Broken Blade Movie 5: The Gap Between Life & Death

Gzerble Mar 5, 2015

5.3

Oh, how I wanted things to go a different route. I really did. Break Blade Movie 5: Shisen no Hate at this point decides to drop the facade of cleverness and becomes far more in line with the standard shounen/mecha TV shows. It was obvious this was going to happen, as it started in the last movie. Still, it needs to be said that there was so much potential if only they had tried a bit more. Whereas the fourth movie started trying to cash in the rewards from the first three movies, Break Blade Movie 5: Shisen no Hate is drawing on credit it already lost. The story is now moving towards simplistic black/white territories where everyone can cheer the heroic heroes and boo the villanous villains. Character development has officially ended, backstories are a thing of the past. The wide cast and the development from earlier films manages to give somewhat of a substance to the writing, but it is going on fumes at this point. As with most mecha shows, the dependency on slow (aka "epic" by the fanboys) movement and still frames is clearly evident. The screams of combat (which I don't get why they are a thing when piloting a mecha) start to dominate the audio as the central theme moves away from the rational and into "robots fighting = awesome" territory. Of course, the solid points from earlier films remain. The character designs are good, the backgrounds awesome, and so on. Still, I really wish things would have been smoother. Overall, Break Blade Movie 5: Shisen no Hate is by far the worst of the movies up to this point. If you are a fan of the genre and don't mind the issues they carry becoming dominant, then you might even think it is an improvement... but others won't feel that way.