Product Details

• Actors: Tezuka
• Directors: Tezuka
• Format: Animated, Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Language: Cantonese
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 3
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: ANIME WORKS
• DVD Release Date: November 25, 2008
• Run Time: 325 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001F0TT3S
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,102 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

PHOENIX:COMPLETE COLLECTION - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Pain of Eternity, June 22, 2009

By 

Aion (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phoenix: The Complete Collection (DVD)

It's hard to rate this series because it's a collection of five short stories. The only links the stories have is the Phoenix, and the immortal bird of legend tends not to play a huge role in any of the stories, often just being in the background watching the events unfold.

Some of the stories last for four episodes, others one. Some of the stories take place in the past, others in the future. Some of the stories involve battles between Gods, others focus on battles against nature. There's almost too much variation.

The first, four episode story is probably the best of the lot - it flowed well from episode to episode, despite there being a lot of twists. It started with a man washing ashore somewhere, getting captured by a tribe and needing to save the life of a woman to save himself from being executed. The focus then switched to an Apocalypto style raid on the tribe by another country. It then switched yet again, this time to a father and son type of story where one of the invaders raised one of the few survivors of the raid as his own. And, during all this, the story kept switching back to the man who washed ashore trying to survive with the woman from the tribe he saved at the start, with them ended up trapped in a cave and left to the mercy of nature.

Out of all of the stories, the was the most involving. I found myself struggling to care about a lot of the characters included in the series, with some taking drastic actions without any real development having occurred, but in the opening story it was easy to care about the 'father' and 'son' who tried to survive during times of war. My only real complaint about it is that the Phoenix might as well have not even been in this story at all. It did nothing other than get hunted on and off a few times. If the Phoenix had played a more important role, like it does in later stories, I could understand its involvement, but it was just there for no real reason. The messages of the first story are that death is a part life that must be accepted and that war is pointless, neither message needing the Phoenix to be expressed.

The second story occurs in space; on the moon. That's right - a jump from the ancient past to the far future.

The story takes place during a time where the Earth has died and the remnants of the human race have escaped to space. At some point after their escape, some humans on the moon discovered the Phoenix, which has the power to give life, and they managed to get one of its tail feathers. Research on the feather took place on the moon, and one of the men in charge was on the verge of understanding it when an 'accident' occurred, resulting in the destruction of the lab and the death of most in it. Right before the researcher died, he was attempting to save a female friend from falling to her death, her last words being "You traitor..."

After the opening described above, the story quickly caught my interest. The researcher who died had been revived after the 'accident', half of his brain having been replaced by a machine. When he awakened, he couldn't distinguish one human from another - they all looked like distorted monsters to him - and he had no memories of his past. However, he discovered shortly after awakening that robots appeared to be living organisms to him, with one robot in particular looking like a woman, resembling the woman who called him a traitor before his death. Shortly after discovering his new 'female' friend, he runs away from the humans with the robot, escaping to the lab that was destroyed at the start.

I liked the second story a lot. It wasn't as involving as the first, mainly because it only lasted for two episodes, but the story was fascinating. It was basically a story of redemption, where one man had to correct his past mistakes by living on. If there's one thing that's suggested a lot in each story included, it's that, rather than being a blessing, immortality is a curse; a punishment that must be endured.

What follows the above is the only one episode story in the entire series. Back in ancient times once more after the leap into the future of the second story, this time around the story was about a woman killing a healer in order to prevent the healer saving her father. As a punishment for killing the healer, the Phoenix forces the killer to take on the role of the healer she killed, trapping her and taking her back in time. In order to make amends, she must allow herself to be killed by herself and hope that, at some point, the the cycle of life and death stops. It was a decent story but, compared to what went before, it wasn't great and it didn't have the length required to make me care a great deal.

The next story switched back to the four episode formula the series opened up with. This time around, still somewhere in the past, a member of the royal family of some clan or another gets the face of wolf put on him after having his own face scalped. He awakens sometime afterwards to discover what has become of his face and, eventually, heads east to another country in order to try to get his old face back after being informed that his future will be brighter if he does so by an old woman who can predict such things.

I liked the fourth story but never really got into it. The back-story of "Dogface" is never explained in detail, and I was left mystified with regards to what exactly lead up to him getting captured and losing his face. Likewise, I didn't get how the wolves face became his own, mouth movements and all. The only thing that came across clear as day was the message of the story, the message being that no religion is right or wrong; only the people themselves are wrong. Despite it lasting for as long as a movie, I felt the story needed more time, or at the very least needed much better explanations.

What really bothered me was the love story aspect of the fourth story. One of the many 'Gods' of the nation in the east fell for Dogface at first sight, never even having a conversation with him before deciding to follow him. She also risked her life for him without much chatter between the two. Their relationship never came across as a real because not enough time was put into it by the author and/or the animation studio. And the end of the story made little sense, with her leaving Dogface randomly, Dogface randomly getting his face back and the two seemingly ending up back together, despite Dogface losing his memory for some reason.

Moving onto the final, two episode story, the story once again took place in the distant future, just like the second story did. In the future depicted in the last story, humans had moved under the surface of the Earth in an attempt to survive after life could no longer be lived above ground. One scientist (Saruta), however, stayed above ground in an attempt to solve of the mystery of life in order to save the earth. He tried and tried to create life, always falling short. When he was on the verge of giving up, the Phoenix appeared before him and told him that a miracle would occur. It turned out that the miracle would be a young man who arrived at Saruta's lab after escaping from the underground cities because his companion - an alien shapeshifter - wasn't allowed to exist. He ended up getting shot and killed by someone who followed him. The miracle occurred when the Phoenix allowed him to drink her blood and made him immortal.

Following these events, every other life on Earth died, leaving the young man alone. It was then that he realized the true pain of loneliness, with nothing to do and no-one to talk to. For billions of years he lived alone in a wasteland, unable to die. He was eventually rewarded by being able to see the rebirth of the world as it began anew and the cycle of life started over.

For me, the message of this final story wasn't very clear. Why wasn't the man simply allowed to die, instead being forced to suffer the pain of loneliness? If I had been in his shoes, seeing the world restart wouldn't have been enough to make up for billions of years of boredom. The main message of Phoenix - that immortality is a curse - came across well in the last story, but it still seemed a bit pointless compared to the earlier stories.

If you're still with me after reading the descriptions of all five stories and my thoughts, I'm sure you'll understand the difficulty of reviewing this title. On one hand, it's far more meaningful than most series out there and has none of the "moe" elements that plague anime based on a lot of the more recent stories. The mangaka clearly had some important messages about life he wanted to express and did so as best he could. But, on the other hand, the series is all over the place because of the variation between each story, and I wouldn't call any of the stories included polished. The stories were released in manga form a long time ago and, compared to the character development and the like in more recent anime, the age of some of of the stories shows. Depending on how you look at it, Phoenix is either very flawed or brilliant because it avoids the holes stories from our age fall into time and time again.

In terms of the visuals, Phoenix is very nice to look at. Someone on Amazon described the art/animation as being something he imagined Disney coming up with after "going on a bender", but I don't think that's an insult when we're talking about an anime TV series. The character designs are rather cartoony, with characters having HUGE noses and the like, but it looks very nice. It's different than most art nowadays, but not in a bad way. The worst thing you can say about the art is that the character designs of the characters in the five stories are mostly very similar, the recurring character Saruta always having the same big... Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad for an adaptation, February 16, 2011

By 

Jamie Erin Gee - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phoenix: The Complete Collection (DVD)

So, I originally started off by reading this series in the library. I was pulled in immediately because this work was different and I began to understand how Tezuka earned the title of "God(father) of Manga". In comparing the anime series to the manga, I was still impressed but a little disappointed to see that the Phoenix didn't interact with the characters more. There are moments in the book when the Phoenix directly addresses the characters and tries to impress the Buddhist sentiment of the natural life cycle, which the Phoenix is in juxtaposition to although the Phoenix too dies and rises (rebirth, karma). I also was a little saddened that not all the stories could have been adapted.

The one thing for me that really made this series stand out was the incorporation of history and mythology that while it isn't absent from modern manga, this series was particularly informative of (there's a reason for Saruta's big nose, it comes from mythology and Tezuka gives a brief description of this in the book). If some of you feel a little thrown by the series of short stories (I was, especially since Nagi and co were growing on me, now I'm trying to figure out who's reincarnated as who), the similar character designs, and the fates of the characters, it really helps to put into perspective that this is a Buddhist work (Tezuka's Buddha is supposed to be a movie soon). Thus the cyclical imagery and an appearance by Buddha himself in the opening credits. You ay not agree with the ideas, but if you're into anthropology/media studies/Japanese culture, this might be a good series to look into. not to mention the opening credits are pretty gorgeous and fall in line with the message of the series, of the natural cycle of things, balance, rebirth, change...good stuff. But I would also recommend reading the manga to get a full understanding of Phoenix. Good discussion material and a classic.

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent stories for all mankind in anime form, December 15, 2011

By 

kay bhee - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Phoenix: The Complete Collection (DVD)

original was a manga book series
in the 1970s..by our own
walt disney of japan...

now you get to see it..more or less
accurate to the book form...in dvd movie form...

GET it
if you wish to know about life,
spiritual values and deep facts of thousands of years
and more...

serious people, and even young OPEN minded clean kids
will carry these lessons
for all their lives.

see how it changes your life.
english subtitles...are ok...they get to the point eventually.
msg gets across.