Malice@Doll(Apr 27, 2001 – June 22, 2001) 
Director: Keitaro Motonaga Written by: Chiaki Konaka
High Fantasy, Psychological, Horror 
Key Words: Steampunk, Hentai-like, CGI
Studio: GAGA Communications; Soeishinsha Licensed American Publisher: Arts Magic

Episodes: 3

My Thoughts: Malice@Doll is a strange CG movie that takes place in the world of Dolls that were made for prostitution. This was a rather interesting show that brought up a lot of questions about what it meant to be human and what might happen if one loses their identity. It was created by the same person that did Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost Town. 

Malice seems a bit more thought out then the rest of the characters, except maybe Joe who seems to be almost a voice of wisdom to the dolls, a father figure. I don’t really understand the relationship between the two but from what it looked like, it seemed that Malice and Joe were very close although you don’t normally see him around the other sex bolls. I wish I could have seen a bit more of the other characters because they really seemed one dimensional throughout the whole show. 

The storyline is really slow for most of it and hard to figure out. It took me a very long time to get a feel of what the story was even trying to say let alone what was going on. They never really tell anyone the history about the area or what actually did happen to the humans, pretty much leaving it open to speculation. Because you never actually see the top world in a sense, you are left to imagine your own answer for why human’s aren’t there. My thought was that the human’s wiped themselves out but others might think that they died off from an illness, they were using sex dolls for their means and never repopulated, or other such things. The show to me really is open to your own ideas and what you get from this show is pretty much all you get. 

The only thing I couldn’t get was the ending with how it happened but I won’t spoil it for you.

During this time, CG was just starting out and nothing looked real at all. Characters were all looking plastic and shiny and yet, this show pretty much works pretty well for that. It’s a bit like Reboot if you ever saw that. The characters are odd looking, some looking humanoid and others looking like strange mixtures of man and machine. The animation part is rather stiff and movements are a bit… well, robotic. It works well with the idea of the show but even when they become something more natural, they still are stiff and robotic making it hard to tell if they even changed. The colors are rather dark and steam punk-ish making it sometimes hard to see what is going on. 

The voice acting is pretty well done for the most part. The English dub is a bit off though as most sound rather static even when turned humanish. Some points that should have had really dramatic scenes with loud voices sounded more tin like. The Japanese was a little better and had the better feel for the characters personality including Malice.

Rating:   

Link to Wikipedia Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malice@Doll

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