So I caught Voltes V: Legacy The Cinematic Experience just because I wanted to see things up close.
I had my expectations, having seen the anime during my childhood.
And yes, this cinematic experience — a compressed version of the show’s first 3 weeks — have awakened the child in a lot of us. In the cinema, I saw a barkada of grandmas, married couples, people in their 30s and 40s and older.
The audience was pretty quiet, no one screaming during crucial scenes. Everyone was engrossed, I would say.
Anyways, here are some things I noticed during the movie:
PACING: The first part, which showed Hrothgar/Ned Armstrong’s background, felt pretty rushed. At some points, Dennis Trillo did some voice-overs just to make the scenes clear for the audience. Can’t blame GMA for this; movie had to be less than 2 hours and I feel that in the actual series, this part will be stretched to 2 weeks.
Speaking of series, I saw somewhere that this would be a daily primetime show. Maybe that’s why they’re putting a lot of back stories here.
Anyhoo, by the time that we get to the Voltes Team, the pacing became okay.
One thing I noticed here is that the writing team added a bit of details to the characters, such as their assignments within the team (who’s in charge of what) and why they shout out their weapons (oh, voice command, cool). These details add depth to each characters and their dynamics, which was good in my opinion.
They also inserted some mother-and-children dynamics (although the original anime focused on the father more, therefore Chichi Wo Motomete), maybe to give intensity to a powerful scene that many fans know.
CGI: Visual effects were good. Some chroma scenes needed some improvements (some scenes you can see were shot on green screen). But the best scene there was the volt-in sequence. If you’re familiar with the anime, you will be impressed on how they did this.
Some people said that it’s still too anime-ish. But I think TOEI intentionally wanted this kind of effect, as opposed to a very Hollywood treatment. And no, I won’t say that this is at par with Marvel movies or Pacific Rim. Maybe more at par with Japanese sentai or tokusatsu. But with time and budget, we may get there soon.
ACTING/WRITING: Despite some cringey lines and acting, I can say it was okay. I’ll probably be expecting some love triangle here (as implied in the trailer before) since the head writer of this show loves those themes (LOL), like it’s the only thing Filipino audiences are looking for. Geez.
MUSICAL SCORE: Happy to hear the familiar background music given a modern sound. As for the theme song, my opinion still stands. It needs to sound more like a battle cry, an anthem. It’s not there yet for me.
Voltes V: Legacy The Cinematic Experience gives a taste of how the TV series would be. I hope that they sustain this until the end. It would suck if it would suffer the fate of the likes of Victor Magtanggol or, recently, Darna. And it’s time that producers and directors make projects for passion first vs. profit.
I hope Pinoy audiences would give this a chance. I’ve seen people bash this without even seeing some scenes of it. They shut it down immediately just because it’s from GMA. Sure, those flops were traumatizing, but given how passionate the people behind Voltes V: Legacy are, I an hopeful that this is going to be something good. Groundbreaking, even, for Philippine TV.
