I spent some time today to watch a Blu-Ray copy of this film. As a gift from my brother, we planned to watch the subtitled original together. This review will cover the Funimation dub, so obviously there will be differences.The story possesses many similarities to the plot of the first Bayonetta video game, with a few differences that make it more original overall than many other movie tie-ins. Granted, it's still not enough to make it seem like more than video game cutscenes drawn in anime, but it delivers on the action and occasional humor or drama with more success than others of its kind. If you have played Bayonetta, then the characters should feel very familiar. For audiences who haven't one bit of knowledge, they can be hard to grasp considering how reliant the writing is on the game's plot. We have the trope of a protagonist's family member for a villain in Balder, the forgotten child Bayonetta, her enabler Jeanne, the tough guy Rodin, and the informant Enzo, the characters are only as complex as they are in the game they came from. To its credit, Bayonetta does have a more deep plot compared to many other video games, so it does work out. Very easily, the animation is the best thing about this movie. The fantasy elements, monsters, and action work gracefully and pristinely with Gonzo's style of anime. The effects are enough to make the fights compelling to watch, while the ideas from the video games (such as the Gomorrah that Bayonetta summons with Avavago) look really amazing with the environments.If you like Bayonetta or are familiar with the franchise, this film is somewhat unremarkable besides just looking like an eye candy version of gameplay. For common audiences (no children, there is graphic violence, language, and nudity, like a classic R film), it may come off as just another otaku movie that isn't designed to cater to a general audience. I didn't find it too interesting, but for some people, its very strong animation and overall higher quality compared to other video game movies may come off as a delightful surprise.

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate is a fantastic addition to the first game. It's basically perfect as far as sticking to what the series is, however it also adds depth to lots of the characters and clears up some confusing plot elements from the game. The animation is generally fantastic from Gonzo, though there are some consistency issues with the drawings. The movie is a bit rushed because they had to fit a story from a game with nearly 3 hours of cut scenes into a 90 minute window and still provide the needed level of action. Overall though they did a good job of getting as much stuff into the movie as they could from the first game. They managed to even deepen the personal stories between the characters in the game and made the connection and story between Bayonetta and her parents a very memorable one. Now to talk about the different versions of the movie. This movie is almost unquestionably the best dub Funimation has ever done. It's very common that you hear fans complain about Funimation dubs sucking and when they dub licensed properties they almost always use in-house actors to save budget. That isn't the case here at all. Funimation went all out with this movie and brought as much of the original cast as possible (and from the director's commentary went EXTREMELY out of their way to get Hellena Taylor in to play Bayonetta. Going as far as delaying the film by 2 months. Not to mention having to track down the original actors who were uncredited in the first game, and inaccurate on IMDb.) The actors were all great here in reprising their roles, and in fact I have to single out Hellena Taylor as she even managed to improve upon Bayonetta from the game as she has a better understanding of exactly how to play the character after having done it for years. They didn't bog the movie down with a silly script and instead tried to keep everything as true to the game as possible (more on this in a second..) The only real thing that sticks out as a mistake is having the Auditio talk in English, but it's a forgivable one. Hats off to Funimation as it's pretty clear they have improved immensely at dubbing Anime in the past 3 or 4 years. Now as far as the Japanese version goes. AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS. It does sound weird saying that about an anime, but it 100% applies here. Bayonetta was designed as an English game and the movie really should have been as well. The Japanese voice cast is horrible and doesn't fit the game or characters what so ever. Nothing against any of the actors as I'm sure they are great, but talk about a mismatch. Even Hideki Kamiya himself, the creator of Bayonetta said he didn't think she should ever have a Japanese voice. The translations of the dialogue from the first game are wholly inaccurate and the character does not seem right at all in Japanese. Bayonetta's Japanese voice actor doesn't get what makes the character special at all, and instead turns her into almost a cliché Japanese lead female character ala Lightning from FF-XIII. Even the movies theme song "Night I Stand" sounds much better in English, where as it just sounds almost.... off key in Japanese.In closing if you're a fan of Bayonetta you should own this movie. In fact if you haven't already done so you should go out and buy it now so Gonzo has more of a reason to give us a sequel! If you don't know anything about Bayonetta you might find it all a bit odd, though I do have to say that I watched this film with someone who had no clue about the game and they actually found themselves enjoying it.

I never got around to playing the game, so I have no clue how true this 2013 animated movie is to the game or the franchise as a whole. But still, I decided to sit down and watch it.I ended up watching a version with English language, and gathering from the Japanese cast listed on IMDb, then this was a dubbed version. Oh the horror! Words cannot begin to describe how much you should avoid English dubbed anime/manga. The English voice acting talents they had cast was just atrocious. It was some unfathomably poor voice acting talents for the project. Most of the time I was just cringing because of the one they had cast to do the English language for the Bayonetta character.The animated was quite good and nice to look at. There was a lot of details to the scenes and lots of flashy colors. And it did help out a lot that there was almost a constant ongoing flow of action throughout the movie.However, given the English dub and a somewhat lack of a deeper storyline, ultimately lead to this being a less than mediocre movie experience for me. And truth be told, I ended up turning it off with about 20 minutes or so left before the end. I just couldn't stand anymore of that awful dialogue and even worse delivery by whomever they had to voice the English version of Bayonetta.Storywise, well I must say that it was sort of a flaccid experience. It was predictable and not really all that enthralling. Sure, the screen was a constant blur of action and colors, but the movie was just halting behind so badly in terms of not having a proper storyline.I can't claim to be compelled to return to "Bayonetta: Bloody Fate" in order to finish the last 20 minutes. I simply was fed up with the questionable dialogue and delivery of aforementioned dialogue.I suppose this 2013 animated movie will sit well with fans of the game. But for someone who is not familiar with the game, it was just not all that impressive.

So here we have another "bad is good and good is evil" type of nonsense, which seems to be a prevailing subject these days.I started watching this not knowing anything about the subject matter, but I didn't last long. It's just a bunch of clichéd, gratuitous, ridiculous tripe. If you are a brainless clod who likes thinking "evil is cool because reasons", then this is for you. No thanks, that mess is beyond obnoxious these days.Also, IMDb said I didn't have ten lines of text which is just as ridiculous. One can get their point across without having to write a novel, and I've seen shorter reviews than mine on here. Just another unnecessarily restrictive process IMO.