Let me preface this by saying I don't watch a lot of anime, and when I do it's Howl's Moving Castle, or something along those lines. I think I came across Dead Leaves by googling for abstract or surreal movies or something like that, and the synopsis intrigued me so...why not?The good: inventively insane visuals, unusual but effective animation styleThe bad: everything else. Terrible, repetitive music. The plot is somewhere between flimsy and nonexistent. The characters are just vehicles for crude humor and gruesome violence, with no merit of their own.I watched with interest for about 20 minutes as things just got progressively weirder and weirder, but it eventually became clear that the movie was going to just be an endless stream of pointless violence and crude humor and that's all, so I turned it off. If you already know and are familiar with this type of anime then maybe it will work for you. If you're looking for any degree of substance, then keep looking.

This is a kind of rather wacky and out of control, kind of like FLCL and SuperJail. I will not have you watch this without a warning, this show is really over the top, packed with sex, poop, gore, and pretty much any type of joke around. Those who take offense to any of this or are young children should leave the room, as I will probably be talking about stuff like that in this review. Are they gone? Alright, back to the review.This show is, hard to actually review as it's that type of humor that you either get it or you don't. Its not something you can actually explain well or have a large discussion about because then it loses its humor. We all know (or at least any Otaku out there who watches anime can tell you) how strange and odd Japan is. Frankly, I believe it's partly because of how strict their country was on honor, morals, and codes of conduct. Those who did not have these standards had to hid or be killed. With that little bit of history, I can see why they have something like this. It's out of control including many scenes of sex and gore. Many different… should I really call them 'fetishes' are pronounced in here like tubes up the ass and all manner of gross images I can never unsee.The story has an interesting storyline, and YES, it does have one. They actually didn't just throw crap into it and try to make a show off of something that doesn't have consistency. It follows two main characters, Pandy and Retro as they call themselves, who one day wake up without any idea who they are or what they are doing naked near a futuristic Tokyo. They start on a crime spree and it takes no time for them to be caught and sent to the moon prison where they find that they and so many others are rejected clones. They try to free themselves and that's as far as I can go without spoiling anything more. If I read into it, and I have to review such a thing, I would consider this more of the dangers of mass cloning and those trying to figure out their place in life. I can only guess that because there is very little to work with. We got a bunch of rejected clones fighting to have their own life.The animation, lets face it, its god awful, not looking like the banner or cover at all. But yet, I have to say this is one of those shows that I really didn't care much. Similar to Panty and Stocking, it has its own interesting spin, although creepy. All the shadows are done in black, leaving rather jagged edges to even more jagged characters. Sometimes it's hard to pick out what are backgrounds and what's a character because the bodies elongate and squash depending on the scene, sometimes filling the whole screen to the point that they look more like a strange deformed background. It doesn't help that everything is a mass of oddly shaped colors pieced together like a puzzle. A lot of times when Pandy is pregnant, her belly changes shape, growing and shrinking from scene to scene.The aliens are actually rather creative, including an alien that has a dick that's a drill (Although I really freaken don't want to know more about him!).The English voices are actually pretty good, being dubbed to each character. Jaxon Lee and Amanda Winn-Lee do pretty good jobs as Retro and Pandy, playing off each others personalities as well as keep the characters interesting. Pandy is almost always in monotone, while Retro seems not able to hold himself back and has a tone of energy (think sort of like Naruto from Naruto and Haruko from FLCL had a kid). The music is pretty fast paced and retro sounding, almost like some old action adventure game, but with a lot of techno after tones that make it more sci-fi feeling.It's not something I would really watch again, but it was interesting none the less.

If Madhouse's Redline is a "flashy action ride", then Dead Leaves is a "nuts-to-the-wall flashy tripped-out action ride on speed". The movie's high-contrast comic book-like visuals had me expecting something unique, but I don't think I could properly have prepared myself for just how unique Dead Leaves turns out to be. The comic book style applies not only to the frequently grotesque characters and outlandish scenery, but also to the cinematography itself with several "panels" often being shown on screen at the same time, sound effects appearing as actual floating words, and unusual framing used to emphasize certain parts of the scenes. The narrative begins with the protagonists, Retro (a TV-headed man) and Pandy (a woman with a mysterious red spot over her right eye) waking up naked and without their memories only to go on a crime spree which gets them sent for life to a prison on the moon called Dead Leaves. Not for the straitlaced or faint of heart, Dead Leaves' mere 52 minutes zoom by at break-neck speed in a flurry of explosions, gore, sex and nudity, but if you can stomach the off-the-wall content you're in for a very enjoyable if lamentably brief anime experience.

I really don't understand how anyone can like this movie. I thought it was absolutely disgusting.This animation is just so sick and wrong on so many levels. There's practically no story or character building behind any of its characters, all the characters look like freaky mutant versions of Sponge Bob characters. There's even a penis character that squirts liquids (don't ask). There's excessive use of violence and torture that seemed to be used for cheap shock value. Or perhaps violence for violence's sake is what they had in mind?The protagonists are unlikable as they come, as the story begins with them killing innocent people on the street to stealing their stuff. No other motivations beyond that other than imply its "fun".The music consists of repetitive techno beats and that's it.The animation looks like its drawn by angry 3rd graders or mental patients. There's massive frame skips that make it jerk around worst than the later Evangelion episodes.In my mind watching this film is like the anime version of been raped, mentally raped. Been so violated that it makes you sick. And the people who liked this film are like the weird people in prison who gets raped then turns around and says they enjoyed the experience.I just don't get it.