egaronia was once a small and unimportant country like any other on the continent of Hulk. Then its inhabitants unearthed the remains of a prosperous ancient society and used that society's superior technology to found a militaristic, imperialist dystopia. Missile-spouting metal ships and bug-winged flying machines gave Megaronia a distinct advantage over the rest of the world, which was apparently still relying on sails and swords.
Soon the small country was a vast empire that swallowed up even the Four Islands of God, popularly believed to be the four fingers of a deity who came out the worse for wear in a battle with a mighty eagle. The god supposedly left his ship Ellcia in the holy islands--the same ship that originally razed Hulk and all its civilizations, including the one found under Megaronia.
Once the Ellcia legend surfaces, along with a prophecy that a Chosen One will arise to pilot the ship against Megaronia, half the country seems ready to volunteer. From the exiled son of the Four Islands' murdered protector to the Megaronian king's evil daughter (instantly distinguishable from his good daughter by her relatively immodest, cleavage-baring dress and comparative lack of sniveling), everyone wants the technological power to beat Megaronia and take over the world themselves.
Unsurprisingly, none of them reckoned on the interference of a ragtag teenage girl and her band of semi-competent pirates ...
Swords, sorcery and...spaceships?
Ellcia is a shake-and-bake mixture of cross-genre stereotypes and standbys that elicits deja vu about once per minute. It's two jiggers of Wizards with a shot of Pirates of Dark Water, a healthy swallow of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and a sprinkle of Pippi Longstocking thrown in for seasoning. But the cramped story jumps from Tolkien fantasy to Captain Harlock space wars so many times that the antecedents get as muddled as the literary classification.
Phylum aside, this four-part movie is too cramped for comfort. It's not hard to follow the convoluted story, which hops back and forth between Megaronia's political infighting and the pirate band's soul-searching, but plot and character detail alike tend to get brushed aside in the race to pack in a few extra conflicts. In a battle royale on this scale (the king's daughters versus each other versus an ambitious guard versus Eira the pirate versus her long-lost brother versus a thousand-year-old demon versus an ancient selkie clan versus the king's daughters ...) there's just no time or space for the players to have individual personalities, at least beyond the vaguest anime butch/wimp/stud/heroine stereotypes.
There's certainly plenty of distracting sound and fury to watch, particularly in the flashy sword fights, which put the ponderous ship battles to shame. But the animation tends to be puffy and generic, particularly when dealing with Eira's team, and all the pretty light and motion just doesn't quite substitute for an individual that stands out above the squalling crowd.
