Twilight of the Dark Master (1997) User Reviews

Great animation, but...

[SheLikesSurprises · 5/10 · 10 March 2002]

I fell for one of the oldest, meanest tricks in the book when i ran into this title at the video store - the DVD cover is simply beautiful, and the movie summary makes the movie sounds reasonably interesting. But unfortunately, the cover seems to be one of the few good things about the movie.

While the animation and the soundtrack were great, and plot had a lot of potential, it seems that the creators of this movie didn't really bother to develop the story into the great movie that it could have been. The story is somewhat scrambled, the characters are developed badly (if at all), with the bulk of information about the main character being provided somewhere in the final battle. That is - somewhere in the last 7 minutes of this (short) movie.

In short - if you feel a burning urge to watch anime, and this is the last title on the shelf at the video store, I'd still recommend that you think twice before renting this. And if you do rent it, do yourself a favor and watch the Japanese dub, at least this way you'll get to experience the cool soundtrack in its full glory.

Animexplotation, no true story

[siderite · 6/10 · 22 September 2012]

The animation was weak for 1997, reminding of anime from the 70's, but the story itself was ridiculous. There are two factions, both working under the radar of ordinary humans, but employing them for their purposes. One uses demons, the other hunts them. In the end, the bosses of the two factions clash and one of them wins.

The entire thing lasts 45 minutes, way too little to call it a film and too much to call it an episode in some anime. The fact that the characters seemed to share some background and backstory only adds to the confusion of this rushed little animation experiment.

In other circumstances, I would have called this a good attempt, but decades have passed from a moment like that. For something from 1997, the animation was clunky, the story simplistic and there wasn't even enough violence or gore to justify the whole thing. A failure, I would say.

Rushed

[unbrokenmetal · 4/10 · 30 January 2008]

"Twilight of the Dark Master" tells the story of Eiji who is turned into a monster. A white haired protector tries to defend him and other humans against demons. All in all, the story is too rushed for 46 minutes. Most likely the movie would have been better if it was twice as long. There is little background information, we witness just another clash between good and bad, and the audience's interest in the characters has hardly time to develop. A drug has the power to turn people into monsters, this is hastily explained in a minute, before more heads explode. The characters are at least visually well created, good sounds, the animation is fine, but not top for the 90s (quite a lot of talking without anyone's lips moving). So, you needn't spend a sleepless night if you missed this.

A character and plot driven anime

[makonxmonkey · 7/10 · 21 February 2002]

Twilight is an extremely well draw anime. It features great artwork and scenery(very reminscent of Blade Runner). Twilight does well with character development and plot advancement, even though it clocks in at only 53 mins. All in all a good solid anime.

Enjoyable 50min movie

[spiros-zer · 6/10 · 10 May 2022]

The classic 90s animation feel, a pretty straight forward plot. The action scenes are a few but quite memorable. Also, one could correlate the hero's ability with this of Col. Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist, makes you wonder on the influence between the creators.

Too short

[Cees-Timmerman · 7/10 · 22 October 2020]

Interesting cyberpunk version of The Guyver, but where is the rest of the story?

Very Rusher and Undeveloped

[rafaelrosado-83055 · 7/10 · 18 November 2023]

I found out about this movie when I watch the Ninja Scroll previews on vhs, the trailer looked amazing, so I spent $20 on it on eBay and was excited to watch it.

Some positives are the sound track and the dark late 90s tone to the movie, the animation is nice and sound effects were great.

But the story was so beyond rushed the character development wasn't there like you wanted to feel for the characters but couldn't no matter how hard you tried, and the fight scenes had so much potential and almost every fight was a huge let down all rushed and one fight was literally skipped completely. The movie could've easily been 2 hours or even a two part series. The movie itself felt like a huge trailer for the actual movie.

I'd still recommend it to people for the simple fact of the potential it had.