With a running time of 30 minutes this movie for the Violinist
of Hameln is something more akin to the likes of the numerous Slayers
specials that exist. The movie itself is completely unlike the TV series and it's
based much more around the manga than the original anime. This means that the
series has a prominent comic side to things, rather than the all out darkness
experienced in the TV series, and we also see that (for reasons unknown but perhaps
explained in the manga) Sizer is now in Harmel's party. The actual plot of the
movie is a very simple one in that the Princess of a city's royal family has been
kidnapped by the local demon hoard and it's Harmel's mission to go off and rescue
her.
Unless it's called Hoshi no Koe you're
never going to get something spectacular out of anime that's only half an hour
in length but the Hameln movie is entertaining none the less. The action
is good to watch and on the comic side of things the jokes are usually quite funny
and compared to how serious the characters are represented in the TV series this
seems even more amusing. Another big bonus is that the movie actually has decent
animation which helps things out a lot. The like of Harmel and Sizer look far
better here and there's none of the still frame shots that were so recurrent in
the TV series either.
Nothing exceptional and only
fans of the TV series like myself will really want to check it out but I found
it a lot more entertaining than most of the already mentioned Slayers specials.
It should also be noted that there are one or two spoilers in the movie and for
that reason it's best to watch this once you've seen the original TV series.
