Posted: 07/23/2011

Casshern Sins: Part I

by Ruben R. Rosario

Now available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Funimation.

Casshern Sins is a great mix of old school characters and new school animation that should make anime fans rejoice. The show is remake of the 1973 series Robot Hunter Casshan by Tatsunoku Productions. Tatsunoku enlisted top tier animation studio, Madhouse, to update the series and present one of their classic characters to a new generation. Set in a Post-Apocalyptic world called The Ruin, we follow Casshern as he has lost his memory and doesn’t remember how the world became this way. Along his journey, he fights giant robots, meets interesting characters and learns what his memories hold and how they correlate to what has happened. Part I of the Blu-Ray set contains the first 12 episodes of the series and does a wonderful job in showing the remake of Casshern in the HD format.

The video quality of Casshern Sins on Blu-Ray is absolutely stunning. The show is presented in full 1080p video, encoded in the H.264 AVC codec that makes this thing shine. Madhouse has been known for years as a quality studio that creates some of the best animation in the industry. This Blu-Ray set shows and proves this fact and displays their uncanny talent for creating intense and beautiful images. Everything from the color palette to the smooth frames of animation, show that any self respected anime fan or Blu-Ray enthusiast would be an idiot not to have Casshern Sins in their media library.

The audio is presented in two versions, the Dolby True HD 5.1 mix in English and the Dolby True HD 2.0 mix in Japanese. While the stereo Japanese mix is very good, the English mix is much wider and delivers a much more immersive experience for the show. The English dialog is about just as good as the Japanese in terms of delivery and performance. The symphonic score that was created for the series was made by Kaoru Wada, of Ninja Scroll fame. Wada does a great job infusing the melancholy and sorrow that has been left in the world of Ruin. With such lush visuals, the English surround mix does a great job in capturing all of the nuances during battle, the atmosphere during the slow parts and completes the experience that is Casshern Sins.

The only real problem with Casshern Sins is the pacing of the series over the 12 episodes. Since the show is set in a Post-Apocalyptic world, it starts to turn into a bit of a drag being there for a few hours. While there’s definitely some ups during battles and the style of the show helps the viewer stay entertained, there may be times where one is worn down by rusted robots and unending wastelands. Overall, it’s still an amazing piece of work and a great piece of animation. As a reboot of a 1973 series, it does justice to the long legacy that Tatsunoku Productions has in the history of anime. Don’t let the retro designs fool you, Casshern Sins is well worth the ride on Blu-Ray.

Ruben R. Rosario is a graduate from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Audio for Visual Media. He works as a freelance location sound mixer, boom operator, sound designer, and writer in his native Chicago. He’s an avid collector of films, comics, and anime.

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