User reviews

The characters and premises are borrowed from Altered Carbon TV series (not book), but seems like the storywriter(s) do not understand the characters. There is no envoy intuition at all in this animation, characters run around doing normal (wrong) things. Takeshi Kovacs also doesn't behave like the character in the book nor TV series. I was disappointed with this.

Season 1 of Netflix's Altered Carbon was good. Season 2 not so much. This stand-alone anime is set in between the two seasons. I'm happy to have more of Takeshi Kovac, but this animation is just so-so.

Good: Very nice CG animation. It's well-done and beautiful to look at. The actions are somewhat average, however, in terms of excitement or originality.

Bad: Cliche story. A bit boring. Half way through I kind of guessed the ending. Not much character development. Not much of a mystery either, it turns out.

The story was pretty straight forward. It did not had twist and turn which made us fan of Altered Carbon Series. Overall, there was nothing in particular altered carbon about it.

I would give 8 stars for the animations, but 4 or less to the story.

It has been said a dozen times by now, the story is full of anime tropes and is cliched to no end. While that doesn't make it bad, it just loses points for having no originality and it didn't need the AC brand slapped on it.

The pros of the film are the visceral and kinetic fight scenes. What it achieves with its neatly and beautifully choreographed fights, it can't fix with the lack of human emotion from any of the characters or the story.

This should've been a shorter story on something like Love, Death, Robots - without the AC brand.

Ps. This still a better time investement than S2 of AC, Anthony Mackie had even less emotion for the entire season of AC S2 than any of the lifeless characters in this film. I guess that 500k per episode wasn't enough for the Marvel actor.

The action choreography is OK-ish, but the characters are either boring or annoying. The CGI animation is soulless and feels more like watching someone play Grand Theft Auto than a movie. Everyone hated AC season 2 for a reason and this animation is just as bad.

Again, the story of eternal life. The colorful and brutal action in Yakuza world is impressive.

Seldom watch japan animation but this one really the best I watched ever. For all the motion and action, it just smooth and the story itself I think it's better than expect. I'm willing to watch more animation if it's this level of production.

Definitely much better than the Season 2 of the Altered Carbon series. First off, the animation is beautiful, it looks like a combination of 2D and 3D animation and the colors just pop out.

The thriller aspect is easy to follow, and the action scenes are stylish with amazing viewpoints, and they are also relatively violently graphic. My complaint though is that there some obvious holes in the plot, and the technology seems a bit outdated.

When Altered Carbon was written in the early 2000s, Cloud Storage was almost unknown, not as common as it is now so they should've incorporated that into script. Still good enough to watch overall.

First of the bat, it's on the same writing quality as Season 2 of Altered Carbon.

What I liked: it's beautiful, the city is fascinating, the camera movement is nice, the fights are awesome.

But, after 15 minutes you start to realize is not Altered Carbon, is just your basic story you've seen thousands of time, no philosophy underneath, it doesn't follow the cannon. All you have is a samurai infused anime story, which is bad and the characters are bad, no depth what so ever. Just waiting to finish.

It could of been great, it what the hook but the bait was rotten.

Really disappointing. i have expected much more bc the show is amazing, kovacs wasnt well played and neither his role in the movie. it was trash

All my stats are for the animators the movie looks absolutely gorgeous. The story is pretty straight forward. Voice acting is good. It's a stand alone story so don't expect any deep dive into AC lore. All in all a good watch. (For Quarantined Folks: Stay at home, stay safe & stream Netflix.)

This has a standard storyline, you could pretty much predict what will happen. The background art is great, but the character art is bad, they have black outlines, so the characters look like they separate from their surroundings. The animation is good, and the action scenes are well done, even if overly bloody. It's not a bad movie, except for the character art, and is a decent watch. Just keep your expectations low.

The animation style was the only redeeming thing about this The story line was a bit boring and the action over the top and not even in the tongue in cheek manner of "over the top" as in other well liked Anime such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or Mob Psycho 100. I gave it a generous 4 because I liked the animation style.

I mean s3 . animation could have been better Netflix really need to be a better animation studios further the story and the fights were breathtaking. Just this if you liked the series

An animated feature films based on Altered Carbon but set in between season one and season two. Kovacs is made to take on a dangerous mission by the yakuza boss Tanaseda. He gets involved with another yakuza gang while trying to protect a young girl. A beautiful CTAC agent gets stirred into the mix. Edgar Allan Poe isn't there but a very Poe-like character in the form of a Japanese hotel clerk is. The story is quite cliched but there is a lot of blood and gore action. If that is what you like, then it's a good movie. That brings us to the question of the animation. It's CG, but it's not good CG. However, it's good enough to make you think that maybe Altered Carbon should have been animation to begin with. It does make you think about the original Ghost in the Shell. If this film had been made as well as Ghost, it could have been something really worthwhile. There are a couple of narrative hints thrown in at the end that make an animated sequel possible. If so, maybe they'll get their act together a little better next time.

First off: I watched the dubbed english version. The dub was fine and nothing amazing but nothing bad either.

I dislike the animation style used in this movie... it's a 'borderlands style' of animation, which honestly is a crude and weak sauce way method of animation... it looks OK, but it's a cheap art-style. I'm not saying they should have gone for the $50million disney-like style of animation, but they should have chosen a better-looking animation style for sure.

As for the story: This is mostly a drama story... sure, there are a handful of fight scenes in this movie, but honestly the majority of the 1hr9mins runtime is dominated by drama and talking scenes. That's honestly what makes "FF7: Advent Children" such a brilliant animation: It has more action and fighting scenes then dialogue.

Overall, the movie was OK, but with a different animation style and more fighting scenes, this movie could easily have been an 8/10 movie.

So maybe because I had seen the TV show I was a bit more weary and had a bit more knowledge of certain things, but this probably would work out as standalone too. It does not feel like this belongs to the show anyway, while it does maintain the character name of the protagonist of said show (and novel this is based on).

Having said that, the animation is done nicely, a lot of action and mayhem ensue (very bloody and violent). Of course some cliches are bound to be subject to the whole thing, but not to a degree that it would hurt the movie. Easy to follow and nice and decent entertainment, if you like Anime and Science Fiction. As I stated at the shows page, I have not read the source novel (yet)

This animated prequel is set on the planet Latimer over two hundred and fifty years before the events shown in the first season of the TV series. Takeshi Kovacs is sent there on a mission to protect a young tattooist, named Holly, who works for the local Yakuza. She is due to play a vital part in the succession ritual but is being targeted by those wishing to stage a coup. Shortly after Holly and Kovacs meet they cross paths with 'Gina', a CTAC agent and she joins them as they head to the hotel which is also the headquarters for the Yakuza... they will have to face many dangers before the truth of who is behind everything is revealed.

As somebody who enjoyed the live action 'Altered Carbon' series and who likes anime I had high expectations for this; I wasn't disappointed. The story is solid and provides plenty of reasons for exciting action; this action is impressively animated. The film looks great with impressively designed backgrounds which reminded me of 'Ghost in the Shell'. I was initially unsure about the use of 3D character designs rather than the traditional 2D used in most anime; I soon got used to them though. Overall I found this a solid addition to the 'Altered Carbon' story and would certainly recommend it.

These comments are based on watching the film in Japanese with English subtitles.

All the worst parts of the anime genre are present here. Cliched characters, ridiculous action, terrible script, wooden voice acting. The animation is technically OK and smoother than traditional anime but the staging and 'camera' angles bring nothing new. Stylistically it's all Ghost in the Shell which is to say Japanese Blade Runner. The plot is similarly derivative with portions copied from Season 1 of the Netflix live action series. Ultimately it's all rather boring.

Better than altered carbon series...this is great best than the series with great animation..and best plot with realistic fight

Visuals are top notch, and so is the fight choreography. But the story is pretty standard, bordering on cliche. There's just not much interesting or surprising happening, which lets down an otherwise great looking film.

Giving this a 5 for the beautiful animation style, only marred by kludgy movement. Action scenes were surprisingly good for animation.

The rest though, forgettable. Hamfisted, zero subtlety, everyone insists on re-iterating plot points out loud, and what's with the girl grunting every 30 seconds?.

Painted up to look like Altered Carbon, but missing all the good bits.