#209: Ninja Scroll (1993)

 

Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Screenplay: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Cast: Kōichi Yamadera as Jubei Kibagami; Daisuke Gouri as Genma Himuro; Emi Shinohara as Kagerou; Takeshi Aono as Dakuan; Akimasa Ohmori as Shijima; Gara Takashima as Benisato; Junichi Sugawara as Shinkurou; Masako Katsuki as Zakuro; Norio Wakamoto as Utsutsu Mujuurou; Reizō Nomoto as Mushizou; Ryūzaburō Ōtomo as Tessai; Shuuichirou Moriyama as Sakaki Hyobu; Toshihiko Seki as Yurimaru

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Ninja Scroll for a certain generation was a huge title. It says a lot that, out of many of the old titles from Manga Entertainment during their VHS years, Ninja Scroll still has a cache, even if now a nostalgic one. Coming to the film at the turn of the DVD era, back when we once madly had three to four episodes per disc released individually, we even got Ninja Scroll in two separate DVD cases for different versions from Manga Entertainment for some reason. That bulky DVD case release does linger in memory, long after it was replaced for a Blu Ray, as an introduction to Yoshiaki Kawajiri's most well known directorial work.

The surprise coming to Ninja Scroll is that, a notoriously violent and dark tale of Edo era Japan and superhuman ninja, was that as far back as 1959 we got this genre of superhuman ninja with unnatural powers, all because of the novel The Kouga Ninja Scrolls by Futaro Yamada, which would be adapted into anime, and can be seen as a home for the notion of ninjas having monstrous and outright supernatural abilities. The other surprise is that Yoshiaki Kawajiri's reputation for graphic content is more complicated than I presumed at a younger age. Wicked City (1987) is the notorious film in his career, in terms of sex and violence and sexual violence, but his whole career is diverse, with something of note that one of his highest regarded projects Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000), was drastically different from the source material by Hideyuki Kikuchi, with Wicked City itself an adaption of one of his titles too. Even Ninja Scroll, which is extreme at times, is complicated now to consider as, from an era of "adult" animation being sold to the West from Japan, even in mind to titles like Ninja Resurrection (1997-8) which were sold off the back of Ninja Scroll's success, it is a much more considered title even for what is an action period story at heart.

In fact, viewed in its original Japanese dub, looked at in the current I realise that for all Ninja Scroll's gore and sexual content, it is an elegant and superbly crafted production as a theatrical length film. Story wise, it is surprisingly complex even if the results are simple. Jubei, inspired by the real life figure of Yagyū Jūbei Mitsuyoshi, is a wandering warrior who finds himself dragged into a conspiracy with the Eight Devils of Kimon, ninja with inhuman abilities hired by a shadowy clan who, in a plot involving secret gold stashes, wish to overthrow the ruling heads of Japan. Jubei is stuck in helping prevent this as Dakuan, a sinister magical old man working for the government, has poisoned him and holds the antidote hostage. In contrast, however, there is the heart of Kagero, the female ninja who, alongside having been a food taster for so long her body is resistant to all poisons, has enough toxins in her own body that any person who has contact with her will die, be it by kiss or anything else. Already resourceful, her group sent to investigate a village which has been wiped out by a disease is massacre, and she finds herself with Jubei and Dakuan.

It is very simple beyond this. The film is also both a tribute in many ways to classic Japanese genre films, though one about ninja that is far darker, openly fantastical and bloodier in comparison. Interestingly, whilst these ninja have the ability to control snakes or turn their body to stone, they negate so many clichés the likes of American cinema and Godfey Ho created about ninja lore at the same time. There are still exaggerations, shurikens been thrown and all, but there are details like ninjas being involved in espionage or disguising as monks/nuns, based on what actual ninja were doing. The nod to genre films is that, with mind of known works like the Lone Wolf and Cub franchise, this finds a balance between an incredibly serious tone, with a bleak emotional core as Jubei will be stuck as a permanent loner, and the hyper exaggerated characters and abilities.

One trademark of Kawajiri's, even far less well regarded work like Highlander: The Search for Vengeance (2007) showing this, is his interest in idiosyncratic looking characters, where even grunts stand out in character design and traits (abilities, monstrous mutations etc.). The very realistic character designs which appear in most of his career, whilst not in all his work, helps considerably, and is because of the talents of reoccurring collaborator Yutaka Minowa, the character designer for so many of his projects. Another is that, when allowed creative control. Kawajiri is very creative. It is, whilst a very serious period film with a complex narrative of secret factors wishing to overthrow the government, it is still an action film which has a man with a bee's nest growing out of his back and also welding a trident. Why the film avoids coming off as ridiculous is the quality of the animation, exceptional from studio Madhouse, alongside the striking cinematography in animation, especially the use of shadow and colour.

Most, when this was first released, came when this was promoted as a very violent anime. The gore is definitely from another era. Whilst nastiness can still occasionally be witnessed nowadays, it is less common and not as lovingly (and gristly) depicted in this at times, back from an era where a lot of anime especially for the straight-to-video OVA market was clearly made with shock value in mind, to keep a viewer glued. This is something you can accuse with this for the nudity and the hints to sexual violence and rape. Ninja Scroll though, lovingly animated and produced, has a greater impact. It feels it has more in mind, even if on a shock level, it effects too seeing a lovingly rendered depicted of a man's arms being ripped off and having the geyser of blood from them being drank. I will say that, if you would feel uncomfortable even seeing the content, especially the threats of sexual violence to Kagero, I do not recommend this film at all. There is something more here, even as pure pulp, due to tone which is more meaningful, even if this is still a work some may have great issue with.

The other thing is an awareness Kawajiri's career is very diverse. Again, as mentioned previously, one of the more notorious works Wicked City, which has a lot of sexual violence, comes from Hideyuki Kikuchi, the novelist whose work Kawajiri adapted a great deal of. Kawajiri as a director is more interested in a very elegant type of action animation, alongside tangents into other genres, painstakingly animated and only easy to forget because, with some titles, there are some inherently ridiculous aspects within them. This, even with pulp characters, does have moments of contemplation, where Kagero is the most sympathetic character, and even the villains have their own personalities, including a rivalry which proves in Jubei's favour by pure chance.

Production wise, Ninja Scroll is exceptional. You can argue the pace is reminiscent of an old video game in plot structure, from boss battle to boss battle, but the film itself has grown for me as being so distinct that it stands head and foot over other ultraviolent titles of the era. As a film also referring to the period action stories of Japanese history, this evoking the chambara films with a swordfight in the middle of forest with a blind swordsman, one with a considerably level of grace when, honestly, a lot of the ultraviolent anime from this time period have less class, for a lack of a better term, than this. Reputation wise, when the title was released in the West, it stood out. Insanely well, that Manga Entertainment tried to sell Sword of Truth (1990), not one of Osamu Dezaki's finest moments, afterwards or when ADV Films tried to sell Ninja Resurrection (1997-8), an unfinished OVA, as an actual sequel. It is a cultural touchstone for a certain generation before my generation, but seeing it in its original form, once you step away from the gore it is, from its traditional instrumental score to its art style, amazingly elegant even if this is also a film where Jubei head butts a man repeatedly to death until the skull is mush.

There is an additional tragedy that, as his career went on, Yoshiaki Kawajiri never got to make a sequel. A Western co-financed series Ninja Scroll: The Series (2003) was commissioned, by Kawajiri  did make a "sizzle reel" for Ninja Scroll 2, which looked gorgeous and just as elaborate, including Jubei on a giant paper swan and various supernatural ninja, but it led to nowhere. Our only condolence is that, one of the best animators as well in the industry, even if Kawajiri's directorial work dried up by the end of the 2000s, he worked on shows like One Punch Man, and those in the know of who animate what scenes do lionise him as being an incredible veteran who contributes his skills to big titles.

#208: Battle Royal High School (1987)

 

Director: Ichirō Itano

Screenplay: Ichirō Itano

Based on the manga by Shinichi Kuruma

Voice Cast: Kazuki Yao/Michael Granberry as Riki Hyoudo/Byoudo; Kazuhiko Inoue/Michael Granberry as Toshihiro Yuuki; Paul Sincoff as Zankan/Hideyuki Tanaka; Sakiko Tamagawa/Susan Grillo  as Youko Takayanagi; Chieko Hondo/Kristen Graf as Megumi Koyama; Mari Yokoo/Hadley Eure as Fairy Master Kain; Shin Aomori/Pierre Brulatour as Baba

Viewed in English Language Dub

 

Coming from Ichirō Itano, any work directed by the celebrated animator, in contrast to his work on others' projects, has however the potential to be infamous. He is rightly acclaimed as an animator and a secondary director, a man so talented that, from his work on the Macross franchise, he gained the named flourish "the Itano Circus" for just how he animated missiles. As a director however, he is notorious for the likes of Violence Jack, specifically the OVA episode he directed called Evil Town (1988), or Angel Cop (1989-94). Even his flirtations with television series led to something like Gantz (2004), which had to be censored for Japanese television and, as a violent and nihilistic work of resurrected people forced into real shooting game scenarios, hit me at the wrong time in life in its tone to the point I never finished it. Even for a work with the leads, which die easily, fighting aliens in the shapes of bird people or Buddha statues, Itano can find a way to make something feel on the edge. Considering, coming to this review, I have learnt that the Itano Circus was inspired, as a motorcycle enthusiast, by him strapping fifty fireworks onto one he was riding at a young age¹, there is a sense, for good and for bad, including some of the undefendable content (Evil Town's content, Angel Cop notoriously in its uncut Japanese dub having an anti-Semitic plot twist), Itano as a young animator onwards may brought with him a nihilistic punk ethos to his work that finds its way out in the directorial work especially.

Battle Royal High School is obscure from his small directorial CV, nearly sixty minutes and cramming an entire lengthier narrative and a few genres inexplicably together for a mad roller coaster ride of tone. It is set up with a fighting genre premise, as Riki Hyoudo, a male high school student, is strengthening himself by wearing a leopard mask he found one day and getting into brawls, even managing to get an enraged female tag-along Ryouko, from the judo dojo on-campus in danger now of closing because he beat their sensei completely. He is so good, a demonic lord Byoudo enters his dimension, revealed to be his parallel self who, realising this, decides to not fight Riki as initially but occupy him in a co-operative form. Byoudo is probably with evil intent for our dimension, but one of his side, a Faerie Queen called Fairy Master Kain, has decided to commit a coup d'etat with the added threat to our side that the fairies will take over people and infect our side.

Yes, fairies are a threat here, and in one of the best ideas of this strange title, along one of the most gruesome and inspired plot points, they are explicitly compared to wasps as, like the real life and grotesque idea of the "parasitoid"², larva which live inside a host, fairies take over a human host in this narrative. Sometimes even disguising themselves as the cute wish givers of fairytales, as happens in one case, they possess an entity to the point that, taking that person over, they take over their mind and can even transmogrify them into horrifying shapes and forms. There is content in this anime, if it had been a longer work, which could have been a compellingly dark horror anime, but here this goes further in that. Alongside this premise, and Itano's obsession with not only gore but fully detailed human biology, you also have a demon hunter but also a trans-dimensional policeman, spotting Byoudo's transition from a satellite base secretly, who is armed with sentai superhero power armour. More action than horror, it is still a strange cocktail from the eighties and the OVA boom to experience, especially as manages in less than an hour to have a full narrative of some sort with everyone involved.

Here you can have a girl, eventually possessed by the fairy which tricks her, accidentally wishing her love rival to Riki, Ryouko, to be mauled by her teddy bear, turned into a giant monstrously sized one. Or that this probably has the most lovingly (and grossly) detailed resurrection of a person by way of complete rebuilding of the human body, taking a monstrous flesh mound and sculpting it, from bone to muscle and flesh, back into a high school girl. This is all lurid and ridiculous, but the later is a huge note as this is no way near as nihilistic as the material from Ichirō Itano I have seen. This possesses so much of the dark content which made him infamous, but alongside how curious it to mix the cast it has, a sci-fi sentai hero the third wheel, it is gleefully ridiculous even if unintentional. Sometimes it feels so if awkwardly, where grotesque transformations violently juxtaposed with high school comedy as Ryouko becomes a proto- tsundere to Riki in her love-hate relationship to him.

Considering Violence Jack: Evil Town, even censored for the Western releases originally, was still gruelling, and Gantz I have mentioned felt too much at a bad time for myself to binge it, Battle Royal High School feels positively more brighter for what is still, even in context for this era of lurid eighties horror-like work for the video market, an incredibly violent and nasty work at times. Not helped (or helped depending on your opinion) by the English dub, including the crassest response after a graphic bodily resurrection just remind you this is of the time, this is of an entirely different era just in terms of anime released to the West, in the nineties, which was sold as being more adult. It is hilarious admittedly, only released in the USA, this is not an obscure title from Manga Entertainment, who released the whole of Violence Jack, or Central Park Media, but AnimEigo of all companies, who behind their utter devotion to the likes of sci-fi like Bubblegum Crisis (1987-91) are not the kind of people of this era to release titles that created the stereotype of anime being adult and violent Japanese cartoons. It is admittedly an outlier as, ironically, this is probably one of the better Itano directed things I have sat through, more so as he was the director and screenwriter and main storyboarder on the production; contrast Evil Town to the elaborate animation in just the grotesque body horror sequences here, and it is night and day in production aesthetic, yet this is an obscure title. Itano, morbidly fascinated by his directorial career as a one-off, really has not made a lot as a director since the 2000s, baring the television series Blassreiter (2006), and has been more a veteran of great talent on other productions. It says a lot for me that, in the little I have seen between them, and in mind he wrote the script for Evil Town, that Noboru "Shō" Aikawa, despite that and penning Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend (1987-89) among other notorious titles from this era of straight-to-video anime, comes off less nihilistic than Itano, a man he wrote stuff for. That is perversely hilarious to even consider.

=====

1) Recollected HERE in interview form.

2) Oh, and whilst body transmogrification does not happen with this breed, the wasps of the genus Glyptapanteles, injecting their eggs into living caterpillars, are a good enough real life horror show as the larva take over the host. You do not need lovingly animated as anything with the fairies here to have something to grimace at in nature itself.

‎#207: Tempura (2014)

 

Director: Ujicha

Screenplay: Ujicha

Voice Cast: Enji Aoyagi, Yuichi Washio and Satoshi Okuda

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

John!

This will be a short, short review as, only a few minutes long, this piece in Ujicha's growing filmography of "geki-mation" is barely more than a fever dream. Searching for John, a dog, two men including a smoker with a robot arm enter a cave where animals are burnt to the wall with tempura batter. John the dog has tragically been deep fried alongside a variety of creatures, and the occupant of the cave has intentions for the intruders.

This, made before Violence Voyager (2018), definitely feels like a prototype to that feature film. A strange block headed creature is armed with small guns which fire dangerous ammo, in this case burning hot tempura batter from two guns. This short, if you had no context of its creator's career, or the fact the creator has a one name pseudonym based on "green tea", would baffle and surprise anyone. Never mind the fact one of the leads is also nude for some reason, but in mind that the art style is unique and tempura will never be viewed the same way again.

It has not really needed to evolve between The Burning Buddha Man (2013) to Violence Voyager, baring that Ujicha has jettisoned the live action sequences from the previous film, as the art style has always been strong. Based directly on a 1976 television adaptation of Kazuo Umezu's manga Cat-Eyed Boy, which was done in paper cut-outs, this is a painstaking art style to even finish for a very short work like this. Even if the animation process involves moving paper cut-outs by hand, and Ujicha (for gross effect) using liquids, the craft to draw these characters and the worlds in the background is a lot to do. It means a great deal, with his unique and grotesque style, that Ujicha can draw extremely well.

Again, this is an extremely short review, but we are dealing with a little fragment here. I am happy to have a piece here, for a little slight piece, just to repeat the virtues of this creator and hope he succeeds with future work.  

#206: Genocyber (1994)

 

Director: Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Emu Arii, Koichi Ohata and Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga¹ by Tony Takezaki

Voice Cast: Akiko Hiramatsu as Elaine Reed/Diana Reed; Kaoru Shimamura as Rat; Kazuyuki Sogabe as Grimson Rockwell; Kouji Tsujitani as Ryuu; Kumiko Nishihara as Mel; Masako Katsuki as Myra; Seizo Katou as Kenneth Reed; Shigeru Chiba as Radneck; Toshihiko Seki as Sakomizu

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Genocyber is a notorious anime, but this is a work, over five episodes, which is a bit more complicated as a viewing experience. To be honest, even saying it is an ultra violent sci-fi horror anime of notoriety is suspect, when arguably one of its five episodes is with lasting impact, and the gore itself is a slither a production which shifts content very erratically.

I was introduced to this by acquiring an old Manga Entertainment videotape of the first episode, watching it on my grandmother's VHS player by myself with shut curtains, all transpiring in my mid-twenties but, when there was a brief moment of finding obscure VHS tapes in British charity shops, having a lasting impact with titles which felt completely inappropriate to come from somewhere you buy second hand clothing from, alongside the two mid-era Godzilla films which proved more playfully memorable. And since this was the era of the internet, firmly, finding the other episodes of Genocyber online was not an issue, but it is the first episode then, and still now, which left a lasting mark. I will talk, for all this production's huge undefendable flaws, positively of this production least for the first episode. It is of its era and was a production clearly spat into existence with warts and all, which you can guess of knowing that Manga Entertainment, who only released this in VHS only in Britain, never released episodes four and five, and not because they were censored nor offensive but likely due to what was made in contrast to the previous three episodes.

This is a Koichi Ohata production, so this has an added infamy even with Shou Aikawa on the production as a screenwriter, the future author of some acclaimed anime narratives but also a writer on the likes of Urotsukidôji and Violence Jack. Koichi Ohata is more infamous, least for my guess, in the United States because M.D. Geist (1986), one of his most well known titles, became something of a lucky rabbit's foot and an obsession for Central Park Media, an American anime distributor, and its head John O'Donnell. Koichi Ohata, whose work in this era was released in the US by O'Donnell's company, had a moment in the OVA boom of the eighties and nineties to make lurid sci-fi orientated work with mechanical and monster designs, even if the production budgets and productions themselves could be a mess in the final results. Ohata is well regarded, to bear in mind, as a mecha and mechanical designer, on the likes of Gunbuster (1988) and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack (1988), but he has an infamy for the likes of M.D. Geist, which got even a "director's cut" helped by Central Park Media, and Genocyber, whilst anyone who has seen M.D. Geist II: Death Force (1996), also coming into existence with Central Park Media's help, can also attest to how erratic his work is even if I admit enjoying the accused thing more than the prequel.

Episode 1 of Genocyber, which is different from the other four in being over forty plus minutes long rather than less than thirty as the others, is a curious production by itself, already setting itself up as idiosyncratic with real photos being used in the opening credits. For all the flaws with this entire work, in plot and point, a trashy cyberpunk narrative initially in the first episode set in early 21st century Hong Kong, the first episode is memorable. It is surprising in the level of experimentation which transpires here, as much likely due to budgetary reasons but creative in inspired ways, alongside its nihilistic tone. The plot is over complicated, but can be boiled down to how, as a result of an experiment into what is the "vajra", a ritual weapon in the likes of Hindu and Buddhists faiths in reality, the psychic force all human beings could tap into in this anime, one scientist created a machine to fully access this and led to two sisters being born by his wife. One called Diana has a completely disabled body, able to move through a robotic one, who is kept with a sinister scientist, responsible for her father's death and working for the Kuryu Group, in his own world working on his own obsessions and with the Kuryu Group ultimately intending to take his project away from him. This project requires the other sister Elaine, effectively the protagonist, has a fully working body but a mind close between a little girl and a feral animal, who has escaped into Hong Kong who the group want to recapture, even if the Kuryu Group will send their own cybernetically enhanced mercenaries sent to get her alive. The Genocyber of the title, the intended goal of reuniting the sisters, is a form both sisters can fuse into, a horrifying humanoid capable of wiping out a whole country as an apocalyptic entity, the creation of humanity's worse tendencies as, linked to Elaine especially with pain and agony wakening it.

What stands out is that, for what was clearly made as much for the sake of gore, this first episode has the unpredictability I want from anime. Alongside the cool ethereal score, the production was clearly working against some huge budget restrictions, but found innovative ways to work around this. Early CGI is used, but also fine pencil still drawings for flashbacks. Live action is used for memories for characters, and sometimes the animated characters are animated over real images, such as Elaine and a boy she meets over a photo of a street, or the back-story of the machine to access the Vajra being an actual handmade model in the background. The most infamous aspect of the first episode, alongside its gore and body horror, is the use of clay, actual red clay, for certain scenes. A foetus sculpted in clay is one thing, but it is used to emphasis gore scenes too, including for a scene of a mercenary after Elaine, when psychically influenced to think there are insects inside his head crawling on his brain, cutting to fake insects on a clay sculpted brain.

The gore and the body horror is extreme if not constant, including episode 2 later on, where it is obvious despite the serious tone this is a work meant to reveal in the grotesque. A detective exists in the first episode, for considerable screen time, only to just be an excuse for an ultraviolent gore sequence. One where, with the scientist having a swarm of deranged masked surgeons out of Silent Hill on his side, they completely butcher the occupants of a hospital, intestines lovingly rendered stuck on the ceiling and, for a really obscure and grotesque reference, leaving someone alive to experience being a perverted version of a Dr. Guther von Hagens display². It is immature as an episode, but I find a work like this compelling for their tone. It is uniquely disturbing in presentation, including a brief moment of cybernetic body-horror, where the mercenaries distort and transmogrify into bio-mechanical monstrosities. That the episode takes no prisoners, with people killed off [Major Spoiler Warning] and Hong Kong being obliterated off the map entirely [Spoilers End], Genocyber for this episode does leave the screen with an impact I have to admire.

The episodes after is where Genocyber becomes complicated as, whilst the first episode could have been released by itself, the others do become less consistent. The art style of before, the experimentation, is entirely stripped away. The second episode, in its first minutes, is probably the most infamous moment of the OVA, where with Elaine in a warzone kids are graphically machine gunned down by a helicopter, still drawings but rendered in full graphic detail of organs that, traversing the taboo of killing children onscreen, can get away with mocking said taboo in animated form. It is after that, whilst with body horror content, a bog standard narrative from Koichi Ohata, where a cybernetic Vajra powered entity created to fly combat planes, as the United States is fighting the middle eastern country of "Karain", becomes more unstable and violent when Ellen is rescued and brought on the aircraft carrier it is housed on. Its creator wishes, corrupted, to further its powers, even if it means engulfing the whole ship and crew into a horrifying flesh-machine battleship, with the story becoming the third episode a kaiju monster versus monster narrative. It is of its time, still compelling for me but, even with the moments of gore, a narrative which feels like a side chapter, especially as it never gets into plot details brought up and disposed of in exposition, such as Karain having magnetic sand which makes it impossible to use modern weaponry, nor that war being of importance in the first place. Only the narrative of a female doctor on board, a figure who is connected traumatically to Genocyber's first apocalyptic attack, has a trajectory which is a little fleshed out, which can be best described as that of a Lovecraft protagonist for all that unfortunately entails.

It is a production which feels erratic, possessing aspects which made these OVA compelling for me over the years but feeling, especially as these were produced in relatively short time to each other, a work which feels abrupt in what narratives we got. As much as this is still compelling, it is a disjointed work where a lot of it is not as well thought out after the initial first episode. Even one of its virtues and a minor detail, a rocking end song, emphasises how this entire production is a mess, as the most inappropriate song to have in context, about "wishing you a rainbow" and called Fairy Dreamin', even if it is a hugely impactful song in mood to the production. This issue is more so with Episodes 4 and 5, which are the most contentious to deal with, with knowledge they were never released on the British VHS, and with only Central Park Media funding an English dub for them where they released the whole OVA series. They were episodes I was initially hesitant to revisit because, originally, these were an incredible low point to reach. Now I find virtues in them, and they connect to the entire narrative arch, what is there, with greater worth, but this is where the erratic nature of Genocyber is a huge aspect to deal with.

Because, far from being offensive, this is a huge tonal shift, a time and narrative shift with no ultra violence to speak of and feeling like an attempt at seriousness out of place. This is set in the post-apocalypse, when Genocyber finally destroyed civilisation after the Kuryu Group funded as much as it could to destroy the beast, a potentially fascinating turn of events for a larger series of narratives as a result truncated here. That at least a hundred years has passed afterwards, with humanity having rebuilt itself with a new city in the centre of the narrative called Ark de Grande. Run by a dictatorship under one politician who has secret police, it is obvious material but it has stuff of interest in this context. I have softened to these episodes for the few inspired aspects, such as the fact that there is a religious group, who is against the corrupt upper classes and with the rebels underground, who pray to Genocyber, believing them to have been a God that, if angered, will cleanse the corruption of the city, its form also petrified and kept in the further depths of their hideaway without them realising it is said God.

The issue with Episodes 4 and 5, and still is the problem, is how slow and conventional this arch is especially as this follows two new characters that are not that interesting. They are a young male knife thrower and his blind girlfriend, who he takes to the city to earn enough to help with her blindness and find themselves chewed up by the evil of the metropolis. They have no emotional investment over the two episodes to care for, and in plot terms their only real connection as is entirely how she, as a psychic, connects mind-to-mind with the Genocyber, specifically the reintroduced Diana, part of the consciousness with Elaine. Aside from this, this is very predictable and, with that lack of violence and gore, it is unnecessary. Even if I have been won over a bit more with its little lore for the whole narrative and melancholic happy ending, it feels a jarring tonal shift for a work which was already on shaky footing with what it wanted to do from the second episode. If Genocyber had lasted just its first OVA, it would have still gained an infamy even if, in the modern day, trying to sell a work only under an hour is less common in the market unless it is something very specific or a company like Media Blasters in the USA that can still release such title. It is strange to think, looking back, how this work ended up this way, and it cannot be ignored many people will find, for all this title's reputation, it becomes an anti-climax for the gorehound and is still a very erratic work in general quality.

I have a soft spot for Koichi Ohata, which is why this review even for a very nasty little work like this is still bizarrely whimsical. He is an example of a man fixated on his obsessions and an auteur in a way for anime, who got his way to produce his ideas for a brief window of time. He had an attempt at moving on in the 2000s, where I was actually introduced to Ohata as a director with Burst Angel (2004), an animated series I encountered at a formation stage as an anime fan when studio Gonzo were a thing. He works to the modern day, but bearing directing later seasons of the Ikki Tousen, a fighting show entirely fixated on softcore titillation despite its female cast being reincarnations of figures of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he is not commonly in the director's seat nowadays. His reputation outside of mechanical designs is not a well regarded one, truth be frank, but it is a sad tale to think that, as his career trajectory became obscurer, the type of anime made in later decades meant not even one Genocyber in a while alongside the good titles we could only get in the modern day. Again, Genocyber is a mess, but even something which kept this work's energy but avoided a lot of the mistakes would be appreciated once in a while.

 

======

1) The original manga is worth bringing up as, a case of one that was cancelled barely into its run, but also getting English publication in the early nineties, its author Tony Takezaki comes from this older era of the likes of A.D. Police, which he wrote the manga of, among the many "adult" titles from this era.

2) Hagens, a German anatomist who invented the preserving technique of "plastination", is controversial for both the Body Works exhibits of persevered and dissected bodies, including human beings, and for how I know of him, that he had public autopsies including ones broadcast on the British channel Channel 4, terrestrial television and not satellite, one programme called Autopsy: Life and Death (2006) likely the one my patents watched and I remember. Hence, the obscure reference that felt appropriate for that one gory scene in Genocyber.

#205: Violence Voyager (2018)

 

Director: Ujicha

Screenplay: Ujicha

Voice Cast: Aoi Yûki as Bobby; Shigeo Takahashi as Akkun/Yakkun; Naoki Tanaka as George; Nao Hanai as Kyoko; Daisuke Ono as Takaaki; Hitoshi Matsumoto as the Narrator; Tomorowo Taguchi as Koike; Saki Fujita as Yoshiko/Sayaka

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

There was a chimpanzee in the toilet!

For most, without context of Ujicha's previous film The Burning Buddha Man (2013), Violence Voyager would be a shock to witness. Available not from anime distributors, as in the United Kingdom through Third Window Pictures on Blu-Ray with the older film in 2021, this exists in a curious place as, not traditionally "anime", Ujicha creates very idiosyncratic work entirely based on the concept of "geki-mation", paper puppet stop motion. If my view of Violence Voyager somehow tones down some of the bafflement, that is only because I have been baptised in this weirdness for a longer time, due to having seen The Burning Buddha Man and witnessed how proudly bizarre the narratives of these films are too.

There is a perverse streak of a fairy tale here, despite not being suitable for children in the slightest, in which an American boy in Japan called Bobby and his friend Akkun, with his odd grilled marked forehead, do not heed the warning of the wise old man, called Old Man Lucky-Monkey, to not go up the mountain. On said mountain, they encounter a rundown and homemade amusement park called Violence Voyager in the middle of nowhere. Not realising even the name, let alone as a rundown amusement part, is something to avoid, they encounter a place which is a mock alien invasion game with killer robots, played as a water tag game where you have a variety of water pistols (replica rifles to tiny dolphin ones) to shoot robot models. Things already go south when they find a girl there who says she has not been allowed to leave. This is a film I had anticipated seeing, but I will warn viewers has pretty extreme content even if the film is done with paper cut-outs. Even if they does not look realistic in Ujicha's design, and is as much goofy and perverse on purpose as it is disturbing, Violence Voyager has some material you would not be able to get away with in live action like this.

That this passed suitable for fifteen year olds in Britain is something to admire if even for me, as a progressive individual, is dumbfounding, as a British viewer who has seen a form of progressiveness appear over the years as much as contradictions still appear within the British Board of Film Classification. They are much more lax with animation, where you can get away with content that would have gotten a higher rating in animation unless you touch on certain topics¹. And trust me, as a horror narrative, Violence Voyager is a twisted little tale involving children, even if grotesque caricatures in some cases, being killed off or, if still alive or useful, being transmogrified into monsters, with corpses mutilated and fed to a figure that was once the dead son of the amusement park's creator.

Taking his influence from Kazuo Umezu's manga Cat-Eyed Boy, specifically a 1976 television adaptation which used paper puppetry too, Ujicha has no qualms with exaggerating his content, befitting a man who named himself after his birth place's green tea. More so as, for gristly effect, he uses real liquids to depict blood and other fluids, especially as transmogrification causes one's digestive system to change. He even uses real fire and firecracker explosions for the final with Chekov's lighter. You could only get away with half of this only in this paper cut-out form, and with some of it, even being paper does not hide the queasy effect, as a certain horrifying bird-mother feeding organism, which feeds the resurrected son with a spiny flesh tube, was icky even for me.

This is, however, a film involving special underwear as a plot point, as Bobby will literally change due to the trauma of this scenario, so Ujicha has a sense of humour. Like The Burning Buddha Man, the plot is depicted seriously but everything is openly bizarre. Naturally as a result of this attitude, this is the kind of one-offs which both had bodily fluid gags, and goes as far as include a troupe from fairy tales (from around the world) of Bobby's kindness to animals leading to them helping him later on, even if here it is his pet cat, a chimpanzee the old wise man keeps, and a bat (as in an actual fairy tale) he showed empathy for. Sometimes anime is bizarre out of accident or the id, combined (as with manga) of being forced to both produce something quickly and has to bring in an audience. There are exceptions, and in the few productions I have seen, Ujicha feels sincerely in touch with these bizarre premises and their idiosyncrasies despite being, as seen in interviews when he steps from behind the camera, an ordinary guy who study design in university². Knowing his work is entirely done by himself (baring sound design, voice acting and music) emphasises this, his id freely flexed in a context, which is twisted and eyebrow rising, but tempered with a whimsy.

It is an achievement, something painstakingly made, the paper cut-out models having to be designed and drawn, cut out and even moved even in their limited form with hands being seen on camera. Baring what they are when you initially start watching the film, this feels like a handsome production which does not show a limitation from its sources, instead a unique form of animation with a deliberate artifice. So much so, I do not want to elaborate on more. Those with the stomach for this are going to experience something truly unique. Call it cult, but that should not be used to dismiss its artistic qualities, because this is still an exceptional production I was grateful to finally experience.

 

=========

1) Elfen Lied (2004), in the earlier days of DVD, was another example and that was both extremely violent and with grim subject matter. Nowadays you have to be far more violent even that Violence Voyager, or have certain explicit content, including anime's bad habit of sexualising teenagers, to get the eighteen certificate and even censorship nowadays.

2) Third Window Picture's 2021 Blu Ray has a short self-made interview with him which really helped grow an appreciation for a slightly awkward younger guy just painstakingly doing his work. Even when the distributor asked what he would want with a larger budget, he would still want to move the puppets himself even if he could have appreciated others to help design the backgrounds for work, which is a clear sign of someone passionate for his craft.

#204: Demon Hunter Makaryūdo (1989)

 

Director: Yukio Okamoto

Screenplay: Yukio Okamoto

Voice Cast: Minami Takayama as Yama Rikudou; Rei Sakuma as Kaoru; Ryo Horikawa as Sawaguchi; Toshihiko Seki as Shou Kurogane; Masashi Ebara as Chaos; Miina Tominaga as Naraka; You Inoue as Rijityo

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I will likely say this a lot with OVAs, at the rate things are going, but this should have been more than a one thirty minute episode in the perfect world. It's plot has been done so many times - a female demonic entity called Yama steps down to Japan from above, secretly enrols in a high school as a student, and deals with an evil witch taking control of the place - be it a male or female lead, or what supernatural entity they are. It is how you tell it that is the interest, and for me, this would have to be an OVA series, rather than a television series, to get the best results, this standing out for some idiosyncratic designs you would have to censor on television. In that perfect world, we sadly never got, a longer work would have been fascinating to see even if becoming a third tier horror anime, still likely to have been entertaining if it got a chance.

At the school, a witch posing as the principal's granddaughter, now the school's stand-in head as a result, is terrorising the place. The reference to the designs comes from the fact, with the monsters in her charge, the most common are monstrous birds with the torsos and heads of beautiful women, a deeply twisted and inspired touch for the surrealistic in me, as they are sensually designed, and yet are still giggling bird monsters giving house cats to chew on in the principal's office or sent out to maul students at night. There is little that happens, feeling like an episode in a larger narrative, but this won me over just for its tone, this specific creative style of horror where you have creatures like this onscreen. Others exist such as this witch being able to brainwash people with spiral shelled molluscs, or a giant version with a feminine human head that attacks with tentacles. Makaryūdo looks very cartoonish next to other anime OVAs from this time for me, but far an okay production with okay animation, it is tantalising to see this imagination on display.

Barely a taste is here but already you have Western and Eastern iconography smash into each other like cars, with a nihilistic streak that the lead Yama is assigned to rid the Earth of the wicked and demonic, but that this will pave the way to the end of humanity at the unseen time when all of the demons (including herself) can go back home to "devildom". She is fixated on one boy at the school named Shou, who it can be invoked is reincarnated from someone she loved a time ago. So many times I am finding myself seeing how the religions in Japan, reincarnation a part of them, feed into pulp, all whilst Yama herself looks like she could have stepped out a Western cartoon as a Judo-Christian demon, with her big hair and tuffs of said hair shaped into horns that are cute and cannot hide her supernatural nature.

She even has a little dragon that talks and looks more western in design, which can grow into a giant when required. Yama herself is even the traditional brooding hero, imprisoned by another demon who she reluctantly helps in ridding evil to be freed from her sentence, because of using a magical mirror she should have not touched, still an interesting plot point even if a cliché to work with. (That the use of the mirror is likely connected to Shou and reincarnation adds to obvious and potentially compelling content to work). Obviously this all feels like a pilot for a larger tale, but sadly, we live in the dimension you only got a one-off barely seen by many. Almost any idea, however dumb, should get a multi-episode anime, or long enough to breathe, with only the execution the concern. Here, sadly, we are dangled in front of us a ghoulish action-horror narrative, cartoonish but exciting, where even an abrupt philosophical argument (subtitled in Japanese) between a demon that can just growl and Yama who can understand them transpires before they clash. It feels like something where even a kitchen sink could be thrown in on a whim, but sadly life did not give us a sequel.

Adding to this is that, looking into credits, its director Yukio Okamoto, who had a small filmography, also wrote the script, did the storyboards, and generally invested a lot into a production that sadly never went anywhere. A shame, though this review will be a sympathetic one to a title one person put a lot in clearly expecting a lot from. Even the anime studio behind this, Studio Fantasia, was just getting into the OVA market with this, lasting until an unfortunate bankruptcy in 2016. Something obscure like this, even if not the best, should have been something more as it had the potential.

#203: Bride of Deimos (1988)

 

Director: Rintaro

Screenplay: Etsuko Ikeda

Based on the manga by Etsuko Ikeda and Yuuho Ashibe

Voice Cast: Mayumi Shō as Minako Ifu; Nachi Nozawa as Deimos; Kaneto Shiozawa as Kaname Ōba; Reiko Mutoh as Ohniwa Tōko / Tōko Ōba; Bin Shimada as Masao; Hiroshi Masuoka as Detective Imamura; Takeshi Aono as Mr. Ōba; Takeshi Kusao as Hisamatsu; Toshiko Fujita as Venus

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Bride of Deimos, a straight-to-video title that is only thirty minutes long, is an abrupt piece by itself. Like a few OVAs from this era, you have a fragment of a property never fully explained, because these were made and sold with mind to their source materials. This case is tantalising in what could have been because, with one of the original creators behind the script, this is based on a manga of the same name, released in the West at one point by Comicsone, that is a shōjo title, for a young female audience, attempting to meld a horror anthology of multiple tales with a larger narrative with central characters. This explains how oddly structured the OVA is, but sadly we never got any more of this elaborate, atmospherically morbid little taster of a premise we could have gotten a whole larger work from in a better world.

Set up with a female figure, rotting but alive, underwater, held in vines with skulls around her, she wishes to be reborn through a female body by Deimos, the Greek god of fear and terror of the name same, whose choice for bride and new form for this figure Venus is revealed to be the character of Minako, an ordinary young human woman. At first, without context, you would presume from this one-off tale, which begins and closes very conclusively, that Minako is just a character for this, with a young male friend looking into the home of a talented female orchid grower who never appears in public. In becomes obvious, however, that Minako is a bigger protagonist from a significantly larger narrative, as Deimos follows her around as a supernatural onlooker. The original manga, in synopsises, even suggests he was in an incestuous relationship with his sister, punished for this, and now is caught in a triangle with her and this mortal female in Minako, who he wishes to come to him into the underworld as his lover, for added stakes. This is where context helps, as Deimos himself, despite being a demon, is not connected to the plot at all but watches on for Minako. Over seventeen volumes, the manga followed an ongoing narrative, intertwined with one-off tales, of him wanting Minako to become his bride.

The result is a concept I have seen in anime a lot of any genre - small one-off tales with central protagonists which connects to an eventual final narrative - but in horror especially is an effectively way to structure a narrative, by having a central figure, be they a supernatural figure or one who deals with supernatural issues, even a crypt keeper entity who does step into the stories they tell as a Greek chorus. I have found my own personal brand of catnip in horror tales where a supernatural entity, who will follow through each episode with their own narrative, traverses or interjects in one-off episodes where characters just for those tales meet their varying fates. I love these type of anime, and with cases like Mononoke (2007), an artistically experimental period version, you can make this innovative as a story structure too. Bride of Deimos as a short, by itself, has enough to make one wish it had been more episodes, particularly when you factor in its director being Rintaro. Born Shigeyuki Hayashi, Rintaro worked in the beginning of the anime industry, in the later fifties when he was just seventeen, and kept going into the 2010s. He is a figure, just for seeing the beginning of the industry and continuing through its evolving decades, you can consider an institution.

He is also a curious case that, even with acclaim of a work like Metropolis (2001), he is unpredictable in how his work is. Sometimes it has been doomed - such as adapting the CLAMP manga X in a 1996 theatrical film, with only ninety minutes to finish an unfinished series - and others are divisive, but I have never found him predictable. Even the shift to Bride of Deimos, from his high budget early eighties theatrical work, to straight-to-video productions like this or Take the X-Train (1987) is fascinating to look at. In the case of also adapting a shōjo horror manga, you can tell as well you had someone with the right attitude for this short's elegant fin de siècle-like macabre, alongside the production team, just for the fact that in on a wall in a scene when someone is killed with a bow and arrow, you have Edvard Munch's Madonna replicated on the wall.

This is definitely melodrama as it is dark, as Minako's journey to locate the unseen grower of the "Blue Lady" orchid, a difficult flower to cultivate, leads to her realising her male friend has vanished, having gone ahead of her to the home, as she meets a brother and sister living there. The sister is wheelchair bound, and the brother warning her to leave. It is not a surprise where this goes but a spoiler warning is required. [Spoiler Warning] Theirs is a tragic tale of the sister's lover, a servant, being killed by the father with a bow and arrow, repeating the act and burning the corpses of others in the incinerator over the years afterwards, using the ashes to grow the orchids. [Spoilers end] It is a slight tale, but just because of the elegant and sinister atmosphere, I wish Rintaro had been able to make an extended project from this. The source material by accounts could get insanely over-the-top in its tone, which immediately fascinates to imagine where this would have gone, particularly as what we get here is an emotionally driven narrative of a doomed romance and a sibling love which has become morbid, if still perversely loving, where the horror is what happens to the corpses left in the emotions' wake.

Whilst anime is for everyone, the fact this was originally for a female audience also entices, which you see a bit in with the anime adaption itself, as enticing in imagining the ghoulishness of the original source material but seeing how this thirty minute short still contrasts a lot of anime horror from the eighties I have seen in tone. This has a distinct air of elegance and emotion mixed with the grotesque, even getting enough menace from a tiny (beautifully rendered spider) being waved about on a stick to make the viewer feel creepy. It is not horror of jump scares, not even the gore and ero-guro of other anime of this era, but something different, evoking what the likes of even Toshiki Hirano, none for making ultraviolent work, attempted to evoke with his wife and manga authoress/animator Narumi Kakinouchi with the Vampire Princess Miyu franchise for a comparison point.

The sense that the source material, vaguely felt here, is melodramatic too, with Deimos in his small part still a dashing dark eyed stranger, with his long hair and demeanour that could attract as much as scare, is a compelling tone to have next to the more lurid and hyper violent anime of the time. Again, we only have this one off short, and unfortunately, OVA releases have been something not as well preserved at times depending on the title. Even to mind that some of Rintaro's work in the theatrical medium has not been readily available over the years at all either, this is an obscure title for him in danger of being lost. This is such a shame as this, if viewed instead as a short animated film, is impressive.

#202: Maryuu Senki (1987-89)

Director: Hiroaki Oogami

Screenplay: Hiroaki Oogami, Junichi Watanabe and Noboru Aikawa

Voice Cast: Tesshō Genda as Kyōichi Hiyū; Chikao Ohtsuka as Gendō; Katsuji Mori as Mukuri; Rumiko Ukai as Tamaki; Ryōsuke Kaizu as Ryōra; Sakiko Tamagawa as Shiho Murase; Shūichi Ikeda as Miki Chiyoe; Toshihiko Seki as Kinshū

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Another obscure anime OVA, in this case interesting from the get-go that the manga came afterwards rather than this title being adapted from a source text. From AIC (Anime International Company), the company was prolific even into the 2000s for the straight-to-video market alongside adapting the likes of Ah My Goddess in various formats, from the notorious Genocyber (1994) for video to Amagami SS (2010) for television, a visual novel adaptation where the various paths, depending on which girl the male lead dates, turns into an entirely different narrative in a quasi-form of interconnecting anthology. This is a very eclectic and prolific company, so naturally there would be obscure titles in their catalogue like Maryuu Senki. There is an added aspect, however, that this is also a Bandai Visual anime too, as AIC are credited to episode 1, whilst the defunct subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings, which dealt with animation and film, worked on episodes two and three. There is, ahead of time, a noticeable sense of the first episode could have ended as an abrupt (if conclusive) finale, but thankfully, the sense of a disjointed nature to the narrative is never felt between the episodes. Only the episode preview at the end of episode one for a version which never happened suggests anything happened. It does paint a much seedier and potentially questionable proposed sequel, with the female lead Shiho in a sexually threatened scene with the main villain, that thankfully never happened, stil a lurid anime in the end but one of a different taste and only that preview suggesting there was a lurch from what was planned.

With some very creepy music to start the first episode, traditional Japanese instruments used through the three episodes, it turns into something more compelling than grot. The opening sequence does set up this era of hyper-adult content in anime - two drunk women walk under an underpass only for one to be tempted to go through a secret door, led to become a sacrifice to a cult called the Spirit Isle. They intend to kill the other women with their group of ninja whilst the sacrifice encounters the first slice of ero-guro of the anime, where the shrine maiden-like figure the main villain Miki has with him turns into a sexually provocative body horror monstrosity. Thankfully, the other woman survives, introducing us to Gendō, an older Buddhist monk whose resourcefulness includes even beating an entire group of ninja through (actual) drunken martial arts. His protégée, and adoptive heir, found abandoned on his temple's doorstep in the back-story, is the main protagonist Kyōichi. He will become part of the four figures representing the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations, a real piece of Chinese mythology of the four beings who guard the cardinal directions, the compass points of North, South, East and West.

Kyōichi is the "White Tiger" of the West, with Gendō the "Black Turtle" of the North. The main villain Miki is the "Green Dragon" of the East, wishing to acquire immortal power, in a war between him and Kyōichi that is longer than Kyōichi has presumed, by marrying and taking the soul of Shiho, the love interest of Kyōichi who represents the "Vermillion Bird" of the South. That even Chinese mythology and ideas enter anime and manga a lot, in mind to the influences Chinese culture have had in Japanese culture such as religion, it has always been impressive and compelling, even in these hyper violent and provocative titles, you have these idiosyncratic concepts be used. The OVA does not really delve into mythology, [Spoiler] though it is revealed to be a battle between the leads which has happened over lifetimes, emphasising Buddhism and Eastern religions' influence even in this type of anime [Spoilers], instead a horror-action narrative where in place of suspense there is a lot of blood spilt, a lot of combat scenes with ninjas, and a lot of horror and even body horror tropes, as Miki has a twisted habit of using the dead as mutated figures, such as what horrifically happens to Shiho mother in the first episode, or employing members of his group who transmogrify into tentacles and jawed monsters. This does even do something arguably progressive in even having female monsters, when even a more known and notorious title like Urotsukidôji is problematic for always victimising its female characters and never letting them being the monsters; you can argue admittedly, whilst transgressive, moments like a female ninja who turns into the tentacled grey skin creature, though her sensual and feminine monstrosity itself can be artistically provocative, was as much likely to try to sell sex to a target audience in really brazen ways, especially with the strategically torn off top.

The only real disappointment with anime like this is that the male leads, here the stoic adult lead, are the least interesting aspect, as is with anime in later decades with teenager male protagonists, and that Shiho is merely a damsel in distress, a shame as she is of the four constellation beings and has pyrokinetic abilities, something you could have exploited in a really interest way even if her plot still involves Miki wanting to literally take her body and soul in union. Beyond this, Maryuu Senki was entertaining, a surprise in that this more than likely never got a Western release in the old days on VHS in the United States let alone Manga Entertainment in the United Kingdom, the kind of title they would have licensed when selling anime as for grownups. Certainly, among these horror based anime of the era, the tropes are there. The obsession with colours like purple, reds and blues is here, the aesthetic in general fascinating and rewarding, an art style throughout that occasionally breaks out into something beautiful. Episode three, for example, opens with a scene with Miki and his new lead ninja, the scene clearly done with mostly a black base, with the characters and parts of the darkened interior environment depicted, among the really artistically minded moments in even this pulpy genre work.

Some of this show could have been fleshed out further, even if you had left it in the ninety minute narrative film it effectively is, less in terms of how the production abruptly changed over time between switching animation studios, more taking advantage of what transpires. Such as, in the abrupt change of animation studio for the second episode, Kyōichi when presumed dead but is instead found almost more animal than man, his ability literally a supernatural super tiger who, when not punching people with ghostly tiger heads, becomes a superhuman monster man who can rip heads off, dangerous to anyone regardless of moral compass. Even the trope, which was clearly used to sell these titles, of sexual occultism is a fascinating idea in that, with anime happily tackling the erotic as much as the grotesque, it would be fascinating to see more ero-guro depicted in pop culture.

The luridness here thankfully stays closer to a distinct artistry than other titles from this era, especially with the talents of the production, and in terms of pure pulp entertainment, you have a lot to work with. The narrative in episode two arguably takes a generic first episode, even if it has interesting body horror already, and bring into it more narrative tropes for the better, which is notable because Noboru "Shō" Aikawa wrote the second episode, a veteran who is acclaimed in the modern for anime screenwriting but in this era was cutting his teeth on notorious but memorable transgressive anime of the time. Whatever the case, Maryuu Senki plays up its action orientated and playful nature much more, even introducing two, even dorky, younger monks, best friends, who are just as capable of taking on monstrosities and even outright zombies on the heroes' side and, in their little screen time, become characters to care for even if they talk too much for their own good.

In mind to the use of mythology, it is cool to see that in a pulp anime like this, between them and Gendō, Buddhist monks are able to be capable and powerful figures that are also affable. That the lead is so conventional, to the point he even starts to rock black shades and tank top, is a shame, but a sense of playfulness is to be found throughout to compensate for the tropes which are generic from this era of anime. Even to the point that, because of the supernatural logic, you can have a scene I have rarely seen, someone passing the hero his severed arm back when they are introduced into a scene, stands out because eventually this particular example of anime horror of the time, whilst still violent and lurid, had people on staff enjoying themselves with a sense of playfulness.

This turns out to be a surprise, with a sense the staff wanted to take some risks too as, without spoiling Maryuu Senki without warning, this does have a bleak and bittersweet ending. [Major Spoiler] Literally everyone dies, which is haunting in how, for a pulpy story which is more entertaining than horrifying, it ends with the endless reincarnations of these characters likely to continue when Shiho, finally showing more than being a victim, steps in when already losing her soul to self immolate the villain, a gut punch end credits scene to finish. [Major Spoilers End] Again, it is surprising how obscure this is when, even with a cheesy Manga Entertainment dub, this would have easily sold in the heyday of titles being imported to the West initially. The only reason why this likely is obscure is simply that so many OVA titles were being made at the time this was missed - whilst it is not perfect, Maryuu Senki was definitely a surprise in a positive way that could have appreciated that early era audience.  

#201: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (1987)

 

Director: Mizuho Nishikubo

Screenplay: Mizuho Nishikubo

Based on the Novels by Aya Nishitani

Voice Cast: Saeko Shimazu as Shirasagi Yumiko; Yū Mizushima as Akemi Nakajima; Fumihiko Tachiki as Susumu Takai; Houchu Ohtsuka as Loki; Mari Yokoo as Ohara; Masaharu Satō as Hiroyuki Kondou; Masako Katsuki as Izanami; Megumi Hayashibara as Kanou Fuyuki; Takurō Kitagawa as Teacher Iida;; Yukio Yamagata as Kaneto Muraki; Yuuri Sugimoto as Kyoko Takamizawa

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

First of all, to talk about Digital Devil Story, we need to get into the complicated history of the source material, as this originates from the novel series from Aya Nishitani. Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, based on the novels, exists in both this OVA one-off and a 1987 video game, the anime more of a tie-in, but connected to the novels together. After a 1990 sequel, the franchise as video games would become 1992's Shin Megami Tensei, which would become a decade spanning franchise of dark fantasy and horror. Shin Megami Tensei would have its own spin-off, Shin Megami Tensei If... (1994), and that game's premise of basing narratives around a high school setting would lead to the Persona franchise. That franchise, into its decades run, would eventually become a popular franchise in the West for video gamers, making this convoluted history worth mentioning, as from this obscure OVA most do not know of, you have an institution whose popularity reaches the West and the East. That is not even getting into how we did get the Shin Megami Tensei anime OVA, the Manga Entertainment released Tokyo Revelation (1995), in the West too, so this franchise that mostly exists in video games has had a wide and curious reach over the passage of time.

This is a curious history to ponder, in mind to the novels and games they were less an ongoing narrative but individual stories set around themes. A lot of mythologies, a lot of horror, some Christian symbolism, and many different concepts have intermingled over the years in this cross-media franchise. Hell even Adolf Hitler appears as a villain in Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999), as the "Fuhrer" using the Spear of Destiny, which shows someone was aware of the Nazis' history of trying acquire occult objects among their other obsessions. This franchise, leading to its popularity in the West with costumed vigilante teenagers in Persona 5 (2016), entering human subconscious to deal with maleficent emotions, has had a run of trying many ideas. Digital Devil Story the OVA finds itself cribbing in the same premise ballpark as Evilspeak (1981), an American horror film caught up in the British Video Nasties wave of banning horror films on video tape, starting Clint Howard as a teenager who summons Satan with a computer. Here this is evoked for me by introducing us to Akemi, at first through the narrative not a likable male protagonist as he starts the narrative having summoned Loki, a demon who he keeps appeased here by having one of his female teachers be a sexual sacrifice in a student run occult ritual, all with the power of virtual reality headgear and polygons summoning demons. Yes, this narrative is bloody ridiculous, before anyone reading this asks.

Only forty plus minutes, this covers the first novel of the original series, in which Akemi has summoned Loki through a demon summoning programme in his school, whilst a new female transfer student Yumiko finds herself drawn towards his secret rituals as a potential sacrificial victim. Adding to the lengthy back-story to the franchise, this single OVA barely scratches the surface of how vast just the novels' get, with even the female teacher a key figure, and future antagonist, or that Loki even if a minor figure appears through the franchise of games¹. The hint in the end of the anime, suggesting a sequel with the Egyptian God Set being summoned, is not surprisingly a nod to a later novel. If you are going to talk of how in depth the references are even for all the unintentionally strange ideas here, even Loki's design is based on 19th century Danish illustrator Lorenz Frølich's depictions of Loki in the 1895 poem Lokasenna². This is going to be a short review in terms of describing the narrative in some ways, as the plot is not a lot. Loki eventually is sick of being confided in the computer, gets assistance from the sacrificed teacher Ohara, and rampages by shooting out shocking pink goo which smothers and crushes students and bank tellers alike with blood geysers coming out the gooey mass, having to eventually be stopped even by Akemi with Yumiko. But it is perplexing having to write a review only to find this tiny fragment is literally that, not merely a one-off as in some OVA titles from this era, which never got anything else baring a manga we never heard of in the West, but a forgotten piece of a huge franchise we would know of. Even joking about unintentional references to Clint Howard movies makes sense when writing this review as, to my delight, there is so much to write of in terms of a single forty minute animated work, lost in time, without feeling like padding and being important to its context and virtues.

With very eighties synth on the score, these horror OVAs are also fascinating as for their aesthetics. Even their fixation of sex and horror, clearly there to sell to an audience in the day but a concept constantly found in Japan's occult pop media at times, stands out, alongside how so many of these titles in the day, even in the nineties, had a reoccurring obsession with nocturnal primary and secondary colour palettes to depict scenes - blues, reds and purples especially alongside something obvious as black to associate with darkness and the supernatural. You can raise an eyebrow at the computers of this era, insanely obsolete technology including a line of reel-to-reel tape machines in the student computer room, or a Star of David (even by accident or misguided cultural appropriation) being the summoning area for the carnal sacrifice of a woman to Loki when Yumiko first learns of what is going on, cheese to be found here. But there a lot still there, including anime and manga being obsessed for better and for worse with appropriate non-Eastern religious symbolism, of technology and the supernatural co-existing, which is something Japanese storytelling and even folklore has little difficulty in doing or sexuality intermingling with the monstrous, that even if lurid and problematic in gender depictions it is something aesthetically heightened in their art even if at times having to find ways around censorship and intermingled with the grotesque.

There are even references to Japanese mythology and lore as Yumiko has more connection to Akemi, with his reoccurring nightmares in an ancient setting being chased by an undead female ghoul, [Spoiler Warning] including the fact Yumiko is a reincarnation of Izanami, the Japanese goddess of creation and death. [Spoilers End] This still ends as an action sequence, with an "Electric Beast Cerberus" being ridden, but the mood and context was catnip for me. It has its gruesome edges too, to match its cousins from this era of anime, even if not the most extreme of them - brainwashed students, even if programmed by a computer programme, killing classmates as a horde is a creepy touch, as is the fact that Akemi's decision to summon a demon is for a juvenile reason, having being brutally beaten up by a tougher classmate in a scene just as bloody as any other for being too close to his girlfriend. (Then there is one moment, only implied, involving one female student, brainwashed, biting another in an area that is frankly perverse as a death scene, even in mind to some of the extreme content actually shown in anime OVAs in the eighties). It is not a great OVA, but for me it fascinates as this dark forgotten little narrative tale, compacting together details and tropes from other anime from this era, which also happens to be connected to a large ongoing franchise.

Even its director/writer Mizuho Nishikubo is a figure of note as, whilst obscurer as a name, he worked over decades in an eclectic number of areas and in just his directorial work. Starting in the seventies with the likes of the Gatchaman franchise, he made OVAs like this or California Crisis (1986), a really peculiar and artistically unique work from this era of obscure straight to video anime, the television series Otogi zôshi (2004), fascinating as a samurai narrative which pulls the rug out from under the viewer with a drastic tone and setting change, and films that vary as wildly as Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai (2009), an animated documentary on swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, to Giovanni's Island (2014), a drama set post World War II. Even when not in the director's chair, Nishikubo was also the animation or sequence director on the likes of Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993) and Ghost in the Shell (1995), so he is someone significant. Seeing this in his career, this curious directorial production, in such a career softens me to the work more so. As a fascinating crosspollination between a variety of different areas, even this obscurity's history befits a franchise which in mythological, spiritual and even Jungian ideas are mixed together as they have over the decades.

 

==========

1) Just going through the fan-made Wikepedia, the first novel has many aspects and characters which progress onwards, as can be read of HERE.

2) Loki's inspiration.