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As far as environments go, it is hard to flaw the dark labyrinthine cityscape with its winding green highways as it manages to be visually unique whilst maintaining a sinister murky quality, with the harsh dark edges of the animation adding to those of the tale to create a tense and awkward atmosphere. The trouble with the world created is that as far as the story is concerned there seems to be a lot to get through and in little time, which on top of the fictional technology it feels the need to discuss results in a lot of babbled plot exposition that slows the pace of the film considerably. This means as well that you have to focus quite hard on what is going on, particularly if you go in with absolutely no prior knowledge of the material it is based upon.
That said, the story once you get your head around it is suitably dark and intriguing, the trouble is that with all the explanation of setting and story many of the characters feel a little underdeveloped and we don’t get to grips with all of the characters in quite the way we perhaps should. What with are killer from the beginning of the picture, Shell, being a strange and seriously disturbed figure that has his memories removed every now and then to cover up his crimes, these should be rather interesting, but instead we largely forget about him. That said his chief henchmen, the literally emotionless Dimsdale Boiled (Tsutomu Isobe), does make up for it in terms of villain stakes as he barges through almost every obstacle in his path to remove Rune Balot from the equation, resulting in some very good and extremely bloody set pieces that feature everything from strange men covered in eyes, flying sharks, and even bleeding firearms.
Mardock Scramble therefore certainly has a good imagination and its bizarre and murky environment works very well, even if it is bogged down with exposition. Yet overall, it remains visually very impressive and many of the set pieces are very good, so that it makes for entertaining and rather interesting viewing. It is just problematic that there are currently only two of three parts of what is made as a trilogy, meaning that the story suddenly cuts out. Which is more than a little irritating and makes it hard to judge as a whole, but the fact that I wanted the story to continue after two hours is a good sign of its quality.
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