Old (well, early 90s) anime film that just popped into my head fairly recently that [sort-of ironically] otherwise I'd forgotten about. I saw it once back when the Sci-Fi channel used to show anime films at midnight on a, like, Friday or Saturday night (whatever it was) about 10 or 11 years ago. I remember thinking at the time that it was brilliant but having forgotten virtually everything about it, I thought it was about time to give it a re-watch. You.. didn't really need to know all that. Still... er....

It didn't really hold up as well as I remember it being, to be honest. But at the same time, I wasn't really expecting it to. The characters are, in many respects, very typical Japanese anime characters. You have the tough, determined, slightly naive but always having good intentions lead with a sexy, mysterious, sometimes naked female support character. They're both hunted by a giant robot killing machine. Occasionally everything seems to stop so they can have philosophical debates about "what is life anyway" and all that jazz. It's pretty standard stuff I guess.

The story itself, although not entirely original in being about a post-apocalyptic world where there's just one man and a woman left, whilst they fend off all the crazies/savages around them, it still has splashes of originality throughout. The big reveal at the end has virtually no impact at all, however, because you either a) saw it coming, or b) don't really care or c) both of the above.

The way the plot develops is like a series of mini stories, and I can't help feel that it would've been better served as a short TV series rather than cramped up into a little movie like this. You do want to see the world they have created, more of the people in it, but at the same time, it didn't really seem like they had much of an idea about how to progress from here. It was a little repetitive, trying to hammer home the same message about what actually makes people happy. Or, indeed, are we really "happy" at all.

I feel like I'm waffling. I'm probably waffling. I'll stop waffling.