Customer Ratings & Reviews

Bought this out of nostalgia because I had fond memories of watching this on TV as a teen back in the 90's. The story is decent, but not great. It follows many familiar tropes found in other anime titles (damsel in distress, dark stranger with supernatural powers and a secret past who comes to her rescue, etc.). The animation was not exactly high quality back when this first came out, and you'll find no improvements on subsequent releases. But it's serviceable and still better than your average 80's Saturday morning cartoon. All that said, what really disappointed me with this release was the dub. I had distinct memories of voices and dialogue from the 90's release and was dismayed to find out that not only does this new release have completely different voice actors, but accents and dialogue have been changed and scenes re-edited in a way that, if I'm being honest, does a disservice to the original production. For example, in the original release, many of the townsfolk and supporting characters had European accents, in keeping with the setting of the film. In this dub (which, btw, is only 2.0 stereo -- no remixing for modern audio), the voice actors have given many characters a distinct Southern (US) country twang. And the main villain went from sounding like a passable Transylvanian to what I can only describe as "laughably Russian." Additionally, some scenes were edited, such as the chat between the hero, D, and Dan, the younger brother of Doris (our damsel in distress). This new dub has significantly different and longer dialogue, where D comes across entirely too chatty and emotional. It's not that the voice acting in this newer dub is bad. It's just... different, and in my opinion, not in a good way. That said, if you've never seen the original English dub (which I have since found out is available on various streaming sites online), you're none the worse for wear and may end up enjoying this dub over the original, bumpkins and all.

Anytime they re-release animation from my childhood I can't resist so I am prejudiced in favor of this movie