Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

Jin-Rô is a story of wolf and man, of love and betrayal, of duty and turmoil. On top of that, it's beautifully animated and with a great soundtrack. As usual, Mamoru Oshii equals quality.

What a disappointment !! I love mangas (and not only ghost in the shell) but this one is a really stupid one. It tries to be philosophical and work out deep human conflicts between duty and love and lonelyness and salvage. But its not more than a try. The makers cannot hide their admiration for fascistic killers that move above law to kill the scum. The less looking fascists turn out to be the most ugly ones at the end. If at least the story would have been consistent ... But what sense is it to work out the inner conflict of a policeman that just saw a young girl vaporizing itself if you will see at the end, that there was no inner conflict at all because it was only plan and show ? The message of the movie: on this world there are humans and wolves in humans skins and the wolves are the better and need to be ugly and kill the humans. Yes - you got it : its the redhood-story, in a fascistic reading ...

In the first ten minutes, the movie was able to hold my interest and it seemed as if it might be good, HOWEVER, it quickly devolved into a sad, warped, Red Riding Hood fairy-tale, with an occasional automatic weapon. Near the beginning of the movie, it seemed that the main character was on hallucinogenic drugs, which would have made the movie watchable had I had some. As the movie progressed, it became increasingly painful to watch and ridiculously overcomplicated. In Jin-Roh, they threw in what were supposed to be flash-backs, foreshadowing, dreams, or conflict of thoughts within the main character. However, they essentially lie to you about the whole situation since the main character doesn't even think those things to begin with, he knows exactly what's going on the whole time. The movie was ridiculous and it felt like it was at least 6 hours of my time wasted. I would give this a zero if I could.

Melodramatic is what this is. During the first three fourths of this I was bored to tears. It plays the same symbolisms and melancholy atmosphere over and over again with almost no plot development. Don't get me wrong, I don't prefer fast action over a good thought provoking plot, but I didn't feel anything while watching this. The protagonist is the same stereotypical silent melancholy hero that just mopes around accomplishing nothing. I was so bored the first time I watched this that after the first half I skipped through the rest only watching short 20-30 clips and was able to piece together a the story. To give some credit to the creators, the animation and sound quality were excellent. Only reason I was able to give this a 4. Some people may find something to like about this, but I found it extremely lacking and unthought provoking. I felt like a vegetable while watching this.

Jin-Roh is probably the best Anime I have seen. Some say Akira takes that title, but I think in total Jin-Roh has a better plot, and character development. I really enjoyed it and it kept me thinking till the very end. I love this movie, so I gave it a 10. If you're slightly interetsed in anime or even want to see a good movie, I suggest Jin-Roh.

I felt sad, and grateful while watching the end credits of this movie. Although I knew who was the director and what to expect from the movie, I was unprepared to what I saw. Jin Roh, in my opinion, is like a diamond: beautiful and icy cold. The story background was rendered in a very subtle way, not that american epic "high lights-low minds" look. Silences, background noises, decay in a world were violence is needed, almost desidered, and growing on this sea of nolove, two dirty red flowers, doomed to die without mercy, in this black world. I appreciated the strong solitude of Jin Roh, the true lie that permeates this movie. I felt empathy with the wolf, mercy for red hood. and I feel envy because you that read have yet to drink this potion