#195: Hi-sCool! Seha Girls (2014)

 

Director: Sōta Sugahara

Screenplay: Sōta Sugahara and Masayuki Kibe  

Voice Cast: M.A.O as Dreamcast; Minami Takahashi as Sega Saturn; Shiori Izawa as Mega Drive; Yuji Naka as Center

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

The immediate thing to talk about, re-interested in video games again, is in mind that I missed a great deal of the history of gaming even in my childhood, but especially after the mid-2000s onwards when I left video games in favour of cinema as a hobby. If I decided to invest in a console whose content interested me, it would also have to be a console that took to my tastes, or if a PC was able to be sustained to play idiosyncratic games, as even in my childhood I was more inclined to odder and more colourful games. Only limited pocket money undercut me, missing out on a lot of titles which are sadly very expensive to buy second hand, the kind due to an unfortunate habit of the medium being young and archiving not fully invested by all by admirable individuals (or publishers), are titles that would have to be sustained on emulation to preserve and play them whether a good thing or not. Some thankfully are restored and re-released, hopefully something that will grow as a sevrice, but a lot of videogame history is still out of reach.

This is of note as, whilst the past is full of deceptively hard games, and some terrible games regardless of age, what we call "retro" appeals particularly in the nineties, a time I barely sat through, is important in both the background of today's review and place in its history I have growing fascination with. This was the fifth generation of consoles came to be, and this is actually worth bringing up in this review as, whilst one of the consoles talked of in the show comes in the sixth generation, this was the time in the nineties which would tragically lead to Sega's downfall, the video game software company who was once a hardware developer too here celebrating itself here by collaborating with Sōta Sugahara, one of the creators of gdgd Fairies franchise.

It is impossible to think of their legacy in this odd premise, to use anthropomorphism to their hardware as cute girls. Entering Sega Highschool, where their anthem is as short as can be if you know the famous "Sega!" musical cue in front of their old games, they are Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast. They represent a history where Sega would leave the hardware race. Under the shadow of Nintendo, whom had a chokehold on gaming, Sega found a success especially in the West with the Mega Drive, here portrayed a bookworm who is intelligent but cannot dance to save her life. Saturn, portrayed as the straight faced figure aghast at the absurdity, has a complicated history as a gaming system: the fifth generation was when three dimensional polygons over sprites became a factor, leading to the future but also leading to great sprite based 2D art being dismissed, and a lot of consoles like the Saturn awkwardly having tech added to have 3D games, a console which was a failure in my home country of Britain but has a cult legacy of a longer time in Japan. Dreamcast, here the eccentric and silly one, whose ability to access the internet sadly comes with a long load time, probably deals with the most tragic of the three real consoles, a console which innovated in the likes of internet connection, but only lasted between 1998 to 2001, leading to Sega giving up hardware fully.

There is a lot of this show, a farce where the trio have to win over a hundred medals in games to graduate, that requires knowledge of Sega to get the jokes, but also one which paradoxically does not do this enough or not embrace this in the end fully. I think, in hindsight, this would have been a much better show, alongside the issue of how quickly and abruptly it concludes over thirteen episodes over eleven minutes each, if it had really stuck to being a time capsule to Sega's rich gaming past, and its weirder productions, with the gdgd Fairies template allowing for affectionate parody and a lot of deeply surreal results of mangling old properties or them straight faced.

The first episode continues the trademark of gdgd Fairies of inane conversations between the main cast, but it is immediately followed up by one of the two best episodes, parodying Virtual Fighter (1993), a game I did have growing up with the Saturn. You do not really need to know the game for the jokes, though they went as far as reference famous real players in competitions; instead, the humour about when the game fails or what can be exploited. You can still find it funny when the episode mocks certain moves being so destructive they can be spammed, Dreamcast borrowing a Virtual Fighter character's diving head butt for wiping out most of the opponents, or when the game has to drag in unexpected competitors. You learn, with a giant beetle getting involved, that Sega did make a game based on the (problematic) Japanese activity of capturing beetles and having them wrestle each other, or an anime connection, that alongside the Saturn in Japan being a well of tie-in video games, Sega and the console were the genesis of Sakura Wars, a franchise originally in video game form, set in an alternative 1920s Japan, which in still going and has animated adaptations.

The other great episode does not even need references to be funny, its subject Space Channel 5 (1999) already an eccentric product, a musical story with sixties sci-fi space pop aesthetic about a female reporter stopping an alien invasion of a space station by dance. Already it is strange, it is stranger when the main leads have to worry about ratings as her fellow co-reporters, and then the game malfunctions, when a fighter from Virtual Fighter (the Australian Aboriginal character Jeffrey) becomes a ratings hit with just being shirtless and only able to say "I win!", and when Saturn gains the affections from a dwarf character from the fantasy game Golden Axe. It is weird, in a perplexing way, that part of the running jokes is Saturn being forced into a bikini to increase the ratings; it is funny she is docked medals in the end due to offending family standard groups, but again throughout the series having a console I did have become the gazed over female character is weird. That she is the one, in the series' running gag, viewed as the most attractive one and sexualised, that did become strange for this and raising a completely awkward question about these shows about anthropomorphising an object probably not wise to delve into for the sake of taste.

The thing of note is that, at thirteen episodes, there is not a long time to really delve into this premise, especially as no sequel or spin-off was ever commissioned as an immediate tie-in, a huge issue with many of these micro series. This, with its ultra obscure references, had enough to parody for a longer time, causing one to think this had to be cut hastily in production by its swiftness in closure, or the more likely issue, that micro-series in their nature really have an issue of being too short to stick out unless you have something really idiosyncratic on your hands. gdgd Fairies was a one-off in many ways, from others I have seen, just for having a second season, let alone a theatrical film and spin-off, where they already established the premise and could run into stranger and more creative directions, even a multi-episode arch involving time travel paradoxes. The humour is curious here as well as after a while, it does not jump fully even into the videogame structure baring recreating gaming scenes as action sequences. Automatically you would think a lot of it would be hard Sega references, including titles never released outside Japan, such as one episode being around the arcade mecha game Border Break that never came to the West, but instead a lot is light hearted slapstick and silly dialogue you would get into other shows. It never gets as weird as gdgd Fairies sadly, nor as weird as Sega could be, as we never even get a reference to Seaman (1999), a virtual pet simulator if you had a human faced fish creature you could talk to and had Leonard Nimoy as your guide.

Neither is there the dubbing pond from gdgd Fairies, where the voice actors for real adlibbed over footage of pre-existing computer models, and many of the games covered are eventually Sega's more modern games rather than ones famous and included in the opening credits, even divisive ones like Altered Beast (1988) which, whether you think is good or overrated, is also among the weird things that company made worth intentional humour. The Sonic the Hedgehog episode, as the company's main intellectual property, is played as a straight faced Sonic animation. It clearly was a moment where the production cannot go with its flow, in case of mocking the blue hedgehog character, but also presents the annoying fact Sega is known for most people only for Sonic. That is not to dismiss that character's lasting impact, to kids and fans, but aside from some retro titles, sadly Sega in terms of archive is not as easily assessable as one would hope. It is also not a great episode, evoking the issue I have seen in micro series and this one has that it really does not get a lot done, and in the time it does have available squanders episodes to material not as funny as its earlier highs.

Even in spite of its energy and moments of funniness, this does creep over the show, and neither can it help to still be melancholic for an odd climax. Deliberately so as it refers back to the main trio not being young women but the video gaming hardware, which is impossible to look back onto without the actual history. You can call it a nostalgic celebration of their glories, which is admirable, but it is stepped in knowledge that, history being recorded by the winners it was not even their rivals Nintendo who beat them in the fifth generation nor the sixth, but upstarts Sony. A technological company, Sony struck gold with the Playstation One and then had a juggernaut called Playstation 2 that maimed the Dreamcast. Nintendo survived, but Sega eventually made and produced software for other companies, and whilst games still appear which are distinct, many of their idiosyncratic choices have had to be put on the wayside. Alongside disappointment in the final production's slightness, one cannot help but also feel a little depressed by its finale too, only tempered by the fact that, even if a lot is rarer to come by, people still talk of Sega's legacy in all its vibrant idiosyncrasies. 

In terms of my own history, I transitioned very quickly to the original Playstation after the Saturn, both consoles with weird titles I wish I then had the money, space and wherewithal to horde even if, honesty, I was not even a great gamer in skill back then. Looking back, this era in general the show mostly nods to, even the Dreamcast released within this period, was an era of incredible flux. That Playstation I transitioned to was the console which off most of the competition in this weird time of doomed endeavours, companies like Atari dying after their Jaguar console failed, full motion video and digitized characters being seen as a good idea, and only getting re-evaluated by a small minority of indie games of note decades later, even Nintendo making the bad creative decision to have a Virtual Boy, and a lot of historical dead ends. This sympathy for the losers of the era, the games never released outside Japan, the doomed spectrum of cult hits and oddities, also includes how Sega bungled through this time. That sadness cannot help to permeate what is just an okay micro-series, one which when worked was funny and sweet, but could have been a lot of inventive and had more episodes in the end.

#194: Urotsukidôji II: Legend of the Demon Womb (1990-1)

 

Director: Hideki Takayama

Screenplay: Noboru Aikawa

Based on the manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Bick Balse as Dr Münchhausen; Jake Lacan as Takeaki; Lucy Morales as Megumi; Christopher Courage as Amano; Danny Bush as Nagumo; Pat McGroyn as Kohoki; Rebel Joy as Akemi/Mimi; Rose Palmer as Kuroko

Viewed in the English Dub, British release of the Feature Length Cut

 

With Legend of the Overfiend, the previous film and the most notorious of the pair Manga Entertainment released, I did feel the need to be cautious with the production in terms of how I reviewed the anime. All the exact concerns and problematic aspects are to be found in its sequel, effectively a side story set between the first and second of the original OVA episodes, or least before the third, which has canonical importance to the later narratives. It is still a work which, desiring to be transgressive, does falter with the problematic nature of a work, entirely about combining sex and death, does use sexual violence and rape in a way that is not defendable in terms of presentation, and will be a taboo for others even in mind to transgressive, an attitude which some viewers will not find defendable to even use. This review is going to soften however, as in spite of this misguided aspect, Urotsukidôji as a premise and production is a fascinating and actually compelling work to sit through, which really was emphasised with the sequel. How ironic it is Legend of the Demon Womb which wins me over: initially two OVA episodes that were composed together as a theatrical release cut, with additional touches, this once one of the worst films I had ever seen just based on the cut we got in the United Kingdom. A lot has changed to alter this opinion, even with that same cut.

Releasing this title, let alone the first Urotsukidôji in the United Kingdom is fascinating to consider with hindsight. This in itself exists from a different time in anime production itself where, even in a small part of the industry, a lot of these violent and adult works, usually straight-to-video, were created and many were picked up for Western audiences. There is such oddness, looking at a Manga Entertainment promo I had never seen before included on the disc, at time capsules of when it is meant to be edgy and cool as a hobby to watch anime, even with Project A-Ko (1986) among the releases, all set the instrumental opening to The Heart Beneath by Celtic Frost. They are a favourite band of mine, on an underrated album, hilariously even repeating lead singer/guitarist Tom G. Warrior's trademark grunt as part of the promo, but it is strange where anime distribution into the United Kingdom went from an underground and male targeted format to where it came to decades later, the time capsules found in this promo, scoring the DVD menu to the first two Urotsukidôji to dark techno music, or that this is was a viable franchise to sell.

This is worth bringing up as a prologue as, right into the sequel's own prologue, this narrative is definitely of its era. The prologue is set in 1944 in Germany, the Third Reich conducting a freakish sex magic experiment to raise a demonic lord of darkness only for it to backfire. The son of the scientist operating the machine, presided by Hitler himself, dies and his son Münchhausen II is able to come to the then-present day Japan with a second attempt, wishing to summon the dark lord and kill the Overfiend to rule. The thing that is notorious about this entry, and is worked around in the editing for the release, is that the machine itself, and this review will have warnings for the content being discussed of, involved taking women and strapping them to it, a giant mechanised machine that sexually penetrates them until their essence is literally sucked from the victims to raise the demonic target of choice. This, in a franchise which has always had the huge flaw of its gender discrimination in terms of how to depict transgression, is the thing even among the other graphic content which makes this entry particularly infamous. 

However, whilst this franchise was never equal opportunity in transgression should be, something in the sequel in tone makes even some of its questionable transgressive content feel more tonally appropriate. For starter, whilst with the potential bad taste of involving Nazis in the lore, depending on how this is thought of it is at least attempting something more meaningful. Openly admitting this take comes from Japanese pop culture commentator and author Patrick Macias¹, Legend of the Demon Womb feels less tasteless if you take a theory he had¹ based on Japan's very dicey history in how it talks of World War II and the Pacific War, in their military operations in Asian countries before, and their allegiance to Nazi Germany eventually. You have to take this with a pinch of salt, as it cannot be denied, sadly, part of Legend of the Demon Womb is meant to be scintillating to its audience in its transgressive content, which is undefendable, but trying to subconsciously depict this problematic history and dealing with the atrocities committed by both sides, even subconsciously, feels apt, even in a lurid horror-action work like this, the Nazis are depicted as inhumane figures now working with sex magic and horrifying violation piston machines. The Nazis themselves in real life were occultists in key areas, their use of the swastika a bastardisation of a symbol which was used in a variety of ways including divinity and spirituality in Hinduism and Buddhism. It is not something profound, before we dive off into pretension, but alongside this, it feels like the story even for pulp storytelling is trying a lot more in terms of what its story is about, even if just to shock and repulse.

The original Urotsukidôji, which was initially set up as three short narratives, does feel more erratic for me nowadays, especially when censored and edited together, whilst the sequel feels far more precise at times, far more idiosyncratic in plot in place, and far more emotionally investable in that, for Münchhausen II's plans to work and in command of demonic forces, his eye turns to the male cousin of Tatsuo, called Takeaki, grounding the narrative to a tragedy. When Takeaki's plane is attacked by one of Münchhausen's demons, with his parents horrifically absorbed by the attackers, the cousin is the only survivor as a result, given Tatsuo's blood in a transfusion and on his way to transforming into a monster Münchhausen wants to sculpt to his uses. It is not complex, and there are still moments which are lurid and problematic with no justification, but even in mind to lowered expectations, Legend of the Demon Womb had much more to invest in. One such plot choice, which is not as well done as it could have been, is that a large part of the protagonist role goes Megumi, a beast woman who barely was in the first story, becoming romantically attacked to Takeaki and as a result embroiled in the tragedy of his downfall as his cousin is.

She is not completely depicted as one would hope, as a strong non-human figure, but a huge advantage of this sequel is that, based on a two part narrative focused on one story, almost all the content is progressing to something emotionally rich. Even the transgressions, the sexual violence even, feels narratively necessary barring at least one scene that is tasteless for the sake of it. Here you are dealing with figures driven by madness, and seeing his father die in a failed experiment, willing to destroy people to control all worlds, assisted by demons whose lusts are inhuman, and human beings (even those with demonic evil sides) trying to find humanity.

It is still hyper violent, and still with content that understandably would be viewed as sexist or even more depending on the viewer, especially with the surprise that this feels more explicitly in content even in its censored version for the British release. The one scene, however, that does feel indulgent for the sake of it, least in the censored cut, involves Kohoki, a demon under Münchhausen II's bidding who is fixated on Megumi, which in how it is depicted does return to the unfortunate nature that this was originally sold as animated pornography, which is very distasteful. That even Kohoki though has a moment later on, despite being a literal monster, refuses to work with Münchhausen on his final project, as Megumi is the planned central sacrifice, until he is brainwashed, shows however even this notorious title is going for more of worth in storytelling.

It is here, alongside Legend of the Overfiend, you have to bring up the screenwriter being Noboru "Shō" Aikawa. His eighties and nineties screenwriting includes so very notorious anime titles - Angel Cop (1989-94), Violence Jack (1986-90) - notorious in their own right, but he gained a reputation later on in Martian Successor Nadesico (1996) and Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). The later is of note as, in mind to the works where he was an episode writer or the main writer, Fullmetal Alchemist was when he was the main writer, a hit at the time but one readapted in another series more accurate to the original manga, as he took the already successful first television adaptation into a different direction with other writers, including an explicit metaphor in a fantasy world setting of the second Gulf War, with stand-ins for the United States and the Middle East which were not from memories as potentially offensive or dumb as metaphors as that could be. Knowing this, it is never simple for me to look at the younger Shō Aikawa, working behind such notorious anime narratives, and not wonder what was meant to be more to them. Seeing Legend of the Demon Womb nowadays, I can see more going on at least in terms of the drama.

And when the transgressive works, even if it still offends it reviles and captivates at the same time. It cannot be said to be progressive nor feminist, but I think of a scene where a female demon, briefly disguised as Megumi, literally screws Takeaki into becoming the Dark One, turning into a monstrosity in the work's binding of body horror and eroticism where it does work. If the franchise had found a way to deal with both the erotica and its horrifying content better would have helped considerably, as even the dark eroticism would have worked if more care had been taken. Even the more light hearted moments, when the comedy felt tonally out of place before, work a lot better, such as Tatsuo trying to help his cousin out by being a pervert and taking him to an erotic stage show. Even the moments which are shock for the sake of it, such as attack proving why you should never ask for head whilst driven, teeth clenching, feel more provocative than just discomforting to know existed.

The fact however, in spite of the prequel being more ambitious in scope, that I find myself drawn more to the sequel is a surprise. There is, however, the obvious advantage that this does not feel like multiple episodes, but one story told. Not a lot was edited out from the two original episodes, and whilst content has to be censored for the release, this feels a lot franker in content than before. The English dub is still bad; there are a couple of moments where, in context of this era of dubs to lurid anime, which are good, but one of the biggest hindrances that would be overcome would be to have these titles recut in their original Japanese dubs. Here as well I fully appreciated too the production, where after some inappropriately chintzy musical cues in the prequel, a few here by composer Masamichi Amano are incredibly evocative, whilst the animation and production design, for this urban-set dark fantasy narrative, does grow and add a lot to this narrative's uncomfortable but idiosyncratic content.

Looking at the first two Urotsukidôji films in the contemporary times, when the anime has moved on and Manga Entertainment was bought out by Funimation in 2019, does stand out more as a result looking back at the pair decades after their heyday of notoriety. Anime has not moved on as people would think, as the violence is gone but the eroticism stayed, but these are the kind of title not likely to get re-released in the modern day due to the paradox that, preferring uncensored boutique titles, this would still be censored. This franchise is more likely to thrive in the United States, even if trying to preserve high definition versions of the OVA episodic versions may be impossible to. This title, returning to it and specifically Legend of the Demon Womb over its prequel, feels of the era, with all the baggage of these notorious adult anime of yore. It however also won me over, never expecting the final scene in this film, with the perfect musical cue, to overcome a questionable English dub and some undefendable adult content, to actually be as evocative and emotionally hitting as it turned out to be when, for all the violence and sexual violence, the tragedy of Tatsuo and Megumi likely having to kill Takeaki before he slays Tatsuo is likely.

Even with reservations, to Urotsukidôji as a franchise of dark, bleak fantasy, here you see that, alongside the script, the productions were trying their best. The aspect that made this series as much as its notoriety, the lore and style, is thankfully one of its greatest virtues, and if this feels such a lighter review for a work still nasty, still violent, and still with issues of questionable content, such as its use of rape, that is because in context a lot more of this feels more precise. It feels intentional when it does something provocative, then at times with the first story being undercut by problematic long scenes which were excised in the British cut. It makes the entire saga after this more compelling as, whilst this exists in the middle of Legend of the Overfiend narratively, it makes sense as a true sequel.

Since the apocalypse stopped us from having stories after a certain part of the timeline, here what is a side story eventually builds to what would actually become important in the lore, including knowledge of the sequels that came afterwards. Manga Entertainment did not release parts three (Return of the Overfiend (1992–1993)) and four (Inferno Road (1993–1995)), but Kiseki Films (under Revelation Films) did. Infamously, to anyone aware of this, two of the three episodes of part four when not allowed on the DVD by the British censors, and there is a lot to mention, as they are set in the post-apocalypse, of alternative endings and one unfinished project ‎Urotsukidoji V: The Final Chapter (1996), which got one episode finished and is said to not even be fully finished in animation from what was made available. It fascinates me, rather than scares me, to wonder what happens next now, especially as Legend of the Demon Womb still paints the inevitable Armageddon which turns the world into the post-apocalypse the future sequels would deal with, all whilst has this narrative which finally won me over.

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1) Very early in the podcast Anime World Order, who started in 2005/6 and are still going into the 2020s, Patrick Macias was interviewed between Episodes 5 to 8, which I will link to HERE for the first episode of these interviews. One of them has a tasteless title, but is an exact dialogue quotation from an obscure erotic anime's English dub called Gonad the Barbarian & Search for Uranus (1986). In that itself, you get however a reminder of how bad this genre can be.

#193: Akikan! (2009)

 

Director: Yuji Himaki

Screenplay: Hideaki Koyasu

Based on a light novel by Riku Ranjō and Hiro Suzuhira

Voice Cast: Jun Fukuyama as Kakeru Daichi; Sayaka Narita as Melon; Aiko Ōkubo as Yurika Kochikaze; Aki Toyosaki as Najimi Tenkūji; Aoi Yūki as Budoko; Mamiko Noto as Yell; Megumi Nakajima as Miku; Megumi Toyoguchi as Airin Kizaki; Nobuhiko Okamoto as Gorō Amaji; Ryotaro Okiayu as Hidehiko Otoyo; Ryou Hirohashi as Misaki Miyashita

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

If you want to drink me, tell me beforehand, idiot.

When I initially came to Akikan, it was under the auspices of it being one of the weirdest anime premises in existence, that of anthropomorphic cans turning into women. This is not the only time then or before of objects being humanised, and whilst in an occasional while it can be gender reversed, like Miracle Train - Ōedo-sen e Yōkoso (2009) that can even include train stations as depicted as cute guys, usually this is done with cute girls and women. Be they firearms, planes, even Sega games consoles. Akikan is definitely weird, though the initial concerns were both sexualising women as literal objects, here owned by those who first bring them to life (of any gender) by finding the right can and drinking from it, and the idea of anyone wanting to have sex with a Pepsi can in the first place.

The bigger issue, and not what I was expecting, was how bad Akikan turned out to be. Still a show, in spite of content that did actually offend me, and content which was just dumb, that I could get some pleasures from, but certainly a deeply misguided production which also felt rushed and had no idea what it wanted to do. That pleasure is honed from years, including within the time I even started writing amateur reviews, of willingly suffering through the strangest of titles as I can appreciate the truly great, which is a significantly different mindset to come to the actual show with than for most readers. The part never brought up in all the weirdest anime lists Akikan gets onto is just how bad some of the ideas turned out.

Here, the protagonist is Kakeru Daichi, who finds an Akikan he will dub Melon, a melon soda that inexplicably turns into a young woman his age when he drinks from it. In this world, what the set-up is presumed to be is a secret group, part of the Department of Economy, who are staging battles between Akikan across the city, those originally aluminium and those of steel, for a very violent form of product research as these magical women have powers. None of the Akikan in the anime are any other gender than women, though the owners can vary, as Kakeru's childhood best friend Najimi accidentally gains one, during a night where her ability to get drunk just on carbonated drinks leads to a sports drink becoming the severe and tough Yell, whilst a junior high school girl named Misaki acquired Budoko, a bratty grape juice based Akikan whose inability to beat Melon is not going to stop her sling shooting exploding grapes at her. None of this, premise wise, is actually bad. It is deeply silly, with the added factor of a lot of cultural idiosyncrasies which would make this a more curious take, that Japanese vending machines and their contents can be very different from other countries, meaning that, if this went any direction, Akikan based on canned coffee could exist and the original light novels has one based on a can of sweet red bean soup. No idea is stupid if the execution is done well.  Akikan tragically does not try.

I am trying to avoid everything, from episode one, that immediately made me realise this show was going to get painful at times, though in truth after the initial few episodes it does settle down or a tolerance came to be that helped me adapt to this production. Dramatically, this review will work better if all the awful content is left to hit the viewer as a warning by the ending, whilst instead I will start here with how, in spite of itself, Akikan is definitely weird. At first, you did not expect this to suddenly have very bleakly existential angst, from the first episode, from a young woman formally a melon soda can. Having to sustain her life-force from drinking other melon soda, which is a potential nightmare if the brand was discontinued, and even having to take cold baths than hot ones, the first days with Kakeru, when he is not one of the worst and scummiest male protagonists to put with as a true sex pest, are filled with the angst of a life of a metal drinks can usually thrown out into recycling or left to rust in waste, uncared for beyond a product. This is really twisted existentialism the premise probably did not realise, all when a lot of it is really the magical girl genre if everyone owned a magical girl, able to be turned back into a can if a tab eye ring is pulled, and with a lot of fetish in its apparently wholesome veneer blatantly there, such as the transformation back into human shape drinking from the can, effectively kissing.

Like an exploding can shaken up, it is not possible to hide from Akikan's many issues, which I probably had a higher tolerance to, but Akikan itself also meanders so much. It has very conventional characters and also a lot of additional weirdness. Something truly weird is felt when you realise the back-story between Kakeru and Najimi, who has her own crush on him, involves Kakeru having protected her in their youth from a kidnapping where he got the gun and killed the criminals dead in the classroom this transpired within, something brushed over in the show's bright tone without realising how tonally out of place that is. Some of the weird in contrast is admittedly funny, the male friend who literally becomes invisible to everyone when no one talks to him, or Yurika, who until the OVA bonus did her a disservice was arguably the best character here. Openly with a huge crush on Najimi, willingly to protect her from the sex pest protagonist by throwing razor sharp tarot cards from him and, born on Halloween, literally a witch who, gets something good in the show which her riding on an actual broom on her birthday.

Even she though, in her introduction, has a weird joke for one scene of trying to sustain herself on vitamin supplements out of curiosity rather than food, or literally distracting someone with her large bust during a baseball game. Then there are moments like how Goro the invisible friend, in the witch sequence previously mentioned, is inexplicably woken up from the bed shared with his sisters in dog hat bed clothes that even baffled me. Akikan, if it was not for all the many sins it commits, would be deliciously erratic and bizarre to experience at times. Eventually even the concept of aluminium and steel Akikan fighting each other is jettisoned, as everyone merely accepts each other existing, and no other Akikan barring one in the two final episodes are introduced.

You have a lot of melodrama and sex comedy, with the added and additionally jarring tonal shift for a major plot that, when Kakeru skips out on a date with Najimi, Yell takes it onto herself to nearly disembowel him, which is the kind of sequence I would have expected from the notorious School Days (2007) or a bad ending of a Japanese visual novel instead. This entire incident is skipped over - which is not surprising, what between Najimi herself having a fixation on a "waste monster" that will get her for not hording, and hair that is literally an antenna, even Yell behaving like a cat if a shiny thing is dangled in front of her, these characters do not act conventionally in the slightest even as caricatures. It is actually a surprise, barring a joke or two, the swimsuit episode, set in an indoor swimming pool, is actually tamer than what comes before. Well, barring the moment a certain character, whose joke is to be a perverted male character in a small sparkly thong, tries to get intimate with Goro, but that character is to still be introduced later here, instead here evidence that if this had been a more sedate and weird show, I would have been a lot kinder to it.

There is even a good episode, or at least for me a breath of fresh air. Episode 10 is actually a good episode, entirely about nothing. Melon with the perils of getting the laundry done with the weather being erratic, between bathing in an ice bath with melon soda drinks; Budoko with cats attacking her hair in her sleep; and finally Yell being distracted by a dragonfly during house cleaning. Many people would not like this episode, but it was such a surprise to have an episode, contrary to others, where there were no dumb jokes, no tasteless sex humour, none of the problematic side characters eventually to introduce in the review, and at the third to last episode not making much of an issue about how little has actually transpired throughout the show. So much so the introduction of an actual antagonist is absolutely rushed. The final two are about a figure created for the anime, a mixed juice Akikan who is absorbing others as a super villainess, replicating her victims as shadow clones in two episodes that are just average. Living with the show as much as I did meant, even Akikan for all it does wrong left some emotional investment, so these two episodes did have something even if the show goes to the obvious conclusion, the power of wishing invoked and inexplicably tying in the cats you find throughout the show into a back-story.

That goes without saying Akikan was also a brutal viewing experience, in that for a late 2000s show, it was amazing how much inappropriate content and bad ideas it had to. After three-quarters of the review biting my tongue, this is where I also confess the countless times, an incredibly amount, I was also cringing throughout. Kakeru, our lead, is immediately a problem as, whilst he tones down at times, he is both one of the worst of the generic male leads of an anime I could have encountered, entirely because he is just an id who says the most inappropriate things. When your lead, meeting Budoko, a young girl Akikan, for the first time asks whether she wants to date him, saying that he will wait until she is grown up to take her virginity, it is, yes, legitimately gross even as a gag and not expected. That is not even taking into consideration a figure more inappropriate, the head of the shady Department of Economy with his female assistant called Hidehiko. Hidehiko is, to be blunt, a walking gag of a predatory gay man who lusts after young men, first introduced with a young man fleeing his office with his clothes in his arms, which would have not aged even in 2009, and upon immediately meeting was an alarm bell of how bad Akikan could get. Much of the worst of Akikan comes in knowing, with no nudity within it, it is a sex comedy when the writers thought jokes about a man trying to molest teenage boys was good, offensive in multiple ways at once. And this is neither just being politically correct or social justice warrioring, but that this is also done with complete tone deafness, nor even getting to the point of the entire premise, which is barely used. Most of this would have been average harem fantasy comedy, with a very weird premise, for the moments which are truly strange is a lot of the premise never being used because the writer was focused on jokes really off-colour and wasting time.

Particularly as, released as a separate bonus, the straight-to-video hot springs episode is a cursed item. Nothing happens - it is a hot springs episode post-series which is an excuse for a sex comedy - but how it is done, in mind there is no nudity or sex, it is a twenty plus minute barrage to suffer through. Immediately you have the two youngest girls among the group, sexualised, which is gross and would edge the border to New Zealand banning this OVA, as they have done so for other anime in this area¹. Nothing within this, even in terms of the sex humour, is inherently problematic either barring that example, but again you witness how execution can be misjudged. That a strategically placed Tengu mask, with a long nose, is phallic; that there is body sushi for no reason, or that Kakeru is a perv. What happens is a barrage of bad and tasteless jokes, a lot of material which is just thrown out without though, like a joke on murder mysteries at hot spars, which, condensed into this bonus where there are not restrictions, is arguably even worse than the whole series. There is more problematic humour with Hidehiko, as a predatory gay male character, at the end, making up the foul cherry on the top, and even predatory lesbianism as a joke, for the unfortunate covering of all bases and ruining Yurika, throwing a fun over-the-top character under the bus. By the point the body sushi scene involves cats happens, that was the point, whilst you do not see anything, the OVA did slip into a rare tier for me, that of something we could have lived without the existence of from a viewer known for being able to find virtue even in the main series. When only one scene, of seeing Najimi herding cats on mass in a one scene joke, the only thing within this of interest, the OVA might be one of the worst things I have actually sat through.

Akikan was a mess to experience. Completely undefendable, and frankly not recommended unless you are willing to sit through something which is not going to be good a lot of the time. The inability to exploit the premise, the concept of soda cans as human beings and all the unintentionally dark existentialism involved, is the scathing thing above all else for me in this show never working, all its un-PC humour worse, not just out of a moral trigger, but that it wastes ideas that could have worked for jokes. You could easily remove all the jokes without ruining anything which says a lot about the work, such as another character (barely seen) that is drag queen, that runs a cafe but is also sadly painted as a broad caricature even if treated more kindly. Even little details - such as Goro not understanding that women can be gay and thinking it's wrong in his oblivious idiocy - comes off as more overtly dumb and really out of place, especially when one of the aspects of anime, in truth, was always its gleeful sense of sexiness even for the sake of titillation, be it embracing the lewdness, the playful fun, or proudly waving homoeroticism around, be it male characters or appreciating the busty gay female friend who is a hell of a lot more appreciated, especially as a witch, as a character in this strange premise than an obnoxious bland male sex pest lead.

Accidentally opening a Pandora's Box, the show is just dumb, and unfocused. To have salvaged this show, regardless of whether faithful to the source material, you would have to drastically rewrite it entirely, especially when knowing the end credits song, a silly attempt to have soda drinking as erotic analogy set to multiple vocalists and musical genres per episode, was one of the only inventive aspects² to a show which also looks visually bland. This is worse in knowledge this is on Weirdest Anime lists online, because for all its weirdest moments the show does not live up to that reputation like it should do.

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1) See Puni Puni Poemy (2004), which was banned in the country for sexual exploitation of children, one of a couple of anime that have been caught in the crosshairs in that country for this. And that was an OVA being tasteless to shock on purpose in the broadest and over-the-top forms, and released uncut in the United Kingdom in the day, so that attitude to the government's censorship is unwavering.

2) Every episode has a different spin on the end theme, including a guest star from artificial vocalist Hatsune Miku, which is surprising considering how generic the show is in look, and obviously how haphazard the work is in narrative and presentation.

#192: Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989)

 

The Theatrical Recut

Director: Hideki Takayama

Screenplay: Noboru Aikawa

Based on the manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Christopher Courage as Amano Jyaku; Danny Bush as Tatsuo Nagumo; Lucy Morales as Megumi Amano; Rebel Joy as Akemi Ito; Rose Palmer as Kuroko; Bill Timoney as Overfiend/Suikakujyu; Greg Puertolas as Elder; Jurgen Offen as Suikakujyu; Randy Woodcock as Niki

Viewed in English Dub

I would not be surprised if anime fans younger than me do not know this exits, unless infamy has made Urotsukidôji something of a bogeyman that can last for an entire couple of generations of anime fandom. I myself caught the tail end of this title's initial infamy, which was in the United Kingdom in the nineties before I really knew what these animated works from Japan were beyond Pokemon. This was in the early Manga Entertainment DVD days, where of all places the first time I saw the first two film cuts of the OVAs, Legend of the Overfiend and Legend of the Demon Womb (1993), was a cheap copy bought in Blockbuster Video, a very different store than in its homeland of the United States. At the same time I would rummage for second hand copies of  titles and discover the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) for the first time, or Playstation 2 videogames, was when after seeing the DVD advertising for this notorious title I finally witnessed it for the first time. I hated the two features on that first viewing, before the readers ask, a particularly filthy experience especially as the second film itself became one of the worst films I had seen at that time. Marathoning the pair, even in their censored British versions, as a double bill was not a particularly bright idea in one night's sitting as was the case back then.

Urotsukidôji is a pretty big title to cover, more so as whilst this had an infamy in the United States, when John O'Donnell of Central Park Media acquired the theatrical cut of the original erotic (hentai) OVAs, even released that version in theatrical screenings, in the United Kingdom this title through Manga Entertainment gained just as distinct an infamous legacy among the British anime community.  Urotsukidôji seen in the harsh light of day, for this review, is a messy work. One which is difficult, in all honesty, to defend and yet, whilst it has frankly weakened in terms of my opinion on it, has aspects which are compelling and feel the creations of a compromised work that could have been something still horrifying, transgressive and offensive, yet actually incredible.

The problem is not helped by how the title was released in Britain, as was the version reviewed for this piece, but we will get to this. Legend of the Overfiend, sticking to the original narrative than its sequels, is a curiosity in hindsight. Creator Toshio Maeda decided to create an ambitious dark fantasy whose scope expands centuries and is Lovecraftian in scope just in the version adaptive for what became Legend of the Overfiend, three original video episodes released between 1987 and 1989 whose producers includes Penthouse. Also among the production was Yoshinobu Nishizaki, a curious figure to find here, as he is important as one of the co-creators of Space Battleship Yamato (1974-5), arguably one of the hugest influences on modern Japanese and Western anime fandon, that television series created with Leiji Matsumoto a huge mythical creation (even in its Westernised Star Blazers version) in spite of it becoming rare to see here in the West for decades after. Nishizaki, among trying to replicate that formula with other space opera science-fictions stories, and getting arrested in 1999 for having various drug paraphernalia and fire arms (including live howitzer shells)¹, helped produce one of the most recognised and notorious of the hentai erotic genre.

Some will already know all this, but I feel establishing all this is significant as this all leads into a title which became, especially in the United Kingdom, an albatross as much as a notorious one-off, a franchise which was probably what most people only saw, even censored, in terms of the pornographic anime genre. Whilst a lot read of being made in the eighties, when the VHS medium created them, sound as frankly unpleasant too, it is strange to know that, rather than sexy porn animation, the initial introduction would be, of all things, this attempt at a transgressive body horror magnum opus many would be introduced to, something that would have to change when more titles (from the likes of Central Park Media) released other titles or when the internet made it possible to view other titles. 

All in mind that the premise is very nineteen eighties, with large plot tropes very commonplace in the modern day and has frankly cheesy in the current day even if under such (even censored) unsettling and at points completely undefendable content. The most remarkable thing about the title was the ambition. That, in a world of three dimensions - our own, the beast people realm, and the equivalent of demons with the Majin - there is to be a messianic God known as the Chōjin to meld all the dimensions into one. I am going to spoil that, to the horror of Amano, a beast man with his sister Megumi trying to find the Chōjin on the human realm, that this will led to the worlds burning. Whilst I will keep aspects a secret through the review beyond this, I will say that at least in terms of content, narratively in its own way there is a lot of idiosyncrasy to appreciate, that in terms of sidestepping expectations it should have warmed said protagonist that, believing the star player in the school basketball team is the Chōjin, the perfect young man adored by all, he should have been paying more attention at Tatsuo, who we are introduced spying on the cheerleaders changing and explicitly masturbating in a crawlspace, unfortunately for everyone the likely messiah.

The transgressive nature of Legend of the Overfiend is not the problem in terms of intent, the horror of combining sex and violent an uncomfortable one for understandable reasons, one that many would not find palatable and avoid for good reason, especially as society has sadly disappointed us still with how grotesque people can be in their abuse of other. In the era of trigger warnings, sexual violence and rape is even more a taboo, and that is completely defendable, as it is still a real horrifying concept many of us do not realise is as prevalent in reality as it is.  As a species with conscious thought, we need transgressions of morality though, drawn to purposely repulse, for the sake of shock and thought, but in mind to what I have just written just before that sentence, the issue is within how to do so. With subjects like sexual violent, this is a subject that you cannot expect to not be uncomfortable and difficult to tackle.

You need to be offended to think, but how something is done is an issue to tackle, alongside the fact many understandably would prefer not to go through the offense. This is why I have always argued to myself, barring extreme exceptions, no concept is inappropriate to try to tell in a piece of art, but that execution is always the issue, and that certain taboos are so difficult to tackle without missing the target entirely. To dismiss Legend of the Overfiend as disgusting animated porn is dodging the point of its existence as well as dark, lurid story writing. The problem here has always been the execution, which I have always felt was the gender discrepancy, not the material. There would be no qualms with depicting the erotic grotesque if it was encompassing all gender and sexual transgressions; still repulsive, and especially now even more difficult for some to experience for complete real (and at times, tragic) reasons, but not hampered by dubious gender stereotypes. This should have been, even as a dark fantasy with characters with super powers and demons, the anime equivalent of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) in attitude. It would still offend many, but the equality in how to transgress would make more sense.

Unfortunately, this is a work where all the sexual violence is committed to female characters only, and continues the stereotype that rape is inherently a crime against women when it is one to men and women equally. Growing up with feminists (rightly) attacking misogyny in culture prominently, I cannot view Legend of the Overfiend without issues, the transgressions of the anime to consider without being dismissed as tasteless, but also impossible to ignore. This is not a film, unlike others, where I can defend the transgressions fully because they purposely blur the morals involved in a pronounced and purposeful way. Here, it does leave the anime with crass content which has made it infamous in a bad way and undermines its ero-guro content. Something like Midori (1992) is an anime which avoids these problems and is more striking as a result, just for the simple reason, without reducing the reason to a crass point, that in that underground production no character in that work was safe from the worse that could happen, making the transgressions centre stage, not the mistakes of victimizing only women.

Overfiend however falls into women being victimised, the male characters allowed to turn into horrifying monsters, and no balance to compensate, where the characters, male and female equally, would be shown to suffer from trauma, not just drawn dolls for lurid kicks, in a story which mixes this despairing nihilism with optimism. One too where men and women can be monsters and heroes, can all be victims of horrifying acts. Knowing what has been removed from the OVAs, which were pornographic, in text research sadly does not helped the production, which does suggest a work which was lurid in a completely undefendable way in sequences heavily censored for the theatrical cut and the version we got in the United Kingdom. It neither helps, to lighten the review's tone, that the version most known in the West, rather than the original Japanese language OVA episodes, has a terrible English dub. Full of swearing you would expect from Manga Entertainment, who used to pad out titles in cursing to get higher age ratings in Britain, it would be more comical if the unpleasant content was not there, and even then some of it returning to the anime was unintentionally funny.

Also, honestly, the original work beneath itself does not understand its own tone anyway. How do you explain the comic side kick of Amano's, Kuroko, a little elven creature there at the most inappropriate times in transgressive sequences ripped out for the British censored cut. One, for example, has him getting turned on at a scene removed, only to be slapped, which was included as newly animated content for the original theatrical release, a Japanese theatrical cut of the OVAs which removed all the pornography and included a couple of new sequences. Even the original, using that example, cannot help but have violently jarring tonal shifts into comedy for a very dark work.

The edited version takes the three OVAs - the first the initial discovery of the Chōjin, the third the apocalyptic finale, and the second the Majin attempting to bring in their own powerful figure from a human being to destroy the Chōjin. The second episode really coming off the most inbued with this work's very pulpy nature, explicitly reminding me that this and the manga were made in the eighties, especially as this is soaked in the fad of psychic powers and ESPers, a concept that was prevalent in a lot of this animation at the time, with a lot of characters flying through the air in coloured force fields and a lot of psychic powers.  

It violently contrasts the content which, even incredibly censored, is dark and unsettling, what with the female lead and object of Tatsuo's eye, Akemi, the unfortunate victim of a lot of assault, and the one scene where the Chōjin awakens which, reading into what is removed from the OVA, is frankly a really undefendable scene of rape on a female nurse, including death and humiliation, even in terms of transgressive art. In contrast to this, some of the more perverse content itself is what has always lingered with me and I will actually defend. That human figure brought in to defeat the Chōjin, a fellow classmate called Niki who likes Akemi and is a broken figure, is an already damaged figure abused by his parents and classmates, and is made a demon by way of the act of castrating himself and literally grafting on a demonic phallus to himself. It is still distasteful, but for the sake of the erotic-grotesque, content like this is not nasty and misogynistic, but actually transgressive, power fantasy literalised with phallic content, whose providers add an additional weirdness in being a demon in a trench coat and a bizarre gangly figure in a Metropolis baseball cap who huffs solvent aerosol. With the added perverseness that Niki can gain more power consuming both the blood and semen of Tatsuo, which he gets from one of the few consensual sex scenes with a premature ending, this shows what is really what ero-guro is for myself, forcing one to look at the human body and sexuality in really twisted and odd ways, and what in the perfect world would have been the greater subject chosen to make the viewer uncomfortable.

The final OVA, for the most part, even jettisons the more problematic content in favour of the one thing especially that has lasted for me and as a virtue, how incredibly dark and ambitious Urotsukidôji is in spite of making so many mistakes. It is not a spoiler to say the world is never going to be the same again, opening up the sequels in parts 3 and 4, the second a side story, into a post-apocalypse narrative centuries further on, and the end of said world is as much disturbing but without any criticisms of it being offensive. It feels surprising how it does not hold its punches and ends in a dark way, even if still with the open ending for good to happen.  It is in the final scenes that you can see more ambition here, where the animators are working at something significantly more profound than pornography, and that you can legitimately wonder whether this is subconsciously dealing with traumas, like Akira (1988) from this era using mushroom cloud imagery. That one tangent suggests the real 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, a devastating natural disaster in Japan's history, was caused by the summoning of a Leviathan-like sea creature attests to this; far from tasteless, this is not the first piece of Japanese media to suggest the real earthquake disaster was caused by supernatural means, as the live action adaptation of the novel Teito Monogatari, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988), had.

Again, it is a nightmare how bad the English dub can be, as honestly whilst the British Board of Film Classification would never make it possible to release something like "The Perfect Collection" available, the long out-of-print US release of the original OVA versions, even seeing the uncut versions would not necessary help the work's favour for me unless willing to have the full nightmarish transgression has its own artistic worth, even if the content on a moral level is objectionable in having to sit through. One of the only things I can gather of note is how, feeling a really pointless character who does nothing, the beast-woman Megumi literally sexes someone to death, which whether that is depicted with any success or not would have least been a significant juxtaposition of a woman's sexuality being powerful and destructive. Instead, upon this viewing, the dub uncuts a work that, in context of its production, does have an incredible atmosphere. Its mood with its vivid and horrifying images is distinct, even if the music at times can be tonally inappropriate and dinky in sound. The dub undercuts the mood, and this is in mind that, under pseudonyms, the original Japanese dub has prolific voice actors from this era in the roles.

The work together is in the light of day an anime compromised by its production, where you have an ending becoming a true Lovecraftian apocalypse that is truly horrifying, something that is far loftier than most anime and is completely unforgettable. This however is tragically set against the mistakes in the lurid content and the stereotypes - that, for the most part, the men are stoic, the women victims - that really cannot be defended.  The work's infamy will last in the West but, as the title is long out of print in the United Kingdom, it is a legacy in mind to a deeply compromised work, and for every image which will stick with me, it will also come off for me as the title that, if it had been rewritten drastically, could have had a greater legacy than the one it actually has.

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1) Nishizaki was arrested in 1997 and in January 1999, before the February 1999 charge I have mentioned, for similar charges too in case you the reader wondered if this was a one-off or not.