released 06 may 03 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* Masamune Shirow has become one of Japan's preeminent manga authors, due to his imaginativeness and extreme (sometimes excessive) technical detail. The short anime movie BLACK MAGIC M-66 is one of his early forays into video. The plot takes place in some semi-mythical country where two highly lethal "M-66" combat androids have escaped. They were accidentally programmed to kill the granddaughter of the scientist who built them. A military team is trying to track them down and trying to keep a lid on the secret of the M-66. The heroine of the story, Sybel, is a gutsy freelance journalist who is trying to learn about the M-66s and rescue the girl.
If you've ever seen the BLACK MAGIC M-66 manga, it is basically sketchy early rough efforts by Shirow. The BLACK MAGIC M-66 anime simply borrows some ideas from the manga and essentially fits them into a minor variation on the plot of TERMINATOR. The end result looks less like a finished product than like a rough cut for someone experimenting with constructing a real movie later -- something like a "student film" if you like. It's less than an hour long, and though it does reflect Shirow's artwork and some of his clever technical thinking, it otherwise has little going for it in terms of plot or production. At least it has a bit more going for it than the 1988 APPLESEED anime movie, which is strictly machine-made stuff that has no Masamune Shirow flavor to it at all.
I would conclude that this might be of interest to hardcore Masamune Shirow fans, but I doubt that anyone else would consider it much worth their time, money, or effort. Try the GHOST IN THE SHELL movie instead, which if not perfect at least has a lot more going for it.