Anime: Juuichinin Iru!

Juuichinin Iru gained some fame along the years for being one of a kind movie, at least when it comes to anime. It has an amazing setting and premise consisting of ten people from different galaxies, planets, and races taking a final exam on a spaceship in order to graduate from a space academy and the situation goes out of control when they realize that there are actually eleven people so they will have to find out who is the infiltrator.

The biggest issue with this movie is its short duration, is only one hour and a half long so there’s no time to explore its vast setting and so many characters properly. Some of them have a bit of their backgrounds and motivations revealed but the viewer will only get the names out of the majority of them. Only a few get some development and since the movie is too short, it feels more like they were rewritten instead of having a natural and progressive change. Their personalities and interactions, though, are strong; everyone is completely different in behavior and they need to work together and use their different knowledge and skills in order to surpass difficult situations such as having to deactivate bombs planted on the spaceship or fix said spaceship’s computers and it never feels like someone is useless, they are all capable people about to graduate after all.

The production values are good for the time the movie came out, the character designs are very simple and, few aside, they all have a generic look from a shoujo manga (this movie is an adaptation of one after all). The motions are weird, it can be excused in the beginning since they were in space but for the rest of the movie, it just feels like the characters’ movements are really slow, to the most part at least. There are noticeable quality drops and the special effects are poor as well. When it comes to body language though, the film does a good job, especially in its comical situations, but the best part of this department are definitely the backgrounds, the space academy, the space station, the spaceship, its different levels, the computers, etc.; as expected from a 80’s anime movie, everything that has to do with mechanical designs looks great.

As for the sound department, it is ok, nothing really special when it comes to voice acting or music, and the sound effects are rather weak.

On the second half is when the film starts to feel rushed; all of a sudden the characters’ motivations change for something completely different with extreme ease and the mystery is resolved in the laziest way possible, with asspulls and no foreshadowing of who was the eleventh at all, even the presentation of the outcomes of the characters is lazy, still images with short descriptions under them, as if it was a videogame from that time. Hell, it even has a completely pointless and out of place food war in the middle.

It’s not a bad movie, it’s actually watchable and enjoyable but it is not even a shadow of what could have been if it was a series and could explore its characters and setting properly.

An unexpected production forgotten by most, “They Were Eleven” is a small albeit concrete adventure of a spacecraft crew trying to survive all alone in the middle of nowhere. Partly mystery and partly survival, the movie is dense in plot but poor in proper duration and aesthetics to allow all its various subplots to be properly presented.

The backdrop of the movie is very rich; it’s about various interstellar organizations sending their candidates to a place where a test is to be made and only one will be accepted to win. The nature of the test is unknown but was reinsured to be non-lethal, plus they were told they would be only ten on board the vessel. Yet they are now eleven and things get out of hand as they lose control of the situation. The entire movie is about finding out the truth, while surviving the ordeal and I can’t get to details without spoiling all the fun.

Having eleven characters is of course not enough time to be offered proper emersion and development. Only three seem to stand out as “mains” and the rest are flavor. Plus, we get almost nothing around the different backgrounds of each one of them and we only have the mystery and crumbs of personalities to keep us interested. The interaction amongst them is otherwise strong, as you see how they need to trust and cooperate with each other despite their differences.

The production values are too undermined as well. There is no awesome animation or well planned action sequences and the music score goes unnoticed. It is hard to keep the average viewer interested without something worth looking or listening to.

In all, this movie would be better off with a mini series and better production values. As it stands it is an interesting but very dry premise. Otherwise, it is worthy to be looked into since such types of stories are rare even today.

And now for some excused scorings.
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Overall

I've never thought I'd dig up something as good from the pile of old and forgotten animes. Not only this movie succeeds in creating a wonderful atmosphere and gripping suspense, it also provides enough character development to preserve viewers attention for its whole running time. Actually, it has so many strong traits that they easily make up for the show's obvious weaknesses (prehistoric animation and horrible sound).

If you like sci-fi or space animes, if you've enjoyed such shows as Infinite Ryvius or Seikai no Monshou - give They Were Eleven a shot. It's old, it's hard to find, yet it's worth your time.

Animation: 4/10

As to be expected from the show from mid eighties. While character designs weren't as bad as I had expected, everything else was. Movement of the characters is choppy and sometimes makes you sigh in disbelief. Environment and surroundings are poorly rendered, it's usually hard to tell some things apart.

Sound: 3/10

Music is, well, bad. If the show hadn't any music at all nothing would've changed. It's not annoying, it's more like useless.

Voiceacting is pretty bad too, it really shows how voiceactors grew more professional by the passing time.

Story: 8/10

On the other hand, neither animation nor sound matters when the story is this good. I believe people who've created Infinite Ryvius had seen this show in the past. It follows a similar idea, a group of people isolated in an outer space. There are supposed to be 10 people isolated in the ship, unfortunately for our crew, it seems they have 11 people on board. Nobody knows what the objective of eleventh person is, but the fact that he shouldn't be there is obvious. Maybe he's there to kill them all? This factor adds a wonderful suspense feeling to the show. Besides this there is an interesting romance going, while the whole sci-fi world is interesting by itself.

Actually, the world created for this movie is so imaginative it could've easily spanned TV series. I wonder why did it not though.

Character: 7/10

It's obvious that it's impossible to develop 11 characters in a span of 90 minutes. Fortunately the creators of this show picked up a good solution to this problem, they've ignored people who were less interesting and focussed on the few more important characters of the show. Who in turn succeeded in being quite good (by movie standarts that is).

Value: 7/10

It's short so it's suited to be a good rewatch. On the other hand the suspense is eliminated since when watching this show for the second time you already know who the culprit is.

***
I know this review kind of sucks, but an anime this good really needs at least one review. I'd write more, except I saw the show like 3 years ago and don't remember the finer details. Go easy on me. X.X
***

They Were Eleven is a prime example of what awesome old-school anime should be: a work that overcomes its dated animation and sound through the sheer awesomeness of its over-arching story.

Many "classics" of yesteryear have become obsolete due to their reliance on animation that has long since become absolutely awful. They Were Eleven avoids this pitfall neatly; although the animation is by no means sloppy, the clear focus is on the story, where all their efforts go towards providing extremely taut suspense.

For the most part, they succeed. Like Black Jack (another anime that not nearly enough people have seen), They Were Eleven more than held my attention for the entire running time. The movie presents a whodunit steeped in sci-fi flavor and peppered with an urgent theme of survival.

In short, the anime is about a group of individuals (anyone who successfully guesses how many individuals gets 11 points) trapped on an abandoned spaceship. Part of the story revolves around the characters struggling to overcome the numerous obstacles put before them. An equally prominent element, however, involves the characters working to unravel the mystery of why they're actually there in the first place. When combined, the two elements form a riveting narrative, and are alone enough to make the show well worth watching.

Granted, the show isn't perfect. Although the ending does possess a certain amount of guileless charm, it's still nonetheless hokey and predictable. Plot holes are certainly there if you look for them, and while the animation and sound are still decent, they certainly haven't gotten better over the past couple of decades. However, for anyone who enjoys obscure 1980s anime, this is pretty much as good as you're going to get.

Animation

The age is going to make the show's visuals guaranteed to suck to some extent, but it's really not as bad as you'd think. Clear, crisp character designs combined with competent backgrounds allow for visuals that are tolerable, if not actually good.

Sound

Two words: 80's cheez.

Character

The first thing that came up mind when I was watching this was how the creators were possibly going to develop eleven characters in the space of a 90 minute movie. The answer, of course, is that they don't.

Basically, they ignore most of them and focus on just three or four of the group. These characters, while not particularly deep, are at least fairly developed and moderately likeable.