This "Wall"-worthy mesh of psychedelic images stapled to a paper-thin fantasy/adventure plot dazzles as much
as it disappoints. But, if nothing else, director Shunji Oga keeps the pace moving with near-Machiavellian tactics,
letting nothing interfere with his marking each successive story point with more gusto and cornball cheesiness
than the previous.
An ill-treated love story, scored with a grating shopping center jazz motif, putters along side an epic story
of the evil Valhiss Emperor and the wake of tragedy and fury he leaves behind as he searches for the fabled Valley
of Gold. Amon and Lichia, cross-eyed lovers if ever there were, hardly get a chance to develop their mutual
adoration. Instead Oga relegates their flame to a cheap love-at-first-site descant on top of the far more involving
action of Amon sleuthing about the Valhiss village for a way to rain vengeance down on Emperor Valhiss, the villain
that slew young Amon's mother many moons ago. In fact, his love for Lichia never alters his main goal, nor does it
complicate his decision to become a champion against evil at close of this film. The sparks between Lichia and Amon,
therefore, sear the edges of this narrative rather than enliven it.
Not that "Amon" isn't lively. The opening sequence featuring the young, vengeful Amon oozing into an alehouse
inhabited by the most despicable of mercenary sludge teems with character and tension. And from there, the film's
slap-dash pace certainly doesn't relent. Art director Mitsuharu Miyamae's resplendent animation opens up a whole
world through which character designers Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno's etchings move with ferocity.
And as one character after another enters the fray, either through battle or flashback, Oga comes closer to
exploiting every fantasy cliché in the book - the brute, the thief, the mystical priests, the gnarled magic user,
the barbarous and dark overlord, the mustached captain of the guards, the princess in peril, her stolid waiting
woman, the wise teacher that taught swordsmanship with pacifism, the fiery pupil who ignores that pacifism, a
secret land of infinite wealth, dragons, suits of armor and lycanthropes in the wilderness.
This stockpile of fantasy archetypes is symptomatic of a much larger problem with "Amon Saga" - the scope of
story it tries to tell in an extremely abbreviated form. Inexplicably Amon is driven paradoxically by honorable
duty and bloodlust; he is both enraptured with love and barely aware of it; the over-lord desires the vast treasures
in the Valley of Gold but has systematically expunged any functional forms of commerce in the land. Rushing from
plot point to plot point, Oga litters "Amon Saga" with story fragments, leaving his deftly-rendered aesthetic,
imbued with fantastically surreal visual trickery, to fend for itself.
