Anime fans it's been a very long time since I last posted anything to do with anime and well I think i've found something that not alot of people let alone anime fans will know about. This is a film that i've been thinking of reviewing for a few days now and while I did come close to reviewing it yesterday I had issues logging on to my laptop which meant I had to put of the review until today and so here is my review of the 2013 anime film "Bayonetta: Bloody Fate" enjoy.
Now I would tell you the full plot at this point as well as give you my thoughts on the plot but from what I can tell this film seems to be about Bayonetta discovering her past. Which really isn't alot to base a ninety plus movie on and I say that that might be the plot because the actual story is so hard to work out which for this kind of film is not a really good thing even more so when you take into account that the story is wafer thin that it might as well not even be there.
Starring in the film is Helena Taylor as Bayonetta and Rosa , Dave Fennoy as Rodin and Grant Albrecht as Balder. Also starring is Grey DeLisle aka Grey Griffin as Jeanne , John Kassir as Enzo , Joy Jillian as Cereza , Richard Epcar as The Narrator and Yuri Lowenthal as Luka. As you can no doubt work out by the names that i've listed in this review i'm basing this review of the dubbed version simply because out of the two times i've seen this film I was watching the dubbed version of the film both times and so to me it would be weird if I suddenly watched the subtitled version of the film.
In all honesty the acting in this film wasn't that bad which given some of the actors who are in this film shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. I honestly went into this film not really knowing what to expect when it came to the acting but I was honestly surprised to see that the acting was really good with all of the actors involved truly becoming whatever character they were playing and hell I believe all of the cast went on to voice the same characters in future games in the Bayonetta game series with Helena Taylor being the only actor from the games to reprise their role for this film.
Doing the animation for this film is GONZO whose previous credits include the Final Fantasy: Unlimited TV anime series. The animation in this film was honestly for me pretty average with some shots looking really good and the characters having nice fluid movements but then there are shots that don't look as good which overall makes the film look really cheap which for a feature film should never be the case whatsoever in my opinion.
This film is based on the 2009 video game Bayonetta which was made by PlatinumGames and was published by Saga. I'm one of the few people who hasn't played any of the Bayonetta games and so I can't really say if this is a faithful adaptation of the games or not but as a film on it's own it can seem pretty boring and I'll get more into why it's boring later on in the review but if the film is anything like the games then i'm not really tempted to check out any of the games.
To me what makes this film boring is it's lack of story and because of the fact that there's very little story in the film there was no reason at all for me to stay engaged over what's going on on screen. This is huge issue since any film should want you to be engaged and when the film doesn't do that then for me it's a huge red flag because it says the film makers didn't care enough to craft a good story let alone one that's worthy of being in a feature length film.
Adding to this is the fact that the characters have no character development where the characters ends the movie s the same place that they started the film. This is something that you see in alot of bad movies and it's something that needs to stop it's not enough to have an interesting character your audience has to care for the character and care about what development they get and when you don't give the character any any kind of development big or small then all you left with is a character that while interesting is still a character that the audience doesn't care about simply due to the fact that you are not giving the audience a reason to care about the character at all.
Honestly out of all the characters in this film the only one that I came close liking was Bayonetta herself. Which even then isn't really a high bar to reach since all of the characters in this aren't really likeable even the characters who are meant to be the good guys nine times out of ten are unlikeable which is a bit of problem since you are meant to root for the main character but at the same time your also meant to like the main characters supporting cast as well.
This film has a running time of one hour and thirty minuets and eleven seconds which in this case is a really good thing. Since it means that you don't have to watch this fairly bad film for long and at the same time this running time really does feel about right for a film like Bayonetta: Bloody Fate and honestly anything over the one hour and thirty minuet running time would make the issues with the film seem even bigger in my opinion.
Now then boys and girls this is an action film after all and that means that I have to talk about the action that's in the film itself. Which in my opinion is where this film shines best since this film is pretty stupid and so having insane action sequences with the characters doing these insane stunts makes the movie more entertaining in my opinion and honestly there's nothing wrong with having over the top action sequences since they make the film more fun to watch or at least I think so anyways.
Overall the best word that I use to describe this film is average because for every good thing there is about the film there are just as many bad things about the film. While this film might have been made for fans of the game which oddly makes sense they don't do enough to make the film good on it's own merit as such this film gets a 5 out of 10 from me and as for where I got the images that I used in this review well I got them from the official Bayonetta fandom wiki page which I do highly recommend for images regarding anything to do with Bayonetta since the images are really high quality.