Review: Versailles - Ascendead Master (Short Movie)

I do not know which is more pathetic: the fact that five grown men take themselves completely seriously in the production and story of the Ascendead Master video, or the fact that a ton of money was pumped into the making of this and it came out this shitty. If this is supposed to supplement the Ascendead Master music video (which in itself recycles footage from this "movie" and makes absolutely no sense either way), why isn't this any good? It's one part "Lestat and other typical vampire movies not named Twilight ripoff gone wrong" mixed in with "awkward camera angles and shitty voiceover" and four very incoherent storylines. For anyone else that can manage to keep a few brain cells functioning throughout this 18 minute chore in concentration, you’re going to wonder why you didn’t quit once the first few words were mentioned and exactly what the hell you were subjected to. (And if you happen to want to read what I think about Ascendead Master as a single, you can click here. I mentioned this movie there but I’m going to go in-depth here and discuss exactly why any Versailles fan with a half a brain should detest this piece of work).

Do not get me wrong; I am no Versailles hater. I am actually a big fan of Versailles, even though I have no idea what the fuck half the things Kamijo mumbles are supposed to mean. My fandom has nothing to do with the movie, it’s marketing strategy, or how badly this was all done. I don’t want to read any shit about how I don’t appreciate “aesthetics” and how “not embracing the visual portion of visual kei is disgraceful to the artist”. This movie is shit. Have we gotten that cleared?

Good.

Let's begin with the storyline, or more accurately, storylines. Yes, there are multiple storylines and I promise you if you get through this once you won't get everything that's going on. I've seen this three or four times just to try and muster together my thoughts on how bad this was, and new things just keep popping up left and right and making the movie more and more obscure.

This is as close as I got to a story:

ACT I

Descendant of the Rose (also known as the third track on the Regular Edition; how fucking clever), otherwise known as Descendant Corp., the innovative name of Kamijo’s trust fund and secret vampiric prostitution ring that provides extras for HBO’s True Blood series, miraculously came across a cure that was guaranteed to grant eternal life to whoever decided to take it. "Curing" death is the first mistake here but I'll let it slide. They just call it the "project of eternal life", but it’s obvious as to what they want to do and that's bite the shit out of everyone. Like the true capitalist vampires they were raised to be in Transylvania Prefecture, Descendant Corp (which seems to be made up of just about five people) decides to sell this product to the masses.

Not even mentioning the moral and societal implications eternal life has on degenerating, crippled 90 year olds the world over, who in the hell thought it was a bright idea to sell eternal life to the public in the form of Tylenol?

That is within the first thirty seconds of the movie. This would have possibly made for a cheesy but semi-decent B-movie if it hadn’t switched gears.

See, we get the first thirty seconds in the form of a television broadcast in this nurse’s room, and I say this nurse because she’s never given a name. No one ever directly addresses her in any way and throughout most of the movie we’re subjected to her inane droll. We're going to call her Kateryna.

Also, let me mention a very annoying fact in an aside: she’s a Russian with an American accent voicing her thoughts over in a movie that features Japanese people in European Renaissance and Baroque outfits.

Another quite annoying aspect of this movie that continues right up until the end is the subtitles. They’re facking huge, take up the whole right edge, and don’t help anyone outside of Japan. There are actually parts of this movie that require subtitles and we don’t get them.

So, we immediately cut to what appears to be a girl getting rushed into the emergency room. Thanks to the painfully enunciated voiceover, we get to learn that the girl was part of a tragic car accident and she was the only survivor. In typical medical fashion, the doctors “could not save her parents”. Instead of looking like a car accident victim, the girl looks like she just got punched in the face. Hard. Repeatedly.

Well, at least they remembered to do her make-up.

Where the movie starts to lose steam, exactly one minute in, is when there is blood dripping all over the floor. We just saw her rushed down the hallway and there was no blood to be seen, and all of a sudden she’s in some sort of intensive surgery on her stomach. It gets even stupider as the doctors don’t seem to realize they have a “guest” alongside them in the room and as the girl dies the lights MAGICALLY shut off and Kamijo gets in a quick bite on her neck.

THERE’S A WOUND ON HER NECK!

….and then that disappears as Kamijo walks by in slow motion and the only person that seems to notice any of this is Kateryna.

AND INEXPLICABLY WE END UP IN A CHURCH WITH SAID NURSE AND HIZAKI as we’re subjected to an explanation of what we just saw from about a 5 degree angle difference five seconds ago.

“Was I hallucinating” says the nurse as she makes the sign of the cross and starts making a prayer to God. Am I hallucinating with these bad transitions?

Did I just see some spotting on his surgical mask? Must be a vampire thing...

In a somewhat clean transition, we’re crowded around your friendly neighborhood medical water cooler as the doctors discuss the tragic AXIDENT from last night and how the girl magically healed herself *coughcoughBULLSHITcoughcough*. The docs wanna chop her up but it looks like someone bought, I mean adopted, her instead. And who else but THE PRESIDENT OF DESCENDANT CORP?

DO YOU LIKE ROSE?

As Kamijo attempts to give presents to the little girl to elicit some "secksual favors", they suddenly cut to an admittedly semi-cool shot of Kamijo looking like Neo from the Matrix walking down the hall with the girl. He is fond of his little girls. After that, another choppy transition to a middle-aged man in a wheelchair who "wants to live forever" because he's sick. You don't want to live forever, you just want to get better. Fool...

He's important later, just so you know...

Then we cut back to the former scene, and Kamijo walks by in epic fashion and we all get to see his plastic retainers he got half-off. Boy, those do look uncomfortable, and he borderline breaks his fucking neck just so we could see inside.

And is that a laugh or a sigh of relief?

And that's the end of part one. Like a dick the nurse pricks her finger on the thorn >.>

INCONSISTENCY NUMBER ONE: VAMPIRES CAN'T STAND SUNLIGHT, SO WHY ARE KAMIJO AND THE GIRL WALKING OUTSIDE?

At least this part was semi-tolerable. The story is ridiculous and things match up way too coincidentally here, but the good part is that you can follow what the hell is going on and there's enough "action" the first time around to get you through it. Here comes ACT II.

ACT II

I'm guessing it's the same night and the two of them went home back to Kamijo's...rather empty apartment. The only thing we see is the daughter watering roses (how odd? I say nay.) while Kamijo stares out the window in an eternally angsty way.

This is where it gets VERY ANNOYING. We have to hear Kateryna talk on and on and on about "eternal life" and if it's "God's will" and shit while staring at some random scenes of crap.

First, she's tucking the dead guy into bed. I didn't notice it was the man from the first part the first time and I didn't notice she was tucking him into bed until the fourth time. Shouldn't she be wheeling him to the morgue or something? Then, she wheels his wheelchair down the empty hallway before we see a scene of her touching herself in the mirror. No, don't get excited. The forced, very emo-like script kills any boner you might get from watching her graze her face while we see obscured pictures of everything from part one. So those who bought part two now have no reason to see part one, because they nicely summed up everything with some poorly recited lines.

"AS. A. NURSE. I. AM. NO. STRANGER. TO. DEATH. I always believed. that we. were all. sinners. and that not one of us. could escape death. in this lifetime."

How introspective of you....

There's ill-fitting opera music backing her emo-poetry. We are also subjected to a ROSE MONTAGE and some more bullshit about eternal beauty and roses on steroids that live for millenia. Note that the story hasn't progressed at ALL until she does some research in a Bram Stoker book and we see ALL the members of Versailles in painting form. This is also the point where we learn that you have to be bitten to become a Descendant of the Rose and receive "eternal life".

So they're not selling Tylenol....

BACK TO THE CHURCH. AGAIN.

A prayer a day keeps the Kamijo away.

Hizaki's spreading some of that Jesus perfume in the air in the church. INCONSISTENCY NUMBER TWO: we have literally just learned Hizaki is one of the Descendants of the Rose because he was in the last scene, and yet he's a nun in a church. VAMPIRES CAN'T ENTER CHURCHES!

AND WHY THE HELL ARE YOU PRAYING? WEREN'T YOU JUST AT HOME? DO YOU HAVE A CHAPEL IN YOUR CLOSET? Her prayer is even more amusing. DEAR GOD PLEASE PROTECT ME FROM TEMPTATION AND FORGIVE ALL MY SINS! What are you afraid of? You should be....doing absolutely nothing you paranoid freak because no one's made a move yet. Go sleep, or masturbate, or watch TV.

And then we're INEXPLICABLY IN AN ALLEY! I'm guessing Kateryna is on her way home from the rousing prayer session at the church with the vampires and she runs into Teru and Jasmine You in an alley. For someone that's afraid of everything that blinks you sure are brave to go into an alley -_-. Teru's painting pictures in short shorts and Jasmine's standing there looking like a freak. Creepy....

And then we skip to her getting her picture done. What the hell does this have to do with anything? IS THIS NECESSARY? What's even worse is that Teru's not even attempting to draw. I hear the sketches going on in the background while he's holding the brush -_-;;

Poor Kateryna realizes too late that Teru draws some very wicked shit and Jasmine You descends upon her with the voice of a digitized Darth Vader mumbling about some occult shit. I lol'd when I saw him bend over, all covered in the shadow, still holding the apple, trying to be all ominous.

After a picture of a hanging head and a fattie eating himself into a coma jumps onto the screen, Kateryna throws some pennies into a hat full of Euros and then rushes off into the alley. We see the picture of her with a hole through her left boob and what looks like Kamijo cerca "The Revenant Choir" behind her.

Absolutely nothing of importance happened this act...

ACT III

I LIKE YO SHIRT MIZZ

Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movie is in the lobby with an inept cameraman that seems to be doing the potty dance. He, like mostly every other self-disrespecting news media in this unnamed city, are here to discover the secret to eternal life, which we already know. He's audible but very low and I don't really get the point of having a schizo camera.

In an equally inexplicable fashion, the members of Versailles, I mean, Descendant Corp. attend this press conference IN FULL VK fashion! Hell, they didn't bother to change out of their costumes and they all look odd. They're quickly followed by a whole bunch of reporters who are also probably Russian. Oh, and this is the first time we see Yuki. Eleven minutes in....

Kateryna's watching the news conference on TV. Is it important? No, but we see about 3 to 4 seconds of Kamijo's face trying to look like Lestat ._.

INCONSISTENCY: VAMPIRES DON'T SHOW UP ON FILM!

This is where I get lost. I have no idea what the hell Kamijo said and the little insane chick went and killed a bunch of reporters, but all the reporters are not there and they're still standing. She's also holding a camera but we don't see her do anything with it. Then, we see Kamijo talking about.....something. I don't fucking understand what the hell he's saying and all the reporters look like they just came. WE NEED SUBTITLES HERE, NOT PICTURES OF FUCKING VERSAILLES IN ALL THEIR MAKEUP AND SHIT.

Join with me in this REBOLUTION.

The creepy girl comes out onto the stage in a ton of makeup and the reporter from before decides to stand up against Kamijo in what happens to be the worst delivered lines in the entire movie. Unknown to him, somewhere along the line all the reporters turned undead and sold their souls. When? All the reporters that were dead on the staircase couldn't be in the room with Kamijo because it was happening concurrently. So when did they all die and then come back? INCONSISTENCY NUMBER THREE. As a result, he subsequently gets jumped by the vampires in a matrix-esque scene but we don't see what happens to him. He just disappears. INCONSISTENCY NUMBER FOUR. Then, there's lots of chanting. NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE. WHAT IS GOING ON?

Then after that there are some weird montages of the hospital and Kateryna running away from....something. She magically warps to the church to slow down and realize...there's someone there. It's KAMIJO! WHY? I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA! He's just sitting there looking pretty even though THERE ARE TWO CROSSES AT THE OPPOSITE END OF THE CHURCH. And then she tries to run but she's not going anywhere and when he goes to bite her she gets the orgasm face on while he opens his mouth about as wide as an iguana. And he bites her. The end.

WHY IS KAMIJO BITING HER? THEY HADN'T MET FOR MORE THAN A MINUTE AND THEY NEVER CONVERSED WORDS OR THOUGHTS! IT'S IMPLIED THAT HE WAS AFTER HER BUT HE NEVER CHASED HER! HE NEVER EVEN STALKED HER! THEY NEVER WERE EVEN IN THE SAME ROOM FOR MORE THAN A MINUTE THE ENTIRE FILM! HELL, KAMIJO HAD OTHER AGENDAS THE ENTIRE MOVIE! WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING EATING HER AT THE END? INCONSISTENCY NUMBER FIVE!

VAMPIRES DON'T BELONG IN CHURCHES. INCONSISTENCY NUMBER SIX. AND HOW DID KAMIJO GET THERE SO FAST? DID HE PIGGYBACK A RIDE ON EDWARD CULLEN? INCONSISTENCY NUMBER SEVEN.

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I swear, this movie made absolutely no sense, yet it borrowed so much from other vampire movies and stories it's almost plagiarism. The whole Act II has this sub-story going on that makes absolutely no sense and fits in nowhere and the second half of ACT I only matches up with the last minute or so of the Third Act. Then you have the whole First part of ACT I matching up with the beginning of Act III and then the rest of Act III makes no sense to me. And then the beginning of ACT II is a repetition of Act I with a different perspective that isn't actually needed. None of these parts make any sense together.

I COULD HAVE WRITTEN A BETTER STORY. This is a bunch of middle with no beginning and no end.

All this time they spent making the movie would have been better spent writing some decent music. Perhaps for Ascendead Master they could have made a more cohesive music video. They probably could have hired an orchestra instead of relying on MIDI for the symphonic portion of their music. They might have even been able to get some new costumes? I just don't see how this movie was justified being made. Even my summary doesn't make sense!

Speaking of music, my thoughts on the musical portion can be found here. The opera bit was unneeded, but then again so was Act II and it was well-done. This is the only decent part of the movie, and those soundtracks came bundled with the limited editions of the single, but they're all so SHORT it's appalling.

Ugh, I am disgusted. Do not watch except for lulz. Please, do it for the kittens.