Silent Möbius: V.2 Twists of Fate (ep.10-18) [DVD]

Features

• Type: DVD
• Studio: Vid Canada
• Language(s): english, japanese
• Director(s): Hideaki Ôba, Hiroyuki Kurimoto, Ken Andô, Kunitoshi Okajima, Masato Sato, Nobuharu Kamanaka, Senhô Yoshioka, Shigeharu Takahashi
• Actor(s): Naoko Matsui, Hiromi Tsuru, Chieko Honda, Maya Okamoto, Barry W. Levy, Nicole Amos, Lisa Ann Beley, Don Brown, Toshiko Fujita, Ellen Kennedy

Revelations, counter-revelations, flashbacks, dream sequences, and illusions pile up until even the filmmakers don't seem to know what's going on in the second set of television episodes based on the 1991 feature film. The original plot, in which the all-female AMP or Attacked Mystification Police fought the Lucifer Hawk, flesh-eating monsters from another dimension, gets hopelessly lost. The attempts to add depth to the characters needlessly complicate the story: cheerful Yuki is the product of yet another program of illegal biogenetic experiments and was once lost in time. Tough cyborg Kiddy resists a deadly mecha virus that threatens her police-officer boyfriend. Katsumi's long-suffering beau Roy breaks up a high-level plot to turn police officers into monsters capable of fighting the Lucifer Hawk. Apparently members of the Lucifer Hawk can breed with humans to produce "human children with the power of demons"; both AMP chief Rally Cheyenne and Katsumi are described as "half Lucifer Hawk"--although both Katsumi's parents have been shown as humans in several flashbacks. Stunned by this revelation, Katsumi refuses to use her powers "against family" and leaves the squad for six months, but that absence may just have been an illusion created by the sinister Ganossa Maxmillian. The limited budget of the TV series appears to be stretched very thin in these episodes: designer Yasuhiro Moriki's Blade Runner-influenced images of a dystopic future Tokyo lashed by acid rain have lost much of their initial punch. Rated 13 Up: Violence, profanity, brief nudity, alcohol use. --Charles Solomon