Twilight of the Dark Master is the type of anime I review not for its story, but because many talented artists contributed 110% effort, just for someone else to give a full 2% to its story.
Everything about this anime feels like it should have come out in the 80s, for better or worse. On the plus side, we get the gritty, futuristic cityscape hand-painted by the same guy who did the background art for "Macross Do You Remember Love" which I'll be reviewing in 2 days.
We also get some pretty gruesome demon transformations and kill scenes, but aside from that, there's not even a modicum of potential with anything else.
The Story
The story is set in a futuristic offshoot of Earth where the same life force that created humans also created two types of supernatural entities, demons, and guardians.
I'll give you two guesses to decide what their jobs are. Also, why go to the trouble of creating something so intricate as humanity when you're just going to make a bunch of monsters to eat them? I guess it's supposed to be some sort of biblical analog, but there's no effort or creativity. They're just demons that go around eating people for no purpose other than it's their job.
The story begins when a woman's fiance transforms into a demon and decides to eat her arm along with a few unnecessary organs. After her lightning-fast recovery, she hires a Guardian named Tsunami to hunt him down.
Since Tsunami had nothing better to do but sit around like an RPG NPC doing nothing but wearing makeup and waiting for someone to talk to him, he decides to take the case. Plus, it's supposed to be his job anyways, so why not let someone pay you to do something you should have been doing all along. The only problem is that Tsunami really sucks at his job.
The last time he fought a demon, the only way he could win was by unleashing an energy attack so powerful it wiped out an entire city. It turns out that two demons looking like Vulcan siblings who decided that incest was logical are the culprits behind the whole ordeal.
They're doing some kind of manipulation that created a pill that turns humans into demi demons. It's a boring explanation that you'll forget 5 seconds after it's explained. The whole story doesn't make much sense, and I'll be surprised if anyone remembers what happened by the time the credits roll.
But, if it weren't for all the screaming and explosions, this might be the perfect anime for falling asleep because of how monotone everyone is. Aesthetically speaking, the anime looks pretty good. Backgrounds look way too detailed for this kind of anime, characters look great, except for these two, and the magic attacks and explosions were well animated.
My favorite part was when this guy screamed and cut a building in half. Twilight of the Dark Master was based on a manga that I can't find anywhere on the internet aside from eBay listings for $14 in good condition. If copies are readily available and nobody bothered to scan them, that probably says a lot about its quality.
Plus, it's only one regular-sized volume, so I doubt there's much it could have added that would make its story more interesting.
The main reason I can ever recommend this is gonna be for art appreciation alone because the story and characters are bland and forgettable. The fights are nice, but they're few and far between. So if you're someone who can watch an anime purely for its art alone, then I can recommend this since its only 45 mins long. It's not that bad. Plus the soundtrack is pretty nice.
Have you seen or read Twilight of the Dark Master? What did you think?
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