Big Wars

Have you ever wondered what would happen if humans attempted to inhabit Mars? Big Wars has taken an interesting approach to explain one of the possible outcomes. Essentially the story of this film demonstrates the conflict and war being waged between humans and aliens over control for the Red Planet. This film tends to display many religious overtones with regards to the notion of God and the type of control and responsibility that has been placed on creatures. The premise for the religious connotations is that each creature has been given control over a domain, or in this case a planet. Humans have control over Earth. Due to Mans ever increasing desire to expand its domain, the balance of power is disrupted and essentially this ensues in a war for survival between humans and aliens. The war itself takes place on Mars, while there are a number of references to aliens attacking the Earth in retaliation.

During the war between the humans and the aliens, there is a growing concern for the control that aliens are able to exert over humans. This is referred to in the film as subversion. Basically what happens is the aliens are able to take control over a human individually and create a spy who will ultimately fight for the cause of the aliens. The Captain or protagonist in the film finds himself battling this problem when his girlfriend becomes subverted and he ultimately ends up having to kill her. Throughout the story, there are some holes with respect to how the subversion is explained. The only real information we get as viewers is that subverted people exhibit two main characteristics; (1) Agitation and refusal to undergo a subversion test, and (2) nymphomania. Captain Aduh realizes his girlfriend has been taken control of after she constantly seeks sex from him, as demonstrated in the pictures below.

As with many smaller production anime films, there tend to be areas for discrepancy, especially in the story. This was no exception. Rather than tear apart the story, it is worth pointing out that as a whole the movie was well done. It wasn't out of this world (no pun intended) but it wasn't a complete waste of time either. By the time I had finished this film, I do not feel like my time was wasted. Given the production year (1993), the animation style was in line with what I enjoy. The music was a little poor in places, some of the background tracks just didn't fit the scene. The character design and personality were entertaining and well done, even the dubbed voices were well suited. After watching this though, the strongest attribute was that the story was able to become something that can be taken into context of the greater world that we live in. There was so much emphasis on the idea that overstepping our bounds can have negative consequences for people other than just ourselves. It also reminds us that humanity is not invincible.

As a film I would rank this in more with the thriller genre than action. The battle scenes were lacking, but the attention to story development was key here. I would recommend this to people interested in science fiction and even those who like to think about humanities impact on its surroundings. Although the title Big Wars still makes no sense to me in terms of how it relates to any of the concepts expressed in this film, you should still check it out.