#71: Black Lion (1992)

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Director: Takashi Watanabe

Screenplay: Ritsuko Hayasaka and Yasunori Takagi

Based on a manga by Go Nagai

Voice Cast: Yasunori Matsumoto/David Stokey as Shishimaru, Yūsaku Yara/Jose Brown as Ginnai Doma, Ai Orikasa/Kathryn Dineen as Hayabusa, Kan Fujimoto/Robert Rudie as Momoji, Kazuyuki Sogabe/Charles Campbell as Oda Nobunaga

Viewed in English Dub

Synopsis: In feudal Japan, the legendary figure Oda Nobunaga has acquired futuristic weaponry like tanks and rifles and is dominating the country as a result. Amongst his allies is Ginnai Doma, a man whose family was killed by ninja and would've have passed on to another life were it not for Nobunaga's intervention, turning him into an unstoppable killer hell bent for revenge on all ninja. One such ninja, Shishimaru, desires revenge Ginnai Doma for the loss of his clan, begrudgingly joining another clan of ninja to stop Doma immediately before he finishes them all off.

Black Lion, a straight-to-video anime, is so ridiculously manly one enthusiastic anime podcaster for the Anime World Order podcast showed his love for the forty minute plus program by punching himself in the testicles mid-recording¹. And considering this is an adaptation of a Go Nagai work, that's not surprising either. Nagai is a legendary manga author, one of the most influential in the medium whose creations - from Cutey Honey to Devilman - are still be adapted to anime today. He even challenged Osamu Tezuka, the "Godfather of Manga", at least being an influence, even if subconscious, on Tezuka going into his more adult and explicit content of the seventies alongside the other bludgeoning manga authors charting that course. Nagai, going through anime adaptations of his work and now able to start on his actual manga, is also an incredible illustrator. Also, he's as mad as a box of frogs.

It's not surprising in lieu of this he created Black Lion - part of an ongoing obsession in Japanese culture of modern technology landing in their past of samurai. Black Lion starts off abruptly with said samurai mowing down ninjas with machine guns, and even a leader of the later having a secret room to his paper wall compound with a super computer, housed behind an iron mechanical door, but it does eventually make sense of this. In this world, the legendary historical figure Oda Nobunaga has ended up encountering evil aliens, who through time travel provide him with future technology, and eventually evoking in this mere fragment of the original manga also good aliens about to take part in this conflict of anachronisms. The spaceship over period Japan that closes the OVA is itself as strange a juxtaposition as it sounds.

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This is also a work obsessed with Oda Nobunaga, the real life 16th warrior who was one of the first to unify Japan during a chaotic period of war through the Sengoku Period. He was very culturally minded, had little issue with interacting with Westerners (to the point he is viewed/confused as having been Christian) and took advantage of it, and is also a divisive figure for how ruthless and violent he was in war and as a ruler. In Japanese pop culture, he's been depicted as being a demon or being in the pocket of demons. He's also been gender swapped into a girl twice - The Ambition of Oda Nobuna (2012) and Sengoku Collection (2012) - and tried to control the world with a demonically possessed satellite and time travel against a heroic samurai and Jean Reno in Onimusha 3: Demon Siege (2004). In their vast and weird interpretations, his representations centuries later are so numerous he inexplicably deserves a blog tag himself as his own subgenre, only if he has a cameo here providing the mortally wounded Ginnai Doma the robotic body and murderous urge to be a threat to all ninja.

All of Black Lion is focused on Ginnai Doma being Terminator-like and ninja dying on mass trying to stop him, our cocky lead Shishimaru with his own vendetta against him established at the beginning. A parade of gore and violence takes place for the whole forty minutes which is trashy; something I openly admit is an acquired taste. It has the decency, however, to just make the entire OVA about just trying kill Doma, over that length of time actually compelling as the ninja become more and more exasperated and the maddening attempts to just him finish off lead to more of them dying, usually in horrible ways. Its sickly humorous if you feel that way inclined, but also has more interest to it than if just another ultraviolent OVA from the nineties which juggled multiple plot threads at this running time with no rhyme or meaning behind them, because at least it sticks to one idea and runs it into the ground with all the sense that it couldn't have forgotten anything that would've made it better than it is.    

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Aside from this, you're enjoyment is entirely how absurd this becomes and how much you can appreciate it. Viewing the OVA in English may prove better for some viewers just for David Stokey's constantly shouted and loud performance as lead Shishimaru, as unlikable a ninja as you could get in his attitude, an obnoxious individual who refuses to play ball and gets at least one person killed if not more, adding the tone. The OVA is adequately animated, entirely more about the content itself rather than any elaborate style. Where someone is going to blow up everyone with a nuclear powered battery within himself or herself, lasers are fired from mouths, and the body count is stupidly high. Even illusions with burning marijuana used are involved and the dialogue especially in shouted English is going to add to the absurdity of it all. All of it is silly, but with Go Nagai, I realise soon into my proper introduction to his original work Nagai is both a very talented artist, but in his ability to mix wackiness with the nightmarish, he indulges to his id to conjure his stories. Even if they are potentially problematic or absurd, he writes material like this as with many manga authors to make each page compelling, which is entirely why you get stuff between this or a Mad Bull 34 (1990) which baffle and amuse decades later now we have ironic and non-ironic viewing.

Black Lion is no different, only with the issue that, merely a fragment which completes its small narrative but with an open conclusion, it's entirely about the most outlandish gore, stunts and twists rather than anything more in-depth. Its, frankly, insubstantial even next to other insane action OVAs of the time, and Nagai's work has been adapted into more memorable and batshit forms. Some were even legitimately good. It is however, if you can be enthused by it, providing enough energy to encourage other viewers to punch themselves in the crotch, so be prepared. I wasn't one such person, but I can sympathise with the masochistic energy that would encourage one to.

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1) Episode # 54c. Not one of their usual shows, running over ten years plus, so I wouldn't necessarily choose it as your first; it is however memorable just for the Black Lion review.