#228: Darkness of the Sea, Shadow of the Moon (1989)

 

Studio: Visual 80

Director: Tetsu Dezaki

Screenplay: Koichi Mizuide and Sōji Yoshikawa

Voice Cast: Mayumi Shō as Lumi Kobayakawa; Rei Sakuma as Luka Kobayakawa; Toshihiko Seki as Katsuyuki Tohma; Ryusei Nakao as Mr. Kobayakawa; Seiko Nakano as Mrs. Kobayakawa; Tesshō Genda as Doctor Kaibara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I had never heard of Darkness of the Sea... until searching for horror anime, but this three part OVA is tantalising when you begin it. It is a shoujo story, a story of young women which combines romance against horror and over-the-top melodrama, all directed by Tetsu Dezaki, Osamu Dezaki's brother who can be credited for helming They Were Eleven (1986), a great sci-fi story from a legendary female manga author Moto Hagio, but also Mad Bull 34 (1990-2), the infamous and at times difficult to watch Kazuo Koike tale about New York City cops with all the ridiculous clichés and distortions you could imagine. Darkness of the Sea... starts off over the top in its own way when twin sisters Rumi and Ruki, already in a romantic triangle over Touma, the popular boy at school, go on an all-girl's trip to the coast with their school. Tragically, during a storm, they find a secret grave mass in the caves, and with everyone baring the sisters being killed by a strange air to the underground environment.

Ruki survives, but Rumi is distant, and now part of the only surviving girls of the sports team due to the horrible tragedy, the three remaining girls have to train with the boys. The third girl will die soon after, as Darkness of the Sea... does waste time with its plot, in which Rumi is now a psychic supernatural being, able in later episodes to infect people and turn them into her slaves, wishing to kill anyone who gets in the way to her and Touma. Even her own sister Ruki, the most melodramatic of sisterly rivalries possible transpiring as the core of the premise, whether it is trying to throw her off a floor on the emergency stairway, or turning their parents into brainwashed ghouls to do the job.

It is sad Ruki is an ineffectual protagonist, despite the inklings that she has supernatural powers too, even in mind that it befits that she is an ordinary person caught up in the most nightmarish of sibling rivalry, "Tutankhamen's Curse" a key reference to the plot exposition, referring to when in 1922 the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, those involved having mysterious deaths afterwards helping a legend of a curse transpire. Most of the time, Touma is the one who has to save her, which is a shame even if the point that, helpless, she is (baring the unnatural ability now to float) a bystander in trouble, arguably the best protagonist for a viewer to be in the shoes of. Largely the repetition of Rumi's attempts to kill her over the three episodes is the biggest cause of this issue.

Truthfully, there are many silly aspects to the show, and so much of it, even in mind to what I have said as criticisms, does not detract from how entertaining this became. The real problem becomes that, even at three episodes, this sadly ends abruptly when it starts to reach a new melodramatic point. By the time the story ends, where the sisterly tragedy is greater, people have died, and Ruki is starting to fight back, only to not have a follow up, feels like a gut punch of the most abrupt kind as this became a rewarding film to watch. This is a shame as this, even when logic starts to fall away, is delightfully over-the-top and macabre. It also befits as a story with a romantic edge, as it is about a female protagonist, who is stuck in a nightmare, yet in a scenario intermingling her growing confidence, as she and Touma start to come closer as people, her own sister the threat adding to the symbolic drama. There is one dubious moment, where Touma briefly comes off as non consensual in the gym closet in terms of getting more intimate with Ruki, which is the one sour point, but most of this is the right kind of melodrama, even when someone stays almost comically stoic in spite of their parents just being killed, the exaggerated tone appealing.

Even the aesthetic tone of the show befits this, the contrast between its character designs, by Setsuko Shibuichi, prolific in the industry from key animator to director on titles from The Rose of Versailles (1979) to Space Adventure Cobra (1982), befit a romantic show in the characters' elegance but contrasted by the macabre (and openly gory) incidents that transpire, to even the countless demonic faces Rumi has trying to off her sister. The sense this was even one episode off a full narrative does suck, more so as, even as pure pulp, it does stand out as a delightful surprise, as obscure as you could get for an animated title. Like a grotesque fantasy tale, even its opening credits are more fantastical, with its echoing of the sisters being nautical entities, and its title (depending on how you translate it) was absolutely one of the reasons I picked it out due to how evocative it is. There is pure cheese, like explaining overtly supernatural powers to ancient bacterial mutation, but that befits the tone as well. As something with no context, this hit with the right impact, only making its obscurity sadder. A Bandai production, at least with their involvement, one can only hope that it is preserved somehow as this, even without the ending it should have had, stands out.