Bayonetta: Bloody Fate (2013) User Reviews

Full throttle, just like the game!

[Victreebong · 7/10 · 1 November 2014]

Nobody's reviewed the new movie yet on IMDb (probably soaking up every last minute of the new game and the re-release), so I thought I'd step up.

Bloody Fate is a mixed bag. Intense action, check. Iconic sassy hyper sexual feminine character in spex stripping half-naked, double check. Mercilessly killing faceless nondescript enemies, check. Half-baked exposition characters thrown in randomly to keep the plot loosely connected, yep. Poor pacing, unfortunately.

Bloody Fate sticks to the first game in the series almost verbatim. Don't let the director's commentary persuade you otherwise. The characters, the lore, the events, even the inside jokes feel like their ripped straight from the cut-scenes. Even the chronological areas visited and recalled by our heroine come from the first game. Which is good, REALLY good... if you are a fan of the first game. If you are a casual watcher, Bayonetta: Bloody Fate is going to feel a little hollow and stale, which is something Bayonetta is anything but. But if you're a fan of the series, you'll get way more bang for your buck.

90 minutes is a lot of time for a single entry anime, but to fit all the events from the game into a film while still keeping up the interests of the niche fan base, things were cut. We start off with a bang, and then a roar, Bayonetta doing what she does best killing Lumen angels in church before going up against a Beloved. A little explanation, more action, and then the movie goes from a roar to dull murmur at the 30 min mark. With the entry of a certain figure that will no doubt go down as the most annoying supporting character since the Brown Wizard, the movie turns cringe worthy. Minor spoilers would give away who this person is, which is just simply THE definition of irony. Trust me, the twist will surprise no one. (I lost count how many times the word Mummy was mentioned after 30.) What follows is a gratuitous display of fan service PG boobs, and unnecessary clothed crotch and butt shots. Fans of the series will be at home with this, newcomers in a mixed crowd will probably be looking back and forth. For a title that made TV-MA, this blows. We're adults, show nipples. With the amount of time they spent drawing Bayonetta's body parts, they may just as well.

Things pick up again after the 50 minute mark, but suddenly the movie goes to fast too keep up with how places are connected, and where our heroes are headed. The verbiage of the series is arresting, and you wont get it in one sitting, even if the tropes are routine. Fore shading and plot twists come out, but the whole three realms and Purgatory references along with the theological aspects are just too filler to get in one sitting. Even more distracting is the action, which even in the middle half doldrums doesn't stop.

All that being said, when it comes to classic femme fatale, perfectly executed BAMF moments, eccentric character creation and perfectly drawn animation, Gonzo and Toei really did their homework. I have the Blu-ray and I have yet to find a single artifact or banding issue in the movie. Gorgeous doesn't do B:BF justice. Also, the original voice actors from the first game make their return! If you weren't aware, Hellena Taylor actually voiced the character before the Japanese voice actors were picked, making Bayonetta by default British. Saucy, British... You'd think you were listening to a sex chat operator.

As far as additional features, the set is lacking. A director's track along with Hellena Taylor giving a brief history of Pinewood studios is just about all there is. Trailers, and storyboard sketches comprise the rest. If there's a complaint I have about additional features, it's that there's no subtitles for the English dub, and the audio is by default in 5.1 no matter what language you pick. For people who like to know exact words this is frustrating. British is NOT American, and accents distract.

All in all, Bloody Fate does well, but has some issues. Think Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, but with a chick, and a really annoying child. If it weren't for the second act lull, I'd give it a nine because the movie does what the games do; kick ass and look good doing it! I'd recommend Bloody Fate for anyone who loves Bayonetta.

SEE YOU AT THE GATES OF HELL

[nogodnomasters · 6/10 · 26 August 2018]

This is a film based on a video game. Seldom are the any good. This one takes two and half minutes of narration to explain the plot. The film combines various religious beliefs and portrays the power of light or goodness as being evil because they want to create a new world..at the expense of the old one. This is done by bringing together two eyes. Bayonetta has one of the eyes as well as a healthy case of amnesia after a 500 year sleep in a chained coffin at the bottom of a lake. She is our protagonist who kills angels in a film that blurs good and evil as a yin/yang.

Based on a video game, there is little to no plot as Bayonetta fights just about everyone and at time sacrifices her clothes to do so. She wears her hair in strategic places to prevent technical nudity of a cartoon, although the characters do drop the F-bomb.

If watching stacked cartoon characters fighting, this one has it.

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate

[Milk_Tray_Guy · 7/10 · 10 July 2021]

Fantastic artwork, heavy on the fan-service (leave it up to you whether that's good or bad!), very good animation, very good voice acting (although the two female adult leads sound distractingly similar), confusing storyline, generic music, dreadful dialogue. What can I say, I had fun. 7/10.

Worthy as an adaptation

[datautisticgamer-74853 · 6/10 · 3 July 2018]

I spent some time today to watch a Blu-Ray copy of this film. As a gift from my brother, we planned to watch the subtitled original together. This review will cover the Funimation dub, so obviously there will be differences.

The story possesses many similarities to the plot of the first Bayonetta video game, with a few differences that make it more original overall than many other movie tie-ins. Granted, it's still not enough to make it seem like more than video game cutscenes drawn in anime, but it delivers on the action and occasional humor or drama with more success than others of its kind. If you have played Bayonetta, then the characters should feel very familiar. For audiences who haven't one bit of knowledge, they can be hard to grasp considering how reliant the writing is on the game's plot. We have the trope of a protagonist's family member for a villain in Balder, the forgotten child Bayonetta, her enabler Jeanne, the tough guy Rodin, and the informant Enzo, the characters are only as complex as they are in the game they came from. To its credit, Bayonetta does have a more deep plot compared to many other video games, so it does work out. Very easily, the animation is the best thing about this movie. The fantasy elements, monsters, and action work gracefully and pristinely with Gonzo's style of anime. The effects are enough to make the fights compelling to watch, while the ideas from the video games (such as the Gomorrah that Bayonetta summons with Avavago) look really amazing with the environments.

If you like Bayonetta or are familiar with the franchise, this film is somewhat unremarkable besides just looking like an eye candy version of gameplay. For common audiences (no children, there is graphic violence, language, and nudity, like a classic R film), it may come off as just another otaku movie that isn't designed to cater to a general audience. I didn't find it too interesting, but for some people, its very strong animation and overall higher quality compared to other video game movies may come off as a delightful surprise.

Does not do the game justice

[hoodho · 4/10 · 5 October 2020]

I absolutely love how the story unfolds in the game. The anime? Not so much. Much of what happens is rushed through so quickly you barely have a moment to really savor it. The voice actors for the angels are laughably bad. Bayonetta while charmingly cheeky in the game is overtly sexual and soooo cheesy in the anime i want to throw up. In the game we feel for her on her quest to uncover her memories and we watch as she goes from taking everything as a joke to becoming serious and genuinely forming an attachment to "little one" and fighting to protect her. In the game Bayonetta actually feels like she might be in danger but in this anime nothing feels like a real threat. The epic ending battle in the game is not nearly as awesome in this anime. If this is your first time watching Bayonetta u will enjoy it. But if u are a direct game player than anime watcher you will be disappointed.

A (mostly) Faithful Adaptation with Great Animation

[L8r_homi3 · 29 October 2022]

With Bayo3 just being released on Nintendo Switch, I decided to replay the games and ended up watching this as well.

If you've played Bayonetta, this feels a love letter to the game that faithfully adheres to the original source material (mostly). Some creative liberties are taken (Luka's car getting trashed instead of Enzo's, hotel scene addition, etc.) which is fine, but everything from the scenes, wardrobe, character/villain design, vehicles/buildings, weapons, finisher moves, and dialogue (there's a plethora of verbatim dialogue straight from the game) are faithfully representative of original source material if not directly taken from it.

The movie is a little condensed with some original scenes missing, but mind you this is a movie based on a video game where the story is definitely not it's strong suit. Fans play the Bayonetta series, because it's historically one of if not the best hack-n-slash games series ever/currently made with top tier battle mechanics; not because of the gripping backstory. This movie does a respectable job portraying Bayonetta and her quest given how little they had to work with and how absolutely ridiculous and over-the-top the story of Bayonetta is - with that made something decently entertaining with high quality animation. While some fans argue that this film doesn't capture Bayonetta's struggle to uncover the truth and thus feel uninvested, that is simply because the viewer isn't investing 10's of hours of gameplay battling insane monsters/angels to progress through the story. You are absolutely not going to get the same feeling watching a movie comprised of cut scenes and condensed action sequences vs 20+ hours of dedicated gameplay - and that's okay.

As a fan with prior exposure to the game, I enjoyed this. If you're walking in this with zero exposure, I don't doubt you'll think, "Wow, this is rushed... Okay, that's a bit over-the-top... Psh, that's ridiculous and would never happen... Wow, this is so cheesy and cringe... Clearly a lot of fan service here... Okay, what is even going on?!" Yeah, try playing the video game, because the original source material is literally JUST like this but dialed up to 100. This movie is like a cup of strong coffee, while the game is more a central line IV of a 5-hour energy, Red-bull cocktail.

That being said, the story is mediocre, because the original story is mediocre. If you have no prior exposure, I doubt this will be highly enjoyable. But with a mediocre story (5/10), very high quality animation, and faithful representation of the source material; my honest review would be a (6/10) as someone who has played the series. With no prior exposure, I can understand a lower review score.

As a final aside to the negative comments on the English voice acting (I genuinely laughed at this comment) - those are literally all the original voice actors from the game, Bayonetta. That's how faithful and representative this adaptation is to the game. The non-English voice cast is so this movie can be enjoyed in another language without subtitles.

Hellena Taylor is literally thee Bayonetta lol

Now please, do yourself a favor and go play any of the Bayonetta games.

Witches be trippin.

It was simply just too much...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 8 November 2016]

I never got around to playing the game, so I have no clue how true this 2013 animated movie is to the game or the franchise as a whole. But still, I decided to sit down and watch it.

I ended up watching a version with English language, and gathering from the Japanese cast listed on IMDb, then this was a dubbed version. Oh the horror! Words cannot begin to describe how much you should avoid English dubbed anime/manga. The English voice acting talents they had cast was just atrocious. It was some unfathomably poor voice acting talents for the project. Most of the time I was just cringing because of the one they had cast to do the English language for the Bayonetta character.

The animated was quite good and nice to look at. There was a lot of details to the scenes and lots of flashy colors. And it did help out a lot that there was almost a constant ongoing flow of action throughout the movie.

However, given the English dub and a somewhat lack of a deeper storyline, ultimately lead to this being a less than mediocre movie experience for me. And truth be told, I ended up turning it off with about 20 minutes or so left before the end. I just couldn't stand anymore of that awful dialogue and even worse delivery by whomever they had to voice the English version of Bayonetta.

Storywise, well I must say that it was sort of a flaccid experience. It was predictable and not really all that enthralling. Sure, the screen was a constant blur of action and colors, but the movie was just halting behind so badly in terms of not having a proper storyline.

I can't claim to be compelled to return to "Bayonetta: Bloody Fate" in order to finish the last 20 minutes. I simply was fed up with the questionable dialogue and delivery of aforementioned dialogue.

I suppose this 2013 animated movie will sit well with fans of the game. But for someone who is not familiar with the game, it was just not all that impressive.

Clichéd "bad is good, good is bad" plot.

[fearandloathing-64177 · 1/10 · 2 November 2016]

So here we have another "bad is good and good is evil" type of nonsense, which seems to be a prevailing subject these days.

I started watching this not knowing anything about the subject matter, but I didn't last long. It's just a bunch of clichéd, gratuitous, ridiculous tripe.

If you are a brainless clod who likes thinking "evil is cool because reasons", then this is for you. No thanks, that mess is beyond obnoxious these days.

Also, IMDb said I didn't have ten lines of text which is just as ridiculous. One can get their point across without having to write a novel, and I've seen shorter reviews than mine on here. Just another unnecessarily restrictive process IMO.

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate is a great side companion for the first game. It's also the best Funimation Dub of all-time.

[maprefnwx · 10/10 · 31 January 2017]

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate is a fantastic addition to the first game. It's basically perfect as far as sticking to what the series is, however it also adds depth to lots of the characters and clears up some confusing plot elements from the game.

The animation is generally fantastic from Gonzo, though there are some consistency issues with the drawings. The movie is a bit rushed because they had to fit a story from a game with nearly 3 hours of cut scenes into a 90 minute window and still provide the needed level of action. Overall though they did a good job of getting as much stuff into the movie as they could from the first game. They managed to even deepen the personal stories between the characters in the game and made the connection and story between Bayonetta and her parents a very memorable one.

Now to talk about the different versions of the movie. This movie is almost unquestionably the best dub Funimation has ever done. It's very common that you hear fans complain about Funimation dubs sucking and when they dub licensed properties they almost always use in-house actors to save budget. That isn't the case here at all. Funimation went all out with this movie and brought as much of the original cast as possible (and from the director's commentary went EXTREMELY out of their way to get Hellena Taylor in to play Bayonetta. Going as far as delaying the film by 2 months. Not to mention having to track down the original actors who were uncredited in the first game, and inaccurate on IMDb.) The actors were all great here in reprising their roles, and in fact I have to single out Hellena Taylor as she even managed to improve upon Bayonetta from the game as she has a better understanding of exactly how to play the character after having done it for years. They didn't bog the movie down with a silly script and instead tried to keep everything as true to the game as possible (more on this in a second..) The only real thing that sticks out as a mistake is having the Auditio talk in English, but it's a forgivable one. Hats off to Funimation as it's pretty clear they have improved immensely at dubbing Anime in the past 3 or 4 years.

Now as far as the Japanese version goes. AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS. It does sound weird saying that about an anime, but it 100% applies here. Bayonetta was designed as an English game and the movie really should have been as well. The Japanese voice cast is horrible and doesn't fit the game or characters what so ever. Nothing against any of the actors as I'm sure they are great, but talk about a mismatch. Even Hideki Kamiya himself, the creator of Bayonetta said he didn't think she should ever have a Japanese voice. The translations of the dialogue from the first game are wholly inaccurate and the character does not seem right at all in Japanese. Bayonetta's Japanese voice actor doesn't get what makes the character special at all, and instead turns her into almost a cliché Japanese lead female character ala Lightning from FF-XIII. Even the movies theme song "Night I Stand" sounds much better in English, where as it just sounds almost.... off key in Japanese.

In closing if you're a fan of Bayonetta you should own this movie. In fact if you haven't already done so you should go out and buy it now so Gonzo has more of a reason to give us a sequel! If you don't know anything about Bayonetta you might find it all a bit odd, though I do have to say that I watched this film with someone who had no clue about the game and they actually found themselves enjoying it.

Little to like

[Darklordnoodlez · 4/10 · 23 July 2021]

The voice acting pretty good, the Artwork/Artsyle is very good, and child Bayonetta is adorable. That's pretty much every positive I can think of, unless you consider ludicrous amounts of fanservice a positive.