Twilight of the Dark Master

Publisher
MVM
Director
Akiyuki Shinbo
Production
Madhouse
Country of origin
Japan
Format
OVA
Running time
50 mins
Year
1997

Twilight of the Dark Master

By Adam Cook
13th Jun 04

Twilight of the Dark Master - It conjures up images of those tacky horror films that dominated video stores in the 1980s. You know the ones, the films that had cheap effects, copious amounts of blood and scantily clad young women, and a plot so well worn it was practically see through. Well Twilight of the Dark Master shares many similar traits, apart from the fact that those dodgy 80s horror films were so bad they were funny - Twilight of the Dark Master is just plain bad.

Twilight of the Dark Master is set in the year 2089 in a metropolis dominated by dark high-rise buildings and corrupt and seedy organisations. However the backdrop of the story begins at man's creation. The Great Mother created demons to become mans adversary. However the demons and the Demon Master were too powerful for the humans alone to contend with so the Great Mother introduced a Guardian to protect man against the Demon Master. We now flash forward back to 2089 and the Demon Master is gaining power again after the last epic battle and as predictable as the story sounds the Guardian and Demon Master must confront each other once again. There are supporting characters too but none are particularly interesting and serve as slight diversions to the core confrontation.
The film is based on the manga of the same name written by Saki Okusa.

I feel the need to point out at this point that there are very few redeemable qualities to Twilight of the Dark Master, every single aspect of it smacks of mediocrity. The story has been seen in a whole myriad of other films and series and even the setting for the film is highly unoriginal. The cityscape is reminiscent of the Neo-Tokyo that appeared in Akira mixed with elements of Bladerunner. Whilst it may be unfair to lambaste the film for containing unoriginal elements it is inexcusable when every single component of this generic movie has been copied and pasted from other more interesting films and series.
What is even more irritating is that the film had potential if only the ideas were expanded upon. Its greatest problem as a film is its length. At only 50 minutes long it is very short yet they cram in as many twists and plot turns as possible. Whilst the twists are extremely obvious the running time of the movie allows no character development whatsoever. The supporting characters are exactly that, they support the Guardian (Tsunami) and the Demon Master (Taka Moya) they offer no substance to the story and are as flat as the actual images. Even the main protagonist and antagonist are not afforded the luxury of being able to grow as characters barring a few nuggets of information that is provided about their histories during the final confrontation. Whilst the film can never become boring as it moves at such a pace the whole experience is incredibly empty as you try and root for a character you couldn't care less about. You realise how important developing characters are to good films when you are confronted with something severely lacking in those areas.
The film would have benefited greatly from decent action set pieces too. Whilst they showed promise they were over too quickly or relied too much on obvious developments. The end battle is over in only a couple of minutes and is hugely anticlimactic. What is even worse is how abruptly the credits come up as if five minutes of the ending had accidentally been cut from the recording.
I don't enjoy being so harsh on the films and series I watch. Obviously it has taken time for the people to produce the work but the film provides nothing unique or special whatsoever, not least in the character design. Whilst the city has been liberally stolen from any other future city the characters are also typical anime and manga fare. Tsunami is dressed in a long black coat that dramatically billows in the wind along with his long hair. The demons are large and vulgar monsters that could be from any monster film made in the last 40 years. A subplot involving a man that turns in to a monster due to muscle-enhancing drugs and his fiance is poorly handled and cliche ridden nonsense and the less said about two siblings that work for the Demon Master the better.
There is plenty of gore on offer plus lots of semi naked young women running about. But just like the rest of the film all this has been seen before. If you haven't guessed already the story and its execution is one of the most cliche ridden and generic horror films you are likely to come across.

The animation on the whole is good without ever being truly impressive. It is smooth and the design work is constant to provide a cohesive feature, yet the set and character design all conspire against it to provide something so totally ordinary and uninspiring.

The musical score is adequate it works well with the images but is never particularly memorable. The film excels in a rather surprising area that of the English dub. The voice acting is surprisingly good and whilst it won't be winning any awards the voices fit the characters well and the dub actually triumphs over the subtitles. The problem with the subtitles is that they are very sparse on details whereas the dub helps expand the characters a little more (although unfortunately not enough).

Twilight of the Dark Master is not a special film, it is not interesting, it is not original and above all it is not good. If you like predictable, shallow and generic horror/thriller films then perhaps you will find some enjoyment in this. If however you prefer something with an ounce of originality I advise you to stay well away.

R2 DVD Notes

Features: English 5.1 surround sound; Japanese 2.0 stereo; Featurette on the cover art; Art gallery; Trailers

Release information: 10th May 2004, MVM

Notes: A rather lacklustre set of extras. Whilst the surround sound is good the actual extras are rather poor. The feature on the cover art is merely a speeded up filming of it being drawn. Whilst it sounded quite interesting it gets boring very quickly. The art gallery is a few slides showing off the very average character artwork and finally the trailers are the standard extras you find on any DVD nowadays. So just like the main feature, the extras are decidedly poor.

-- Adam Cook 13th Jun 04

Twilight of the Dark Master Images