Understanding Chaos

Original Title: N/A
Romanized: Understanding Chaos
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

In the future, there is an ongoing conflict between Earth and Mars--and an ideological battle between Earth's organized society and Mars' chaotic take on government. But will an agent from Earth, trained in order, be able to deal with the battle with chaos that awaits him?

Quick Review

Rating: 3 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-06-30

Understanding Chaos is really as much an educational video as anime. On one hand, there is the short film, consisting of a couple of very brief but spiffy looking action sequences, and a longer, deep-sounding conversation between a stoic hero-type and a talkative villain, plus a little twist. The dialogue is a bit pretentious for my taste, but the basic set up and style is professional and has a good dark-future feel. The other half is a 40-minute-long interview with the creator, giving detailed information (with plenty of step-by-step demonstrations) on exactly how each shot and effect was produced.

Together, this short film and long how-to video make an interesting and currently unique package. If you're at all interested in making your own anime production or what goes into producing something like this, or you're just intrigued by the idea of a quality one-man-show and how it comes together, then Understanding Chaos is a worthwhile purchase.

US DVD Review

The DVD is minimal, but nice. The menu offers 3 simple choices: The video with subtitles (for the Japanese dialogue, and they're hard coded), the video without subtitles, and the making-of video. The story section offers one chapter break, and the making-of section is broken up with several (although neither showed a "time elapsed" counter on my DVD player). The video is quite sharp, an the 2-channel audio is nice as well.

Content Guide

The short is serious, but not that rough.

Violence: 1 - Hints at violence, but no onscreen death.

Nudity: 1 - A girl in a bottle.

Sex/Mature Themes: 0 - Nothing.

Language: 1 - Relatively mild language.

Notes and Trivia

The first production of Studio ArtFX and the brainchild of Terrence Walker, who appears in the interview. They've also finished the first episode of Shadowskin, which is very similar and a full episode of an ongoing story.

Availability

9-minute short, plus a 41-minute making-of video; available on DVD directly from Studio ArtFX.

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