February 27, 2006
Galerians: Rion
Year: 2004
Directed by: Masahiko Maesawa
Written by: Chinfa Kang
Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: Medium
Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: Low
Overview: Galerians Rion is a a low-quality animation - meaning video game quality with a semi-coherent story. Unfortunately, the story too plays like a video game. The star of the video game is a boy named Rion, who wakes up in a bizarre dystopic version of his former world. It turns out that this crazed supercomputer named Dorothy is attempting to become a God and only Rion can stop her. To do so, he needs to find his sister Lilia, who, along with Rion, has been given a virus that combined, can destroy Dorothy. As most RPGs, Rion’s powers grow as he fights the Galerians that Dorothy throws up to block his journey to finding his sister. You can tell the end of the segment, because, um, Rion fights a boss character. Yes, you really are watching someone play a video game here!
The Bottom Line: While I am impressed that Maesawa was able to produce an anime on such a limited budget (I’m guessing a game environment was used to make most of the visuals other than Dorothy), they just aren’t good enough to make for compelling viewing. The visuals are rather fascinating in places - Dorothy (see above) is pretty cool for instance - and certainly are cyberpunk, as is the story, but there just isn’t enough here, either in story or visuals to make this worth recommending. I will give it a point for attempting to do a full scale anime without a budget.
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21 Comments on Galerians: Rion »
July 21, 2006
Zero34 @ 1:30 am:
You guys really suck at reviewing movies you need to just stick with your day jobs.
ETM @ 5:13 pm:
Well that was terribly productive of you, Zero. Thanks for the insightful comment.
July 22, 2006
SFAM @ 1:59 pm:
So Zero, I’m guessing you’re thinking that 4 stars is too many? Hmm…I might agree with you. I really did think of giving it 3 stars if that helps.
November 12, 2006
BlightedEdge @ 6:32 am:
The cinematics of the game were subpar. The story was cut and dry.
As a game I gave it a .5/10 mostly because the original had some impossible to get around without game shark glitches and a difficult to avoid Game Over from your own mind collapsing from it’s own weight.
As a video that most likely was put together of mostly cutscenes from the game I’d barely give it a one. It wasn’t very good at all. Hinted towards some cyberpunk-ish themes, but overall wasn’t very intriguing.
November 13, 2006
SFAM @ 4:40 pm:
Hi BlightedEdge, in retrospecting, I agree with you. Three stars is a more accurate score. Changed accordingly.
February 11, 2007
Lr @ 5:14 am:
Lilia is not Rion’s sister. She’s his best friend.
SFAM @ 4:36 pm:
Hi Lr, thanks for the clarification.
March 2, 2007
rion @ 12:07 am:
hey rion is my name
April 4, 2007
ChEeSaY ChIcKeN @ 9:51 pm:
Its awesome u ppl have no taste 4 movies. havent playel the game though.
May 13, 2007
Taokitty @ 7:49 pm:
Ori? Was not Rion and Lilia childhood friends, for do they not have seperate sets of parents? Or is there something I missed in the game? I don’t recall them ever saying they are siblings. o.o *Is confused*
SFAM @ 8:35 pm:
Hi Taokitty, my apologies if they were just friends and not siblings. I haven’t played the game -just watched the movie.
May 15, 2007
thoghtful186 @ 10:54 pm:
I love galerians,and galerians: ASH and the movie. But Rion and Lilia are childhood friends. Because their fathers created Drathy together, and were friends, Rion and Lilia became friends, so Lilia’s the most important person to Rion. In the second game Lilia says she loves him. Just gthought I’d clear that up^^
July 5, 2007
Taokitty @ 12:30 pm:
xD Tis fine though, I watched the movie first, and I was aware they were only childhood friends and not siblings seeing Lilia is Lilia Pascalle, Rion is Rion Steiner, and there are two fathers… *Sweat*
Though the movie doesn’t have everything in the game, you can still get a good piece of info from it. =^_^=
Fotf @ 1:13 pm:
They are not reviewing the movie guys, they are reviewing them for Cyberpunkness, not goodness.
February 26, 2008
Ryan @ 2:25 am:
I think they should have gone in more on the story and on the other galerians. That would have made the movie a lot more better.
March 5, 2008
Lilia @ 6:10 pm:
You gave galerians rion a bad review it is a great movie
March 14, 2008
blah @ 1:17 am:
i didnt even know this was a game until like 10 mins ago. i was in iraq and borrowed the movie from a friend. i thought it looked good animation wise since it came out in 03 and was a low budget movie. in the movie, they were siblings; i never played the game so i dont know their official relationship.
May 4, 2008
Hannah @ 6:02 am:
the movie is good!!!!people who say it’s not sucks!!!
May 12, 2008
Rodney Armstrong @ 6:12 pm:
I realy liked the movie i hope yall make another galerians: rion movie
Mr. No 1 @ 7:35 pm:
I played Galerians when it was first released for PSX and I loved it. I found it absolutely Cyberpunk (did anyone see certain similarities between those pills/powers and Akira?
). I remember I loved the CGI.
I shall watch the film and get Galerians: Rion when I have a chance.
As I said, I didn’t watch this but, SFAM, maybe you could review the film again after playing the videogames? Perhaps it would make more sense then? Dunno.
May 16, 2008
Claire @ 1:29 am:
In the movie they had different last names and fathers, so I think in both the game and movie they are friends.