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| From https://orig00.deviantart.net/640f/f/2017/138/ 6/d/violence_jack_harem_bomber_by_mdtartist83-db9mc0j.jpg |
Director: Osamu Kamijo
Screenplay: Mikio Matsushita
Based on the manga by
Go Nagai
Voice Actors: Julia Braams as Mari; John Bull as the Slumking;
Nadia DeLemeny as Yumi; William Roberts
as Harem Bomber; Liza Ross as Rose; Bob Sessions as Violence Jack; Barbara
Barnes as Sabu; Colin Bruce as Yamaguchi; David Jarvis as Kenichi
Synopsis: In the post-apocalyptic world, the Slum King rules it
with an iron fist with his vast hordes; in the midst of it is Mari, captured
for his vast sex slavery group, and one of his soldiers named Kenichi, who were
a couple before a comet from outer space destroyed civilisation, find each
other and attempt to escape the Slum King's minions like Harem Bomber. Whilst this
takes place Violence Jack, the personification of death and mayhem, approaches
the Slum King's territory.
[Spoilers and Trigger Warnings Throughout]
After the gruelling content of Evil Town, than the more rewarding but
still tasteless Hell's Wind, there's
Harem Bomber, or the Slum King as its Manga Entertainment release dubs it. By this point Violent Jack is just a personification
of violence with supernatural powers, all in the shortest of the episodes, the
first released and the one with the least censorship for the English release
barring a minute or so. It's also so badly put together you could put it on in
an art gallery and be compelled by how low a bar in terms of eighties OVA anime
is in terms of quality. Revisiting these edited versions, censorship or not, it's
a strange emotional trajectory when you don't dare try to marathon all of them,
which I made the mistake of for the first time - Evil Town even butchered forcing one to want to take a shower
notwithstanding, Hell's Wind watchable,
and Harem Bomber so hellishly awful
I am amazed I never noticed had bad it was until now. It's bad to the point it's
amazing it ever got sequel episodes.
The script's sleazy pulp, Jack
versus the samurai helmeted Slum King, all whilst a young couple find
themselves in the midst of sexual slavery and Jack causing mayhem, rife in
issues and not even ending with a fight against the Slum King, but one of his
minions Harem Bomber, a giant nondescript man whose minions (including a
bisexual dominatrix with a metal Phantom of the Opera mask who runs the sex
slavery harem) are more interesting than him. It also ends anticlimactically
as, to defeat the Harem Bomber, Jack throws the helicopter containing the young
couple at him, killing the male love interest who decided to help. That in
particular stands up as one of the more ridiculous moments of the OVAs, one of
the few plot points which is closer to the absurdity found in most
"bad" anime from this era rather than distasteful grim. That, and
whilst its connected to the grim sexual slavery subplot and the homophobic evil
lesbian figure who molests a captive to the point she has instant Stockholm
Syndrome, that her male staff are all large men in really, really tiny leather briefs straight out of the infamous Frankie Goes To Hollywood "Relax" music video.
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The animation is also dreadful even by my tolerant standards, a side to myself I openly admit takes masochistic (even sadistic) delight in bad animation and production value, but even here cringed in horror. It's bad to the point that one of the truly infamous lines of the English dub, a case of verbal tourettes, was actually to cover up an animation mistake. The dub, only covered barely so far in these Violence Jack reviews, is ridiculous; whilst its totally inappropriate for the nasty material at points, intentionally and unintentionally, its ironically one of the reasons why the anime is even re-released by Discotek in the current day, its mad failure one of the few reliving aspects to sooth the septic viewing experience. This line, a stream of verbal insults at Jack's way that (in the one single amusing aspect of Violence Jack for myself) I have considered using as an alarm sound, was forced out due to the lip movements of a character being accidental, just as that young male hero Kenichi abruptly develops a twitch in an eyeball in one shot. This amongst the general presentation is truly bottom of the barrel for anime, compelling but utter trash even technically, ending with Violence Jack not only able to regenerating a lost eye but turning into a phoenix for reasons I don't understand.
The entire Violence Jack project is an inexplicable creation that came from the
eighties OVA boom. One that is morally repugnant yet developed a reputation for
many to get re-released and even I would wish for a real explanation to why it
even came about, the kind of details that would not be revealed by people who
worked on this unless forced out of them in a very awkward conversation.
Thinking of the individuals behind this, why they made the series even with the
fame of Go Nagai behind it, why it
took four years and was this sporadic and wildly bad in various ways. The poor
female animators having to work on some of the material in the uncensored version,
the poor production staff and voice actors of both genders having to work on
certain scenes I thankfully never saw, how this project, clearly brought into
existence because Go Nagai is an
important figure in all manga and anime, blundered along, ended up taking the
artistic decisions that happened.
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And this is all with knowledge the uncut versions, especially with Evil Town, would drastically effect my opinion further, with Evil Town potentially spiritually and psychologically scarring me if it's as bad as I've read it as. If anything, Violence Jack is synonymous now with how for any good or obscure curiosity found in eighties OVAs, it let problematic and artistically incompetent material in the door too, from this to the extremes of hentai porn anime that began when straight-to-video allowed a liberation of content restrictions. The irony is that, even if it was tasteless and offensive for some still, if Violence Jack's worse moments were toned down or flat out removed it would've work provided the quality was improved artistically alongside fixing major script problems. As I'd gladly had Legend of the Overfiend (1989) without the censored sexual violence, Violence Jack even if it has far less defendable content in plot complexity could be remade into something better. Hell, a remake which didn't fall down the same pit holes this did could make sense, especially as of all people the experimental cult anime director Masaaki Yuasa was chosen to helm a Devilman remake in 2018, and that did very well. (And, not knowing enough about the material and not wishing to spoil it, I'd be reprimanded if I didn't mention Violence Jack is secretly a sequel to Devilman in story, so the remake idea isn't that weird).
Go Nagai, frankly, made some dubious creations even if you only
watched the anime adaptations rather than the original source material, but it's
noticeable that, for every Kekko Karman
(the super heroine who wears no clothes) that was originally a joke that
backfired, or a Violence Jack, he
also made characters like Devilman
and Cutey Honey that can thankfully
be interpreted in a variety of ways, still flexible as stories and characters
for a variety of tones. Nagai's
reputation is too important to dismiss him, as important to anime and manga arguably
as a Hayao Miyazaki or an Osamu Tezuka, and if it's unfortunate he
likes extremes in gore and sex, he at least has characters and properties which
can be malleable and reinterpreted in various ways in contrast to this. The
same could happen to Violence Jack,
the proto-Mad Max apocalypse still a
profound advantage even if everyone's done this material over the decades now. Until
then, Violence Jack so far is the
infamous punch line that has made even the most hardened of anime fans green in
the face viewing its content.
The End (Finally...)
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| From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hzVIq6agNIk/hqdefault.jpg |
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