DESCRIPTION

CAST

MOVIE ActionMardock Scramble: The Second Combustion
MANGA Sci-FiMardock Scramble

REVIEWS

• 

  aikaflip

  80/100
  An ambitious and savage cyberpunk odyssey that's grossly underappreciated.

  "I wish I was dead..."

  Spoken by 15-year old prostitute Rune Balot, these first words set the dispirited tone of the anime movie trilogy Mardock Scramble. The story is set in Mardock City, a cyberpunk world where the skyline is filled with skyscrapers, cars glide on fluorescent green roads, and everything sparkles like champagne. It's a stunning place to look at, but it’s also a savage place where cruelty and crime are often left unpunished.

  

  Homicide has become so rampant that the government has authorized a controversial procedure to resurrect victims from the dead to help track down and testify against their assailants. This is one of the several unusual, and perhaps implausible, concepts in Mardock Scramble, but it's presented with such conviction that it’s not too difficult to get caught up in the moment and suspend disbelief.

  

  The central plot-line, which is essentially about Rune’s revenge, is likely a catalyst for weightier themes. There are some fantastical action sequences, but the series tends to be more of a character study than a typical action-adventure. The conversations are philosophical, covering a wide range of topics such as the nature of memories and regret, free will, finding a purpose in life, and rebirth.

  

  There’s a lot of hidden symbolism to keep your mind busy if you choose to look for it—such as the egg references that frequently appear. The doctor who performs the resurrection procedure is named Dr. Easter; "scramble" is, of course, one of the ways in which eggs are cooked; and there's a yellow shapeshifting mouse named “Oeufcoque”, which is French for “soft-boiled egg.” What all these egg references mean, I’m not sure.

  

  Mardock Scramble has a consistently abrasive aesthetic. The art is usually intensely bright, or shrouded in shadows, or textured by noise that must've been hell for the video encoders to deal with. GoHands doesn't appear to have cut any corners or expenses with the animation, which, especially in the action sequences, looks painstakingly detailed. The visuals are rounded off with an electronic and ambient music soundtrack.

  

  If you like science-fiction fantasy with a psychological twist, strong and stylish animation, and don't mind graphic violence, mental and physical abuse, and nudity, you should definitely check out Mardock Scramble. If you haven't read the synopsis yet, don't. The less you know going in, the more surprised you’ll be. Just sit back and get pounced by it.

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• 

  R2R

  60/100
  Not a good trilogy, but not a bad film.

  https://anilist.co/anime/8100/Mardock-Scramble-The-First-Compression/

  ---

  I randomly got the urge to watch "Hellsing Abridged" (not to be confused with (Hellsing Ultimate), and during that scene in Seras' backstory, I got reminded of this movie's beginning.

  So, in the most generic cyberpunk-ish dystopian advanced civilization, we follow this particular big shot with an underaged girl wrapped in his arms on a perfectly dark night in a perfectly isolated automobile in a perfectly isolated woodland, doing what the night asks except it's far from romantic. After a few minutes of doing his thing, the guy gets out of the car, locks the girl in, and then... BAM! The car explodes after a very graphic depiction of a young helpless girl frantically fighting to rescue her broken life.
  This is insignificant. What counts is that an unaffiliated third party comes to her aid, despite the fact that he had been closely studying everything prior to the explosion with his heat vision goggles. They only save her psychologically by implanting her with an artificial fiber body, which completely messes up her mental state and nearly kills her, due to some law that allows the police to resuscitate the criminal witness. Now, this befuddled cyborg must defend her 'innocence,' as the mistake known as "Her Past" haunts her on both a societal and psychological level. Fortunately, she is being supervised by a professor com' scientist com' gambler and an AI resembling a rat, but how much can they handle this psychologically unstable cyborg while evading a hunter appointed by the villain?

  TL;DR,
  What if Batou was actually a villain and Kusanagi was actually a confused teenage girl in an edgy Ghost in the Shell rip-off?

  One clear thing while watching the movie is the over-saturated colors. The entire movie is bright and shiny everywhere and every time, which is both a plus and a drawback. Plus, in the sense, it's bright, and drawback in the sense, that it's so bright that it makes me avert my eyes. There are, however, some slick gun animations with some good camera usage and choreography. This is something that appears throughout the trilogy, so if anything, it gets entertaining eventually. But it doesn't.

  Because the story is just edgy and pretentious (This goes down the lane as you progress into the trilogy). Not even in the entertainingly edgy but in the most boring sense. Like the court where our mentally complicated victim can only answer in a Yes/No/No Comment throughout the trial, or the whole irrelevant gambling plot that happens in movie 2, or whatever the fuck happens in movie 3. The story progressively degrades from being a mildly mind-bending character study, into edgy bullshit drama. As a trilogy it really fails, because you don't feel like you watched a coherent story unraveling character pasts or decisions, but 3 separate films with 3 different plot lines got superficially intertwined. You are better off spending those 3 hours on Ghost in the Shell 1 and 2, even as a rewatch it would be a better experience than this trilogy.

  While 2 & 3 movies are not worth the time, the first compression, however, is definitely worth experiencing because of this mildly interesting character study between Balot and Oeufcoque. Balotto is a confused cyborg who already has a damaged mind and past as a human being. Oeufcoque, while being an AI, shows genuine human emotion upon hearing this emotionless girl asking for its love, a cute & tiny rat-looking AI's love, and the movie does a surprisingly good job by not making this weird but making their interactions emotional.

  But that's all the credit I give for the movie in the writing department. Anything and everything else is just a poorly written edge fest with very little damn giving to portraying themes or invoking drama.

  ---

  Conclusion

  The only good thing about this movie is the AI-rat Oeufcoque. If it wasn't for Oeufcoque, this trilogy would've been a pretty waste of time.

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