There's no denying that without Osamu Tezuka, we wouldn't have the modern anime and manga industry as we know it. He popularized many genres, tropes, and styles that are now considered commonplace today. However, not everything the God of Manga made was good, and unfortunately, Prime Rose: A Time Slip of 10,000 Years is among his lesser works. Originally a 4-volume manga, his company Tezuka Pro decided to make it into a feature-length TV special as part of an NTV program. I haven't read the manga, and I'm not sure it even has an English translation, official or fan made. Do correct me if I'm wrong though. But after watching the movie version...I have no desire to read the manga anyway, because the anime Prime Rose is just...not good. At all.

One day, a gigantic satellite that eerily resembles the head of C-3PO from Star Wars splits into two and destroys two cities: Kujukuri City in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, and Dallas, Texas in the United States. Centuries later, Gai Tanbara, a member of the Time Patrol, is informed that the two cities and their citizens weren't actually destroyed, but actually sent forward in time by 10,000 years. He and his younger brother Bunretsu are sent forward in time to figure out what's going on. But circumstances make it so that Gai is enslaved in a labor camp where slaves spend their days building strange statues, and a young woman he tries to help, Emiya Tachi, wants to get revenge on the people who killed her lover. Gai, Bunretsu, and Emiya must work together if they're to both free the slaves and put a stop to the machinations of the satellite responsible for everything, the dreaded Deathmask.

If that plot summary sounds convoluted as all hell, that's because it is. There's no way a TV special that's an hour and a half long is gonna be able to cover that much material without compromising it in some way, and sure enough, that's exactly what happens. Prime Rose just moves from one plot point to another without really taking the time to flesh them out and give them the breathing room they need to utilize their potential. Not to mention that the story itself makes zero sense if you try to apply any logic to it. So two cities get sent forward in time, suddenly split into two whole nations that are at war with each other, and somehow they speak the same language? That's just the first of many questions that the story raises and gives absolutely no answers to. We never see just how this whole situation came about other than being told that they were sent forward in time, not to mention a lot of the fantasy creatures that appear just seem like they're there as an excuse for the characters to get from point A to point B because the plot demands it. Seriously, where do Emiya and Gai even get their horses from? And how did they manage to wrangle a whole group of gigantic cockroaches? Where did they even get those cockroaches? Furthermore, Emiya's ability to turn to stone seems to have no concrete (Ha, get it?) rules. Most of the time she can change back whenever she wants, but in the finale, she stays frozen in stone for over a month with literally no explanation other than we have to milk a potential tragedy to wring the tears out of the audience.

This also results in piss-poor writing for the characters overall. Every single one of them has as much depth as a puddle, Emiya suddenly goes from swooning girl to competent warrior within two or three scenes, making any development she gets feel completely rushed and unearned, and one villain just...decides he doesn't want to be a villain anymore because Gai made him sign a document demanding that he stop being a dictator or some shit. Also, FUCK BUNRETSU. This kid is annoying as all hell and easily the worst thing about the entire movie. Bunretsu causes Gai and Emiya no small amount of grief, gets way too much screen time, has several pointless scenes where he's perving on Emiya (Whether it be seeing her naked or getting too close to her butt when they're trying to escape getting hanged), and is generally a dumb, useless brat. You could cut him out of the movie entirely and it'd be so much better off for it. By the way, what the heck is Spock from Star Trek doing in this movie? No, I'm not kidding, Gai's boss, who only appears in the beginning of the movie, literally looks so much like Spock that I'm surprised Tezuka didn't get sued for copyright violations. Not to mention Emiya, after watching her first boyfriend die in a laughably silly manner, gets over him at the end of the movie and falls in love with Gai. See what I mean when I say the writing for the characters is shit?

Honestly, the animation and soundtrack aren't much to write home about either. The character designs are your typical Tezuka fare, with important characters looking a good mixture of human and cartoony whereas all the minor characters are supremely cartoonish and silly-looking. I hate Emiya's warrior outfit though. It's literally just a pair of panties and an X-shaped bra with shoulder pads glued onto it, and all it does is make her look super sexualized when she could be wearing anything else. Again, like I mentioned, there's a scene where Bunretsu almost runs face first into her butt when they're trying to escape getting hanged, and there's literally no purpose to it other than titillation. I guess not even Tezuka is immune to pointless horny sexual humor. Now, something interesting I learned is that Prime Rose actually got an English dub, which is shocking because some new company commissioned it, and I'm surprised Tezuka Pro even bothered to preserve the M&E track for it, which doesn't often happen for older properties like this. I gotta say, having actually watched this English dub, which was the very first one that SkySet Entertainment made, it's surprisingly a solid effort. Not perfect, as this is their first dub, and there were several points where dialogue didn't match the lip flaps very well, but it's a way better first attempt at a dub than I expected. Oh, and the dub outtakes are absolutely hilarious.

Not that it does anything to save this trainwreck of a TV special. So yeah, Osamu Tezuka has made a lot of great series during his lifetime, but Prime Rose: A Time Slip of 10,000 Years is not one of them. It has so many conflicting ideas it wants to explore, but can't make sense of any of them, and as a result, it feels really bloated, directionless, and unsatisfying, trying to find some purpose and coming out empty handed. Seriously, don't waste your time on Prime Rose. It's terrible.