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EP. REVIEW: MARS RED


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Cryten



Joined: 19 Jan 2019
Posts: 978
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:23 pm Reply with quote
So we all agree. It was just Defrott being suicidally depressed and unwilling to rescue his friend.
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Cryten



Joined: 19 Jan 2019
Posts: 978
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:08 pm Reply with quote
I quite enjoyed the experience. Its attempts at art are the highlights of the experience but as a story it remains a failure. TV shows demand a structure that Mars Red was just not interested in.

Maeda felt the biggest victim of the shows desire to be metaphorical over logical. As we only got his intentions and drives but never really had compelling narrative for his behaviours. Instead we just kept circling the dynamic of him placing his unfulfilled loyalty and never developed love for Misaki over his loyalty to his once saviour. With no human subtext in between. He basicly became the misbehaving automaton, a blind slave to his hidden emotions with no brain activity whatsoever.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:27 pm Reply with quote
Though I'm unlikely to rewatch it, I did enjoy the time I spent with it. I get, on an intellectual level, the various explanations people have given about why this didn't really work, but they don't quite resonate with me any more than the series itself did. All I know is that I loved many of its parts but they didn't quite come together as a whole that I could embrace emotionally.

And I can't pinpoint why not, or what was missing for me. It feels like there were a number of plot points that didn't have proper resolutions, but if I pick those out and try to figure out what was unresolved about them, it turns out that, yes, they did tie those up after all. It's just that there are still all these "okay...and?" tags hanging off those resolutions. Nothing seems finished, but I guess that's kind of appropriate for a vampire story.

Anyway, I know none of that makes sense. Smile tldr: I liked it, but something was missing and I don't know what.
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Chiibi



Joined: 19 Dec 2011
Posts: 4828
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:52 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, I dropped this like a rock after the first episode. No offense to those who liked it but for me, it was mind-numbingly boring. And strange.

But mostly boring. I wonder if anyone else struggled as much as I did during that 24 minutes.
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Zeino



Joined: 19 May 2017
Posts: 1098
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:18 pm Reply with quote
Well, Mars Red ended better than I expected. As original anime heavily coproduce by companies in the west go, it's a good solid series. Perhaps it could never really to the potential that it's first episode promised but it never at least didn't try to not aim high with it's ambitions even it's writing reach's exceeded it's grasp. I at least won't forget it and will have fondness for this artsy Taisho vampire theater melodrama.
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MPAndonee



Joined: 31 Dec 2019
Posts: 22
PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 7:36 pm Reply with quote
Steve nailed the Review of the last episode and the overall feelings I developed for this series.

Thanks for some great reviews.
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave



Joined: 14 Jan 2019
Posts: 482
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:31 am Reply with quote
Chiibi wrote:
Yeah, I dropped this like a rock after the first episode. No offense to those who liked it but for me, it was mind-numbingly boring. And strange.

But mostly boring. I wonder if anyone else struggled as much as I did during that 24 minutes.

I thought the first episode was the best in the whole series, and could be even standalone story, and later episodes weren't as good. Then again, if you disliked first episode, I doubt you would not be bored by the rest - I found myself fast-watching through some of them.
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 3:38 am Reply with quote
I did not like what they did with Maeda’s character after he was turned, but I did like his extended dream sequence in the finale. We got into his head, and it was melancholy and fitting for the show. I still wish there was more coherence around his actions and more context to the Maeda/Kurusu fight, though.

There were a lot of plot threads left dangling, or perhaps I missed it—did the Tenmaya vampires find the vampire village? *Did* Kurusu and Aoi end up together? I don’t think they made that clear; I was hoping for an epilogue to clarify it.

I enjoyed the show, but it was very choppy.
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