#272: Bio Hunter (1995)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Yūzō Satō

Screenplay: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Based on a manga by Fujihiko Hosono

Voice Cast: Kazuhiko Inoue as Koshigaya, Toshihiko Seki as Komada, Chikao Ohtsuka as Bokudo Murakami, Tarô Ishida as Seijuro Tabe, Yuko Minaguchi as Sayaka Murakami

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Recreating Wicked City (1987) in the opening, this feels like a throwback to eighties ultraviolent anime with breast dentata and someone actually getting their hand bitten off. We still got violent anime in the nineties, especially in the straight to video market, but notably, this has a connection to the past that, whilst in a screenwriting role, Wicked City's director Yoshiaki Kawajiri is involved in this production. This does mean this feels like a return to the films he and studio Madhouse made in the eighties, only with another director taking on the reigns in Yūzō Satō, and also the unfortunate sense of this feeling like a weaker Kawajiri work, still worth a rediscovery, but having to be compared to someone who became more interesting when the more controversial aspects of Wicked City were being removed from his own work. There is also the difference here that this is, in context, a very late era OVA. Whilst many would still be made into the 2000s, they changed in mood entirely as different technology was being brought into animation production, changing them even in how they look right down to the use of colour even next to works just from the early nineties.

Molecular scientists and professors Koshigaya and Komada work in an illegal but virtuous side job for the sake of humanity, in which this world has a "Demon Virus" which mutates people into flesh eating monsters. Like the young woman in the opening who becomes host to a few on her form like parasites, faces and mouths appearing on her body, whilst another later on eventually has gone so far he is effectively undead and controlled by the parasite in the centre of his chest, this has the potential to be a huge problem for humanity as a whole, as well as allow some of the most creative aspects of the production, meaning our leads have had to research ways to stop cases and also kill them if need be. One of our leads is infected himself, able to control his condition as far as be able to shape shift back and forth in forms, thankfully at first just needing to eat a ridiculous amount of food to sate an evolutionary take on yokai and monsters. It is certainly a shift for its original author Fujihiko Hosono, who contributed the source to another curious one-off OVA Judge (1991), explicitly a supernatural story about the supernatural judge of sinners, especially in his case those who are practice corrupt business tactics. Touches like this make Hosono's work quite a curious one in how he shifted tones per manga.

The condition our lead Komada has will still become a problem over this one-off story, alongside the angst of his position, especially as control is slipping and a young woman comes into his life named Sayaka, connected to a grandfather and famous fortune teller who has gone missing. Her existence, more of a damsel sadly for most of this, raises the question of whether he could ever in his position fall for someone or end up eating said girlfriend if the control vanishes entirely. A serial killer who chews on intestines and eats the livers of young women is connected to this, unfortunately connected to a powerful politician and his armed goons who are a credible threat to both leads. As an hour OVA, you only have enough time for a short tale, though this is an adaptation for what was actually a very short manga from Fujihiko Hosono himself, and possibly told the entire tale there in animation here.

Revisiting Bio Hunter, it feels like an object from a different time period, one which should be approached with in some caution due to this streak of transgressive sexuality, namely having female victims to these monsters being undressed, which will be understandably uncomfortable for some. Most of this film though is just gore, from the blood to a severed hand moving independently on its own free will on a rescue mission, and a set up to a literal punch line with a heart being ripped out. Truthfully, alongside its weird mishmash of scientific rationalism with occult leanings it still wants to get into, including trying to rationalise fortune telling as a superpower, the leads are the least interesting thing as in many of these, next to the mood and tone. It loses a bit of this due to Kawajiri sticking in the screenwriting position. Whilst Yūzō Satō became a veteran by the modern day, this does miss some of the tonal choices which did make Kawajiri's work his own, such as his trademark for a "Kawajiri Blue" in depicting night-time scenes.

There is enough here which evokes the atmosphere a lot of these anime had. Even without the monster designs - the final villain a host with the creature in his chest, and a discomforting nod to tentacle symbolism of Urotsukidôji and its ilk - it has something of its own that, even as a slight story, does stand out with interest. By this point however, whilst Ninja Scroll (1993) does have some discomforting scenes, it showed that this type of action anime, with tangents into horror, fantasy and/or science fiction, from Yoshiaki Kawajiri was far more than this, whilst Bio Hunter is more of a curiosity in his filmography. It is entertaining for what it is, but just missing out something to make it stand out more than this or its style.

#262: Doomed Megalopolis (1991-2)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Rintaro

Screenplay: Akinori Endō, Masayuki and Rintaro

Based on the novel Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Aramata

Voice Cast: Masaaki Okabe as the Narrator, Kouichi Yamadera as Jun'ichi Narutaki, Kyuusaku Shimada as Yasunori Kato, Gorou Naya as Yasumasa Hirai, Kan Tokumaru as Dr. Makoto Nishimura, Kaneto Shiozawa as Youichirou Tatsumiya, Keiko Han as Yukari Tatsumiya, Ken Yamaguchi as Kamo, Kenichi Ogata as Shigemaru Kuroda, Kouichi Kitamura as Junkichi Amano, Naoki Tatsuta as Torahiko Terada, Osamu Saka as Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa, Takaya Hashi as Noritsugu Hayakawa, Youko Asagami as Keiko Tatsumiya, Yuusaku Yara as Shigeyuki "Rohan Kouda" Kouda

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Before this adaptation, there were two live action films adapting Hiroshi Aramata's book series, Teito Monogatari, a single narrative across Japan in the 20^th century broken up into volumes in its various publication forms. The first was the 1988 Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, which with Doomed Megalopolis adapts the earlier parts of Hiroshi Aramata's story, whilst Tokyo: The Last War (1989) adapts the volumes dealing with the final days of the Pacific War. With Doomed Megalopolis, animation director Rintaro, who started in the beginning of the modern anime industry in the early sixties, came to this adaptation with great interest in the source material¹, and took interest in depicting the more fantastical nature of its premise¹, in which an alternative Japanese history of the 20th century involves immortal magician Yasunori Katō, a figure who wishes to destroy the city of Tokyo with his craft. Contextually it is important to realise its source author Hiroshi Aramata, a polymath and natural history researcher, whose career varied between translating classic Western fantasy literature to bringing Western natural historical texts to Japan, used this multi-volume work that cemented a legacy to focus on both Japanese history and real Asian occultism, the central theme of three of these episodes being Kato's desire to reawaken Taira no Masakado, until March 25, 940 when he was betrayed and decapitated. His head, with stories of it still being alert after assassination, was buried in Edo, the future Tokyo, where in real life, stories have suggested a curse that has lasted over decades to the point that, even in the modern day, his shrine in Tokyo is still held with great respect.

In Doomed Megalopolis, Kato wishes to awaken him even when Masakado himself wishes to be allowed to rest in his grave. He will even call forth a shrine maiden, Keiko, to represent him in episode three to get Kato to leave him alone, instead becoming almost a duality of Kato representing the real figure's rage of authority, wishing to level Tokyo fully, something which the film Tokyo: The Last War emphasised as him being thousands of years of slain and dead peoples' angers coming together to bring him back in 1945. Doomed Megalopolis' narrative begins in 1908, and in both the first live action film and this anime, all three adaptations include Kyuusaku Shimada, whose first film role was Kato, playing this figure at the end of the Meiji era going into the Taisho era of emperors beginning this quest to destroy Tokyo, connected to the real 1923 Kanto earthquake in both adaptations.

When I had heard of Doomed Megalopolis, it had a notoriety for being lurid, and in comparison to Akio Jissoji's adaptation of the 1988 live action film as a director, Rintaro's take here with studio Madhouse is a lot more explicit in both the horror content as much as gore and transgressive sexual content, though Tokyo: The Last War, bringing in legendary practical effects artist Screaming Mad George (Joji Tani for his birth name), had already brought in more overtly gory content itself to the adaptations. I also have to admit that, whilst I admire the 1988 feature film, and both adaptations have their virtues, Doomed Megalopolis has a huge advantage with its fantastical content as animation, a freedom to be vivid and vibrant with its phantasmagorical content fully. From the get-go, you have a work oozing in style, be it the idiosyncratic use of colour and framing scenes, to actually depicting the supernatural elements, such as the fact, when introduced, one of the initial leads by the name of Yukari, a maiden, is able to see the future, a target of Kato's goals whose visions and nightmares over the first two episodes would not be possible to depict in the live action film as vividly as this.

The Last Megalopolis to its credit used practical effects, including stop motion, but here you can have the horror grow and be fluidly animated, be it shadow demons formed of eyes and mouths in wrong places, like ink well creatures, to one of the more infamous moments I had heard about with this mini-series, the openly phallic stomach worm being vomited out of a victim's mouth which has an appropriately horrifying execution due to the animation quality. The work is more tonally appropriate for its medium - more action based - and not as entirely focused on the smaller details other adaptations did. The Last Megalopolis really made a deal of a key plot point, that this is a time when there is an attempt in the government to make Tokyo a capital city influential even outside the country, whilst here there is a lot more emphasis on the horror as well as more psycho dramatic plot turns for characters you never got in the live action film. There is significantly more rock guitar solos from Kazuhiko Toyama here in the score, but I will not complain about one of the anime's best aspects, that score, for this.

Moments are more explicit, but never feel tasteless for the sake of it. Probably the most extreme aspect is a subplot entirely jettisoned from their live action counterparts in Yukari and her brother, which becomes explicitly incestuous on his side in a bleak narrative stroke, one despite the luridness of the content becoming more the tragedy of how her character, bright and charismatic when introduced, is psychologically broken between Kato and her own brother, her daughter inheriting a greater weight of power and struggle as a result in this perverse psychodrama between brother and sister. Even this violent overtone never feels tasteless as, by episode two when we skip to 1923, this is allowed to breathe as a narrative in a way The Last Megalopolis was not able to, able to have greater emphasis on characterisation in ways that The Last Megalopolis could not even if that adaptation has touches of its own more fleshed out.

There are differences between both adaptations, which mean both have their virtues. By episode three, the character of Keiko here is a much more significant character than in the film, but in contrasted by how her introduction in the episode is a much abbreviated take on what becomes the finale of the film, including far less emphasis sadly on Gakutensoku, a real life robot, the first built in the East of the globe,  who is far more elaborated on in this fictional context in connection to the building of the first subway in Tokyo, shown here even with actual photos and designs from it but less focused on as a narrative concern in the anime adaptation.

This still however feels like its source, taking real spiritual and occultist beliefs, and melding them with history, even if details like a giant flying manta ray was not expected at all in context. You can argue that in terms of telling the history of Japan itself, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis was doing more, especially as episode three here feels significantly more expanded in the live action film where it made the perfect conclusion for that story. There is however the fact this adaptation has additional content that continues after this for episode four, where never was mathematical sums and equations made more menacing as we enter alien territory, narrative beyond the film in which Lagrange’s equation of motion is brought in and you would have struggled with depicting its plot even with practical stop motion effects with where it goes. Here, Kato figures out that his solution is to move the Moon closer to the Earth and literally cause it to awaken a spiritual dragon, something even a big budget film from the Japanese movie industry would have had a hard time depicting but animation can. It definitely ends the animation at its most phantasmagoric and certainly with a left turn to conclude the mini-series, as unexpectedly love defeats the monster, something which with credit to a production adds a weight to it. For what is the most extreme in content from the three Teito Monogatari adaptations that came first, there is emphasis throughout on how, if you viewed these stories from afar, Yasunori Kato is a figure who will never succeed, in any other context a weak villain but in context to this adaptation by himself someone more symbolically complex in how he is inevitable, more a force that comes and will always fight with Tokyo itself as a symbol of the unrest that built the capital of Japan over a turbulent century.

Doomed Megalopolis was a surprise, a gravitas even among brethren in the more lurid horror anime coming out straight-to-video at this time, and won me over. Certainly next to the other live action films, this feels an entirely different take in terms of tone despite all that is clearly carried over from the original films, Kyuusaku Shimada notwithstanding, the pulpier take which however inherited the weight of the others’ taking on Japanese history and esotericism with an admirable attitude in depicting them. It is out of the three a striking work as pure horror anime too, with sights like a woman splitting open into a giant insect creature to a nightmare sequence involving a cat monster, something which when these titles have questionable content still retain incredible artistic flourishes and mood to the productions to admire in this genre.

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1) For the 2021 Blu-Ray release from Media Blasters, a small anime and live action distributor in the USA who have managed to continue over decades of changes in the US anime distribution industry, it includes fascinating short documentaries made for the Japanese audience, three of them about locations around Tokyo with spiritual and esoteric lore around them, whilst the forth contains promo interviews with actor Kyuusaku Shimada and briefly with Rintaro, though it is clear how the director came to this with admiration for the source novel and wishing to bring what was possible in animation against the two live action films already released by that point.

#219: Wicked City (1987)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Screenplay: Norio Osada

Based on the book series by Hideyuki Kikuchi  

Voice Cast: Toshiko Fujita as Makie; Yūsaku Yara as Renzaburo Taki; Ichirō Nagai as Guiseppe Maiyart; Mari Yokoo as Spider Woman; Takeshi Aono as Mr. Shadow

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

This is a significant film for me to reach - one of the key films of Yoshiaki Kawajiri, a director who became a name in Western anime fandom in the nineties, but one painted for me getting into the medium as a notorious one. Kawajiri in truth, getting into anime in the 2000s, was once for me the director known for sex and violence, but when it comes to actually viewing his work, which is not a lot of his career. Action anime and a high quality to the work with his collaborators, as a studio Madhouse director, is more his trademark. The infamy I heard second hand of him came from Wicked City and Ninja Scroll (1993), and even then, Wicked City was a title available in the United Kingdom, as in the United States, but Ninja Scroll was more freely available and a stock title for Manga Entertainment to have into the early DVD days. Ninja Scroll has held up well, and whilst it is transgressive in a lot of its content, it feels like a pulp narrative whose content was trying to be more thoughtful even if it dealt with gore and sexual violence. This is something to consider as, whilst of its era, anime in the decades afterwards even if not more explicit in these subjects, or having to work around television censorship, have tackled just as extreme content to this day, whilst Ninja Scroll's shock nowadays in how it tackles it explicitly as a high budgeted production. Wicked City was the title I hesitated to get to from the director, and for all its virtues, you cannot ignore that just ten percent of the film's content, some of its more controversial aspects, are going to be off-putting and unacceptable for anime fans. The irony is that, yes, it is only a part of the film altogether and that Wicked City itself has more to consider even beyond what I considered it would have been.

A factor to consider with Kawajiri's career is how significant author Hideyuki Kikuchi is to parts of it for source material, especially with some of the more adult work in content. His most well known work is the novel series Vampire Hunter D, which has now become a multi-medium franchise and has not stopped since the first novel in 1983, but he has worked on other titles, Wicked City based on the novel series of the same name from 1985 to 2016. Barring Ninja Scroll, more of the overtly horror and violent titles in Kawajiri's career come from Kikuchi source material, and Wicked City would have been released after the third novel came out, set in a world where demons and humans co-exist in a treaty skating on thin ice. A new treaty after centuries is to be signed, with a demon terrorist group wishing to snuff out the demon representative, Guiseppe Maiyart, sent to our side to sign it. He is to be protected by a human member of the Black Guard, secret agents guarding the "Black World" of the demons against ours, called Renzaburo Taki, with Makie, a female demon member of the Black Guard as his mirror to also protect Guiseppe. In terms of the Wicked City itself, it has a basic plot, which is traditional for a few Kawajiri titles, although in terms of his career, this one does feel the weakest. Compared to Ninja Scroll's, which is surprisingly more complex in back story, this does have a huge contrivance that, to get Renzaburo and Makie to fall in love, which is the real goal for peace, this film does have to work around some abrupt emotional whiplash and contrivances which other Kawajiri productions avoid.

You also have to accept that Guiseppe Maiyart's main characteristic, despite being someone revealed to be wiser and being a diminutive man with thunder abilities, is also having a horniness bordering on a suicidal streak in the risks he takes to please this. Among a curious duo with Ninja Scroll's Dakuan of Kawajiri having a fixation on short old men who are cocky tricksters, It has humour as well. You also have to accept that Guiseppe Maiyart's main characteristic, despite being someone revealed to be wiser and being a diminutive man with thunder abilities, who is also with a horniness bordering on a suicidal streak in the risks he takes to please this. This will put viewers off too, among a curious duo with Ninja Scroll's Dakuan of Kawajiri having a fixation on short old men who are cocky tricksters, but thankfully this does succeed with some light humour as much as it feels like another aspect Wicked City as an early work from Kawajiri does feel like a template for his later work, including the fact the villains in later stories would stand out more than the one here.

Wicked City also has a huge caveat already hinted at which cannot be ignored, even in mind to this being a film which I will talk about having incredible aspects to it, and has left a lasting legacy alongside other Kawajiri productions which influenced Todd MacFarlane for the creation of Spawn¹, to being admired by Hideo Kojima². That being, that in representing its transgressive sexual body horror content, where sex is used as a weapon including rape, this has the exact same problem you deal with in Urotsukidôji; that being, whether you think those subjects in transgressive depictions would still be defendable or not, how this is depicted is with having this subject always involving a female victim, and is clearly lurid for the sake of it with no reason to be there. The problem is worse when the sole figure of this content is Makie herself, the sole female character of note, which makes the content more problematic. This is worse here as, alongside undercutting a character who is a demon who has inhuman abilities that should make her powerful, she is the figure who exists to mirror Renzaburo Taki as well as emotionally connect to him, someone too who like Jubei in Ninja Scroll, is deliberately the male lead who scrapes by and gets maimed in scenarios as much as he succeeds.

Some may actually be offended by the suggestion you can tackle sexual violence in a way in art or even pulp storytelling which can be transgressive on purpose, but the problem is that, before you can either get to the subject of whether it can be defended or not, Wicked City alongside other anime fall into the issue that these subjects this same way. Always involving the victimisation of female characters, and always feels like it is done for shock value than with note. That this is just a fragment of Wicked City makes this worse, making this a difficult film to defend, even with aspects involving the sexual body horror, whilst grotesque, which are startling in a way without these issues and can be defended. It was not as explicit as I had feared, but with one scene in particularly reaching a fine line, this ten percent or so of the film's content of how Makie is victimised is uncomfortable. We did get Wicked City for VHS and for even cinema releases back in the nineties from Manga Entertainment, but is was censored for these scenes, only coming to us uncensored in 2022³. These scenes once censored neither have any real weight to the content or narrative of Wicked City either, making them pointless to even have had.

Beyond this, Wicked City is still a very violent and very grotesque film from Kawajiri, and it is infamous as much for its body horror, yet I feel I can defended this even if, on purpose, they are startling too with the advantage of the production being as highly crafted as it is. This film has the most infamous moment of his career, within the first scenes, where Renzaburo Taki is introduced courting a lady for a one night stand, only for her to have been knocked unconscious and had a demon spider woman masquerade as her in the hotel room. Explicit vagina dentata is involved, starting this film's melding of sensuality with the perverse, where he just avoids death as she casually scuttles out the window on her spider legs out the hotel room. This is where Wicked City, like Urotsukidôji, is still extreme, but has transgression be the ero-guro (erotic grotesque) which has artist merit, flourishes in its imagination to striking effect as much to horrify. An argument can be made most of these have the theme of the female body being dangerous, with a couple of womb-like metaphors and one blatant one, but these scenes will make the men just as likely victims as the women to these horrifying threats. One literally involves a giant stomach vagina and Renzaburo Taki literally return to the womb before he snaps out of it. Some anime fans, understandably, will find this scene disgusting, but rather than alien the viewer with transgression of the sexual kind which is exploitative, this is the kind of perversity that at least has more meaning to it, significantly in this example as it transpires within the same scene as some of the problematic sexual violence, which does not have these virtues.

Some will not be able to get through Wicked City because of some of its content, which is tragic as well as, one of Kawajiri's earliest productions by himself in the director's chair, this also has incredible artistry, the horror contrasted by a lot of the film even in its quietest moments which are startling to see in the modern day for how more subtle it can even be. A lot of Kawajiri's work is very simplistic in their characterisations, even in how they are structured around figures the protagonist has to fight to reach the main boss, like a video game template, but his productions, especially with the original character designs by himself, are incredibly ornate and aesthetically beautiful even in spite of how some are very gory and nasty. One of the biggest surprises for me as I became more a fan of Yoshiaki Kawajiri has been how  mood plays a role in his films, even when the action stops and the characters are allowed to breathe in his narratives. Wicked City embraces the horror genre even in terms of eeriness within sequences, and it is also a film, unlike the reputation it has been painted for me, with a willingness to stop and contemplate. It is a film only eighty minutes long but stops for Renzaburo Taki, when they initially have Guiseppe Maiyart secured in a hotel with a security barrier, playing chess with the hotel owner and contemplate his place as a bachelor.

As mentioned earlier on in this review, it feels Yoshiaki Kawajiri is still early in his career here, and Wicked City feels as much a prototype of Ninja Scroll. This is not to downplay the virtues of this film, which is a gorgeous production, possessing an atmosphere which, whilst not redeeming its major problems, which is compelling. It looks gorgeous, the music is gorgeous with Osamu Shoji's moody score, leaving Wicked City a fascinating production unlike other lurid and controversial anime from the eighties in that its artistic value is higher than the likes of Violence Jack from the decade. Kawajiri, even for his OVA work, had a high bar of quality of work, which makes the sad fact he stopped having directorial work in the late 2000s onwards more tragic, if thankfully contrasted by the fact, even if in the storyboarding credits later on, he still had his mark on big television series in the 2020s. Finally seeing Wicked City, my concerns which caused me to hesitate watching this were proven, and it is entirely per individual viewers if they feel comfortable sitting through the scenes whether to watch the film or not, rather than say whether it is recommended. In terms of the film's virtues beyond these scenes, this for horror anime shows the director's talents and those of Madhouse altogether exceptionally.

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1) Examining the Work of Anime Director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, written by Padraig Cotter, published for Den of Geek on May 26th 2015.

2) My Favorite Films by Hideo Kojima, translated by Marc Laidlaw from METAL GEAR SOLID naked (2004), published by Kadokawa Shoten and with the translation from Junkerhq.net. For a side tangent, for fans of Kojima's, and speaking of a huge cineaste myself, this is a fascinating selection of films, including some obscurer gems like Burst City (1982), even I would dig through for the titles I have missed over the years.

3) "Wicked City... 1987 Japan anime horror previously cut but now released uncut on DVD and Blu-ray", published on December 21st 2021 for Melon Farmers, a site dedicated to documenting film classification, censorship and censorship of culture in general. Their name, before anyone asks with curious bafflement, is based on the infamous "TV Edit" of Alex Cox's punk genre film Repo Man (1984), for another tangent about a film (and that infamous edit) worth looking into.

#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.

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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.

#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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

#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.