Stunning animation and inventive camera work frame an insubstantial piece of fiction, laden with a cast of thousands and a budget of not as much.

Amon may be driven by revenge but he stalls early on, allowing a wayward narrative current to wind him through a densely populated story.

High points include Amon's stylized battle with a creature in the dark and the rendering of flames or falling rocks. Keenly expressive editing and a dexterous use of rapid close-ups helps mend (or at least distracts from) the story's tattered rags.

The dub is unfathomably more ridiculous than the story. The Japanese voices play into the camp while the English voices phone in sterile, extremely serious performances. As for the translation, it's a wonder why you'd even need it.

Violence and a few monsters.

The DVD menu features picturesque snippets of Mitsuharu Miuyamae's art design behind some tasteful, unobtrusive, easily-navigated buttons. Aside from the standard DVD fare is a Rogue's Gallery that provides character profiles on "Amon's" extensive cast, a romp that reveals just how many characters in this anime get short shrift.

Embodied in the music, a Love Boat sensitivity compels the composer to sweep with violins to score the lovers' first glance; and then later he dives into a modern lounge lizard theme that make even the embroidered suits in Vegas blush.

A girl walks straight out of his dreams into the middle of an epic battle from which he saves her, guaranteeing him a great deal of nookie along with a life time worth of faithful devotion, and Amon, recalling an oath to continue fighting for justice - an oath he only recalls in the last thirty seconds of the film - decides to leave this buxom, green-haired hottie so that he can nuzzle up to Alcan the punk rock mohawk and Gaius the two-ton ebony metal head on their mission to rid the land of evil. Stupid **it.

Love it? Hate it? Buy it.