Lady Death

Not a bad Storyline from a more then well known character. However the story seems to end to soon and leave you expecting there to be a series of movie. In other words seems to be a incomplete story as well as seeming incredibly short & you feel a bit ripped off due to this. The animation is OK But could be better tho to it having a bit of a dole style effected the whole movie by making it kind of boring in a way leaving only the story to keep it going. The Storyline itself does not save it enough to make this a Great movie it barely makes it a half decent movie. Scoring a 6 out of 10

I must say that I was sort of thrilled when I found this animated movie by sheer luck on Amazon. I had been reading the Lady Death comics back prior to 2004, and then stopped, and gotten out of the loop, so I had no idea that an animated movie was in the works. And by sheer luck I happened to come across it, so of course I bought it to see what it was. First of all, if you are familiar with the art style found in the Lady Death comic books, be warned that there is an Anime/Manga style influence to the art style in the animated movie. This might not sit well with just anybody, but personally, I found it to be alright. Although the original art style would have been (and is) better. However, I will say that in itself, then this particular art style was alright, and there were some nice details and appearances to some of the damned legion that were seen in Hell. The story, quickly summarized, is about Hope, the daughter of Matthias, who finds out about her father's dark and unholy secret. Burnt as a witch, Hope calls out to her father and ends up in Hell. Here she sheds her identity and becomes Lady Death, hellbent on taking revenge on Lucifer, the Lord of Lies. Right, well the storyline itself was simple and easy to follow, and would be a great introduction to those not having read the comic books. Was it impressive? Well, yeah, if you haven't already read the comic books. If you have read them, then this approach to the story of Lady Death is sort of a mediocre one. If you watch this animated movie, forget what you know from having read the comic books, and just watch this for the entertainment. It have what you need in an animated movie; demons, carnage, Hell, and scantily clad women.

Only very minor spoilers exist for major plot points, but no details about those plot points given. Lady Death has been "on my radar" for a while, I knew it existed and I was curious, but I never got around to watching it. Knowing it was just animated "straight to video" told me it wasn't going to be that good. When I finally did watch it and realized it wasn't just animated, but it was an anime, I was a little more than disappointed. I have found that anime versions of popular properties are either really good (Witchblade) or really bad (take your pick). I feel like this is one of those situations where it falls in between, like they wanted to make a good movie, but didn't have the budget or maybe just didn't have the vision. I think the movie's biggest problem is the lack of anything happening. There's a lot of talking. A lot of talking. Characters seem stiff and the voice acting, while not terrible, just seems like they didn't want to be there that day. A lot of the voices just don't seem to fit the characters, Lucifer is no exception. The voice actor has some kind of accent and sounds kind of slurred. Not a drunk slur, but some words just don't sound right. Imagine elves of Lord of the Rings with a slight southern accent. Lady Death has a decent voice, much better than Julie Strain of Heavy Metal FAKK2 fame, but there are times where she doesn't sound like she knows what kind of emotion she should convey. The animation is right on par with an ok budget anime, but nothing to write home about (much better than some like Dragon Ball Z where most of the time the only animation is their mouths moving). There were definitely some corners cut to keep costs down and some of the effects animations (like Lady Death's blue energy) were lacking. There are times when it looks like there were two animation teams working on the same project, Lady Death especially would change a bit between scenes. Fight scenes are typical for this type of animation, everyone can jump over buildings and leap off walls, just like any anime. Weapon usage is also on par where nothing feels "heavy". The plot is... ok. It's your basic, run of the mill "kill the bad guy" fluff. There is almost no character growth at all, aside from Hope becoming Lady Death and wanting more revenge. I would have at least expected her to have learned something, but it's just "more death, more killing". And the plot just skims over a lot of things, this movie could have benefited from an additional 15-20mins of time to explain things or go more in depth on some plots, but the plot can be summed easily with a few points: Here's Hope. Hope is Lucifer's daughter. Here's Hell. Hope is Dead. Introduce Lady Death. Here's a sword. Here's a horse. Lucifer is dead. Cliffhanger ending. They NEVER explain anything. It really leaves you wanting more story, which as I said earlier, is odd considering it's almost all talking in this movie. That being said, it doesn't mean it's a terrible plot, it just really light on details. I have seen movies where plot points literally go nowhere or they throw in a 'macguffin' or even an "deus ex machina" to solve something. I do enjoy the fact that they stayed fairly true to Lady Death's design, something that seems lost on many directors. Witchblade can be forgiven for the way the armor in the comics looked and would probably have been a pain to animate, but Lady Death really shined, even right down to the little skulls that hold her outfit together. Other character designs were ok, but not anything spectacular. It's something to watch if you're bored and don't know what else to watch. In the end, it's not the worst movie you'll ever see and it was an ok adaptation, at least they didn't do something like add little bears and flying cars because "the director wanted to", but it also won't keep you glued to your seat.

I enjoyed the "Lady Death" comic series. I enjoy anime. Let me rephrase that. I enjoy well done anime. This isn't well done. The script follows the comic series closely, the voice acting is competent, but the animation is every bit as wretched as an episode of Pokemon, and that can't be considered a compliment no matter how you twist it. With better animation, a whole series of direct-to-video films could have been launched. Now I pray that doesn't happen. Films like this have one shot to make it, so one would think that the producers would spend the money to make them beautiful. If they did that, then they could even slack off a bit on the animation quality of subsequent entries into the series. Instead, this one started with crap and has nowhere to go but downhill. I won't deny that some of the backgrounds are gorgeous, but animated film focuses on that which is animated... characters moving about. It is there that "Lady Death:TMP" fails dismally.

First of all, the critics of this movie are really over-exaggerating. Just because everybody isn't an anime geek that drools over animated (i.e. NOT REAL) females that are nothing more than lines drawn on a page doesn't make this a horrible movie. It's funny, I think I even heard Ralph Bakshi mentioned in one review. Yeah, the guy that did Wizards. sigh. Anyway, I didn't mind the story of a "heroine" in hell wanting to take out Lucifer. Gave it a more "casual watcher" appeal than to see a bunch of evil killing machines wanting to outdo each other. It wasn't spectacular by any means, but it's a cartoon for pete's sake. Oh, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to offend the fanboys. I mean "animated feature". Whatever. Cremator was a cool character and they gave as much of a story to the main parts without overdoing it. Not something I would watch over and over but wasn't a waste of the time I spent watching it. I did wonder if things died in hell, did they just come back to hell? That was an anomaly I think you have to suspend disbelief about so you don't get a headache. Another thing was that they could have had a much better ending battle. But it was a basic animated movie with more violence than what you'd want a kid to be watching, so I didn't expect the moon and emmys. And for all of you freakshows that want "nudity" and "realism", here's an idea. Watch a movie with real people in it and quit complaining that you don't get to see "cartoon *".

I also saw this amazingly bad piece of "anime" at the London Sci-Fi Festival. If you HAVE to watch this thing, do so with a large audience preferably after a few beers, you may then glean some enjoyment from it. I found the dialogue hilarious, lodged in my mind is the introduction of Cremator. The animation is awful. It is badly designed and badly executed. It may have been a good idea for the producers to have hired at least one person who was not colour blind. There's nothing else to say really, this film is a failure on every level.

Not all comic book adaptations have found success in live-action. From what has been produced in the past, it takes a lot of meticulous work and tedious time to produce a product everyone will like. Sometimes, the better route is to ditch the live-action bit and start off with an animation feature instead. It's less costly and could prove as a valid test to show whether a certain character has enough draw power to bring in enough viewers. Sadly, this motion picture attempt just didn't cut it for viewers, as did I. The lead, Lady Death is taken from the same name character from a now debunked comic book company called Chaos Comics. Unfortunately, by the time this motion picture was released, Chaos Comics went bankrupt. So, that's not a good sign right there, if the main comic distributor is out of business before the movie is even released,...the turnout probably won't be that successful. This ended up coming true but not because of popularity, it was more because of everything else. The two components to this film that really bring the quality down are its animation and writing. The majority of writing was done by Carl Macek, the same guy who wrote the screenplay to Heavy Metal 2000 (2000), the slightly bit more entertaining sequel to the animation cult classic, Heavy Metal (1981). But that's not to say that movie, or this one for that matter is really that entertaining. Heavy Metal 2000 (2000) was a little bit better because it actually focused on a character and not just a compilation feature. The same is here too but the reasoning behind various subplots are practically left untouched. After being accused of being the lovechild of Lucifer, Hope (the heroine) is burned at the stake and upon her death, decides to take vengeance on Lucifer for the cause of her death. This particular plot may be simple enough but upon deeper analysis, there are a lot of holes within the story. For example, it's not even explained to why or how Hope turns into Lady Death or how she even decides to come up with the name. Another unexplained subplot is if Hope really was the lovechild of Lucifer. Was it all a lie or did she truly have dark powers that she had no idea of. And if that was the case, how did she learn how to use her power? It's questions like these that are not answered, which can lead to a very disconnected and possibly boring watch between viewer and the screen. Plus, the dialog isn't too deep either. One of the most repeated lines in this film is "Desire equals power" and its not that difficult to understand the first time it is said, yet it is stated several times as if everyone will forget. Adding to the frustration is the disjointed and choppy animation. There were even some frames where the character stopped moving completely and was zoomed out of the frame; almost like no one would notice. Even the continuity wasn't kept in line, which seems legit that no one was taking this animated picture very seriously. But it's baffling though, the animators are not even credited here so....were they professionals? What's going on? As for anything else, it's OK. The music provided by Bill Brown was appropriate for the setting but it didn't make the experience any more meaningful. The actors who lent their voices to their designated characters also did a fair job but again, the dialog didn't help them make their characters very memorable. The art headed by storyboard artist Dan Schaefer looked good but for these few things, that's about all I can give it for the attempt that was made. But to say it'll capture even the smallest bit of the viewers attention is a little bit of a stretch. This poor adaptation of the Chaos Comic heroine has respectable performances from its voice cast but the overall product is horrendous. The writing is bare bones with minimal explanations to anything, the dialog is repetitive and animation is almost to the point of insulting.

All i hear about is how poorly the animation is done. It may not be up to par with what everyone expects, but look at it this way. Would you expect perfection in hell? It is my belief that the animation was made dry and gritty on purpose. It was great to see her character transformation in this movie, considering it will probably be as close to live action as we will ever get. I hope for a sequel very soon. If we want live action, i think we may be better off with Chastity or Purgatori. I don't think Lady Death would transfer well to film. But be that as it may, It is my own personal belief that all the naysayers about this movie are DEAD wrong. No pun intended.

Oh my GOD this was so bad! The story was weak - at best - and the animation was flat and lifeless - even childish. This film takes itself far too seriously...unless of course they meant to be funny. I saw this last week at the London Sci-Fi Festival and the entire audience was laughing at every scene. I think my favourite was 'shouldn't you be studying medicine at Oopsalof'! And I also think they were trying to see how many times they could cram in the character Nicalo's only line 'we will be together...it is our destiny.' I'm sorry but after the first time, the words lost all meaning. And what was with the apple? I recommend this as a lesson to Americans: You cannot animate, so please don't try. You only embarrass yourselves.

First of all, I'd like to tell you that I'm into comics, anime, animation and such stuff. It is true that everyone has his own preferences, but you can trust me on this movie. I'll be objective. To begin with the story - it's OK. Follows the story line of the comic books as far as I'm familiar with them. But the animation... Well, it's not actually terrible, but it's definitely cheap and mediocre. It would be a lot better if they didn't try to imitate the anime style and sticked to the original comic book style drawings. If we pretend not to see the rare sloppy effects like fire and lightnings you could tell that the movie is made about 10 years ago and even more. Looks a little bit like the original Vampire Hunter D from 1985. Take a look at Heavy Metal FAKK 2000 for instance - 4 years ago they made a movie that looks a hell lot better! In addition to this the voice talents do nothing remarkable, the music is nothing special. So all in all - it lacks atmosphere. I watched it, but I cannot tell I really enjoyed it. It just does not capture you. There's plenty of blood and violence, but that does not impress me at all. May be it will be shocking for someone who was never watched more mature oriented animations and sees animated blood for the first time (is there anyone around?), but I don't think this is the audience for this movie. So they could add a little nudity and spice to it. The chicks around Lucifer were quite tasty, and hell, we have Lady Death herself! There are few sexy looks, but that's not enough. Instead of Bill Brown's music I think it would look better on a hard rock / heavy metal soundtrack. All in all - the movie isn't that bad, but if you want something better take the original Heavy Metal, Heavy Metal FAKK 2000, Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice or Wizards maybe. And of course - Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust