Review: Sin: The Movie

In doing so, he rescues a young girl and also incurs the wrath of J.C.'s sister (another J.C.), a tough woman high in the ranks of military intelligence.

The young girl is kidnapped again and everything is traced back to one woman - Elexis Sinclaire, head of the huge pharmaceuticals corporation SinTEK. Elexis' goal is to force the evolution of mankind - even if humanity perishes as a result...

The basic plot is fairly straightforward and contains few real surprises. Basically Sin seems like a very empty movie; having watched it, I was chiefly left wondering why I bothered. The plot lurches from one set piece to another, chiefly driven by the need to force events in a direction which was predictable already.

It also feels quite short. Probably because it is; 60 minutes is shorter than what most people would be willing to class as a movie. In anime terms, it's more of a long OVA, although I can't say I'm sorry that the series stopped here.

Characterisation is fairly shallow, motives transparent, actions predictable. There's a little fan service, but you would hardly notice from the buckets of gore lavishly splashed around.

Animation quality is a little mixed. Use of computer effects (CGI) stands out enormously from time to time; the handful of detailed 3D models used are lovingly zoomed into and around. Meanwhile, scaling is badly abused to give a poor illusion of objects approaching from, or receding into, the distance.

Fortunately the dodgy animation is largely limited to external views; the conventional character animation is reasonable, although the low frame rate is rather noticeable at times.

Voice acting is strictly average (not great, not terrible). Ambient sound and music likewise.

One oddity of this release is that there are two subtitle tracks. One is essentially a dubtitle, reflecting the text of the English dub, which is quite different to the alternative subtitles.

Packaging is decent, with a fairly attractive cover design.