Iron Man: Rise of Technovore (2013)

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The anime scenes were so boring. 57 minutes in I remembered that it was supposed to be about a satellite. One thing that the other reviewers seems to have missed is that Black Widow swore. That was the most exciting thing about this movie.

A movie follow up to the anime series by Mad House comes Iron Man's latest adventure where he seeks to launch his newest invention, the satellite Howard. However he and War Machine were attacked by a mysterious bio-tech seeking to wipe out all living organisms. As one of the leading technological geniuses of the world and a devil may care hero, he gets to the bottom of this, uncovering the Technovore with mysterious connections to Tony while saving the world from a machine who has long abandoned his humanity.The anime format does wonders for the world of Iron Man, as his armor along with barrage of mechs he fights look nice and shiny, seeing them in action is a delight. The only drawback to the art style is that in brightly lit rooms and in the dark the lighting becomes very distracting, it's too bright in the former, and too dark in the latter. Good portions of the movie take place in either and it's far too distracting. However in other environments it looks just fine.You got Iron Man; the genius playboy we all know and love, but he's not alone as we have War Machine fighting alongside him as well as SHIELD along with the ride which includes Director Nick Fury and his top agents Hawkeye and Black Widow. Punisher also makes a short lived but memorable enough appearance. All are represented pretty well from their characterization to their relationships and conflicts.Technovore is the main antagonist and is a convincing psychopath with Ezekiel Stane's fragile state of mind as a result of his teen angst meshing together with the Technovore nanotech eating away at his humanity. He's similar to Carnage, in that he's near unstoppable and causes insane amounts of damage. You really feel that the world is at stake with his rampage and proves a difficult obstacle for our heroes to overcome.Not too much to say, it's a decent enough action packed hour and a half that's sure to please fans of the Invincible Iron Man.

To coincide with the release of IRON MAN 3 in cinemas, Marvel has returned to direct-to-video animation with Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. Yes, everything rises. Machines rise, Apes rise, Guardians rise, prices rise; too bads story standards have not. Iron Man Rise of Technovore has more clichés in it than its title, showcasing all that is good and bad about modern Japanese anime.Our story seemingly takes place within the Marvel Cinematic universe. The characters look like their live action movie counterparts, and there are references to events in the live action movies. We start off with Tony Stark about to launch a "Big brother" surveillance satellite that will be able to track all criminal activity worldwide. Ooh, intriguing! What are the moral implications for such a move? Will a crime free world justify the loss of privacy? Well, we never touch on these instead moving into an attack by mobile suits piloted by the silly named "Raiders" intending to stop the launch. How original. Iron Man tries to save the day but encounters a nubile teenage boy clad in weird nano-techno-organic armour far more advanced than Iron Man's. Lives are lost, and since Stark is the only survivor, he is taken in by SHIELD for questioning. Now here is where things stop making sense. Instead of hearing Nick Fury out and joining forces to stop this new threat christened "The Technovore", Iron Man bails out on SHIELD and stupidly makes himself a wanted man. Now with SHIELD agents Hawkeye and Black Widow on his tail, Iron Man has to find a way to defeat this Technovore despite being outclassed in every way possible.True to modern anime, this movie favours flaire, extravagance and all round coolness over narrative, pacing and the usual things that matter. Take a leading Japanese anime studio, give them an American sized budget and technological backing and Iron Man Rise of Technovore is the end result. It looks marvelous! The CGI (computer generated images) are blended seamlessly with the traditional animation, action is fast paced and in-your-face, character movements are smooth while still keeping an insane level of art detail. Overall, the show is a real thrill with wicked aerial combat and state of the art tech.For fans of anime, this is truly a visual treat. There are numerous little shout outs to other anime shows, most notably gundam. Yet like most modern anime, the visuals are about the only thing good going for it. As stated earlier, the story makes little sense. Stark could have saved himself a lot of trouble with SHIELD if he just stopped for a bit and listened. But no. Our character of Stark is a one trick egotistical pony, dead set on having things his way. The other characters also come across as flat personalities, more typical anime fodder for fanservice than actual contributors to the story. We even have your typical angst ridden teen out to "remake the world". All in all, the story bears a lot of similar elements to Steins;Gate and Texhnolyze, 2 other anime series directed by Technovore director Hiroshi Hamasaki. The script is a hodge podge of, again, anime clichés. Thankfully, the voice cast do great job of becoming their characters, both English and Japanese cast. They bring their best performance to the roles, especially Keiji Fujiwara and Matthew Mercer as Tony Stark. This is not Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, which is refreshing; you do not have any of the corny humor that plagues the live action movies. Instead you have a Tony Stark that is not as comedic as the movies but still as snarky; more like in the comics. On a whole, Iron Man: Rise of Technovore is merely superficial entertainment. There is no way anyone can be emotionally invested in any of the characters thanks to the cliché ridden script and story. Character relationships are simplistic to the point when death of characters become a mere passing moment. He's dead, on with the story. Pacing is too slow in many places to the point where it gets boring. Oh and the Punisher gets shoehorned in for absolutely little reason.Pretty graphics and good acting cannot save an otherwise unimpressive, uninspired, and mediocre anime movie. At best, this is an extremely long showcase of studio Madhouse's animation capabilities when given the right backing. The "Invincible Iron Man" animated movie from 2007 is still a better animated feature than this.

The Animation is probably the strongest part of this installment of this Iron Man production. The Voice Acting could use some work on the supporting cast though. The story begins as we are placed dead centre in the middle of another technological marvel as Stark is trying to change the world. However bad guys don't take a Vacation. Stark has to fix things before its too late. And that's my problem with this movie. The only sense of urgency seems to come from Stark and its not very convincing because the Antagonist is way too enigmatic. Even when the pseudo-philosophical mechanized angst driven plot unravels you don't really care, assuming you understand what everyone's motives actually are. The Antagonist is dreary, his monologuing is distracting and his intentions in-genuine. However, cameo appearances from a few heroes in Marvel universe make up for this. Overall its a shaky 7/10. It could have been 30 mins shorter and just as sweet.