M.D. Geist Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-06-27 (updated 2013-08-16)
• 0.5 stars out of 5 (?)

M.D. Geist (Director's Cut or not) is a cheesy '80s action flick, and not even a very good one. It has an abysmal plot, weak, entirely unsympathetic characters, ugly visuals, and is generally uninteresting to boot. The relative bright points are a moderate amount of decent post-apocalyptic gory action and some relatively cool Mad Max-esque mechanical design. If only it took itself a little less seriously, it might have been fun in a gleefully violent Fist of the North Star sort of way... but no. At least the inconclusive ending isn't, if you include the sequel.

Unless you're very into old-school post-apocalyptic gore, it's not worth the time.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-06-27 (updated 2013-08-16)
• 0.5 stars out of 5 (?)

From its relative popularity when USM first released it you'd think that there was something special about M.D. Geist, but so far as I can tell, it's bad anime, plain and simple. There's nothing more to it than a gory '80s anime action flick with characters that are uninteresting and completely unsympathetic (it usually helps if you at least care who wins), a story next to nonexistent, and it doesn't even look very good.

The Director's cut, produced about a decade later, adds about five minutes at the beginning and end (mostly the end) to help tie the movie in better with the sequel, but it doesn't improve the situation noticeably.

Given the story, about the best you could hope for M.D. Geist to be is an action flick about a super soldier who has known nothing but battle and is desperate for a cause. If only it were even that good. In the whole video, there are all of three lines of dialogue that even resemble character development, one third of which don't make much sense. The rest of the "story" is no better--there are gaping holes everywhere. (Examples: Why'd they stick Geist on a satellite instead of just killing him? What's even up with the Death Force?)

Now, bad anime can be good if you look at it right. In this case, the flimsy story might have worked if M.D. Geist were one of those gleefully violent action flicks that revels in its own gore. Sadly, it takes itself too seriously to succeed even on that level.

To be fair, there are a couple of things that aren't bad. For one, Geist is a little different than the usual cold, grim anti-hero. Instead of just walking around looking too cool for words and never saying much (though he does all that too), he occasionally gets this sort of odd, out-of-place smile or sadistically pleased look that gives him some character. The mechanical design also isn't bad: Cool-looking big, chunky war machines and a few of those Mad Max motorcycles and dune buggies that everyone seems to like. And of course there's Geist's armor, which was cool enough to be adopted as US Manga Corp's "spokesmecha."

There are a few other flashes of visual cool, but, other than the mechanical design, nothing to write home about. The plentiful action looks good by the standards of low-budget older anime, but that's it. The rest of the animation is weak, the character animation is crude, and the art is rough and messy. The end is particularly bad--it's hard to distinguish the robots from the backgrounds. The '80s-style character designs are seriously ugly, which makes the characters that much harder to sympathize with.

Neither the Japanese version nor the English dub has any voices of note, and neither is particularly good. I didn't think much of the English casting for Geist, though--his voice is too deep. Acting aside, the writing in the dub is bad--the dialogue has a high cheese factor, and a lot of it is so poorly written that it doesn't even make sense (note that as an ongoing theme). The music is uninteresting, except for a decent classic J-rock end theme.

In all, M.D. Geist (Director's Cut or not) is a cheesy '80s action flick, and not even a very good one. It has an abysmal plot, weak characters, ugly visuals, and is generally uninteresting to boot. The action, at least, isn't bad, but unless you're very into post-apocalyptic gore, it's not worth the time. If you do watch it, note that the sequel continues (and concludes) the plot.

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The plot is continued in M.D. Geist II, though that's more of a '90s action flick than an '80s one.