Customer Reviews

Kimera

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

A bit of background, for those of you who are hardcore anime fans. This movie is based on a manga of the same name by Kazuma Kodaka---a popular professional artist who specializes in writing "yaoi" manga (a subgenre of manga written for women, by women, about male/male "homosexual" romance and sex---a kind of hentai for women). She's the same artist who created "Kizuna." In the original Kimera manga, Kimera was once male, before being genetically altered into an hermaphrodite.

The movie version toned down the graphic sexuality and gore of the manga a great deal, but otherwise was fairly true to the manga plotline (abbreviated, of course). However, this English-language translation, in an attempt to avoid annoying the homophobes among the US anime-viewing audience, made one significant alteration to the translation in order to avoid any sign of homosexuality: they translated Kimera's gender as female. Yaoi fans, take note. Kimera still *looks* male (you never see genitalia in the anime, but I've read the manga; Kimera still has male equipment, at least externally), but the other characters repeatedly call it "she" and "her," which gets *really* annoying after a while.

In addition, the English-language dub of this movie is... wretched. The mis-translations are one problem, but the voice acting is just plain bad---flat in some places, overacted in others. The art's not bad, but the animation is jerky in some places---as I understand it, Kimera had a lower budget than anime aimed at male audiences.

If you're interested in a low-budget badly-dubbed horrorfest, you might like this movie. If you're a yaoi fan, or a Kodaka fan, you'll hate it.

Only 2 negative points on this anime.
1), the volume on the English sound track is quite LOW. My DVD player is a SONY DVP-S570D. I had the volume cranked to the max with headphones on and I still had problems hearing the english track. So, for customers who only like to enjoy these anime in english dubbed you will probably be disappointed.
2), Profanity is regulated to the english track. (I guess the producers assume that the consumer wants profanity. It doesn't help the story.) The japanese track is better.
I give KI-ME-RA a 4, since I enjoy viewing anime in japanese with subtitles. They have better Voice Actors too. : )

A surreal, erotic animated feature created by Kazuma Kodaka, the Japanese manga (comic book) artist who has also produced "Kizuna", two volumes (VHS) of which is also available through Amazon.com. Excellently animated, dubbed into English very well -- my only argument against this anime would be the translation. The biggest example of which is that a certain main character is inaccurately portrayed as a dominantly female being. Bad enough that Kimera HAS female parts... but c'mon! All of Kodaka's works that I'm aware of feature gay men, and "Kimera" is a stab into sci-fi macabre that works so well in mainstream exactly because Kimera's 'swishy-ness' can be taken in another way... Sigh. But aside from the implications of a storyline that at least comes off adequately to the Western viewer ("Just pass it off as more surrealism!"), I do admit that I found myself watching it over again within a few minutes of finishing. The dynamic of a cereal salesman stumbling upon a mysterious beauty (whatever gender Kimera is!) in a setup that's vaguely X-Files-esque is truly unique. And just wait til you experience Shiro Sagisu's score, a techno remake of a familiar classical piece (name escapes me at the moment -- I remember hearing it in one sequence of Disney's "Fantasia"). I recommend buying this title.

I'm sorry to have to berate the other reviewers, but at the time that I'm writing this 7-out-of-10 of them have given this movie 4 stars or better. Myself and three of my friends, all of us having seen a large amount of anime in the past, watched this piece of garbage, and frankly, we were appalled. The animation is sub-par, the plot varies from nonsensical to non-existent, and the quality of dubbing on the English-language edition is horrendous. In general, the movie only gets worse as the show goes on until it climaxes in a needlessly confusing splatter of unnecessary and overdone violence. Not to sound judgmental, but I suspect the previous favourable reviewers were simply anime novices who were wowed by the showy novelty of animated blood and the small amount of pathetic sexual content. Hopefully, after they've seen a little more of the genre, they'll realise just how awful "Kimera" really is. In a nutshell, my friends and I were agreed that this was not only the hands-down worst anime we had ever seen, but in some ways arguably the worst movie we had ever seen, as well. Thank God for Blockbuster and its "Love It Or The Next One's Free" policy. You better believe we collected on this one.

This movie was in no way entertaining to me. It was decent visually; However, The story was short and pathetic. It tried to be deep and engrossing but failed miserably. It was rushed along and didn't improve as the movie progressed. I perfer sub titles but the voice over for this film was done quite well. All the sexuality in the film was kind of over the top. All in all, i felt that it was cheesy and read out like a wannabe Stoker's novel.

One of Japan's flops which I'll proudly trump. This movie is [garbage]. I've seen the dub. But that doesn't change my opinion about the whole package. If you take a bathroom break during the middle you haven't missed anything. Too many flashbacks one rape scene.This movie is tasteless... The plot is pretty flat(if you can call it a plot that is). There is no drama,action or redeemable traits in this movie
Don't waste your time or money on this...

The anime would probably only appeal to fans of the original manga (comic.) For those not in the know, Kimera should be refered to as "he" rather than "she." I am not surprised the english released changed it to "she." though.

Not being fluent in Japanese, I can only guess at the plot, but the manga is fun to look at.

This is one of the best sci-fi animes ever! The character who plays kimera reminds me of Milla Jovich from The Fifth Element. If u loved that character, you will love Kimera! Oh and if you want to check out another anime that rocks, check out Ninja Scroll and Mermaid Forest!

Kimera is a fine sci-fi it has all one wants in a sci-fi from myaterious woman in a high tech frezzing system to Vampires from a fantasy world who can't breed so they have a MOTHER system. I give it five stars for rich animeation and powerful scenes.

Maxfield Starrett

It's just sex,violence. No real plot.Even the japanese version would prove equally uninspired. I saw a live action movie following a similar plot called species. Species 2 is better than this mindless drivel. The story was in a similar fashion sexuality but the plot didn't revolve solely around sex. I suggest better anime titles in the action genre. This movie has no action. Just sex. Too predictable and dull. The story follows the "Species" cliche.