Casshern DVD Review

Adapted from a long running anime of the same name Casshern is the story of Tetsuya, a young man living in a post-apocalyptic pan-asian society that has been engaged in a decades long war.  Though the war has officially been won the fighting has not stopped as troops are continually shipped out to hunt down a supposed terrorist threat.  Society is ruled by a military dictatorship and though the capital city has apparently survived relatively intact the surrounding countryside is a shelled-out ruin, utterly devastated by the lengthy conflict, and the environment has slowly been turned toxic by the use of powerful weaponry and pollution spewing armaments factory.  Birth defects are commonplace and many – including Tetsuya’s own mother – are stricken by degenerative diseases as a consequence of the toxic environment. 

Obsessed with finding a cure for his wife Tetsuya’s father Asawa – a genetics researcher – has stumbled across something he terms neo-cells, a primeval cell type that can be easily cultured into any organ or limb, essentially allowing scientists to build a stockpile of spare parts to cure any illness.  Recognizing the potential for war time application the military offers to fund Asawa’s research – an arrangement he accepts only because he so desperately needs money and resources to continue his research to save his wife. 

Driven by a mixture of national pride and a desire to spite his father Tetsuya signs up for military service, leaving his family and young fiancé behind.  Tetsuya is, of course, killed on the battlefield and his body shipped back home to his parents.  Asawa is notified of his son’s death while giving his fiance’s father – a researcher specializing in experimental armors – a tour through his genetics lab and just as he breaks the news the lab is struck by a bolt of lightning.  The sudden power surge triggers a reaction in one of the grow vats and the body parts spontaneously begin to knit themselves together, forming fully grown, super human beings who term themselves neo-sapiens.  Seeing that Asawa’s experiment is running outside of their control the military panics and sends in troops to slaughter the neo-sapiens as they are birthed from the tanks, leading to a bloody massacre that only a small handful survive. 

Realizing that he now has the ability to give life to dead flesh Asawa fetches the corpse of his son, immerses him in the tank, and brings him back to life.  Tetsuya now shares the neo-sapien’s immense strength but, due to the circumstances surrounding his own re-birth, he is physically unstable, his body literally on the verge of tearing itself apart.  Thus his future father in law whisks him away to his own lab where Tetsuya is encased in a suit of specialized body armor that provides him with the support he needs to hold himself together while also giving him extra powers.

And what of the surviving neo-sapiens?  The flee deep into the surrounding wasteland where they stumble across an abandoned fortress, presumably belonging to some defeated foe, which at one time was used as a manufacturing plant for military robots.  Driven by hatred for the humans who slaughtered them the surviving neo-sapiens swear vengeance upon humanity and begin to build a robot army to destroy all of civilization.

Got all that?  It’s not as complicated as it seems, really.

Casshern is a distinctly Japanese film and like all Japanese science fiction it was born squarely in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The conflicted love-hate relationship the Japanese have with technology is on open display here.  Will technology save us or destroy us, one level of the film is asking, and the answer is simply yes.  Technology has the potential to bring about immense benefits or immense harm and there is no society in the world more keenly aware of both sides of that coin that the Japanese.  It is also a keenly Japanese film in its blend of action with philosophy.  While the action sequences are impressive it is important to bear in mind that they are purely secondary to the main thrust of the film and thus are given a secondary level of screen time.  The action sequences here are somewhat analogous to the action sequences in a Takeshi Kitano film – they’re present, and they’re mighty impressive, but they’re there to support the larger story not to become the story.  In other words if you come to Casshern looking only for a lot of big explosions you’re going to be frustrated by the lengthy pauses between things going boom.

What fills those pauses?  Quite a lot, really.  Casshern is a glaringly anti-war film and spends a great deal of time exploring the issue from different angles.  We see it from the participant’s level, from the cultures swept away, from the bereaved parents, and from the military and political level.  Why do we fight, the film asks, and how can we stop it?  Various subtexts that pop up throughout – the ethics of stem cell research, creating fear of a likely fictitious foe for political gain, the manipulation of the media – are remarkably timely, so much so that many could have been lifted from current headlines.

And what about the visuals?  Could a film shot for a reported six million dollars possibly look as good as those trailers suggest?  You bet.  In fact I’d go so far as to say that the trailers frequently under-sell just how impressive this film is on a visual level.  Vocal dubs are pretty much anathema around these parts but I frequently found myself wishing that this included a dubbed version so that I wouldn’t have to keep looking down at the bottom of the screen to read the subtitles.  I was very, very thankful that I am a very fast reader.  There are a few visual hiccups along the way thanks to Kiriya’s ‘everything including the kitchen sink’ approach.  He uses every visual technique imaginable and though they generally mesh incredibly well there are a couple moments where he moves from a highly processed shot to cleaner, more natural shots where the shift in style is a little bit jarring.  That said the ninety five percent of the film where everything fits as intended is some of the most beautiful film you’ll ever see.  The production design is distinctly retro-tech, lifting elements from the art-deco movement, German expressionism, Nazi propaganda films, classic monster films and more straightforward anime design, and it is flawlessly executed with a staggering attention to detail.  Everywhere you look in this film, on every single inch of the screen, you will find something to occupy your eye.  We’re not just talking eye candy here, we’re talking a multiple course meal.

As for the DVD itself, while I have not yet looked at any of the special features, the film is given a flawless transfer, a killer DTS audio track, impressively nuanced English subtitles and is beautifully packaged.  I said right at the beginning that Casshern had the potential to be an instant classic.  It has lived up to that potential.  Check it out.