Strange Dawn: Strange Journey (Vol. 2) (2002)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Original Story and Character Design by Hajime Miyakawa
Directed by Junichi Sato (English version by Laurent Soumoy)
Series Structure and Screenplay by Michiko Yokote (English script by Angus Waycott)

Features:

• art gallery
  
• animated menus
  
• trailers
  
• DVD-ROM content
  
• English and Japanese language tracks, with English subtitles
  

Dindrane's Anime Warnings:

• rampant surrealism not controlled by intellect
• more pervy toe fanciers
• dialogue so silly that there are no English words to describe it

Rating: NR, suitable for most audiences

Anamorphic: N/A; presented in original TV aspect.

My Advice: Search and Destroy

Strange Dawn: Strange Journey continues the story of Emi and Yuko, middle-school girls somehow shifted to another world where tiny tribes of "people" fight each other for no apparent reason. Early in this disk, Yuko is captured by a bad-guy group (we think they're the bad guys, but the real bad guys might be...something else). Actually, she is not so much captured as wanders off with them, but Emi is terrified anyway. The rest of the disk is taken up by Yuko struggling against her imprisonment at the hands of her tiny captors. Basically, some people fight a bit, some wandering about happens, and nothing is learned, resolved, or found, though they do seem to think all of this is terribly clever, deep, important, and vital to All Things. Too bad it isn't.

As with the first disk, nothing in this series makes any sense. Not because they think they're Anime's answer to David Lynch or Terry Gilliam, but because it just doesn't make any bloody sense. It's never clear who is fighting with whom or why, Emi and Yuko seem to get monumentally sidetracked by just about anything constantly, and it's frustrating to see how easily the whole mess could be resolved by the Great Protectors if only they had a single brain cell between them. It's also frustrating to have them continually called "Great Protectors" when all they do is wander aimlessly, complain, or, at most, save them from me, because I would have just killed them all. More weepiness and faux angst substitutes for real character development.

The voices continue to be mediocre and oddly unmatched. Why Emi and Yuko sound wildly different when they're supposedly from the same place is distracting, but the wee folk have this issue as well--we still have a French femme fatale mixed in with sundry other villagers. The characterization, however, matches the voices perfectly--random and aimless with no conceivable connection to each other or to the "plot."

A sudden bizarre turn occurs towards the end of the final episode of the disk--real blood is drawn. In a series meant to be enjoyed by very young audiences, this duel is unexpected and somewhat incongruent. I do not believe in editing such things out of a writer's work for the sake of age-appropriateness (the butchered DBZ series, anyone?), but I do think that the tone of a given series should remain relatively consistent or at least build toward changes and growth--a sudden swerve into violence and then back again is just going to make your audiences nauseous and distrusting of your storytelling skills.

All in all, if you enjoyed the first Strange Dawn disk (God help you), then you'll likely enjoy this one as well. If you didn't enjoy the first disk or didn't see it, skip this one, as you're missing only a headache and furrowed brows as you struggle to find a reason for, well, anything.