Audience reviews
16 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
emberreviews
Mardock Scramble: The First Compression comes to us via a combination of anime’s most unhinged writer and most unhinged studio to produce a surprisingly compelling, if a bit muddled cyberpunk crime thriller. Explanations for the various unique sci-fi concepts and technologies tend to focus more on the “why” than the “how,” so while the intricacies of how Balot is able to make Œufcoque do the utterly fantastical things he does is left unsaid, character motivations and thematic ideas are crystal clear, if a bit overly so. The focus on sexual assault and how it affects its victims means this film comes with heavy content warnings, but, for the most part, it’s portrayed in a way that both acknowledges the deep pain inflicted upon those who are victims, while also empowering them with the tools…
Read at the sourceHughMungis
8/10
I was NOT ready for this one. For years I've heard the name of this anime but is there anything that can really prepare you for this movie? The closest thing would be the original Ghost in the Shell movie.
As someone that liked the 80s/90s flavor of cyberpunk, I was really surprised to see that this was made in 2010. The best way that I could describe this movie is that it's the original Ghost in the Shell movie, but brought into the 21st century. It has everything.
Detective work +1
Characters that have their own agendas +1
a tad too much nudity -1
cyberpunk setting without too much focus on the tech +1
horror that doesn't rely on gore to move the story along +1
Read at the sourceDewDue
My 3 AM thoughts on this 3-star movie that I watched 3 months ago.
This review is written out of boredom.
____
I randomly got the urge to watch "Hellsing Abridged" (not to be confused with (Hellsing Ultimate), and during that scene in Seras' backstory, I got reminded of this movie's beginning.
So, in the most generic cyberpunk-ish dystopian advanced civilization, we follow this particular big shot with an underaged girl wrapped in his arms on a perfectly dark night in a perfectly isolated automobile in a perfectly isolated woodland, doing what the night asks except it's far from romantic. After a few minutes of doing his _thing_, the guy gets out of the car, locks the girl in, and then... BAM! The car explodes after a very graphic depiction of a young helpless girl frantically fighting to…
Read at the sourceRyanSpring
This review is for the entire three movie trilogy, not just the first movie, as they are essentially one giant movie broken up into three parts.
I purchased the DVDs for all three of these after watching a trailer and reading the base premise. Dark, hypersexual and hyperviolent? That is about as up my alley as it gets! Unfortunately, I think that representation is significantly overblown and there's not nearly as much of any of those things as certain reviews would have you believe.
I didn't like this series as much as I'd hoped I would. It has a lot of problems that there just isn't any way around. Starting with the positives, the visuals are absolutely stunning, and this is easily the strongest individual aspect of the product. I'd also praise the originality of the story. However, maj…
Read at the sourceBriareoss
A true Tow Ubukata Creation...which means we dealing here with the sheer amount of incompetence one should expect from anything that involves this so called writer.
In Mardock Scramble, Ubukata does what he does best: putting random, incoherent and incomprehensible scenes together and ACT like he did the deepest screenplay ever, while in reality he did nothing but creating a pure dumpsterfire.
If you watched the second season of Psycho Pass or Ghost In The Shell: Arise, both written by Ubukata, then you know exactly what to expect from Mardock Scramble: random stupid shit that doesn't make no sense at all and character-exploration/development retarded as it gets. Plus uninspired and boring scenrey.
Mardock Scramble is yet another example of what a non-talented and horrendous writer Ubuk…
Read at the sourcemouthpiece
Review up to the second movie. Will edit as I watch more.
This trilogy of movies had a rough time while getting green light for production. It was originally planed to be animated by studio GONZO, but after its almost bankruptcy the project was handed over to a new studio on the block, called Go Hands. This studio and the director haven’t made any good anime so far (their roster is full of crappy ecchis) but the final poject can’t possibly be any worse than that piece of shit that is GONZO. So I like this change.
So what is this show about? It is based on an award-winning science fiction novel concerning the attempts of a law-enforcing organization to fight crime by resurrecting victims of crooks and using them against said crooks as witnesses in trials. In one such case, a young girl is…
Read at the sourceGrayRealm
This si a review for all 3 mardock scramble movies, and not just the first one.
Reading the synopsis of this anime may fool you into thinking that you're going to watch an anime with ton of action in it, perhaps with violence and gore. And cyberpunk. Basically, you'd expect something similar to Psycho-Pass or maybe Ghost in the Shell... that kind of thing.
And you would be wrong. This anime does have very well done action scenes, but mostly it is a rather slow and rather sad story about its characters, their inner demons and psychological troubles.
It also does have a problem of never explaining most of the futuristic setting...
Anyway, detailed breakdown below:
Story: 6/10:
It is interesting, but it has that slight problem where it never properly explains fairly big details of its f…
Read at the sourcelawlmartz
"Sometimes winning is more painful than losing. The more you win, the more burden you have to carry" - Bell Wing
Preface:
Mardock Scramble is a very interesting trilogy of movies. Set in the cyberpunk styled future city of Mardock, Mardock Scramble follows Rune Balot, a teenage prostitute whose small and insignificant life is given new meaning after she gets wrapped up in a complex of despair, misery and destruction orchestrated by a man named Shell. After scraping for so long and being left in the street like gutter trash, Rune is picked up by Shell, an immensely wealthy and charismatic young man. Rune seeks nothing but some small inkling of love- but ends up another pawn in Shell's sick game of lies and murder.
After a night out, Shell rapes Rune, locks her in his car, and then proc…
Read at the sourceaikaflip
"I wish I was dead."
Spoken by 15-year old prostitute Rune Balot, these are the first words that set the dispirited tone of the anime movie trilogy Mardock Scramble. The story is set in Mardock City, a cyberpunk world where the skyline is filled with skyscrapers, cars glide on fluorescent green roads, and everything sparkles like champagne. It's a stunning place to look at, but it’s also a savage place where cruelty and crime are often left unpunished.
Homicide has become so rampant that the government has authorized a controversial procedure to resurrect victims from the dead to help track down and testify against their assailants. This is one of the several unusual, and perhaps implausible, concepts in Mardock Scramble, but it's presented with such conviction that it’s not too diffic…
Read at the sourceL_A_Cyberpunk
As my username might give away, I love cyberpunk, and I always have. Ever since those first few ambient skyline shots from the original Ghost in the Shell, I've been hooked. For me, anime is as much about the characters as the setting itself. Cyberpunk anime always seem to offer backdrops oozing with emotion, from lonely and derelict alleys to streets bustling with life.
Mardock Scramble is by no means perfect, and I loved it just the same. While it does have a few flaws, I hope this review can highlight the strong moments for which I hold it so fondly.
STORY- 7
I won't give away any spoilers here. What you do need to know is that Mardock Scramble is only part one of the trilogy. With that in mind, the ending is quite abrupt, leaving almost all questions unanswered. Many reviewers look…
Read at the sourceThraw
This movie popped up on one of my favorite sub groups so I figured I would give it a try. That ended up being a terrible mistake. Before I go into that, I will say the movie had some things going for it. First, the art style was really impressive. It was very clean and worked well with the genre. I also felt some of the characters were intriguing and the city it was set in seemed really cool. Unfortunately, the story is just horrid. The writer of this movie seemed to be of one of two mindsets. Either he/she wanted to make a mature scifi theme movie and thought that mature meant excessive amounts of nudity, sex/rape and at one point excessive brutality. Or they derived pleasure from taboo or grotesque themes. I felt awkward or uncomfortable throughout a lot of this movie and that was with n…
Read at the sourceggultra2764
In my exposure to this first movie in the Mardock Scramble film trilogy, I must admit I am impressed enough with the movie where I'm tempted to want to see more of what it offers up. Taking place in a far future, First Compression features the start of Balot's journey where she gains her cyborg body after being nearly killed and along with her new AI companion, Oeufcoque, must survive to be a witness to the misdeeds of her former lover, Shell, who is heavily involved in the underworld of crime that plagues Mardock City. The major highlight of the movie for me came in the form of Balot's very character. Coming from some very tragic and ugly circumstances from within her life, she is quite insecure and withdrawn about herself as she tries finding meaning for her life after the near-death she…
Read at the sourceMangoFox
If there’s one thing that can be said about anime, it’s that it can get quite controversial at times. From the Ecchi genre, to the Horror genre, to the Psychological genre, anime is often presented with scenes of intense language, violence, gore, nudity, sex, and highly questionable themes. Mardock Scramble is one such anime.
The story follows a young Rune Balot, who as a child was raped by her father. Enraged, her brother then proceeds to shoot the father. As her family falls to pieces, Rune grows up as an underage prostitute, and where she is ultimately caught and put in jail. Enter Shell, the main antagonist of this anime, who gets her out, gives her shelter, offers her his love and support… and then proceeds to blow her up.
Severely injured and on the verge of death, she is then resc…
Read at the sourceNavyCherub
Clarity is important to a movie's effectiveness. While it is true that clarity is always important in storytelling, a movie does well to keep that in mind even more, as there is much less time than usual to tell a story. With that in mind, as an introduction to a trilogy, Mardock Scramble: The First Compression does a wishy-washy job.
The main issue with The First Compression's execution is its confusing way of expressing itself. The first section of the movie consists of a vague and confusing sequence of related events. Many intense and provocative things are shown during this, but their relevance and, at a more basic level, what exactly is happening in them is all left unexplained. It seems there was an attempt to let the visuals do the talking here, but it doesn't work very well becaus…
Read at the sourceDraconisMarch
Short and sweet:
Story - Very interesting, but suffered from pacing issues. It moved wayyy too fast and didn't explain what was going on--or why--very well. Then again, some people may like this kind of vagueness that puts the jobs of interpretation and filling in the gaps on the viewer. If they had tacked an extra 20-30 minutes onto it, they could've SLOWED THE HELL DOWN and taken their time.
Art - Incredible, clean, and beautiful, except I'm not a fan of the grain layering they used over the duration of the film. It was different, but not my taste. Watching it on an HD-TV greatly reduces its gravity, so I recommend that.
Sound - Great sound effects, excellent voice acting (both English and Japanese). But there wasn't a lot of music--and when there was, it didn't stand out very much. T…
Read at the source5camp
This installment of Mardock Scramble is the first in what’s planned to be a 3-part series. In it, a teenage prostitute is killed by the man who took care of her, but she’s brought back to life by some magical science to try get revenge on her killers. She’s given a robotic body, lots of skin tight clothing and a highly intelligent golden mouse who can transform into whatever he wants, normally a gun of some sort.
It’s hard to talk about Mardock Scramble without giving out some plot setting spoilers. People might say that descriptions of the plot aren’t spoilers at all, but it does seem a shame to hurt one of the few things this movie actually does very well. The exposition, often a clunky and tedious part of a movie, was revealed in a gradual course of exchanges betwe…
Read at the source