie is just about his journey of his research and medication. The story itself is quite poor, as the movie itself literally is nothing but a medium to deliver deep messages to the audience. There is no story at all, aside from Watson going to save humanity with dumb and absurd way. Premise - 6/10 The premise itself is sort of interesting, witheveryone was zombiefied and become 'Frankensteins'. Government zombiefied their citizens and corpses that are re-purposed with a false soul in order to use them as laborers, are used to improve industrial development. No doubt, the premise is pretty cool and there were symbolism behind it. The whole movie was actually symbolizing those laborers that have lost their soul to the system, which makes them no longer humane anymore. In order to regain the one's soul, humanity needs love. More or less, it's sort of like Guilty Crown, however at the same time, it's same as Guilty Crown failed in delivering the messages. The story and messages were all over the places without any coherence at all. In order words, this movie failed, even though it looks cool by its cover. Character - 1/10 There is no character at all in this movie. All of them are plot devices in order to move on the plot and deliver deep messages. All of them are pretentious. There are no characteristic at all for the characters in the movie. It completely failed in character's aspect! I like Alexei, Nikolai & Friday though, but all of them are the same too. Plot devices! Art - 9/10 Wit Studio, the studio that produced Attack on Titans and in Spring 2016 they are going to make a high budget production with cool animation, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. If you have seen the trailer, or watched Attack on Titans before, you must have known the quality of animation the studio could deliver. It's all superb and fantastic throughout the whole movie. It's the only selling point for this bad movie. The animation, no doubt is eye-catching. The textures in background, the control in colours are well-produced. Every second every frame of the movie is so beautiful. Seriously, Wit Studio really did well in the visual part for this movie. Music - 7/10 Not that bad, not that good either. All the tracks fit the movie well, but there is no memorable soundtracks from the movie. EGOIST's theme song is fine too. Enjoyment - 4/10 The whole movie is like a boring roller coaster. It gave me so much anticipation on the movie, however it just left a huge disappointment to me. Nothing in the movie aside from the animation impressed me. I won't recommend anyone to watch this movie, even though it might be some "2deep4u" stuff, however the movie failed to handle the messages coherently. It really disappointed to me. Seriously, don't watch this movie, unless you wanna experience the great animations. Moreover, it's 2-hour long. I really hyped this movie very much along with the other two Project ITOH (Genocidal Organ & Harmony). I hope the other two won't be this bad, seriously please. It's kinda wasted to spend that much of budget on this bad story.
This review is my very biased opinion. I am a huge sucker for redjuice and EGOiST and it will be apparent in the review. Let's start with the good point(s). Art: 10 The art and animation is amazing. Redjuice has provided the movie with some great character design followed by incredible backgrounds, animation of scenes and effects. Story: 3 The story is hugely inspired by Frankenstein. This might be due to me not being able to understand the story, however it mostly seemed like a mediocre fanfiction which includes major characters from many classic western novels such as Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes books and more. This might be dueto the fact that this is a movie adaptation from a novel. With knowledge of all the characters (I only knew about 30% beforehand) this might be an interesting approach. The movie has a lot of plot holes, pretty much nothing is explained or showed (unless this is caused by my lack of understanding) and the story pretty much uses the most cliché plot twists to a point where it's not even surprising at all. In the same way action scenes seemed hollow and seemed to follow some kind of cliché setup taken directly from the worse end of Hollywood action movies. The events defy common logic and the choices made by the characters makes no sense but this is something you'll see in many old novels (in my very biased opinion). Sound: 9 Soundtracks wasn't used a lot (unless I failed to notice) which in my opinion was a nice decision which made the movie feel closer to the time of the events (19th century). I was quite impressed by the sounds the zombies made and the sound effects in general were nice. The 2 ending themes, Door by EGOiST and another one was quite nice and fit the movie really well, but they were the only clear instance of music or soundtrack (I might be very bad at noticing soundtracks). Characters: 5 Even if the art of the characters are 10/10 the characters themselves are quite mediocre. The characters don't seem to resemble the source material (how they are in their respective books) and seem to fit a stereotype quite well. Without spoiling too much, the sidekick Barnaby (I'm pretty sure it's Barnaby) is basically random sidekick nr. 1. Enjoyment: 8 This was quite enjoyable to watch as the art (backgrounds, characters & animation quality) was so good that I could fap to it. The story was interesting, as it used tonnes of references and had some really great ideas, but it wasn't good enough to keep me hooked. Questions I wanted answered during the movie was usually like: How are they going to explain this? The answer was it wouldn't be explained. The characters, while not being unique, they weren't terrible either so just mediocre. Overall: 7 (I allowed myself to vote 8 on it for bias) Quite similar to Guilty Crown by having superior art and bad story. Also had other Guilty Crown feels and elements (Guilty Crown haters shouldn't watch this imo :>) Might not be the movie you remember as the best but it is definitely enjoyable as you watch it.
Story: 7/10 This story is heavily influenced by Frankenstein. The whole plot revolves around the possibility of reanimating corpses infusing them with their "souls". These corpses prove to be very useful after time and they're used for different works. Watson is hired to retrieve some notes that would help to recover the souls of the corpses, but there are some conflicting opinions. Some people think this process is awful, and some others want to take advantage of it. Watson will find himself in the middle of this situation and will have to take a decision that will affect everyone. This story is a re-reading of Frankensteinand the moral conflict it arises from the use of corpses. There are some changes, like the technology used, but the similiraties are there. Art: 10/10 The art is stunning. The characters are absolutely beautiful and very different from each other. The details in the backgrounds are simply amazing. Visually, this movie is a masterpiece. Sound: 7/10 The music is nice and it fits with the situation of the movie but there's not any remarkable song. Character: 8/10 Okay, this may be my favourite part of the movie. All the characters are based in literary figures. If you've read the works it's funny to see some similarities between the characters with the original sources, like how Watson is actually studying medicine, for example. For me this was a very nice touch, but I admit that if you don't know the works this little details are going to pass unnoticed. Either way they're not necessary to understand the main plot but it is a nice touch either way. Enjoyment: 8/10 I think this movie is pretty enjoyable. It can be confusing at times but it is interesting enough. Overall: 9/10 The animation is amazing, the characters varied and the story is interesting enough to keep you entertained. The only problem can be the fact that the plot is not that original but a re-reading of Frankestein and that it can get complicated at some parts.
Shisha no Teikoku (The Empire of Corpses) a movie from the Project Itoh, so this entire movie was some how confusing, I enjoyed it, but I had problems understanding part of it maybe with a re-watch in the future I will understand more, part of the reason it's hard to understand is the characters since they are from different novels/books and without reading them you may not understand some characters decisions so moving on: Story- 6/10 On the paper, Empire of Corpses looks like the coolest thing ever. Seriously, a movie about zombies who become part of society and are used in our daily lives in aSteampunk London with famous characters from various novels? Fuck Yeah but as always the sad part is, the movie promises you lots of things but has trouble to keep them. The story looks simple at first sight but it’s actually way more complex that you think. The first half of the movie is pretty good but it falls apart in the second half, the ending will leave you with lots of questions that will never be answered nothing is explained multiples brains had to work together on this movie to understand it well i guess that’s something. Characters- 8/10 The characters are almost all from various novels/books or are real people that I believe lived in London during that century. But that doesn’t really matter actually. Aside from little references that made me smile like “ooh look it's Frederick Burnaby” the characters being named after famous people has no influence on the story whatsoever.You have the Main Character Dr. Watson (sidekick to Holmes) Hadaly Lilith (from the book The Future Eve) and many others so are they well developed? I’d say meh i guess without reading those books you can't know how much alike they really are or different they are, the character designs are great. Sound- 7/10 Really nothing big to say here, the OST had nothing memorable but it was good enough to set good moods for action or drama. Art- 10/10 Now this was the best thing from the movie, the Art is amazing, Wit studio has done a great job once again the movie is eye candy for anyone from snowy cold landscapes to the noisy, full of corpses city of London, corpses exploding and fighting scenes everything was detailed, well draw and animated. Overall/Enjoyment- 8/10 Should you watch it? well if the movie sounded cool you should check it out, I know I’m kind on this one, but the Art saved this show, I also liked the characters and the story of this movie i belive there is more to it than what i understood or what you can understand watching it only once it’s obvious that it could have been better handled and executed with maybe more explanations on the incentives of the characters and the story as a hole. Anyway it's a good movie and i don't think you lose anything from watching it :)
You know, despite all the advantages they have in terms of budget and brevity, it's a shame anime films get so little attention within the community and even more of a shame that they're generally not very good. And it's not like they're rare or anything, as I've been reviewing quite a lot of them as of late. With the exception of Kizumonogatari and arguably the new Ghost in the Shell, they're not even franchise films made solely to milk the life out of a product that's already on life support. They just don't really take advantage of the fact that they're supposed to beself-contained stories, often coming off like someone just crammed an entire series worth of material into the thing before realizing they only have two hours to tell their tale and proceeded to edit like they were taking lessons from the guy who was responsible for Green Lantern's final cut. But for all my complaints regarding the weird pacing in Anthem of the Heart and The Boy and the Beast, I must now extend an apology to them. Because I recently saw Empire of Corpses, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that the pacing in that movie was so bad it literally physically assaults you. Empire of Corpses is one of three adaptations of the novels written by Project Itoh that noitamina announced sometime last year, and before people get on my case regarding the dude, no I've never even heard of him prior to now let alone read his stuff, and yes I know he's dead. In fact, Empire of Corpses is actually based on a novel of his that he never completed before kicking the bucket, and boy does it show. Because the way this movie played out, it felt like I was watching a live-action outline that clearly didn't go through any revising before being pushed into Studio Wit's hands. Now as I've said before, I respect Wit for their desire to challenge themselves and I can see the appeal of wanting to complete the work of a great author on your own (assuming that was the intention). But that doesn't change the fact that when they fuck up, they really fuck up. I don't think you even call what happens in Empire of Corpses a story. More like a bunch of explosions that might as well have a giant sign attached to them saying "are you entertained, motherfucker? I sure hope you are, because we overstocked on explosives and need to clear out the warehouse before the end of the week". The movie is centered on John H. Watson, a young scientist who experiments with corpse reanimation in a European setting where dead people are reanimated into "Frankensteins" in order to function as expendable labor. Having turned his recently deceased friend, Friday, into a Frankenstein, Watson is recruited as a government agent in order to help out with his own research and what follows is a series of what I can only describe as trying to cram an entire series' worth of material into a two-hour film, so the plot shifts rapidly from trying to make me sympathize with John to making me want to punch his eyeballs out of his skull. My big problem with the movie is that it doesn't really tell you what's going on and why I'm supposed to care. I don't know who John is besides the fact that he's obsessed with his work and getting Friday to become capable of speech again, and I don't know who Friday is because the film just assumes that since John cares about him, so should I. There's a scene in the middle of the movie where John is supposed to destroy an artifact called the "Notes of Valour" that's supposed to contain secrets regarding the Frankensteins that the bad guys want to utilize, but because he's more determined to get Friday back to a human-like state, he nearly gets his non-Frankenstein buddies killed and loses the notes in the process. This might have been understandable if we had seen anything of Friday when he was alive, but John doesn't even give a sentence regarding what his buddy was like back then. He just wastes people's sacrifices all for his own selfish gains, and without a good understanding of where he's coming from, it makes him incredibly unlikeable. Don't even bother looking at the other characters for support, because they're nothing but plot devices to either die or get close to dying so that John can experience a character arc without good grounding. Friday constantly turns on the characters due to his zombie state, so he'd be kinda hard to sympathize with even if Empire bothered to tell me who the fuck he is. The only other really noticeable character I can think of at the moment is the one female character in the movie, Hadaly Lillith, and that's only because of a secret regarding her true nature that I won't spoil and how she barbecues a bunch of zombies with a flamethrower. There is one guy who in the dub has a really bad German accent, but he gets arbitrarily killed off about thirty minutes in so don't expect his voice to make you laugh all through the movie's overly long two-hour length. Nobody but our dear old Watson really has an arc in this film, and to this day, I still don't know what the fuck the main villain's plan was beyond creating a bride out of humanity's souls. Why? Um...he couldn't move on? I guess the big selling point of the film is the whole "Frankenstein as sacrificial" labor premise given that they're dead and thus you don't have to feel guilty about overworking them or whatnot, and that's pretty cool because that's one of the few things zombies haven't been used for yet in fiction's constant attempt to exploit them to no end. But Empire keeps turning them into an excuse for action set pieces and very rarely do said setpieces have to do with how the public uses them as war fighting machines. Now this is Wit, so the action is decent for the most part, but prettily-executed junk food spectacle is still junk food, and junk food is never going to be fun to watch under any circumstances - especially not when video games alone have pretty much exploited every way for a zombie to become a threat by now. Without a narrative, or even a good personal reason for John to be involved in it, they quickly become the equivalent of the well-produced yet boring musical numbers from Blues Brothers 2000. And despite being incredibly simplistic, the narrative also somehow managers to be overcomplicated at the same time. It even ends with an incredibly grim scene of John trying to turn himself into a Frankenstein after the happy times achieved with his comrades. Why? I don't know, but I wish he had done it before the thirty minute mark so I wouldn't have to hear him talk with that bad accent anymore. So let's recap this film, shall we? Story: A fucking mess. Characterization: A fucking mess. Visuals: As expected of the studio, if once again it's trying to be Attack on Titan. Entertainment Value: Almost none. The film is not funny apart from some unintentionally bad dubbing choices and it doesn't make me think at all. Without either of those elements to invite me in, the only thing I left the theater with as soon as the Egoist song played was a stone-cold expression and an hour-long train ride home in the middle of the night.
It's so sad to see how people misunderstood this masterpiece because well known names were used separately to whom they belong to. Shisha no Teikoku is part of a series based on novels written by Project Itoh ("Genocidal Organ", "Harmony", "Shisha no Teikoku/The Empire of Corpses"). Unfortunately the 3rd novel - "The Empire of Corpses" - was finished after Satoshi Itoh's death (2009) using a few of his ideas he managed to write about his future story. Story (might contain spoilers) 9/10 Even though it was confusing at times and I had to watch some parts many times to understand them, at the end of it Iwas sitting in my chair satisfied with how the story turned out to be. After a person dies, his body becomes 21 grams lighter which is thought to be the weight of the soul. Two bright med students engage in a dangerous experiment to prove a lot of their theories revolving around life and death. One of them offers to be the subject of their experiment (Friday) of bringing back to life the deads along with their souls. In Friday's opinion "thoughts define soul". Since all the rest of the deads brought back to life until then seemed to have lost their soul and their whole identity, Friday tells his friends, Watson, that he will let him know if he (or a part of him) is inside his revived body by touching his nose with a pen. And this is how the amazing story begins. Art 10/10 Breathtaking, after all we're talking about Wit Studio, the one that produced Shingeki no Kyojin and Koutetsujou no Kabaneri. Sound 10/10 Fitting the story perfectly. Ending performed by EGOIST - no need to say anything about that, we know what happens when ops/eds are performed by them. Character 10/10 I liked almost all characters and the way they reacted to various situations. Most of them are named after famous writers, characters of famous novels, famous soliders and leaders. Overall 10/10 --Thank you--
Few years ago i find myself excited after stumbled on a news. It anounced that three novel work by project itoh would be ADAPTED into a movie. What caught my attention was project itoh happened to be an award winning author, knowing a novel was a medium of public entertainment that freed from ridiculous demographic like shounen, seinen, and shit; therefore i assume it could quench my thirst for a GOOD anime. oh God, i hate that i'm wrong!! Story: 3 (Just Like Modern Art) John Watson (Yes, that john watson) adventure to revive his beloved friday as a human being. JUST THAT!! if you happened tofind any kind of digression in story, it doesn't mean anything!! otherwise it's Stupid! Believe me!! Surely you should noticed that the concept of moving corpses itself was a form of metaphor to our society. Kinda biased by the perspective of objectivism, becase it assumed anyone wanted to be special. Because of this, i believe the main theme (the nature of human conscience or heart or soul or even humanity itself) that they tried to convey in the story misserably failed. Art: 8,5 (Magnificently Neat) Wit Studio that previously had worked attack on titan that claimed international success surely blow their steams! Every shot, design, and setting looks wonderfull! The colour was vibrant and bright, some looked like bleak and cold, the art was just right when it needs to. Though everything was eye candy, there's few thing that bugged me! one is, anti-gravity boob of hadaly! second is, character design that looked like it's some kind of fujoshi haystack! i don't read the novel but, everything looks gay! third is, there's too many sexual inuendos in the imagery! friday with his unbuttoned shirt playing in sewer with watson! Friday with the first! Alex and Nico! this movie depict that everyone in victorian era seems gay! Sounds: 6 (Average) Any music was unnoticable and the director wasn't using any kind of ambient music. The voice acting was good, but unimpressive. Character: 1 (Serious Cluster Fuck) the MC is Dr. john watson. ok, that's from sherlock holmes. and then there's mycroft holmes. and then there's irene adler aka hadaly. and mix it up with frankenstein, frankenstein's monster, thomas alpha edison, and some character from brother karamazov! you get that? It's fucking horse shit! The motive behind an author characterization is pitifull! he's out of steam and idea so he take a stock character to make it easy! no need exposition, no character description, no shit, this guy is lazy as fuck! I mean, c'mon, watson's journey to afghan was with his gay friend? i won't mind if the basic story was from frankenstein! they mixed it up with sherlock holmes? what the fuck is this shit? Enjoyment: 3 (Enduring) It takes 2 days for me to watch this from begining to end while constantly stopping in the middle because of boredom. While i emphasize the art was good, the story was seriously hard to discern, because of this character that swept by the unrelentless curent of plot! Overall: 4 (Spitefull) i didn't recommend this to anyone whose source of entertainment was Kawai bullshit and Flashy Action. Though i recommend this movie to those fujoshi. For those with open taste with wide range of receptive capabilities in entertainment, just turn of your mind, enjoy the colour, and there you go, 120 minutes of highly eye stimulating video.
Artwork I'll start off with the art and consistency of it. It's very consistent in terms of the drawn sections of the anime the quality never really dropped in terms of that style. The problem is that there is multiple instances of CG used in the film which detracts a fair good amount from it's visuals. I still managed to appreciate it but clash of styles if very clear. Sound Design. A day from watching the event I can't remember any of the music that were used but there are definitely moments in the film that music definitely elevated scenes well and there are times when the director/editorknew when not to use music. Story The story has a rather simple premise but the story doesn't rush its premise and shows you in depth what it's going to be about but still manages to not answer everything. The story goes to many different locations during the film moving from place to place to the point where it arguably could have stayed in locations for longer but none of the locations felt like they spent too long there. It's a film that has a few twists and turns and some of them can be on the obvious side if you've watched many Sci Fi classics. Setting Set in the latter half of the 1800s (1870s area) it does for the most part establish that well. It isn't like our version of that so there are several differences. I feel that some of the buildings shouldn't be as futuristic for the time that they are set in. Characters The characters are all to an extent archetypes of characters you already know. The Main character feels like your average main character that is rather smart (thought he doesn't show much of that during the film) though his name in popular culture would say otherwise. The film does focus more on story progression but the character do evolve slightly with the way that they are thinking. Enjoyment I enjoyed this film thoroughly but I did find a 5 minute section near the ending to be not as entertaining as I would have liked. There is a constant struggle with the main character and his friend that does feel rather repetitive and by the 3rd time it happens I had a good indication what was roughly going to happen later Misc Unfortunately I feel that the synopsis and character list slightly spoil/ruin the movie if and so I would recommend not reading that but I'm pretty that's going to convince most of you to read it. I watched this at the MCM Loves Anime event where everyone aside from me (aside from two girls who came back during the end) left during the credits of the film. They missed the epilogue that happened at the end of the credits which is important to see as it's important to know actually know what happens so remember to watch the credits or at least the last minute of it. Overall To conclude it's a good film that I would recommend people to go watch. It has some repetitive moments but unfortunately the last 20 minutes seems to get a lot of people that watch it confused. If you don't pay too much attention to films then I can see why you could easily get confused as some things don't get explained twice though most things do.
It has a very good plot, but its kind of hard to follow. I have to watch it more than once to completely understand the movie. but overall, all of the confusion is worth it for the masterpiece plot. I love the the artworks, it is beautiful the soundtrack is also good to hear. what I love the most is how EGOIST successfully fit in the movie. The character development is kind of slow, but it is still acceptable. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. But it left some unanswered questions. if you like a goth anime such as black butler theme, you should watch it!
Empire of Corpses depicts an alternate interpretation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein mixed with several characters from other notable Victorian era stories. Set in an alternate Victorian era England where technology used to reanimate corpses has allowed for England's quick technological advance, corpse engineer John Watson illegally reanimates the corpse of his close friend and former partner, Friday. To avoid punishment for his crimes, Watson is given the mission of retrieving the journal of the famous Victor Frankenstein, whose records have information on potential advances in reanimation of corpses that could allow them to gain free will and the possible restoration of their original soul. Empire ofCorpses offers off a great balance of adventure and philosophical dilemmas in its focus on Watson's search for Frankenstein's journal. I'll dabble into the adventure aspect first as that will be more straightforward to discuss over the philosophical elements. Watson's search for the journal with his allies lead him to trek to Russia and Japan in search of its whereabouts. This provides some solid world building to exploring how these countries each make use of the reanimation technology and provide more exploration of what the contents of Frankenstein's journal would mean for the reanimation process. Some shocking plot twists come about with the revelations from the journal, as the series introduces a couple villains who have their own ulterior motives for using the journal's knowledge. One of them will be very familiar to those who have read Mary Shelly's novel and their motives play into the movie's philosophical themes very nicely. The other antagonist plays into more conventional territory with his motives where while a unique twist to standard “take over the world” motives of villainy, still comes off as cliched and less intriguing compared to the other notable villain of Empire of Corpses. The philosophical element that comes into play is regarding the corpses as sentient forms of life. Within the alternate world portrayed in Empire of Corpses, the corpses that serve humanity are regarded as little more than tools, much in the same vain that alternate futures portrayed in sci-fi anime would usually involve human treatment of robots. This is a moral dilemma faced by Watson throughout much of the film as he desires Frankenstein's journal to uncover a means to restore Friday's soul back to his body, yet comes to realize the flaws of such research when he discovers the ethical lines that are crossed when trying to produce a corpse having free will. The dilemma is further complicated by the emergence of one of the movie's villains who faces his own personal tragedy from the society established in the movie and seeks to correct it by any means, even if it risks the fall of humanity to do so. This sparks an interesting debate similar to what is portrayed within Mary Shelly's classic novel if one could consider our villain and the revived corpses to be humans or monsters. The movie ending wraps up this dilemma in an ambiguous matter intentionally to allow viewers to come to their own conclusions over how to justify the treatment of corpses and what defines a living being as man or monster. Visually, Empire of Corpses is an impressive-looking film that depicts steampunk-like settings with how life within the alternate reality of the movie gets depicted. Settings are drawn to be faithfully accurate to the time period in which the series is portrayed while mixed with steampunk elements that include the use of steam-powered technology and automatons that are major components to the world of the movie. The historical accuracy is also passed along to the type of dress that British and Japanese characters have around the time period, with a minor issue being Hadaly's style of dress clashing badly with public decency trends of the time with her cleavage being on prominent display. Animation is consistently fluid throughout the film from the movement of vehicles to the unnatural and disturbing slow walking of the reanimated corpses as they assist their masters and attack intruders or enemy threats. As a fair warning, this film is quite bloody and disturbing at many points with the integration of reanimated corpses into society and some nasty methods of death that take place as more of the plot regarding Frankenstein's diary gets unveiled, thus I would avoid showing this off to younger or more sensitive viewers. But if you have the stomach to handle this film's macabre themes and plot, Empire of Corpses offers an engaging adventure that dabbles into themes from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein in its own unique way and offers some surprising developments that Watson and his comrades encounter throughout their search for Frankenstein's diary.
I have an interesting history with this here work of art. The first time I watched it was without hearing any sound/dialogues. I was sitting in a bar with friends and it was playing on one of the screens. So I was periodically looking up and that was how I watched entire thing for the first time. It seemed quite interesting. The art was decent and whatever was happening on the screen seemed very intriguing. But then recently I've decided to watch the whole thing properly. And God knows that was a mistake. While the premise of the world it is set in sounds interesting -the writers did absolutely 0 with it. It seems as if the story and characters where written by a complete and utter amateur (probably drunk most of the time), who wanted something 'meaningful and philosophical' but ended with bat**it insane in the end. It does raise some questions, or, rather, throws them in the air and has them crash into absolutely painful to listen to dialogues, that leave you understanding less and less the longer the thing goes on. Characters - God Almighty, such badly written characters with completely and utterly nonsensical motivations is almost a wonder to behold. Only they weren't intended to be that, which is sad. And it throws in an android in for a good measure. Someone probably went like 'sure, we haven't achieved anything with the zombie concept, but lets add androids in as well, it will be fine'. In essence - if this premise was handed over to half competent people - this would have probably been a much better story. As it stand - don't waste your time with it.
Shisha no Teikoku is a psychological anime with a Victorian Steampunk setting and the unusual twist of zombies which, in this universe, play a vital part in the worlds economy. The core of the story was extremely intriguing and, if transposed differently, could have made for a exceptionally delightful film experience. It started off well with an eerie yet gripping scene that made for a truly exiting first impression. Yet I first got bothered by the first proper dialog, in which the plot was presented in a manner which was unclear to me. Throughout the whole movie the conversations built around the progress of the plotwould be the most frustrating factor for me, since too often I was not quite sure in which direction the story was heading or what the incentive of the antagonists were. I find it a great shame that such a rich and promising story line fell short of its worth in its anime adaption. Yet I must commend the atmospheric value this film had with its melancholy and macabre feel and its harrowing setting which I thoroughly enjoyed. The art of this anime was its strongest point in my opinion, the animation is impeccable and the art design utterly beautiful. I especially loved the mechanical details and would consider this movie a treat to people who enjoy eye-candy as much as I do. The soundtrack to this film was pleasant and fitting yet nothing stood out to me as remarkable. My critique on the Characters range from both sides of the spectrum. On the one hand I liked the many different character designs that were created, used and invented upon. On the other hand I often thought the characters to be one dimensional and distant. At times it seemed as if the protagonist, John H. Watson, was somewhat detached even though it was evident that he was not supposed to be a cold character. Yet in other scenes he would show a great amount of emotion. It's a pity that his personality is this inconsistent since the emotional experience plays a big role in the enjoyment of this film due to the morals and philosophy of the story. I would have liked him to be more feeling throughout all of his scenes due to the inner impact they left. The degree to which Shisha no Teikoku entertains is based heavily upon whether you as an observer enjoy the genre or not and how much you value emotionally stimulating visuals and story lines. I myself adore Victorian Steampunk settings as much as I like to feel touched and mournful during a movie and am therefore quite biased towards this film. All in all even though I had a lot to criticize about this film I still enjoyed it very much and would definitely consider re watching it for its stunning visuals and the emotional turmoil it sent me through.
Today, I have decided to check a new local anime streaming site and picked one of their anime to watch. Knowing that this anime is having an EGOIST song as their ending, I quickly clicked for this anime movie. This is an anime produced by WIT Studio, Empire of Corpses or Shisha no Teikoku While the premise of this anime is very unique and the progression is pretty good, I found the ending is a bit disappointing. The ending is not as grand as what I have thought in the beginning of the movie and left me with a feeling of "What? Why?" just because itis a little bit rushed in their way to the major villain's reveal. Most maybe caused by the travels that supposed to feel a little bit longer in that time feels too much fast like they were travelling with planes which was not invented back then. It was not immersive. I think the best way to fix this is to make the travels a bit longer and that's why the first half is better than the last half. Which that leads us to the character building of this anime. I think almost all of the character is not fully built and I think it as a major flaw caused by how the story flows. I felt like Friday and Watson's background was not explored enough to make us attached to them even they are the main characters of this anime. It is a bit saddening since I really wanted to know more about Friday and Watson's relationship before Friday's supposed death. The soundtrack is pretty epic for their action sequences but I think the most impressive is the ending by EGOIST which has this vibe of mystery and made the anime ended with more mystery lurking around it. Overall, I think this anime have so much things to be patched with. Since the world build has been done so well, this anime have a great potential but ultimately wasted it in the last half of the anime. You still should give it a try, though.
Skip to the last sentence if you want to know my overall opinion of the movie This is spoiler heavy because I give no respect to this movie: Instead of writing a review based on my choice of scores, I will just write about the things that annoyed me throughout the movie and some things I like. My choice of scores are pretty much the same as the people who rated this a low overall score. Also, this is my second time watching this after a year because everything that happened in the first viewing went over my head. There is a deep philosophical discussion thatcan be made of one of the themes: what makes us human? Or in other words, what makes a soul? They explicitly say that if anything has language, it has a consious ( I disagree but that isn't my point in this paragraph). I just hate how producers think that if they put some deep philosophical aspect, they can be lazy with the rest of the movie, show, book, etc in terms of story. I felt like all the main characters were just a form of media to speak upon the author's view on this theme. The whole time is just characters saying what they believe in and then some action happens. Its as if the transition from book to movie was physically stuck in the process and the characters are half-book and there just to read out loud. I personally am not too critical on things like movies and books anymore because it makes the enjoyment go down but this movie just made me sigh at times and forced me to criticize it negatively. To sum this up: I hate it when shows are trying to be profound but awkwardly force deep concepts without trying to make their story any good. You know the story sucks when you boil it down without trying to boil it down when trying to remember what happened. Good stories and bad stories can all be boiled down and all be the same. This is defines an archetype. What separates a good movie and a bad one is the creativity that can make a story seem unique and memorable. In this movie, all I can remember that happened was: a guy reanimated his friend to find out what a soul is, he got found out so he had to go on a mission to prevent punishment, his mission is to find notes that can help his research, action happens, he finds the notes, characters babble about half-assed philosophy, villain (both) wants to use the notes to kill all of humanity for some dumbass reason, main characters stop them, they babble some more, no real conclusion. You really have to pay attention to every word they say to understand what's going on because it seems like the producer does not know how to properly tell a story without making the characters explicitly say what's going on at each part. A good story has to have good and creative transitions to the next scene. This does not have that. The reason why I even came across this movie was because of Egoist, a band I like that composed the ending song. In my opinion, the best part of the movie was the ending credits (LOL). I haven't read the book but I feel as if this movie missed a lot of key parts that made this story enjoyable because people seem to enjoy the book series. I read Harmony, one of Project Itoh's other stories, and probably enjoyed the movie more than I should have. Now that I am thinking more about that movie, I think that Harmony suffered the same exact problems as this movie in the sense of contrived conversations of philosophy and generic story line. Both movies only seemed good in the trailer because of the art and hint of the deep societal themes. These movies are, in my opinion, "Oscar Bait". That refers to movies that try to be deep and take on heavy themes to try to be profound and end up being bad. In conclusion, don't even watch this pretty piece of shit because its long and a waste of time.
We’ve all heard the story of Victor Frankenstein and his creation, which often gets mistaken for him. Some versions tell of his monster dancing to Puttin’ on the Ritz, some versions tell of his monster battling an ancient order of gargoyles, and some versions tell of his monster’s daughter attending high school with other Halloween Bratz rejects. But what no version of this classic story has ever told you is that the old doctor was only the first person to successfully reanimate a corpse. His creation could move on it’s own, it could speak, it could make decisions for itself, it could promote strawberry cereal...But aside from the doctor, nobody could replicate this feat. By the 1800s, technological necromancy was so popular that the soulless, silent husks of the departed had been relegated to the roles of menial workers, performing simple tasks for their fleshy masters, just like at the end of Shaun of the Dead. It was seen as impossible to imbue a reanimated corpse(they’re VERY specific about avoiding the zed word) with a soul, thus the Doctor and his creation became the stuff of legends. Much like Nikola Tesla, Dr. Frankenstein never released his revolutionary methods to the public, and he and his creation have unfortunately disappeared into time. While it’s entirely possible that the old doctor is living it up in Storybrook and getting freaky with Snow White, and that his monster, labelled by history as “The One” is off somewhere battling other monsters on the side of a bunch of obnoxious children, history has marched on, with all soul reanimation research becoming illegal in Great Britain. Cut to relatively present times, where a young Dr. John Watson has undertaken the not-so-elementary task of figuring out the old Doctor’s work. With a freshly reanimated corpse working as his close assistant, he picks up a bunch of... People... Who join his journey because of... Reasons... As they all push forward on an Unexpected journey to find Doctor Frankenstein’s notes and bring a real soul into the body of his deceased... Friend? I think? And in orer to get it, he’ll brave any number of savage, flesh eating totally-not-zombie hordes, even as they spontaneously combust in his face. But sooner rather than later, he’ll have to ask himself... Who are the true monsters? I’ve said before that Production IG is one of the most solid you’ll find, as they tend to produce some of the best looking anime of their time(and a few bombs, but it’s still a really impressive ratio). Empire of Corpses unfortunately wasn’t made by Production IG, at least not on paper. It was produced by Wit Studio, which is a smaller studio founded by producers from IG, so it’s basically the Touchstone to IG’s Disney. This smaller studio was actually founded very recently, as it’s first known work was released in 2013, and that was of course the original Attack on Titan. Despite it’s overblown reputation, Titan wasn’t the best looking anime, as used a handful of budget saving tricks to maximize it’s visual quality, but they were all somewhat noticeable and distracting, and the thick outlines didn’t help either. Empire of corpses is a decent improvement over this method, because while there wasn’t a huge increase in budget between the two shows, Empire ia a lot better at hiding it’s flaws and shortcuts. One thing I noticed about this film in terms of quality control is how a good chunk of the budget was spent on actions scenes, most of which take place in bright daylight, and they paved the way for this by spending a lot of the film’s run time in the dark, using heavy shadows and CG fog effects to hide what would have looked a lot cheaper upon closer and more well-lit inspection. Over-all, the animation looks solid enough to be above complaint. People move as much as they need to, and they never really freeze in the background. The animation is pretty good, but the artwork is nothing short of exquisite. The character designs are a little on the generic side, and that goes for both the living AND the undead, but they’re still polished and consistently on-model enough. The lighting and shading are meticulously realistic, the coloring in the darker and more intense scenes is satisfyingly eerie, and the backgrounds are beautifully designed and atmospheric, and trust me, there are a ton of backgrounds in this movie. There’s a lot of travel between different countries in this film, including what I believe were many different setting across America, England, India, Russia and Japan, and the level of detail is mind numbing all across the board. Far off shots reveal entire towns, lit by fire and the earliest gasps of technology against the night sky, and the chaos of thousands of people dealing with the onslaught of their once docile reanimated servants is captured beautifully in all it’s carnage. The intricacies get even more elaborate as we explore a number of indoor locations, such as a Japanese chemical company and the Tower of London, where 2D and 3D animation are flawlessly combined to show off technological environments that are guaranteed to ignite the fancies of any steampunk fan who happens to be watching. There’s also simpler settings, like the cozy interior of the USS Richmond, any number of towns the cast has to pass through, and several real life geographical locations. All in all, this film did a hell of a job in the visual department. The English dub is also quite commendable, with the adaptive script from John Burgmeier of course being respectful to the source material, although whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you. The dialogue for this movie is overloaded with exposition and long winded explanations, and while that kind of thing is hard to make up for through adaptation, the actors still manage to rise above the material they’ve been given. Jason Leibricht is the voice you’ll hear the most, and while the chunks of dialogue he gets can occasionally be tiresome, he doesn’t sound like he’s just reading it from a cue card, either. It sounds like he’s in character, talking to us in his natural voice, and while that doesn’t entirely make up for the material, it’s easily the best anybody could have done with it. This is especially impressive from him because, in the Japanese, the narrator and John Watson were played by different people, but he takes all of it on himself. And thankfully, when the explanations are set aside, he does a fantastic job emoting in his more story-driven scenes. But speaking of emoting, you really have to give it up for Todd Haberkorn, who plays the mostly mute character Friday, and in order to perform his wordless grunts and attempted vocalizations, he had to call upon a level of voice control that I haven’t heard out of anybody other than Brittany Karbowski, who I’d previously dubbed as the queen of in-character suffering. He brings the necessary elements of pain and tragedy to the character, and even when he does get to speak, he winds up doing so on two different occasions, using two equally perfect accents... British and Russian. J Michael Tatum is a joy to listen to with his gruff, charming cockney accent, sounding like a guy you just wanna go get a beer with. Mike McFarland and Micah Solusod don’t get a lot of screen time, but they still put forth admirable Russian accents, and Morgan Garrett plays the British femme fatale Hadalay like she was born to be a mysterious Bond girl. Greg Dulcie sounds convincing as former president Ulysses S Grant, and R Bruce Elliot plays a cool yet incredibly intimidating take on Frankenstein’s classic monster. Solid English dub all around, can’t recommend it enough. Now, when I hear the name Empire of Corpses, and then someone tells me that it’s a story loosely connected to the Frankenstein mythos, the first image that ops into my head is a bit more of a metaphorical take on that title than we actually get. I picture in my head that moment from Berserk when Griffith is just realizing how many people have died for him to get as far as he has, how many more he’ll have to kill to get there, and just how many deaths will have been wasted if he turns back and gives up. The idea of pairing that image with a follower of Dr. Frankenstein in a world where reanimated corpses are a societal norm opens up a slew of tantalizing possibilities, quite a few of which had me eager to sit down and see if all of this movie’s poor reviews were really indicative of it’s potential. I didn’t get quite what I was expecting from it, but that also doesn’t mean there wasn’t some potential in what I DID get. Instead of a dark character study on an insane genius losing his grip on reality, we get a mostly sane-minded scientist getting scooped up on a Hobbit-style journey alongside other individuals with their own relationships to reanimation science and their opinions on how to use it. Is that a bad scenario? No, not at all. The exploration of an idea through the different perspectives of a number of unique, diverse characters can often result in some really enjoyable think pieces, especially if there’s action and in-fighting to challenge them and a dark mystery going on below the surface to increase the stakes of the story. So why is it that out of four entire attempts to watch this film all the way through, I wound up falling asleep every single time? Sometimes multiple times? Well, two of the movie’s huge problems are evident right at the beginning. Not even ten minutes into the film, we’ve already been given two mutually exclusive expository monologues from the main character, one being about his work and the other being about the world the story is taking place in, how Dr. Frankenstein’s work has affected the world as it is, and especially the way it’s affected the warfare of the times. Exposition in a movie can be tiresome at the best of times, with the obligatory Star Wars text scroll being on the high end, but this just keeps going on and on. And the other problem may not be as prevalent, but it’s far more damaging to the story... We see Watson reanimate Friday, his new corpse servant, but we’re not given any ideas as to who Friday was, what relationship he had to Watson, OR why we’re supposed to care about him being given a soul. We find out around the hour mark that he’s Watson’s former partner and he volunteered to be resurrected upon his death, but at no point are we given any reason to want him to become whole again, which makes all of the trouble they go through to achieve this end feel kind of meaningless. We’re given plenty of reasons to want Ed Elric to get his brother’s soul back, because we knew Alphonse as a child, and we were all given ample time and reason to fall in love with him. On the contrary, you take a movie like Logan, where Professor X is elderly and suffering from dementia, turning his mind into a deadly weapon of mass destruction, and every tragedy that Wolverine’s caring for him causes... Including the slaughter of an entire family that he insisted on visiting... Just winds up feeling like the consequences of pursuing a really bad idea, even though it’s not presented as such. It’s hard to not feel that way when John Watson’s dedication to bringing life back to Friday winds up causing untold death and destruction, including a scene where Friday literally loses control and murders a random young woman in the street, and you don’t know enough about their previous relationship to address extremely potent questions like whether or not this quest was worth pursuing in the first place, and whether or not just letting the poor zombie die and ending said quest in it’s tracks would be for the better. I might have been able to get behind his resurrection and Watson’s steadfast resolve if the two of them were best friends, going all the way back to childhood with a dependence on one another. Hell, if they were previously lovers, that would make it even more compelling. But if we as the audience aren’t given a reason to care, why the hell should we WANT to see Friday resurrected with all of this destruction lying in his wake? All of the bad things that happen in the film are unequivocally Watson’s fault, so we’d better be getting a satisfying resolution out of it. But all of that isn’t the reason I kept falling asleep. See, this movie’s overall story just isn’t engaging. At all. I know I said that the people in charge of animating and dubbing were on the top of their game, but between the writer and the director, somebody made a bunch of embarrassingly amateurish mistakes, and I’m not just talking about forgetting to mark large passages of time, like a year long time skip towards the middle of the film... although that did happen. The structure is sloppy from beginning to end, to the point that I honestly wasn’t surprised that it was based on a novel, because I normally only see execution this bad when people are trying to cram entire books into a 2 hour format. I haven’t read the original novel, nor do I intend to, but the movie feels like someone set out to hit all the important plot points of the story, and in doing so, found they had to sacrifice everything that wasn’t necessary to the outline. This would explain why the pacing was so bad, with the story jumping from scene to scene at a breakneck speed, with little attempt to ease the viewer through each major scene conversion. It also probably explains why there is literally... Yes, I mean literally... No character development throughout the entire film. Oh, you learn things about the characters you didn’t know before, and you get to see them react to different events, but you never see anybody develop. I don’t mind if one or two characters are the same at the end as they were in the beginning, especially when there’s an in-universe explanation like in Steins;Gate, but everybody? They relegate months worth of traveling together and getting to know each other and learning about each other into a brief montage, then they expect you to care when two characters suddenly get killed off. Oh no, the guy who looks like that and had that voice got killed both by and alongside the guy who just showed up a couple of minutes ago to dump exposition on us, how will we ever replace them? Oh, I know, we’ll replace them with a brand new random character who’ll stick with us a little while and then ALSO disappear from the film completely! There’s groundwork for a decent message about the importance of equality, as the reanimated corpses are being used as slaves and servants for the more fortunate, and I figured this was intentional from the fact that the main cast was British and a lot of the corpses were Indian, but several events and revelations in the third act that I don’t want to get into kind of squashed that potential for depth into the dirt. Oh, but speaking of the third act, here’s something interesting about the movie’s climax... It’s a rip-off of two separate anime combined into one... Fullmetal Alchemist, and Evangelion! Oh yeah, it starts out as a rip-off of the big Philosopher’s Stone reveal, and it swerves headfirst right into a rip-off of the human Instrumentality project! That’s what all of this was leading to! That’s what all of this emotionally bankrupt action and dialogue that was at least seventy-five percent full of exposition was leading to. Also, and I hate to bring this up so late in the review, but if the walking dead in this universe are created through science, why does their bite create more of them? Consistency, people. Empire of corpses is available from Funimation. While the original novel is not available stateside... Or at least, I can’t find it... His other novels, including Harmony, Genocidal Organ and a novelization of Meta Gear solid: Guns oif the Patriots, are available from Viz Media, are. The movie versions of Harmony and Genocidal Organ are also available on DVD from Funimation. Okay, I know I went off on this movie for being badly written and devoid of any emotional resonance, but honestly, I still kind of recommend checking it out. It’s not every day you get to see zombies that have been turned into suicidal biological bombs, there’s quite a few interesting ideas on display, and when the director really wanted to buckle down and get you invested in a scene, it can at least be entertaining, if only in those few scenes. It’s also worth watching for the outstanding visual quality and the top notch English dub, but don’t misunderstand me, this movie just isn’t very good, and it’s attempts to weave a connected history through Thomas Edison, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Frankenstein, President Grant and even the Bond films feels more like a poorly planned experiment than an expanded universe. It’s hard for me to fully get behind a movie that I can’t for the life of me stay awake through, but it does have some merits. You may need an energy drink to get through it, but personally, I don’t regret seeing it. I give Empire of corpses a 4/10.
TLDR: You wont regret not watching this. -The Good First, the good. The animation and graphics is clearly top notch; no expense was spared here. Even the faces of the zombies were well animated. The world and setting was particularly interesting; Victorian-era steampunk London? Love it. -The Bad This show reminded me the most of Ghost in the Shell with its long expositions and ruminations on the nature of the soul, the seat of human consciousness, and self-awareness. Sadly, the story is nowhere near the quality of GiTS and is largely pretentious, incomprehensible and exasperating.-Stupid Story The central, critical flaw of this story is that the motivations of the characters were completely illogical and unbelievable. Whereas the setting may change, human beings and their motivations remain the same. In the present case, what we are stuck with are cardboard, paper thin characters who act in illogical ways to advance the story. In the original Frankenstein, Victor is driven by the death of his mother to experiment into the giving of life to the dead. In this story however, the characters have no such driving passion; it is never explained why all the scientists are so captivated by the idea that they willingly sacrifice their own lives, and more damningly, what purpose will their deaths serve. In all, I am given the distinct impression that the director/storywriter threw in as many of these meaningless grand gestures as possible in the mistaken belief that this will somehow add pathos to the story. It does not; instead the viewer is left scratching his/her head at the apparent stupidity of the people in that world. -Conclusion Watch this only if you have time to kill and are willing to enjoy the animation without giving thought to the story. If you are the type who demands stories that make sense, give this a pass.
No spoilers, just what I thought about the film. I was very excited to watch Shisha no Teikoku (Empire of Corpses) after seeing the trailer and the art style. Without reading the premise, I jumped into this movie blind. Unfortunately, I was utterly disappointed. The late 1800s setting was an interesting choice and the premise of "reanimation" of humans was fair but that was all there is to it. The plot was confusing, hard to follow, and jumped everywhere; I was never sure of anyone's actual motives. Characters play a huge role to my personal enjoyment and in this movie, it lacked. I do not feel any kindof relation or understanding for any of the characters and what they are trying to accomplish. The art and ending by EGOIST is the highlights of this film, I'd say. Although the art is not extraordinary, it looks pleasing to the eye and appears smooth and modern. Overall, I did not enjoy much of this film and would not recommend it. I'd just listen to the ending and forget the film ever existed. I give it 1 point for the art, 1 point for the EGOIST ending, 1 point for the interesting setting, and 1 point for trying.
The premise to this is so good even the animaton and voice acting is superb yet this film fell flat on its face. Ive never seen so much potential in something that could've had so much depth wasted. The film has an inability to focus. It tries to do too much in a small time frame with too many characters and story lines that are either unnecessary or somewhat intresting but never explained and leaves you standing there like what was the point. The best thing about this film was Friday's and Watsons relationship that's what made the first 15 minutes of this movie goodand grabs your attention. The relationship was complicated. Friday is the corspe of Watsons deceased friend. And Watson has been trying to return Fridays soul and or find out if it still exist. You'd think that would be a good enough plot to focus on but nope not for these writers. They completely abandon the depth that they founded in the first 15 minutes of the movie for ridiculous bullshit. Friday and Watson somehow gets involved in Foreign affairs, ended up fighting Zombie terrorist o yeah read right ZOMBIE TERRORIST. Then at the end they battle the Frankenstein monster. I just couldnt believe something that could've been a masterpiece was wasted in such a horrible way it was like a completely different person with no writting skill whatsoever took over after the first 15 minutes it really is a crying shame.
The idea that someone could speak ill of this is unfathomable. You will only fail to enjoy this movie if you come in with wildly inaccurate expectations. This is perhaps not the MOST cerebral flick around, but it isn't like there is nothing to chew on from that angle. As a tale of one man's search for an almost philosophers stone-esque ideal, it's explores its chosen intellectual premises quite thoroughly. Don't waste your time watching this solo. Some of the historical references are just a touch on the obscure side, enough that having some extra manpower around to increase the chances someone knows what is going onwill increase your enjoyment. While there isn't strictly any actual comedy in the movie, you'll be hard pressed not to burst into laughter at times. MOSTLY though, this film is incredible because it is like a million rad as hell things crammed into a single movie, mostly coherently. This film has everything. Cool steampunk necromancy bullshit, Ulysses S. Grant, 007, flamethrowers, the Afghan War but with zombie ninjas, frankensteins, samurai, seriously they covered it all. All animated with the sort of love and attention we've come to expect from the increasingly well resourced Wit Studios.