FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL
I was completely mixed with “Crimson Whale” as a feature, because when you get down to it, it feels like it pads its run time. It’s only seventy minutes in length, and a lot of it feels like its treading water to get to the inevitable confrontation with its titular foe that happens to be anomaly of nature. “Crimson Whale” isn’t the worst anime film I’ve ever seen. It just isn’t all that good. It gets the distinction of being middle of the road mainly because it’s just so damn gloomy and mean spirited. It’s violent, and dark, and definitely does not thrive on supplying a happy ending. It barely has an ending, when you cut to the chase.
It’s 2070, and Korea has become the center of volcanic activity where earthquakes strike almost every day leaving the city in an apocalyptic ruin. Ha-jin is an orphan abandoned by her family who spends her days dealing drugs to degenerates and stealing to survive. She is haunted and driven gradually mad by her memories of slaughtering groups of whales. She has a talent for calling them from the sea, and sent many to be slaughtered for food by desperate villagers. Ha Jin is called on by a group of pirates and eventually taken by them to call the Crimson Whale, a whale that looms at the heart of a volcano. They want to slay it so they can acquire precious Uncentium.
“Crimson Whale” garners shades of “Moby Dick” with one of the crew members holding a vicious grudge against the crimson whale for biting off her arm. This leaves the crew with their own ulterior motives in confronting the whale, while Ha Jin spends her time moaning about her past, whining to the crew, and trying to figure out if it’s worth killing the whale if it means she can acquire vast amounts of wealth. Some of the crew want to kill the whale, some want to sell it for food, and others simply want to bypass it to get to the Uncentium to make it to a mythical village inexplicably untouched by the earthquakes. The creative work of the Korean Academy of Film Arts’ Advanced Program, “Crimson Whale” is a mixed bag. Sometimes it devotes itself to being for younger audiences, and then it displays immense violence.
Sometimes the animation is crudely simplistic, and then conveys immense detail, and let’s face it, the voice work needs a lot of redoing, if only because some of the performers come off as wooden. That said, “Crimson Whale” kept me invested in its tale, mainly because Ha Jin is such an interesting anti-heroine. She’s definitely ashamed of her gift for calling whales, and has no choice but to confront the Crimson Whale who seems to be a metaphor for her punishment for seizing and killing all the sea animals. “Crimson Whale” is definitely middling anime, but it achieves a somewhat interesting tale about man vs. nature and man vs. himself.