Introduction
In the far future, earthlings come across the foreign planet of Pasatorine. Few things are understood about the planet, but it is clear that earthlings are not welcome there. However, the inhabitants of Pasatorine have initiated something called the "Cleopatra Plan." Puzzled why an alien planet would name a plan after a woman from Earth, the military decides to send three soldiers' minds back to the past to study Cleopatra's life.
The Kingdom of Egypt, led by the drunkard Ptolemy, is threatened by Julius Caesar and the Roman empire. In an attempt to save Egypt, Cleopatra, the younger sister of Ptolemy, chooses to undergo a procedure that makes her body irresistible to Caesar. Caesar is immediately smitten and desires to rule Egypt with Cleopatra at his side—but little does he know that she intends to assassinate him as soon as she can.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Audience reviews
6 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Egoistfan1
Cleopatra is a work which is filled with as much good as it is bad. It is based on the life of Cleopatra, which it paints with very broad strokes. Parts of it are incoherent, especially in the first half, while others are genuinely good historical fiction. The opening scene, which mixes live-action and animation, is the worst thing I have ever seen. It was directed by both Osamu Tezuka and Eiichi Yamamoto, and you can see the signature of both of them here. It has Tezuka's trademark humor, which mostly is just inappropriate and jarring here. It's strange to see Tezuka's typical over-the-top slapstick style used in the service of a rape joke. The first half of the movie in generally is often tasteless. There is also an entirely unnecessary science fiction subplot that can be removed without…
Read at the sourceleom0402
To be honest, I liked it. Would I watch it again? No, it's a movie to watch just once, remember it, whether in a bad or good way and leave it there, forgotten. The animation's art style, at least for me, is what kept me watching, even though I fell asleep around half the movie and had to watch it again from that part on, that's another thing, it feels really long, specially in some parts around the start and the end. Let's say it's an experience, and you should watch it when you had slept well and around 5 to 6 pm.
Read at the sourceLadyStardust97
Cleopatra is a difficult work to talk about and with, because it's essentially a very long and occasionally meaningless sex pervert movie (or, to put it more professionally, an erotic arthouse film) that nonetheless has a lot of historical and artistic interest.
The story and characters both effectively exist only as vessels for the artistic intent that MushiPro wanted to convey, which careens between erotic, comedic, genuinely tragic, and completely abstract. It's a long, long movie with very poor pacing that can be difficult to sit through if you're not in the right mindset, especially since most of the plot is flat and it occasionally borders on being an unintelligible excuse for sex scenes that register more as outrageous or experimental rather than actually arousing in any measure.…
Read at the sourceAssthete
I haven't read most of Tezuka's manga, but as far as anime is concerned, he sure isn't very good. He seemed to lack some basic discernment, much like Tomino does for example, and littered his shit with unbecoming tonal shifts and jokes that have no place and exist merely cause he thought it would be funny. When reading some of his titles, it is common to have the flow interrupted by some visual gag and I wondered just why it was there to begin with. Cleopatra is a disaster in most senses, starting with its premise that sounds like one which would be promptly refused by any funder with more than two brain cells. The movie goes and goes and as you realize it's absolutely all over the place a thought arises: why does this exist? There aren't bad jokes interrupting a relatively thoughtful stor…
Read at the sourcematthigh
This movie really is a big, hot mess. It's all over the place, and never seems to really figure out what kind of movie it wants to be.
This is the second in the triumvirate of movies from Mushi Productions, coming on the heels of the more successful (and eminently more watchable) 1001 Nights.
It falls flat on its face at the very start, opening with a ten-minute futuristic sequence, where three agents are sent to the past (Cleopatra's time) to find out the secret of the "Cleopatra Plan", which aliens are trying to use to conquer future Earth. Borderline unwatchable, as it's live-action people with poorly animated heads painted on top. And outside of about thee minutes at the end, and a handful of minor references to this little envelope of an idea in the middle of the film, it's pretty…
Read at the sourceGundroog
Cleopatra is a wild ride. Just looking at the cover and reading the synopsis will not prepare you even for a fraction of what happens in this movie and while overall it’s drawn out mess there’s enough crazy in this to warrant a watch.
First things first, when it comes to story Cleopatra is a rather dull, stretched out, vaguely historical retelling of Cleopatra’s life that mixes historical accounts with some legends and its own original scenes. For some reason this is all wrapped in the premise of people way far in the future going to the past cause they overheard aliens talking about a plan that has Cleopatra’s name in it.
Either way none of this would be worth talking about as something bad after all there’s nothing inherently wrong with alternative history plots that stray from histor…
Read at the source