SnoopyStyle
Kaena wants more than her village life which centers around collecting sap from the tree Axis for their gods. The village elder sees the rebellious girl as a threat as the god demands more sap from the dying tree. She explores and encounters alien Opaz who reveals he is the sole survivor that crashed on her planet. The native Selenites killed his people and stolen their technology. The ship's core Vecanoi survived the crash and the Axis tree grows from it into space. Kaena has to retrieve the core from the base of Axis.This is an exercise in CG animation with a clunky story that needs too much exposition. It has one character in Kaena and the rest are forgettable. The CG is functional video game graphics from the era. It's an interesting world for a video game but needs much more work to make it a good story.
psycho bob
Short and sweet storyline:- Set in another "world", Kaena is the rebellious girl of her tribe.She finds herself beckoned to save her people and world, with the help of some new "friends".This is the best anime using CGI since Final Fantasy and is just as good.Certainly outshines The Animatrix, which is also a favourite of mine. Don't let other peoples bad reviews put you off-take a gamble, rent the DVD(video doesn't do it justice) and make your own mind up. I saw this from a downloaded, poor quality copy that was passed on to me.I liked it so much that I went and bought the widescreen DVD the next day. I confess to being a little bemused at the PG13 rating, as my two youngest daughters(7 and 10 years old) loved it and will watch it again.The only thing I can think of is a chase scene but even that was not scary to them.They have seen worse on Itchy and Scratchy!! It's a must see for anime/fantasy fans of all ages.10/10 every time from me !!
seals_jay
Have you ever played a game on the PS2, PC or XBOX and just drooled over the cut-scenes, those small cinematic snippets shown between levels? This entire movie, scene after scene, *is just like that*. And I'll tell you why: when it was originally conceived by the director and writer, that is precisely what they had intended to do... they wanted to create a game.Looking at the "Special Features" and the Making-Of featurette on the DVD before watching the movie, I learned quite a lot about why and how it was made. The majority of the CG artists who worked on this film were, at first, all novices, most of whom had some minor experience in doing CG game work. When they first started on "Kaena", the 3D software darling of Hollywood, Maya, hadn't even come out on the market. These CGI animators were all using, basically, a freeware 3D modeling/animation suite. They worked on a shoestring budget, I might add, which is one of the reasons why all of their animators were so inexperienced and were learning as they went along.Their animation/CG crew began as a five-man team and eventually grew to 50 persons at any given time. At a few key points they had up to 100 people working on the entire project, but most of the time they had a fairly core group of people all working in the same office building. Looking at the scenes individually, I can definitely see where they gave certain scenes to certain teams- as a 3D artist myself, I've gotten quite adept at picking out different styles and techniques used. MOST of the biggest differences between the scenes can be found in the lighting setups, which in some spots are breath-takingly exquisite and at other times amateurish at best.Due to the original intention for this project to be a video game rather than a feature-length film, I can totally understand why the storyline would have some plot holes here and there- I expect that those gaps would have been filled in during gameplay. So taking that into account, I can honestly say that this film has a pretty solid storyline and some fairly well fleshed-out characters, all things considered. It is also good to keep in mind that this story wasn't written by "professional" sci-fi writers- it was written, in part, by the director who hadn't done anything like this before in his life.Looking at the entire project with the trained eye of someone who's been involved with the business for a couple years now, I think that "Kaena" is not only a superb film, but it is a testament to what is possible when enough people throw themselves into a project like this. No major studio backing, no major software endorsement, no real experience in this field whatsoever... it's amazing that it even got rendered, let alone having been edited, scored, printed and distributed worldwide.This movie is similar to "Final Fantasy" only in the sense that it was done completely with CGI. In every other way, however, this one stands alone and it SHOULD be given the proper credit that is due.
ieatmold
i thought it was really a pretty good movie. Don't expect the childish humor you might find in shrek or sharks tale. Though it sounds funny to say this about a cg film with the main character being a large chested tomb raider figure, i thought the movie actually had something deeper to say. It is modern mythology that shows a representation of conflict in society through our religion and trying to understand and cope with the world around us...she tries to find real meaning and continues throughout the film searching for a better way of life and peace...in any case worth watching. I don't know what else to say about it... they want me to write at least ten lines...thats about it...yeah
