#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.

#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.

Bonus #13: Gonad the Barbarian & Search for Uranus (1986)

 

"Director": Arthur King

"Screenplay": Arthur King

Viewed in English Dub

 

What's an agent of A.S.S. doing on my toilet?

We would have to face the situation eventually - that of reviewing uncensored hentai (porn) anime - but to just add an odd layer to the proceedings, let us begin with a very curious release. This will require a couple of contexts first. 1) When OVAs started as a format in 1983-4, straight to video anime alongside the videotape industry in general, naturally erotic anime would appear. 2) Called ero anime in Japan, "hentai" is the term we coined for the genre in the West despite being the Japanese term for "pervert". 3) As I have seen with the censored titles they tried to sell in the British Isles, it is a a prolific genre but also one that you could barely see in the United Kingdom, simply because of the type of content that would be allowed to be passed even in the modern day, but also because we still have a lot of restrictions of where you can purchase pornography still; the internet has become freed a lot of restrictions, deliberately or people going against our country's rules, but continually with laws trying to be passed in our country in regards of this, the internet as a medium for erotica of all types is one of debate still.

In terms of anime itself, one of the most iconic hentai series, not connected to today's subjects, is the Cream Lemon series, which in its original run started in 1984. That series helped, over its many sequel series, had great animators cutting their teeth, and even help lead to the term "lemon" be used for erotic fan fiction in the West. But naturally, there would be other titles, and other brands, and these are such titles. And in a curious decision, predating when Akira (1988) really began anime's relationship in the West, we ended up with members of the adult film industry licensing hentai and redubbing it with porn actors.

Gonad the Barbarian was the title, though only under thirty minutes to my surprise, I was intrigued to see, appropriated by Arthur King, a writer on titles like Ten Little Maidens (1985) with Harry Reems and Ginger Lynn. Hence, this cannot count as a regular review, as the American script and dub is its own creation which drastically changed the material, taking liberties to an extreme. In a sci-fi future, the villainous group G.A.S., led by the "slimy twit" Gonad the Barbarian, looking more like a bald moustached man with half an android's visor on, is behind the nefarious kidnapping of women. "So begins this tale of erotic valour and evil decadence", and yes, the narrator is the MVP just for the quotes. G.A.S have kidnapped Pussy La'Mour, forcing the people behind A.S.S., with members like Dr. Jerkoff, to ask Princess Layme to come back into their fold to help. Alongside its name changes (her friend and possible lover Dick for example), and some really peculiar touches like this Earth having submarine races at the beach, the due is also "special". Actually, the animation already is not great either. It is definitely a Japanese production, as there is kanji visible in scenes, but it however looks like a poorly animated children's show if you added in porn, with the added touch that the English dub is ridiculous.

This show presents a curious meeting of cultures as a result, very American porn attitudes with Japanese niche content. For starts, it is amazing to think, considering how most Japanese media is still expensive to buy even decades later in that country, that you would have to pay so much just to have a thirty minute animation like this, not well made and only having a few scenes, really more of a sci-fi show that a promised cavalcade of erotica even if from the early days of the medium. Princess Layme is also clearly a schoolgirl, which is definitely uncomfortable, the actress voicing her clearly sounding like a star from an eighties porn film, but definitely someone befittign the role; Pussy La'Mour's actress in contrast definitely sounds older than her character design. Some of the content in terms of plot does translate - I can see a Star Wars parody having a Dildo Sword, the Weapon Research Department, in a legitimately funny joke for this version, creating it either as perverts or that they outsourced their work to a sex toy designer.

To be honest, whilst I would be morbidly curious to see this with the original Japanese language track, this is probably superior in this form. Since we are talking about actually sex being depicted too, the one thing you have in hentai as a genre as its main point, it is crudely depicted. This is the equivalent of shrugging my shoulders as, regardless of its plot, or it being definitely of the eighties due to the Casio keyboard track or the heroine wearing a red headband, this is still aesthetically unpleasing regardless of your sexuality. This is something to bear in mind as, alongside problematic content, hentai anime's other big issue is the lack of quality animation. It neither helps that, to be blunt, the sex here is non-consensual and thus the title is also problematic too. This will be a worse issue with Search for Uranus, but for all the comedic porn noises and characters named "Anus Andy", this from its shots of bound and captured women is deeply problematic even if terribly drawn, entirely built around the female characters being put through erotic Stockholm Syndrome by sexual torture.

It would not pass still in the United Kingdom, where especially from the 2010s on, our film classificators have still a concern with sexual violent and non-consensual material even in fictional form, even rating regular films higher than in years pass if suggested or depicted. Thankfully as well, whilst also gross, they never have Gonad's friend Scotty involved; Scotty also happens to be a dog, if you were curious, and it is ugly that they tease that as a kink, even if it just means menacing, crude close ups to the dog and nothing else. The only real consolation prize in the original visual content, uncomfortable if merely absurd, is that, having designed the pervy equipment fostered on Princess Layme (even a device to track her using her underwear), Dr. Jerkoff is forced into being the first one to wear her skimpy work costume, giving us middle aged hairy legs as a result. As a result, whilst tacky and the adult actors not really voice performers, the work done by Arthur King, who is credited with producer/director/writer, probably saved Gonad the Barbarian from its poor quality and the discomfort around its content. Due to its humour and the participants turning it into a farce, it can be entertaining in the right context. It milks moments in the anime - those damn spaceship technicians handling the Dildo Sword and leaving it on the runway floor than putting it back in the ship - but adds so much silliness to soften the blow.

 

*****

Sadly that cannot be said for Search for Uranus, which in spite of its title is not actually science fiction, but a curious slice of ancient Greek iconography, including a lesbian Medusa, another trope that emphasises its era of origin in psychic powers, which were a craze for plots at the time, and a poor man's Urotsukidôji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989). With no context for this, not even realising Gonad the Barbarian was only under thirty minutes and Search for Uranus was not a subtitle, I thought I was in for more absurdity. Staring Princess Orgasma and Mark Starkiller, the narrator again won me over with lines like "we are specs of copulating dust..." or "...a fading rectal breeze", before leaving never to be heard again. If this had just been a Greek myth tinged tale of Espers (psychics) with added porn, it might have been compelling especially as the animation is a little better. The music, bouncy, vastly contrasts the actual material badly, and alongside mispronouncing "Medusa", in a female-female scene with music strangely reminiscent to a Sega Saturn game, there is something truly peculiar to porn actors trying to have elaborating anime exposition. But, the first scene involves a villain named Lord Uranus, a monstrosity who has more bound women around him and has tentacles. I had considered not writing about this anime, wishing to ignore it, as much due to whether anyone I knew or of importance would read this, thinking ill of me as a result when I could have just turned it off, but I decided to  still this part of the review.

All because I am a believer in freedom of art and speech, and whilst I would not say I was traumatised, it is probably better for me to write how, by pure accident, I witnessed my first uncensored scenes of tentacles in an anime and how uncomfortable it was even as crude doodles. Not because of the tentacles, which if a kink for someone, they have the right to have. Obviously, it is the non-consensual nature that is the issue, and this title would again not be allowed to be released in the United Kingdom unless butchered to barely a few minutes. Its cheese helps soften the blow, alongside the padding out of scenes by the end, but I cannot help but think of the apparent target audience for this title. Both because the porn scenes again feel crow barred in, and why this would have appear in the first place. It makes Call Me Tonight (1986) actually more poignant then I gave it credit for, another obscure OVA of only thirty or so minutes which parodied this material in the era, about a man who turned into a tentacle monster when he was aroused, making it more relevant and meaningful now with context of the material it was criticising.

And honestly, whilst I am even more wary about ever watching the uncut version of Urotsukidôji now as a result, that feels for more morally sound in comparison as the notion of transgressive and taboo subject matter similar to this was less the issue, even if it will be deemed offensive for most viewers, because it had an elaborate Lovecraftian horror narrative which was compelling even if grotesque. The gender discrepancy was always the issue with Urotsukidôji, where the women were always the victims of sexual violence, which understandably led to people calling it misogynistic. Something like Searching for Uranus in comparison however cannot be defended at all, because this is for someone's titillation let alone scraping the bottom of the barrel only. The Arthur King dialogue cannot hide this. It ends the review on a sour note, though we have the fascinating detail that this was not the last time Arthur King got the rights to anime erotica however: he was also involved with the titles Offenders of the Universe & Star Trap (1987), and Pandora... An Erotic Trilogy: The Dark Forest, the Black Widow and Living Shadows (1988), the later consisting of three titles together the most intriguing, though hopefully he chose wiser than this.

#144: La Blue Girl Returns (2001-2) [The UK DVD Release]

Director: Hiroshi Ogawa and Yoshitaka Fujimoto

Screenplay: Megumi Hitotsuyanagi

Based on the La Blue Girl manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Kat Vandam as Miko Mido; Barry Banner as Nin - nin; Lotus as Fubuki; Lynna Dunham as Yaku / Maria; Tim Brash as King Seikima

Viewed in English Dub

[Warning: This review covers a hentai title from a notorious franchise in detail. Bare this mind in some of the more explicit content that has to be discussed]

Prologue

"Hentai", which is the term to describe pornographic work, actually translates from Japanese as "pervert". For Japanese otaku, placing the term "ero" in front of manga, anime etc. denotes it as pornographic. We in the West have nonetheless clung upon "hentai", and inevitably, this subject would have to be discussed here, though the irony is not lost in term we use having a loaded meaning when translated.

An initial problem for covering work like this is that the United Kingdom for all our history of sexual kink and liberation our laws are still draconian or just antiquated to modern society, particularly with the issue that especially now with the internet to factor in, there is not really a market for anything beyond what sells for pure titillation. Before the internet, and still to this day, porn is only available to buy legally in licensed sex shops. Not the illicit places of imagination but ordinary stores, ones however that only exist in certain locations and inherently prevents the medium of pornography from being seen in any artistic light, simply because it is not feasible with limited shelf spaces to stock anything not just designed for masturbation. Even in light of the internet making an obvious dent on the medium, it entirely depends on the market to whether animated hentai would be sellable here.

There is also the issue that there is so much of it, since the start during the OVA and video boom of the eighties, that trying to sieve through it would be a nightmare. The final issue, and the elephant in the room, is that even if it was a minority, the artistic freedom of hentai even in lieu to Japanese censorship laws has a double edged sword that a lot of it is very fetishishtic. That would not be an issue aside from the fact that, entirely from even my perspective of only reading of synopsises and of comments by people willing to sit through titles, this has also meant unfortunately lot of hentai with premises and content that sound gross and offensive.

I am not even referring to cheaply animated work either, but that the image of hentai includes material which reading descriptions which include transgressive material and sexual violence. This is not to dismiss the genre in the slightest, as in a case like the franchise Cream Lemon you can have someone like Hiroyuki Kitakubo cut his teeth on his first directorial work for an episode before he goes onto Blood: The Last Vampire (2000), but it does not help in the slightest that even some of the most well known titles, like the Bible Black series, are sold on taboos which suggest not something to watch for a romantic night in but really transgressive and nasty porn horror whatever its artistic merits. As we will get into for this review, this poses also an issue for myself as a British anime fan as this type of material would be significantly more filtered out by the British Board of Film Classification, and I would not be stupid enough on that factor and also for my own sake delve into material I might find disgusting.

One of the most notorious sub-genres, which became a stereotype of anime itself, would have to be tentacle monsters schoolgirls, an image of anime which is actually a tiny part of it in truth. The man responsible for it is La Blue Girl's manga creator Toshio Maeda, who created this trope of tentacles in a sexual context because he was not allowed to depict ordinary sex around 1986¹. Like the issue with depicting pubic hair in Japanese art, there is an irony that sexual Puritanism is entirely responsible for this, as the Meiji Restoration led to an influence of Western morality that affected how Japanese culture perceived eroticism, something which in classical art can be extremely explicit in shunga art before the censorship. The irony is that this led to a growth of many fetishes but also probably a few many like me would feel understandably uncomfortable with. Likewise, as a result of laws that to this day mean Japanese porn still has blurring, Maeda found a loophole that which was most infamously depicted in Urotsukidôji, a manga more well known not even for its three part OVA version for the first arch between 1987-9, but the theatrical version called The Legend of the Overfiend, which got a Western release and developed a notoriety which adds a huge back story to this review. You have probably been curious why the review is structured so differently from usual, and looks to be a long read, but context is important for myself as much for anyone in terms of trying to figure how to deal with this review.

Maeda himself? I won't dismiss the creator despite the troublesome tone of his content. Maeda is someone who works in a medium where he also does erotic manga for women, and also (to his own surprise)² gets fan mail from female fans for his violent material for men. He only created the use of tentacles due to artistic censorship and it says a lot of the banality behind a lot of art that, for all its shock value and controversy, the creator is still an ordinary working man. This is worth baring in mind for La Blue Girl Returns as, just looking at the directors, Hiroshi Ogawa has done a lot of key animation including for an episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) for example, whilst Yoshitaka Fujimoto has directed a bit of hentai, but has also say storyboards for the original Pokemon television series. Many people - directors, animators, voice actors - have to juggle this work alongside non-pornographic anime for jobs, so an accusations of the problematic nature of some of this content does have to be considered with the complicated nature of being stuck having to earn money to feed yourself.

When it comes to The Legend of the Overfiend, its notoriety and effect on how it made outsiders see anime comes under two lights for both the United States and Britain. In the States, Central Park Media released it with its owner John O'Donnell managing to even get the theatrical cut version released in cinemas. In the UK, Manga Entertainment released the title, and it also has had a lasting legacy which included a very negative image of Japanese animation that was painted before my time as a fan. Urotsukidôji itself is a title to discuss another day, though it ties a little into today's subject as Maeda as an idea man is a fascinating person, an interesting fountain of ero-guro creativity whose adaptations are problematic but could have been transgressive art without any hesitance if they were tweaked.

All the lengthy prologue above, and trust me this review is going to be a long dissection to get one's money worth, is necessary as it all ties in. See, going from the complex Cthulian tale set over hundreds of years to La Blue Girl Returns, which is meant to be a more comedic tale of sex ninjas, you get a complicated epic in itself. The first aspect is that, after The Legend of the Overfiend, there is not a lot of hentai released in the United Kingdom. Practically, as long as the United Kingdom has its work classified by the British Board of Film Classification, censorship is inevitable. It cannot be gotten around a lot of this stuff clearly plays with characters who are teenagers even when it is very harmless sex, which would be a no-no unless the dialogue was changed to say they were at community college, and it entirely depends on the content of each title if it was censored or refused classification³. Especially if you take the mad action of taking stuff likely to be censored even in the 2010s and try to release it as a mainstream release, as for whatever reason, a long defunct company in our earlier days of DVD releases called ILC tried a couple of time to release hentai like Alien of Darkness (1996), all of which was inevitably censored for release. ILC didn't really release a lot of prominence, barring some cultish horror titles and oddities that Arrow Films might release on restored blu-ray one day, but they managed to broker a deal with Central Park Media to release a couple of their titles in the UK. Most of it was their main catalogue, like the entire Project A-Ko series, but also inexplicably a sequel series for a hentai.

This review already has an absurd nature as the original La Blue Girl (1992-3) anime OVAs were titles refused classification by the BBFC on the 30th December 1996⁴, Manga Entertainment not even allowed to released a censored cut like The Legend of the Overfiend, but having their proposed released flat out rejected. That we got the sequel series after the fact is perversely comical. And, oh, not surprisingly this review is going to be about the censored release as frankly, attempting to review this like one would do the original uncut version would be a waste of time. See this as an absurd historical assessment.

Episodes 1 and 2

La Blue Girl is effectively Toshio Maeda's take on sex magic as, once you get past how big the franchise is with sequel anime and even a couple of live action films, it is a story about a half demon half human young woman named Miko Mido who is the last descended of a clan who is a ninja able to use practical sexual magical abilities. Even a cheap production like this four part OVA touches upon a really interesting concept, that is the idea of sex as a magical practice, with aspects of Shinto and Japanese folklore iconography likely to be discerned with knowledge even if in not in their original context. Honestly, we as a species have always had an obsession with sex having a magical nature to it, be it fluids like semen and menstrual blood having mystical properties to the likes of carved phallus to the Sheela Na Gig, a ward against evil which is a stone carving of a woman spreading her vagina open. The idea even if for a really kinky porn anime about sexual magic is not absurd to cover.

One of the immediate things, as mentioned, is that with the original series never being allowed in the country even censored, you are dumped into this world with little context unless you managed to see the original. Two stories, two episodes each less than thirty minutes. The tone was set when you get a CPM infomercial explaining "Japanimation" on both discs. Cut to clips of their other hentai titles, like a Sailor Moon parody where the sailor suits are noticeably shrunk, they explain why the female characters have high pitched voices, even and unintentionally admit that they had to age up the characters who were high school students in the original versions to college students by saying the later still wore school uniforms. That is not an actual comment made, instead the serious and thoughtful narrator explaining that such uniforms are worn by college students, but it is easy to read between the lines.

The first narrative is a clan in Japan's feudal past, the insectoid ninja clan of the Mahoroba, who are connected to butterfly humanoids. They are later revealed to be inter-dimensional butterfly humanoids, which is ridiculous, but until then they merely wish to take over the realm Miko Mido's parents have control over. Said realm, the Shikima, is literally inside a giant being, which may have the unintentionally hilarious moment of concern about sealing up the "anus", but is still an exceptionally inspired and grotesque idea in which you can be inside the colon of the entity said to have created existence itself, taking the idea of God being all to a literal extreme.   

This is where Toshio Maeda, even just going off other people adapting his work only, fascinates me as Urotsukidoji for all its problematic material is fascinating. If it had changed its attitude to victimising female characters, even being equal opportunities offensive in which transgression can happen to male characters and female characters can turn into horrifying power monsters, it would still be offensive but arguably more defendable in its take-no-prisoners attitude especially as it is still a tale of so many centuries of plot, characters and detail. A sense of scale and ambition beyond something grotty could be found here too, as even if very weird and kinky, the sex ninjutsu and ero-guro is at least fascinating. There is some odd stuff that you would be embarrassed to explain if walk in upon to ordinary people - group masturbation to enter the demon realm, or the shot that has been burnt into my mind as one of the weirdest in all anime where magical resistant lotion is applied by two female heroes to each other by tribbing - but it is at least a transgressive kink with creativity. None of this material is the real problem with La Blue Girl Returns but, as is the issue when deal even with non-hentai transgressive anime and manga, where every aspect of shock value always has to hang upon victimising female characters entirely and no one else, and that in a work like this it is also meant to be titillating even if completely excised from this release.

In the perfect world, La Blue Girl would have just been a comedy, the gender politics balanced out for still lurid but equal opportunities kink, no violence and entirely played out as a slapstick tale of a female ninja having to be the figurehead of this clan. The characters here around her could offer this version - be it her older sister, who is an ordinary human being whose romantic life is there just to keep his younger sister wide awake at night, or the diminutive dwarf ninja Ninnin who is reliable but a pervert, possibly a factor to why the original nineties OVAs were not allowed by the BBFC to be released despite being clearly an adult. You even have two former enemies turned female allies, one who turns into a werewolf and never getting a chance to use this properly story wise in what we got in real life. Unfortunately, this cheap and scuzzy production is not that, which warns you of what it is with a theme credit song so chintzy it is funny in how inappropriate it is for the material.

You cannot skip over the fact, no matter how much is cut out to the point the editing is a mess, that the show placates on monsters molesting and raping the female cast, with the one consensual sex scene turning into the hunky guy turning into a villain. That these heroines can bat it off as nothing has happened afterwards is strange in context but does not help the situation either as a viewer. Even in terms of ero-guro and someone who can defend parts of Legend of the Overfiend, La Blue Girl Returns is not worth dying on the hill for, gross and misogynistic with the added effect that the censorship the BBFC demanded really makes a point in subconsciously pointing this out by accidentally amplifying it rather than trying to obfuscate the material excised. Even if this was not the case, I will argue you cannot mix action and the erotic any without it coming off as inappropriately violent unless it is done with slapstick. La Blue Girl Return does have light-hearted humour, but it feels so tonally off between the unpalatable materials it feels worse.

Technically, this is the early era of digital animation where the OVA was released, so it looks gaudy, be it the bright colours to everyone having a waxy sculpted nature to them, especially the female cast who (to be polite) are not the most comically exaggerated designs but, for a cast for a pornographic work, have a look for the male gaze and are very shiny. I will admit if there was one interest to this, alongside the creative ero-guro ideas, is the trashy aesthetic of basic environments and an aesthetic that could be recreated with action figures, even the monsters and demons looking like toys you could buy in the nineties in their "toyrific" nature. Sadly, I cannot really admit a pleasure as with guilt I know it's for really uncomfortable material. The English dub, the only audio option for the UK DVDs, is just dreadful, adding a cherry on top of this mangled release in that, whilst it is going to get worse, it feels more embarrassing than be caught watching questionable live action porn, because as a result of the censorship and attempt at a complicated plot. The unnecessary amount of exposition and terminology makes the experience more terrible as you now have to put up with lore too. Combined in the English with moaning and a lot of leaden plot exposition and it adds a further layer of wrongness to all this.

This is worse as the plot is pretty simple - evil butterfly people who manage to take over the demon realm, which is depicted with magic resistant elixirs and actual fights between characters which are literally sex acts between them. The actual work, even with the censorship, has so much unnecessary padding and a lot of problematic sexual content whose existent is not really needed except for its own sake that it does not get around to much with its material. The first two episodes by themselves are a compelling car wreck, which I have no shame in admitting, but it feels like the entire production does not know what it is meant to be doing, even in terms of ILC thinking it was a wise idea to try to release this in the UK.

Episodes 3 and 4

By the next disc, someone clearly thought the release got away with too much sex in the first disc, as you even got drawn genitalia without showing any phalluses, so La Blue Girl Returns goes from butchered to being decimated for the final story arch.

Plot wise, in the aftermath of the first story, a plan is set up to gain entry into the brain of the Shikima realm, which involves clan members who protect it from all intruders even if they and Miko Mido are reincarnated from former lovers. After this initial set up, good luck, as from the final part of the third episode, where the scenes are fully ripped out, you are lead to entire plot points being lost, two characters suddenly waking up nude in a lab having been in virtual reality and nothing left to explain how this all transpired. It is ominous that the second disc, containing these two episodes, are less than forty minutes altogether including a repeat of the CPM infomercial, which shows a gutting policy to all the content more extreme than before.

Generally, the production manages to become worse. Harsher editing, a less "interesting" plot, and a truly dreadful dub performance of Kanako, a character introduced as the last of another clan who is barely used, a performance whose vocals at time feel slurred with the addition that she is completely wooden. Semblance of interesting ideas needed to be rescued are found - a pool of desire in a dreamt world where, if in for too long, causes one spirit to be lost into the ineffable eventually - but have mostly dried out when such ideas even in a transgressive work could be a compelling, surreal one in better hands. That the whole OVA ends in tragedy, over a death of a character we barely knew but ending the story as an inconclusive downer, with demons attempting to assault the brain, adds to the damned experience. It is more an abrupt end as this was the last anime adaptation from the original nineties release, with no others in the La Blue Girl world coming in the rest of the 2000s or in the entire 2010s.

Conclusion

Here I will confess that I have seen the first two episodes three times now, the last two twice. I owned the first disc, a compelling mess even if one that many and I may be embarrassed, the second rented. Then they are included in a boxset ILC released of Central Park Media titles, these four episodes an outlier. This is not something to be proud of, yet it says a lot I can argue I have still seen some terrible anime which does not have the morally questionable content of this. The studio behind this, ARMS, have found that creating franchises like the sequels to Ikki Tousen, the Queen's Blade franchise and Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid (2015), very fetishishtic television programmes which even censored can have uncut physical releases and OVAs sold for, very lucrative without even being hentai. To know they directed the anime series Elfen Lied (2005), divisive and lurid but a programme I would defend, just adds to the strange nature of how the industry works.. 

Here, I have to include a comment or two. One, that hentai is not something to just dismiss, that a lot of it is probably kinky but not like this. Secondly, it is a very obvious thing for a male viewer like me to dismiss aspects of this title based on content we in society accept as morally repugnant. Where the real questions are to be had is if a female viewer, or preferably a few, were willing to tackle subjects like this as, alongside a feminist opinion, there is also an argument I will make even in my naive perspective that we oversimplify female sexuality especially when it comes to transgressive desires, something that should be considered and why, even if it is this mangled DVD release, a fascinating perspective on content like this would be a pro-kink female critic or even just a female anime fan with her own perspectives on titles, her own gender and her own sexuality, rather than merely for myself as a man, a heterosexual one at that, making the presumptions.

The question left also is what the experience of the uncensored version would be like, as so much tonally and in content being added back would drastically change one's opinion. As mentioned before, this is less a proper review of this title, but examining a cultural relic. From there you learn a surprising amount, or at least I did, of an entire side of this type of anime by way of seeing how BBFC censorship would come into play. It certainly feels of another era even if hentai still exists and is in chique - Central Park Media went into bankruptcy in 2009, whilst ILC have disappeared off the face of the earth, as CPM's downfall was when the violent and erotic titles it sold were no longer in fashion, whilst ILC would be replaced with the slow grow of boutique companies who would eventually be taken over by those we have with their glossy restorations. If hentai is available in the United Kingdom, it is never a censored title with an eighteen certificate, but the occasional title you might find in a sex shop if any.  

These discs can occasionally still be found in our British second hand stores, alongside obscure titles even from a year or so after from the likes of ADV Films, MVM and Manga Entertainment etc. All of them are worthy of examination, and La Blue Girl Returns even in this state was definitely memorable if in a way to feel embarrassed about having on your DVD shelf.

=======

1) Yes, before anyone mentions it, let us not forget the Hokusai painting The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (1814) about a woman's octopus fetish.

2) HERE

3) The story of the Urotsukodoji sequels, number 3 and 4, for their UK DVD releases is an entirely different example of a doomed financial license that was ill advised from the get-go. Suffice to say it involves an entire episode being forced to be removed by the BBFC and requiring a text explanation on the DVD, let alone butchering in the editing, so the result experienced would be a baffled historical example few would know about.

4) HERE

#103: Magnos the Robot (1976/1983)

From https://www.iansvintage.online/wp-content/
uploads/DVDR1/P1180035.jpg

Director:  Tomoyoshi Katsumada

Screenplay: Hiroyasu Yamaura; Hiroyuki Hoshiyama; Keisuke Fujikawa; Toyohiro Andō

Based on Magne Robo Gakeen and Re-Edited by International Media Group and Century Video

Voice Cast: John H. Mayer as Sir Miles Nevers/Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada; Marla Scott Frumkin as Mai Lady Ester Nevers/Estroydia/Yuri Petrakov; Paul Ross as Janus; John H. Mayer as Gordo Starkey; Paul Ross as Brain/Stretch Landis

Viewed in the English Dub Version

This is a curious one to review, usually the realm of a bonus review, but in this example Magnos the Robot is more than likely known over here in the West not for the original 1976 giant robot series Magne Robo Gakeen but as a ninety minute compilation film. Now, for the uninitiated, giant robots (where heroes, usually teenagers for some reason, pilot giant militarised machines as a form of hero fantasy) had a heyday through the seventies. This genre, whether super robot or attempting to be more realistic, still exists to this day usually in throw backs to this earlier era (Tengen toppa gurren lagann (2007)), more serious interpretations of this material (Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), bearing in mind co-creator Hideaki Anno was more inspired by Ultraman than robots), or a curious meshing of fan service and other aspects (Godannar (2003), by all accounts actually a cool show, but rife with enough giant breasts, nudity and skimpy costumes just on the DVD covers it's been hurt from having a wider cult audience). The seventies, however, was very important as, whilst much of this genre was targeted for young boys with the intention to promote toys, it was when legendary manga author Go Nagai innovated in the genre, director Tadao Nagahama and the staff of Toei (under the collective name of "Saburo Yatsude") created the Robot Romance Trilogy, three shows between 1976 to 1979 that started striding to add more dynamic storytelling to them, and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) whilst initially unsuccessful would eventually become a franchise and draw the serious giant robot show into being.

In the midst of this, I highly doubt Magne Robo Gakeen is a big license. Someone probably likes it - probably one of the coolest videogame crossover series Super Robot Wars, when not a version with original characters, grabs robots and characters from every licensed anime from known titles like Neon Genesis Evangelion to Gundam, to ultra obscure titles like Hades Project Zeorymer (1988-1990), so I'd be baffled if Magne Robo Gakeen never appeared in a future title. However, in terms of actual historical context, this is a franchise who in the West in more infamous for this re-edited version in from International Media Group and Century Video, the kind which deliberately removes any Japanese text with crude text blocks onscreen, renames characters and was clearly meant to sell to a Western family audience for profit. The biggest distinction of the premise left in this version is that, as male pilot Janus (originally Takeru Houjou) and female pilot Lady Ester Nevers (originally Mai Kazuki) need to combine their robots into a super machine, they have to jump out of their cockpits in mid-air, join hands and, in an unexplained transmogrification that would become Cronenbergian if depicted in explicit detail, they turn into the belt buckle of the final machine. It's deeply silly and by all accounts, it's the one gimmick of the series, something somewhat tragic as sadly the original series has never been licensed for the West to confirm where this show would go.

From there, Magne Robo Gakeen was presumably a monster-of-the-week show, a new antagonist each episode; hailing from the once dominate species the Paleo-Goths, the villains are a group led by Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, a glorious name if ever there was one, a vague form whose visibility are his henchmen and women take centre stage, creating synthetic giant monsters to take back Earth. There is a dark twist, mind, in that they're doing this because their world is about to be destroyed, slowly the moon and the planet about to collide, a detail left in the English script that adds an unexpected moral complexity so out of place for this material. Not that this is meant to add dramatic complexity like the Robot Romance Trilogy is said to do mind, just a jagged edge as you're supposed to boo the villains.

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Helped by Lady Ester's scientist father John H. Mayer, on the mobile battle fort Ft. Liberty with three male teammates of useless backup, Janus and Ester must defend the Earth. Janus belong to the list of stoic but frankly boring leads, even if as a karate champion there is even a flashback image to the fact he once fought a bull. Ester on the other hand is in danger of being the useless female protagonist, gender discrepancy sadly an issue here for the male power fantasy for boys. Baring in mind the original context of the series, meant as entertainment for young children, this is an issue but I have to bear in mind how the U.S re-cut has taken this material as, for all I know, there is many character beats even for a conventional premise which are probably lost. Of course, what we get also has a ridiculously broad English dub, peppy and exaggerated which does drastically change these characters a great deal even if it is amusing.

Thankfully, whilst the prospect of thirty nine minutes being condensed into ninety minutes sounds an absolute nightmare, the work is a breeze to sit through is utter cheese. The production wisely just turned this into a few vignettes as our villainous henchmen, lead by the giant Brain (with his exposed brain), who keep trying to get the jump on the heroes. Credit where its due, they try (for an anime) wise tactics like two-on-one assaults or exploiting how Magnos' feet overheat if overused, just silly mistakes or the heroes pulling contrivances out of their backsides preventing them from winning. I confess my love for the gaudy designs as well, the monsters in particular animal hybrids christened with glorious names like Batroacher III, emphasising that whilst many of these shows regardless of country of origins were toy tie-ins, which has always been problematic, they had a creativity even if bizarre that can be appreciated if this commercial aspect is separated from the images. As someone who has no shame in still having old toys from his childhood, now as room decorations no matter how banged up some are, there's an art to vivid and creative designs even at their gaudiest that I have to appreciate here.

In the end, I couldn't help but find a lot to like even if there's the innate issue that, as a compilation of an episodic series, this has a rinse and wash style to it, escalating in terms of what is done but never building to greater detail even if a (presumably) episode rather than story driven show. Thankfully there is some sort of escalation, when the battle fort is hijacked, but you are watching segments from episodes, with their own dynamic beats and resolutions, be cut down to swifter paces and connected together tangentially. In fact, having seen a bit of giant robot anime, I can see plot points that have been used in future work like when Janus briefly quits, something that even Neon Genesis Evangelion used but with a greater psychological complexity. Mazinkaiser (2001-2), an OVA series based on the Go Nagai property Mazinger Z, was arguably in style of this compilation, as a series of event-of-the-week incidents and vibrant robot/monster designs, but (with Nagai's history and the production) more knowing in its bombast, from the opening rock song by JAM Project having lyrics like "Crush on crush!" to gratuitous nudity just for the hell of it.

Characters learnt of looking up the series are gone completely, and at least one villain who has shape shifting abilities here is barely used, a figure likely of greater prominence in the original series, just emphasising how this whilst in its own little bubble is still a piece of a bigger puzzle. Nowadays we'd condemn this type of compilation, even if editing of shows for Western tastes was still happening into the nineties. Ironically, what really drives the enjoyment of Magnos the Robot, regardless of the version deliberately trying to scrub away any sense that it is a Japanese production, is the original work even in a truncated form. Seventies anime is not that commonly seen still over this side of the globe and, from its hand drawn animation to the funky music about to turn into full disco, the entire aesthetic and wholesome tone is charming. It's enough that, if I had the luck to see the original Magne Robo Gakeen show, I'd take a chance on it.

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