Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Calcaa_Cutie
The art and stylization is really unique. I loved the character designs, artysyle, concept, and background. Besides that, I'm confused? the plot is very difficult to explain in a lot of parts, there's so much going on that I don't understand and a lot of things drive the characters that make no sense? I feel like this could have been really amazing as a series, but not as a movie. The plot goes so quickly in the movie and it's hard to keep track, if it slowed down and became a show that had time to flesh things out more, it definitely would have been better.
I understand why they couldn't make it a show, the art is so unique that it would be hard to maintain quality, but the plot just ruined the entire movie for me. It had such a fun concept too, it just had too much with too little time…
Read at the sourcehiniku_chan
"Hells Angels" is an extraordinary work that surprises at every turn. The film directed by Yoshiki Yamakawa, based on the manga by Shinichi Hiromoto, is both a film and a manga full of incredible plot twists, diverse characters and unusual graphics that catch the eye from the first minutes. One of the greatest advantages of "Hells Angels" is the variety of characters. The main character, Amane, is an ordinary girl who ends up in hell as a result of an unfortunate accident. There he meets a number of colorful and unique characters who create an extraordinary and unpredictable world. Each character, from the lovable punk devil to the mysterious guardians of Hell, has their own unique traits and motivations that add depth to the plot and make it more engaging. As for the plot, it's a real rol…
Read at the sourceReinKitamura
Besides the art, this is a solid mess. The movie starts off being pretty decent but the plot is just all over the place. The characters are constantly jumping from one end to the other over and over again. It would have been better if this was a show instead but even then, the final result of the unfolding of this story would have still been an absolute mess if the destination was the same. The only redeemable aspect of this show is the art. It's aesthetically pleasing to look at but even then I know for a fact some people wouldn’t like it. Just watch something else honestly. Some people recommend the manga more than the movie. I haven't read the manga but maybe give that a shot instead. The ratings on MAL for both are pretty much the same.
Read at the sourceSkyBelowTheSun
Now a lot of people have reviewed this classic and it's both heavily slept on and underrated. Almost every negative review of this gives a lot of credit for the unique art style and wild trigger-like fights and general unhinged storyline. Bottom line is the majority of negative reviews here actually missed primary plot lines (confusion, more like skill issue, try again next time). The show has a certain skill hill for compreshesion and while some people who watch this may hate the idea of, what is now known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the final fight scene being a biblical condensed evangelion scale experience of positive self thought and indominable human spirit based on the writings of occult magic study.
This movie is in a way just Gurren Laggan mixed with Evangelion, and like bo…
Read at the sourcelamaraptor
What a trip.
It's always interesting to see how Japan takes and adapts Christian folklore into the surreal world of anime. Hell is a concept almost ubiquitous in religions around the world, but nobody seems to be able to agree on it's exact nature. While a strictly Biblical depiction would show it to be a place of only suffering, eastern ideas about the afterlife paint it as being basically a continuation of our society as we have it already here on earth. So of course Hell is going to be a Japanese high school, where they play volleyball and talk about which boys they like.
The philosophies aside, what really stands out in this movie is the unique art style and animation. It's the kind of thing you can really only get from anime, and is hard to describe in just words. Even if the plot i…
Read at the sourcektulu007
Continuing our look into horror anime, we have Hells. A Madhouse film from 2008 based off of a manga. For a long time I've posited that Madhouse has two teams. One that's putting out quality work, another that puts out utter rubbish. So, which one are we getting?
Story:
We open with our main heroine, Amagane Rinne, running late for school. On her way there, she rescues a strange looking cat that's being harassed by some horrible children. Does she think she's Tsukino Usagi? This results in her being hit by a truck. Afterwards, she wakes up in hell where she can start at a new school and leave hell if she graduates. There's just one catch, she may not be quite dead.
The biggest problem with the film is that the pacing is very awkward. Hells likes to pause the action for long, rambling s…
Read at the sourceTalvos
The first half is pretty good, but the last half has many issues. They may have been able to pull off what they were going for if this had been a full 26 episode anime. However, the amount of things that happens in this movie, most of which are supposed to be very deep character moments are insane. There is just no room for the proper build up, or to even breath between events.
I enjoyed most of the main cast, but there's just so many of them and we really needed more time with them if the emotional moments were going to have a chance at hitting. Also, there is AT LEAST a dozen other characters that we are supposed to care about that have so little screen time, that they could have been removed entirely. We get a nice amount of time with some characters early on, but once the plot picks u…
Read at the sourceLombandicoot
Hells uses a visually interesting artstyle and great animation to tell a fun story. About halfway through the film, the story and characters become a lot weightier, which reinvigorated my interest right when I was getting a little bored of the quirky Hell antics. Overall, the mix of biblical mythology and anime sensibilities made for a touching, universally inspiring story.
Also, I watched the English dub, which I thought was pretty good. So, shout out to Team Four Star on the good work. A smile was brought to my face everytime I heard Nick Landis deliver a line as Helvis.
Read at the sourceFanZ26
I just finally watched this after having wanted to check out the "TFS official dub" for a while. Honestly I found this a rather difficult movie to follow or to evaluate; the art style is very unique and enjoyable, and the characters and scenes FEEL like they have a lot of personality, but the story, atmosphere and direction seem to unpredictably jump around a lot, and not always in a good way. It feels like this never establishes enough of a status quo for the twists and upheavals to it to really land. That may be partly due to them compressing 21 manga chapters into a 2-hour movie when usually you'd want around 10 minutes per chapter, and partly due to the manga itself probably changing direction as it was being written and not being sure exactly where it was going from the beginning (and…
Read at the sourceDeathByJeff
I had an extremely fun time with this one. So much so that I started watching at 1 a.m. and ended staying up until 3 because I just couldn't stop.
I don't want to spoil too much about the plot, but the gist of it is basically Dead Leaves + Kill la Kill with just a tiny pinch of Devilman. In other words, the perfect popcorn anime.
Animation was a special high point along with the absolute bonkers plot.
My only regret is that I didn't stumble across it sooner. Highly recommended.
*********
Umm, it looks like I haven't reached the character limit yet. What to write? Um, I thought the character designs were pretty good. Except for Helvis, he's just totally awesome. I don't remember much of the soundtrack. MC was adorable but kind of forgettable. I liked the girl who looked like Griffith f…
Read at the sourceMoribundMurdoch
Interesting is a fuzzy word, but that's the easiest way to describe the experience of watching this anime. I liked the idea behind the story, and I loved all the Dante's Inferno vibes, but the story wasn't particularly to my fancy.
"Hells" had the idea where "hell" is a place where you study before being reincarnated and that's a brilliant idea [that bit is defiantly my style].
Also, I liked interpreting the story as a battle between being unflappable/pollyannaish [unfailingly cheerful] versus being gloom-ridden. The whole symbolism whatnot, appealed to my logomaniac [being obsessed with words] nature because it gave me a story where I could easily attach some of my English vocabularies too.But besides this story appealing to the logomaniac psychographic and having a cool concept. I have t…
Read at the sourceYemi_Hikari
One trope I majorly dislike is Author Tract. The reason I dislike said trope comes down to the fact the viewer won't notice the tropes utilization unless they're doing either a full blown analysis of the work or the message the author is putting in becomes too obvious for the work's own good. The movie Hells falls into the latter. This isn't to say the message isn't a good message - though in this case I think it is, but when the narrative pummels it into the viewer in the degree and ferocity Hells does it's hard for said viewer not to become sick of the whole thing.
On top of the Author Tract trope the series also falls into the Black and White morality problem and over simplifies the concepts of hope and despair with rhetoric which can't even begin to understand human nature. In fact, b…
Read at the sourceLostNomad4471
I really like the idea of a high school in Hell and I can think of a lot of other great movies with similar premises like Pixar's Coco and Tim Burnton's Corpse Bride, but what ruins this movie is its execution.
About at the 30 minute mark, it's like the writers just completely abandoned their original premise of a high school in Hell and the whole movie falls apart. There's all this talk about the madness of Able, God appears but doesn't really add anything to the story, and the movie's ending doesn't even make sense.
On top of that, the movie is full of anime cliches like how Rinne is constantly late for school, the student council being the antagonists, and Rinne having this genki girl personality where she's so happy go lucky and optimistic all the time.
Also, a lot of the conflict…
Read at the sourceCodeBlazeFate
It’s hard to properly describe just how absurd Hells is. Much like feelings themselves, this movie is inexplicable, irrational, and borderline unpredictable at times. By that same token, given that it embodies feelings so well, it does an admirable job at being a delightfully earnest film. It’s honestly a shame this eye-catcher didn’t receive that much attention until now.
On that note, let’s start at what drew me in. The art style in this movie is insane! Far removed from the blander or softer art styles present in most anime, this movie showcases rough outlines and keeps the sketching and coloring lines on its characters. This unique style allows for the designers and animators to go all out in constructing the craziest and loveliest character designs, craft a wonderfully vibrant world…
Read at the sourceCB3GD
This movie aims to be quirky, spontaneous, funny, high-impact action with deep themes and biblical references, however it fails to do so in almost every way. Its completely lacking in any form of enjoyment and is painful to the eyes especially with its 2 hour length. This movie fails to accomplish what Studio Trigger has achieved; of course I do realize this movie came out in 2008, several years before much of Trigger's works, however, whether they drew inspiration from this movie or not, Trigger very much improves upon what they attempted with this movie in every way and more. I would not recommend this movie to anyone and instead watch something like Kill La Kill or Gurren Lagann, ultimately this movie feels, at best, like an imitation of Trigger that fails to accomplish what they did.
Read at the sourceFAKEANIMEGIRL
(Check out my profile for a link to my site containing more up-to-date reviews and bonus media!)
Rinne Amagame is an average schoolgirl ready to start the new year, but on her way to her first class is struck by a semi-truck while trying to save a cat. Naturally, she goes straight to Hell and is enrolled at an academy for demonic delinquents whose goal is graduation and ascension to Heaven. But Rinne quickly learns her death is a mistake, and looks for a way to return to the real world and her mother. Rinne and the rest of Hell will even be dragged into a plot that goes as far back as the story of Adam and Eve.
It’s surprising to see anime with such distinctive art and stunning animation be such a well-kept secret, and a modern anime at that. This one could have gone under my radar for a…
Read at the sourceNealTenshio
Hells... wow that art is really unique. Beyond the art however, you find that the story at times is special within its own right, yet lacking in its bipolar plot. Personally, I enjoyed the few aspects of the story. The story I guess you could say... is a form of art: making you think of literature and such (it gets quite metaphoric in the second half, although that's not entirely a good thing because it's so different from the first half). And if you're interested in Cain/Abel references, then that's a cool bonus for you.
The art seems pretty retro and possibly low budget, also reminding me of Kill La Kill. I wouldn't say that the art is a weak point in this anime however, because its drawing really fits the theme of this anime superbly, being flexible towards its dark moments as well as…
Read at the sourceriri9
READ THE MANGA! The movie's only watchable.
Good points:
The art style stays true to the manga's, very "hellish". If the movie stands alone, I would say it's an impressionistic piece of crazy artsy shit.
Not-so-good points:
This is a very concise adaptation of the manga. It's like an animated version with a lot of essential factors taken away. The plot rushes through character development and important relationships, making everyone seems rather flat. Although the manga only has three volumes, the story and the characters are so complex and interesting that a TV series would do more justice than a movie. Cramming all the drama and plot twists in just two hours doesn't seem like a good idea.
Overall, meh. Try the manga.
Read at the sourceNoSignal
I think Scamp's review sums it up nicely, but I just wanted to add a couple things.
He compared it to Redline, but I think a better comparison would be either Mindgame or Kaiba. Both stylistically and thematically. However, both Mindgame and Kaiba ease you into what they are trying to say, and draw from their references subtly. Especially Mindgame, which could also be seen in a biblical context (Jonah and the whale...), but it never comes out and beats you over the head with this.
So Hells does a good job of introducing the characters and getting you to emotionally invest in them. But then the focus shifts from their personal stories, to some larger biblical story. I feel like this shift was really unnecessary, and they could have made all the same points within their personal dramas. Bu…
Read at the source5camp
The story is about Linne, a regular old schoolgirl who’s late for school and running with a piece of toast in her mouth. Then she’s hit by a truck and ends up in hell. Not exactly the best start to her day. She has to attend the Hell School for Prim and Proper Ladies, a variety of demon ladies with various gothic dresses or alternatively lavishly decorated pubic hair. Oh, and the principal is Elvis-sorry, I mean Helvis.
The style of hell is very much that cartoony gothic you see in Tim Burton or, to bring a more anime example to the table, Soul Eater, and it’s a style I’m rather fond of. It works well in Hells because they know full well how ridiculous the story is and so ham it up to eleven. Unlike the very crisp and clean animation style of Soul Eater though, Hells goes for a very penci…
Read at the source