Product Details

• Actors: Artist Not Provided
• Format: AC-3, Animated, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English, Japanese
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 3
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Adv Films
• DVD Release Date: January 1, 2008
• Run Time: 325 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000Y7WGTC
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #106,708 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Based on a manga by Sirou Tunasima, the adventure series Jinki Extend (2005) combines magical girl and mecha elements. Aoba Tsuzaki, a seemingly ordinary 13-year-old who loves robot models, is taken to a mysterious land where giant robots engage in deadly battles. Fascinated by the gigantic Moribito-2, Aoba meets its pilots, hot-headed Ryohei Ogawa and his gentle father, Genta. Aoba is a cognate, a human with special abilities to control the Moribito. Her talents and enthusiasm earn Aoba a berth in Angel, an elite team fighting the Ancient Jinki, "mechanical life-forms" that attack humans. These actions have been planned by Aoba's estranged mother Shizuka, who runs Angel. The mecha battles are well-staged, and the filmmakers make the Moribito feel like a massive machine. But these effects can't disguise that Jinki Extend is a shamelessly clone of Evangelion, with a few elements from Patlabor thrown in.(Rated TV PG, suitable for ages 14 and older: violence, grotesque imagery, brief nudity, some profanity) --Charles Solomon

Product Description
The elite organization Angel pilots the mighty Jinki, giant robots employed to fight the evil Kyomu. But Angel needs new recruits, and it just so happens that a set of beautiful girls were born with the innate ability to be the best Jinki pilots ever! What happens when these cuties become Earth's last line of defense?

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So Much Potential Wasted By Odd Editing, March 29, 2009

By	ONENEO (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews

I'll confess it: My love for robot-based anime has, on several occasions, resulted in my having purchased and endured countless substandard shows. I try to come on and review as many of the good ones as time permits but sometimes the not so goods deserve a bit of attention as well. Now don't get me wrong, everyone's tastes are different and one man's trash is often another man's treasure but the mecha series Jinki: Extend simply fails on so many levels that even the unique robots contained within can't salvage the muddled mess of a plot.

The simple summary of the show's entirely specious plot would look something like this: Based on a manga by Sirou Tunasima, Jinki Extend combines cute bubbly girls with giant robot elements. In 1988 Aoba Tsuzaki, a seemingly ordinary 13-year-old chick, who just so happens to spend her time building and painting robot models, is kidnapped by a cross dresser and taken into a war where giant robots, both new and ancient, engage in an ongoing struggle.

Fair enough so long as you don't stop to think too hard about the whole cross dresser element (which is used here merely as a gimmick) but in truth this represents the most logical portion of the prose.

Fascinated by the gigantic robot (Moribito-2), Aoba comes to know the machine's pilots, Ryohei Ogawa (the cross dresser who kidnapped her) and his father, Genta. In addition to loving robots all her life, it turns out that Aoba is a cognate, a human with special abilities to control such complex machines.

It's all downhill from there! The first sign of things unraveling is when the plot jumps to Japan in the year 1991 (without telling us this) where a branch of the Angel organization attempts to recruit a seemingly unrelated kid to pilot a Jinki (while another girl we haven't met yet) mysteriously looks on.

Suddenly our buddy Aoba (back in 1988) is torn between what she considers right and wrong when she starts to have feelings for a boy who happens to be the pilot of an enemy robot.

This may not sound too bad when written out like this, the truth is that whatever charm the first volume of the series introduced is almost immediately taken away by the start of the second disc. It would have helped tremendously if ADV Films would have had the presence of mind to toss a subtitle up whenever the story happens to alternates between events in 1988 Venezuela and 1991 Japan.

Instead the plot jumps between the two timeframe/ locations with alarming frequency, leaving the viewer with the daunting task of figuring out when and where they are. If the wacky editing made sense in the original Japanese release, it was definitely lost in translation!

The bigger problem then becomes the pacing of the plot. The fact that it bounces around so often never allows a full (or connected) story to take place. Instead the information is provided in small, meaningless fragments. Countless 1988 story threads fizzle out never to be touched upon again and several characters and events crop up in the 1991 timeline without explanation or congruity.

As frustrating as this is, there may be an even bigger flaw that takes away from the entertainment value of the show: The fact that many of the character models look identical! Especially when you factor in the physical aging that comes with treating 3 years time as if it were twenty seconds. Add names like Minami, Shizuka, and Shiva to the formula and good luck figuring out who is who in any given scene.

Jinki: Extend suffers continuously from a failed attempt to cram a huge (and confusing) cast of characters into a big clumsy story with only thirteen episodes to do it. Suffice to say, viewing the show in conditions other than those that allow for absolute dedication and concentration will result in confusion.

While I'm a fan of the logic that there's nothing inherently wrong with experimenting with narrative structure, Jinki:Extend's use of constant narrative cutoffs, flashbacks and unpredictable timeline jumps comes off as incredibly cheap. It feels like a half-hearted attempt to emulate more complex shows like Rahxephon and Neon Genesis Evangelion by "artistically" chopping everything into pieces. Worse still is that if you have the patience (and internet access to look things up) to finally make sense of the muddled plot line, it becomes alarmingly clear that what's actually there is thin and predictable.

About the only viewer who may enjoy Jinki: Extend despite its shortcomings would be those seeking attractive female models strapped into the cockpits of giant robots. There is no shortage of almost nude encounters (bath house scenes), puberty references, and giant robots blowing things up here in J:E. However, anything beyond the superficial begins to unravel quickly and completely nullifies the few interesting elements the show introduces initially.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, can get confusing, but deffinitly intersting, September 24, 2006

By	mixdupmind "otaku" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jinki:Extend, Vol. 1 (DVD)

The art is clean and simple- so it can come off as a "girls'" anime. But when the fight starts the characters and scenery become more in depth and detaile to give a spin on things. (the fight scenes r pretty good too!-its one of those classic robot themes you cant get away from). When it comes to story, it gets kinda confusing. There are "flashforwards" to a time 3 yrs after, and then it flashes back. It can get confusing if u dont have ur facts straight, Especially since its only 13 episodes (not 12, okay?). Its alot of story in a short amount of time, so you gotta pay attention, But its not always serious. It has its funny moments too! In the 1st episode the main character gets abuducted by what she calls a crossdressing pervert! Of course, he only kidnapped her because he was ordered too, but she still labels him as that.(by the way, musics pretty good too)

3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Promises anime fans much adventure., October 14, 2006

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jinki:Extend, Vol. 1 (DVD)

Manga and Japanese anime fans will appreciate JINKI: EXTEND, the new anime series from ADV which features giant robots and lovely anime girls who drive them. It pairs soap opera action and romance with science, and promises anime fans much adventure.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch