Innocent Venus Vol. #1

By Bryan Morton     October 05, 2007
Release Date: September 17, 2007



What They Say
IN A DARK FUTURE, HOPE RESTS WITH INNOCENT VENUS
SLICKLY ANIMATED POST-APOCALYPTIC MECH ACTIONER DEBUTS

Hailing from famed production studio Bandai Visual (Mobile Suit Gundam, Cowboy Bebop) and Director Jun Kawagoe (New Getter Robo), Innocent Venus is anything but your run-of-the-mill mecha story. This is an exciting, action-packed series with sophisticated settings; great character designs and a fluid animation style that incorporates 3D cell shading. The entire production is top-notch.

Episodes Comprise
1 - Hell
2 - Madness
3 - Pirates
4 - Invasion

The Review!
Another post-apocalyptic world, another girl surrounded in mystery, and another group of bloodthirsty military types trying to get their hands on her. Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before. Can Innocent Venus bring anything new to an idea that’s been done many times before..?

Audio:
Audio is presented in Japanese 2.0 and English 5.1 versions – I listened to the Japanese track for this review. It’s a soundtrack that’s fairly typical these days – good, clear presentation, reasonable use made of the available soundstage with the action scenes coming across particularly well, and no apparent encoding problems or dropouts. Perfectly serviceable, but nothing exceptional, either.

Video:
Video is presented in its original 1.78:1 widescreen aspect, enhanced for anamorphic playback. The world portrayed by the series, one which is recovering from widespread destruction, is nicely realised through some very detailed background and a general feeling of decay in most scenes that captures setting well. As far as the encode goes, there’s some visible colour banding in some places, but nothing serious. Overall, a good-looking release.

Packaging:
The packaging does its best to capture a dark feel, with Sana, Jin and Joe visible through a blood-red cross in the centre of the image, with one of the Phantom mecha in outline in the background. The way it’s done leaves the characters taking up at most only a quarter of the image, and tries to portray the series as being darker than it actually is (so far, at least)

Menu:
The main screen is a fairly straightforward affair, with a shot of a ruined building that’s been lifted from episode 1 forming the backdrop, with the sky slowly cycling from day to night. Direct access is provided to each episode, along with submenus for language select and extras. The main problem is that the “Main”, “Languages” and “Extras” options are on-screen on every page – but on the sub-menus you can only actually select “Main”, which led to some confusing moments while I tried to select Extras from the Language screen & got nowhere – the layout doesn’t exactly encourage ease of use. Once you figure out what is and isn’t selectable, though, it’s quick enough to use.

Extras:
Very little in the way of extras here – creditless versions of the opening and closing sequences, and that’s your lot.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review will contain spoilers)
In 2010, a series of huge storms rampaged across the Earth, killing 5 billion people and destroying entire countries. A new world order arose, controlled by those with money. In the remnants of Japan, the Logos took power for themselves and maintained their grip on power by the ruthless use of force. The poor they called Revinus - they were banished outside the rebuilt cities, and the military group Phantom were used to make sure no rebellion could ever take root amongst them. Their latest targets are Jin Tsurasawa and the young girl he's protecting, Sana Noto - and it seems they'll stop at nothing to capture them.

Another day, another post-apoclayptic nightmare world, and I'm left stifling a yawn before we even start. The opening two episodes of the series go a long way to introducing Jin, Sana and Joe on the one hand (our forces of good), and Phantom on the other (deliberately shown to be a truly bloodthirsty bunch), along with some decent views of the world they've found themselves in - all very interesting, and the scenes showing the new-world politicians at work give a good feel of the divide that’s formed between those who live in the rebuilt cities (the Logos, where life goes on much as it did before the storms) and the slums outside (the Revinus, where scraping a living is a real challenge and roast frog could be considered a delicacy). Phantom's forces are shown initially in some unrelated operations that establish their modus operandi (leave no survivors, especially if they’re Revinus, and preferably be as bloody as possible) - never let it be said we weren't warned they were tough muthers - but of the reason why Sana and friends are such wanted people, we're told not a thing.

The list of groups that are after Sana grows as we go on, too, and the connections between them grow ever more tangled – but always leading back to Phantom in one way or another. Perhaps the most interesting bunch are Toraji, captain of the stolen warship Ishin, and the pirates who follow him – you’re never really sure if he’s on the good side or the bad. I like that kind of ambiguity in a character, which makes his scenes that little bit more interesting.

The use of 3DCG animation for the combat scenes is an issue, though. Against the more traditional-looking 2D animation used for the characters and backgrounds, the mecha look out of place, as if they’d just been dropped onto the scene after the fact – as one example, there’s a scene where some 2D solider are hit by a 3D-rendered truck, and it looks as though the two never actually touch – the sense of perspective is all off. The 3D animation is also noticeably jerkier than the rest. Presentation and technical issues clearly aren’t the be-all and end-all of a series, but in this case it’s a really noticeable issue that gets in the way of getting yourself immersed in the action – you’re too busy wincing at the flaws.

There are issues story-wise, as well. Why is Sana so significant? Why have all these ex-Phantom people struck off on their own, and what are their aims? Could we please get some character development for Jin and Joe, as they’re as much enigmas at the end of this disc as they were at the beginning? There aren’t even any real hints dropped over the course of these episodes as to what’s going on, which leaves me with real concerns about how well it’s all going to be tied up over the remaining two discs.

Reading all that, you’d probably think I was about to give Innocent Venus a thorough slating – I can’t quite bring myself to do that, though. The world it portrays is nicely detailed and believable, there are some good characters thrown into the mix who, given the opportunity and a decent storyline, could become very enjoyable to watch, and there is a sense that there’s a mystery that’s waiting to be uncovered – if the series has enough time left to do that. The battle scenes are generally well-choreographed, and only let down by the poor CG. While the volume as a whole doesn’t quite hold up, there are periods where it is genuinely enjoyable to watch – it just doesn’t quite manage to pull everything together into a coherent whole, and isn’t helped by not being very original in its ideas.

In summary:
Innocent Venus has promise, but at the moment it’s not really living up to it – too many mysteries are left untouched, never mind unanswered, there’s a real lack of development for some of the lead characters, and some flaky CG doesn’t help the overall package. If some of that promise is made use of later in the series, then this could be a good series – but for the moment the verdict has to be, “wait and see”.

Features
Japanese Language 2.0,English Language 5.1,English Subtitles,Clean Opening & Closing Sequences

Review Equipment
Toshiba 37X3030DB 37" widescreen HDTV; Sony PS3 Blu-ray player (via HDMI, upscaled to 1080p); Acoustic Solutions DS-222 5.1 speaker system.