#81: Biohazard 4D-Executer (2000)

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMzczNTBkYTAt
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Director: Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Daisuke Okamoto

Based on the video game franchise Biohazard/Resident Evil

Voice Cast: Masaki Aizawa as Claus; Hiroto Torihata as Roger; Hideto Erihara as Ed; Tadasuke Ohmizu as Robert; Yoshyiunki Kaneko as Norman; Yurika Hino as Dr. Cameron

Part 1 of the Koichi Ohata Power Hour

Synopsis: Originally, a 3D interactive experience at theme parks and in booths, Biohazard 4D follows in the world of the legendary videogame series as a group of soldiers are sent to locate a female scientist Dr. Cameron, someone who has been working on the T-Virus.

Ah, Koichi Ohata...that's a name that both strikes both fear in to the heart and yet pricks up the ears of many an anime fan from an era before my own.  Fear because, whilst it has a fan base, the notoriety of M.D. Geist (1986) exists as much because it, infamously, was the pet obsession of Central Park Media's head John O'Donnell, who helped get it released, paid for a newer Director's Cut and a 1996 sequel, and was rewarding with the OVA selling hotcakes on VHS despite being a bad anime. Bad to the point, as well, even in regards of ridiculous, lurid anime from the same era it stands out as being terrible in comparison to others which are defended.

Pricking up ears however because, whilst it has its detractors and the last two episodes of the five are dreadful, Genocyber (1994) has its defenders who I'll pitch my tent alongside with, defendable just for the first episode for its lurid and grotesque body horror nonetheless having a nihilistic nuisance, even going as far as using shots of wet clay in just that first episode because Ohata clearly felt drawn gore was woefully inefficient. Arguably as much of its interest comes from Shou Aikawa during his nasty era as its screenwriter, a man behind some deplorable material, some controversial work (Legend of the Overfiend (1989)), but who also went on with acclaim to pen the scripts for the likes of Full Metal Alchemist (2003).

From http://s019.radikal.ru/i608/1603/0c/cf446d6a5d9b.jpg

After the nineties to today, though, Koichi Ohata like many from the OVA era have had odd careers as working anime directors. Ohata did have Burst Angel (2004), a briefly successful if not highly regarded series which existed; after that, well, Ikki Tousen sequels and far less ultraviolent schlock, more otaku bait shows with lots of titillation. You can map the history of anime, in aesthetic and trends, easily with directors as infamous as Ohata, not viewed as a great director, viewed more as a curious one-off, and with the caviets that you'd have to dare watch everything that came after his infamous career high. But he's still someone you can track anime's history with from the nineties with some legitimately interesting tangents.

However, for a mere taster, a bite sized snack of a review, how interesting it was for me to discover in 2000 he worked, with Capcom directly, on a Resident Evil tie-in. Now, Biohazard 4D (a far superior name than Resident Evil ever was) was an interactive movie you saw as a ride, so I confess not only of the dubious nature of seeing the short; but I know I'm missing out on it being in 3D and with other interactive aspects that were included, including a gimmick chair William Castle would be proud of that blew air at the back of a viewer's neck and moved.

From https://img.youtube.com/vi/u44WcBZi-XY/0.jpg

Unfortunately, whenever you have these unique examples of the motion image which have unconventional aspects (3D, even Smell-O-Vision) which are not easy to replicate, companies effectively lop off the ability to see a work over a long time and not even by their own fault. Unless a true archival action is taken so even a country bumpkin like myself could one day see an old 3D production like Disneyworld's Captain EO (1986), directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Michael Jackson, in its original context outside a large metropolis we're stuck into an accidental cultural elitism where few (if many) can see these productions. This'll be worst when Biohazard 4D, despite being part of a major and global franchise, was only available in its home country, in a Japanese dub only, with the added issue that bootlegs that exist don't recapture the full experience unless you get friends to move your chair and use a hairdryer.

Not helping in terms of historical virtue for some potential viewers, and immediately feeding into my obsession with obsolete polygons, is that it's part of the very early stage of three dimensional CGI animation in anime. This is a budget higher, clearly, than early pioneers like A.Li.Ce (1999) [Reviewed here], but nowadays it does look like a Playstation One cut scene. Old CGI is more difficult to sell than old hand drawn animation or sprites and naturally, Biohazard 4D has a stroke unfairly against it in terms of critical opinion. Ironically, considering this was Ohata's first try with polygons, and the two MD Geist anime are a t r o c i o u s in terms of their animation and production, he did quite well here to my surprise for what was always a schlocky haunted house ride.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rHtRPbgGLrc/hqdefault.jpg

In fact, for what is for twenty minutes pure and un-defendable body horror schlock full of grossness, getting the director of Genocyber was actually a creative and clever staff choice. Executer proves the premise of Resident Evil is ridiculous, as no sane villain (even the Umbrella Corporation) should consider an uncontrollable and easily spread virus which regenerates and zombifies any living creature a wise financial investment, but Ohata for a large part of the film literally takes a viewer through the first person perspective of a zombified cockroach among the treats on offer, which is quite funny and awesomely inventive, clearly someone who wasn't going to take the project seriously and thankfully playing it up to the ghoulish delight of viewers like myself seeing it a decade or so later.

For a director who infamously, on the first M.D. Geist, just put together cool scenes with the screenwriter without logic and pissing off the animators as a result, giving him an interactive spectacle and telling him he can be as gory with sprite figures as possible was like giving a child access to a perverse chocolate factory. This is a major spoiler, but it shouldn't spoil the experience if you locate it, that when our soldier lead finally meets the elusive Dr. Cameron, her face growing out of another's say by him, it does evoke the second and third episode of Genocyber when an entire military warship becomes a living Lovecraftian horror who absorbs crewmembers, all arguing that Ohata should've with some helping hands become a much more well regarded figure if he either just provided the ideas for these images or you have Sho Akiwara and well regarded figures involved to spin the material out. Ohata's too nihilistic for his own good, man eating centipede robots in MD Geist II for no reason and an obsession with humanity destroying itself including the innocent in ridiculous ways, but he's clearly someone who with good screenwriters and animators to guide him along should've made some of the most striking body horror anime he could get his hands on.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ugdW2MY4pHA/maxresdefault.jpg

Sadly, whilst gore anime is still made, his brand of gore anime with lovingly rendered split intestines dried out by the 2000s, another fascinating cultural trend is that for every infamously nasty production that still appears (many like Blood-C (2011) not well regarded for other production reasons), they don't have the same sticking power in the conscious. Or, for another theory, they've been replaced by the logic that it's acceptable to spill a lot of blood but a sense of being wildly less of interest just for the fact that, in his own career and for others, its more bankable for Ohata to draw nubile schoolgirls with physically impossible figure shapes rather than a niche he made. Usually I'd advocate more love, less violence in creative art in general, but when it's an uncomfortable sexualisation of underage characters and blinkered sex comedy without an ounce of eroticism, I might be mad enough to want someone to fund MD Geist III instead for a change of pace.

And yes, in lieu to referencing Captain EO, it's perverse in a funny way that, exhibited (probably) at theme parks Japan, a nasty and gory film short like this, with demonic crows pecking at people and spiked dismemberment, was once an interactive ride experience for a large public even if there were edited down versions to trim the gore. Its why in this case, I now wonder if Biohazard was a far better name in context as well as preference for a franchise than Resident Evil, one which is respected and acclaimed (especially after Resident Evil 4 (2005) and 7 (2017)) , but also wallowed in the schlock until the cows came home.

From https://kinolexx.ru/files/film/2017/9/5/39438/
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#80: Landlock (1995)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/
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Director: Yasuhiro Matsumura

Screenplay: ORCA

(Voice) Cast: Ally Coyote as Agahali; Darryl Borden as Luda; Howard Chen as Nosaku; J.F. Searle as Zanark; Mike Pustil as Volk; Sarah LaFleur as Ansa

Viewed in the English Dub

Synopsis: In the world of Zer’lue, a young boy named Luda (Darryl Borden) is assigned the power of the red eye of the Wind God, only for Zanark of the Zul’earth kingdom to invade and kill his father as a plan to have the red and blue eyes of said God for himself.

[Spoilers Throughout]

Landlock? Somehow in watching this generic 90s fantasy anime, part of the Manga Entertainment DVD collection of old licenses, I pine for Violence Jack (1986-1990) again of all things. I cannot even make the comment, admittedly cruel, that I'd never thought Ghost in the Shell author Masamune Shirow could pen a bland sci-fi fantasy anime...only to learn he only contributed to the (admittedly nice) character designs and Landlock has little beyond that in notoriety.

Being able to fish virtues out of any anime, even Landlock has moments of visual vibrancy, originally a two part OVA but put together as a theatrical length one-off by Manga Entertainment, who also (unfortunately) created a terrible English dub, one of the least worthwhile in a while from The Collection series. Visually, the anime at least has a colourful, sci-fi folk world of ancient period dress but with floating sky fortresses, mech robots and the sort of visual styling you would find on a prog rock or power metal album cover, which isn't a bad thing at all. Even the decision, based on providing a contrast between two halves of a godlike power based on red light/eye or blue light/eye, has a nice aesthetic appeal as well as being for an anime (by some unconfirmed and debatable source) that was going to have a Sega Saturn game tie-in that never came to be, thus would've been part of the power up aesthetic if it came to be.

From https://www.onthebox.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Landlock-1.jpg

Unfortunately this in service of the most generic of properties; Shirow merely designing the characters is a shame as, whilst by all accounts as mad as a box of frogs from what he apparently went on to (weird porn and all) in his career afterwards, he would've gone somewhere interesting in ideas even if the results were a car crash. Instead this emphasises the dangers of fantasy as a genre, its reductions of Hero's Journey plotting, and bastardising mythology and religious tales continuing until it's the flavour of cardboard.

Only that sense of visual spectacle occasionally stands out among a really generic cast of characters - standard teenage male hero, quirky anthropologist who is pulled into the tale and does little, the hero's sister and so forth. The only real drama is to be found with the villainess who kill's the hero's father, revealed to be related, thus making her decisions in murder to have a horrible new context, all whilst one of her male squad members working under her is willing to changes sides with her as he is in love with her. It is in itself a fascinating side plot that, in another context, would have been fascinating to see even if there's the absurd notion that she's managing a squad despite being a teenager. That and the fan service nudity, which is creepy when its signposted the main characters are teenagers; it is one of those constantly bizarre decisions in anime found even into the modern day that, even as a fan of anime, has always baffled me when it made far more sense to have characters in their twenties instead of, even without shifting into Hubert Hubert territory, having a tasteless choice and a clear fear of aging.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Uk-HUnWYqN4/TT-raHqW85I/AAAAAAAAAKg/
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After that, it's low in choice to find anything to fill a review up further from. The issues with The Collection, this reoccurring series that only a madman like myself will be obsessed with, is that as with any company Manga Entertainment licensed titles to push out product, and in any era of the anime industry they'll release material that you'd look back on with bafflement if you came across old VHS and DVDs as much as hidden gems, a phenomenon that exists still in the streaming world and probably is worse now. The OVA market, which fed into much of The Collection, is one that for every compelling work (for good or bad) also includes product like Landlock which feels like it squandered artists and ideas.

And Landlock, especially if you can cut a trailer set to Mad Capsule Markets as Manga Entertainment did, would have easily worked as a curious sci-fi tale which yet emphasises a medieval/possible Mesoamerican influenced world, one of a wind god and ritual statues of deities you can use to teleport over vast distances if you have the power, evoking Dune in the blurring the fantastical and the intergalactic. Plus no one would argue with the dynamic meat of a villain, female in this case, who is scarred by what she has been tricked into doing to changing sides for a legitimately profound reason, something more morally superior (and common in anime) than the Western tendency to kill  them of in revenge. Especially more so, as the hero himself is your generic male non-entity, that the female characters have a hell of a lot more cared for it their designs than any of the male characters in their own, another peculiar trait of anime I have less concern of even if there's a fear of a creepy fetishisation in a female character's hair colour.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_Af2YLu2e1k/hqdefault.jpg

Instead, it's bland, that aforementioned dub terrible and also makes me pine for Violence Jack which, for all the horrible content removed from it, at least had a memorable dub. If anything at this stage going through The Collection, the closer to the mid-nineties and onwards the more interesting observations are to be found in the tropes that'd take over, like that weird fan service, and the increasing emphasis on bland male teenage heroes over gruff men. Distinctly, in its sense of colour and style, it's of the nineties only, looking very different from the eighties but different from the modern day after the transition to digital animation techniques.

There's also the sense that, if one is going to appreciate trash or have tropes that I am immediately smitten with, Landlock's too set on telling its generic tale without any sense of surprise or the fun of slightly going insane, a killjoy stubbornly telling an obvious story straight. There's not even a scene of the protagonist ending up in a phantom realm of swirling colours and objects, whilst a supernatural entity providing an exposition dump, that became a personal obsession of mine as a result of viewing The Collection titles, all in spite of the opportunity to in a story which gives you carte blanche for it to happen, and eventually leads to giant hands being summoned that can smash whole miles of forest canopy underneath them....that it wasn't included and could've just makes me feel more disappointed.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/s9vQifilWqo/hqdefault.jpg

No 79: Gunbuster (1988-89)

From https://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/254841-
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a.k.a Aim for the Top! Gunbuster

Director: Hideaki Anno

Screenplay: Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga and Toshio Okada

Voice Cast: Noriko Hidaka as Noriko Takaya; Rei Sakuma as Kazumi "Onee-sama" Amano; Kazuki Yao as Smith Toren; Maria Kawamura as Jung Freud; Masako Katsuki as Kimiko Akai/Reiko Kashiwara; Norio Wakamoto as Kouichiro "Coach" Ohta; Tamio Ohki as Captain Tatsumi Tashiro

Synopsis: In the future, Noriko Takaya (Noriko Hidaka) is a young student at a high school that trains robot pilots to protect the Earth from a hostile alien race. Hoping to follow her father's example, lost to outer space, she strives to become the best regardless of any doubts and handicaps in front of her.

[Major Spoilers Throughout]

Gunbuster has not been helped by its chequered history in terms of availability in the West, nor the potential and pointless handicap in terms of marketability of never having an English dub, is nonetheless a legendary work from Gainax. I will state, outright, that any flaws that I find in the work are subsumed by the lasting thoughts of all Gunbuster does right and what an ambitious project the then-fledgling studio was with hindsight. Being sandwiched between Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), arguably Gainax's most intelligent and ambitious projects, and the cultural behemoth that was Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) doesn't help either as whilst Gainax's legacy is strong due to so many idiosyncratic titles, it does unfortunately mean they have to be jostled in competition for superiority when they're all good.

Six episodes is actually not a lot in terms of length for Gunbuster as, thirty minutes each, they aren't a lot of time for a work which had a bit of ambition beyond its initial premise. In particular it is a curious hybrid of genres and styles that is definitely of the eighties with its synth pop music and style but visibly leaning towards the next decade in themes and tonal shifts. The first episode of Gunbuster however always completely betrays what your expectations are, and also prepare you for the brave if erratic structure of the OVA, that it is entirely an extended parody of the sports drama, in which protagonist Noriko Takaya is the plucky heroine who is chosen to go into outer space, much to the derision of other students, and thus must prove herself to "Coach" Kouichiro Ohta. That it's entirely through giant pilot robots we see using giant skipping ropes, jog across the track and field, and do push-ups is inherently (and deliberately) humorous, right down to a pastiche of Vangelis' Chariots of Fire (1981) score that was removed in subsequent releases.

From http://animuze.com/blog/wp-content
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This belies Hideaki Anno's directorial career, how he juxtaposes tones to an extreme. The eighties aesthetic, alongside incredible and painstakingly hand drawn animation, even includes a vibrant and frankly un-cool sweetness to the proceedings, the opening and ending credit songs even into the darker later episodes cute synth pop about striving to be the best, the end credits one even set over crayon drawn comedy gag stills for emphasis. The sense of humour is to be found as well in the omake, made for the series during its production and even with a few additions for later releases, which are parodies of short science lessons where the science by the cast, all drawn in "chibi" form (squat, exaggerated versions like gnomes), is detailed and realistic but utterly made-up. The gag in Episode 3 of having a character's full and convoluted scientific dissertation in white text on a black background, whilst a karaoke duet about a man and a woman getting drunk takes place between the casts' off-time, is just a cherry on the cake for this playfulness. Between these and the first episode, Gunbuster starts off as a light hearted sci-fi romp but it's already establishes clues to where the plot will go.

And in taking such risks, Hideaki Anno having to sacrifice pace for this tonal shifting, there are issues to be had. There is something very unique, in context of when the OVAs were first released in the late eighties, where this even in the early episodes can still have the humour and titillating fan service, introducing a space station and characters like the Russian female pilot Jung Freud with additional space bathing, whilst there's still the gravity of the threat, the alien forces truly monstrous multi-coloured bio-mechanical masses who implant eggs into suns and planets destroying them, the plot emphasising that this feels like humanity fighting against a natural process of the universe in desperation. Some of the risks haven't aged well, mainly episode third to be honest because it falls on a trope, introducing a character only to kill them off in that same piece, that's been done better elsewhere. It's famous for calling a character for that episode Smith Toren, named after the Canadian manga translator and founder of Studio Proteus who had first hand interaction with Gainax staff through his contributions to Western anime and manga fan culture. It's a wonderful tribute to the late Toren, but as the first crush of Noriko's it does have to be compared to other examples of one character being introduced to an episode and a tragedy taking place, to which Kaiba (2008) and a very early episode of Full Metal Alchemist (2003) show a lot more nuisance to this risk.

From https://sqwabb.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/gunbuster-dilation.jpg

It certainly predates by decades Christopher Nolan's Interstella (2014) in terms of the idea of time dilation, an irony that Nolan's career is practically cursed by anime works which predate his films (Paprika (2006) < Inception (2010) for another example) and does the ideas better. The entire plot of Noriko's trajectory, in lieu as well to the time dilation, becomes one of Gunbuster's greatest successes. Bear in mind, whilst it's named after a monolithic robot that is Earth's secret super weapon, one of the largest in anime still until Gainax's own Gurren Lagann (2007) got ridiculous, is only introduced in action in the last minutes of episode four. Instead, alongside a sense of hope and courage against dire situations, it's the emotional drama which Gunbuster tries its damndest with and succeeds with completely.  

It gets melodramatic, plot twists exposed as it weaves Noriko's own conflicts with her abilities with her senior and co-pilot Kazumi Amano's romanctic longings for Coach, Noriko's own doubts and fears fighting the aliens especially confounded by the time dilation, where merely a few hours in space are months on Earth, those she loves like her high school friend aging as she is still a teenager. The swipe at Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is actually appropriate, as, its legitimately arguable Gunbuster is a more subtle work that tackles the subject more fully, as characters' lives beyond the story are what Hideaki Anno actually deals with rather than the giant robot versus alien plot the likes of me expected. And yes, it absolutely sets up Anno's own career trajectory as Neon Genesis Evangelion, even having the silly humour in early episodes, would do the same thing. The marvel is that the proud otaku who by all accounts still plays with Ultraman toys in the bathtub was always interested in human emotions for his pulp characters from the get-go in his career.

From https://deculture101.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/vlcsnap-5083404.jpg

Also in terms of production, Gainax cannot be accused of being poor, even into the 2000s when their reputation weathers financial and political strife in-house and questionable projects are started, because they always have had very distinct works in premise, aesthetic and. Fully embracing high sci-fi here, there's an attention to detail in even the mechanics of spaceships of the imagination that even a laymen to animation would applaud. As the story takes risks, so the hard work on the production is likewise the same.

Then episode six, the last, appears and whilst its one of the best of any OVA or TV series, it makes a case that whilst he's one of Gainax's best voices before departing for his own studio called Studio Khara, Anno at least to the 2000s was cursed for real, as his output from here to the late nineties shows. Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990-1), a NHK/Toho/Korad co-production, took a turn when the infamous "island" episodes had to be made to pad out the series, filler so bad it traumatises viewers to this day. Neon Genesis Evangelion's production history is very well documented, Anno's mental health issues so bad that later next episode previews were actual sketches rather than animation and the more overt experimentation came in as much for practicality. Anyone who has seen The End of Evangelion (1997) can attest to where that went to traumatise viewers and His and Her Circumstances (1998-9) had the unfortunate scenario where the original authoress hated where the series went with her source material, affecting it as it went along. Anno is a good argument for the auteur theory even in terms of how this streak of bad luck, the chaotic production histories, helped shape the final materials as much as his hard work.

From https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gunbuster/
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Gunbuster's no different as it immediately starts in monochrome; the last episode barring the final moment is entirely animated in black-and-white and the result is a drastic change in tone because of this. It is stylish but it's clearly a production or financial issue which caused this as for a major space battle between the aliens and Earth's space fleets, it's depicted entirely in a montage of still shots and a text scrawl documenting the survivor numbers afterwards¹. And yet, in spite of this, ultimately Gunbuster succeeds as it rakes the viewer over the coals in sadness yet is actually a triumphant, happy ending on display, one of the few examples in any art where a story justifies its happy conclusion by making it a worthy thing succeeded in acquiring. And that's why, flaws and all, I see Gunbuster works and know why it's beloved, a very idiosyncratic work that would be a breath of fresh air back in the late eighties, still idiosyncratic today.

Admittedly that's in mind of it being a show of such a status that's not easily available, the existence of a theatrical cut which removes material that was also released in the West complicated things. As even Evangelion has been picked up by Netflix and to be made available again, Gunbuster is one of the last jewels in Gainax's crown that is harder to glimpse, not helped that whilst worthy of its own stature, the ill-advised decision to effectively sell Diebuster (2004-6) as Gunbuster II in the West didn't go down so well, a show set in the same world (and in hindsight, mirroring the ending of Gunbuster with its own ending with a greater meaning now for me) but an entirely different animal. The talk about Diebuster however is for another day...Gunbuster, the prequel, is something that needs to return back in availability.

From https://www.forbiddenplanet.org/Gunbuster/Visual/Episode6/gb604.jpg

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1) And not necessarily because the black-and-white ink instead of colour being used was a cost cutting measure either...either way, the final episode finds a way to overcome material limitations as is another trademark of Hideaki Anno's.

#78: Psycho Diver - Soul Siren (1997)

From https://myanimelist.cdn-dena.com/
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Director: Mamoru Kanbe

Screenplay: Tatsuhiko Urahata and Toshiaki Kawamura

Voice Cast: Michael Scott Ryan as Bosujima, Kate T. Vogt as Yuki (singing), Sherry Lynn as Yuki, Iona Morris as Angelica, John Demita as Kuroiwa, Julia Fletcher as Kyoko, Kerrigan Mahan as Kunimitsu, Matthew K. Miller as Funky, Michael Forest as Kudo, Scott Weil as Sawada

Based on the novels of Baku Yumemakura

Viewed in English

Synopsis: In the distant future, Bosujima is a "psycho diver" skilled in entering people's subconscious, brought out of retirement to help with a very young female pop star named Yuki plagued by nightmares. The assignment, as he learns more however, is clearly a trap.

[Spoilers Throughout]

From http://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/e/e3/Psycho_Diver_Soul_Siren_shotgun_2.jpg/500px-Psycho_Diver_Soul_Siren_shotgun_2.jpg

It was a disappointment, expecting this to be a horror anime over all these years of learning it, that Psycho Diver isn't really horror. Neither in only forty nine minutes is it actually focused on the world of entering the mind, by way of advanced technology and a superhuman will to prevent ones' head exploding, the enticing premise of the anime OVA unfortunately of less concern to the creators than a conspiracy tale filled with seinen clichés.

And that's ultimately the issue with Psycho Diver that the production instead follows the kind of lurid crime story you could easily remove the more interesting pieces from and change little. A shame as, with its moody anime cyberpunk future and psychic treatment existing in this world, there's a lot to work from in even less than fifty minutes. What you get however is all the clichés - the tough hero involved in a conspiracy; the love interest who immediately, after they finally consummate their love physically, is killed for cheap emotional weight soon after; the post noir tropes and all - without a lot of interesting dynamic meat to them. This is particularly surprising as this is a story which brings in a religious cult who it awakening pop idol Yuki's psychic powers for their own means, the heir of the group, so alongside the barely used dream tech you have a very unconventional story at hand which is squandered instead.

From https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4b/f1/e8
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That and having a bland protagonist, beginning with how Bosujima looks like an utter dork despite the noir-like voiceovers in the English dub version. Hirohiko Araki and Akira Toriyama characters, which exist in a world where ridiculous hairstyles and vampires wearing love kneepads make sense to the tone, would point at him and mock him for having a pineapple on top of his shoulders. Spiked is one thing, this rigid is not only incongruous to his suits and debonair style, not to mention you could use his as a human javelin and hurt someone. How he barely registers his beloved dog being killed but screams to the heavens over another, like a tonal mess in one body, is another matter entirely.

He belongs to the ciphers, alongside sci-fi metropolises, I miss from older anime having never felt the same since the 2000s onwards, but is definitely not done as well here, the cool tough heroes of yore who represent the male target audience and their fantasies. However to make them work, whether rightly or not, the plots have to be dynamic and its disappointing how Psycho Diver barely covers that titular premise. When it does the anime I thought I'd get is briefly there, and where most of the interesting and rewarding moments are too. The strangeness, the stylised use of blacks and minimal colours like violent bloody red, alongside strange psycho visions such as a figure knocking over mirrors representing her memories or the very euro-guro moment where Yuki, the idol, uses Bosujima's severed but conscious head to pleasure herself, no way around that blunt description but as with ero-guro at its best more elegant and compellingly strange in its transgression on the screen than in text.

From https://assets.mubi.com/images/film/113308/
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Those sequences also evoke, now realising who directed the film, Mamoru Kanbe's later career. It's strange such a bland production comes from him as he also directed the notorious TV series Elfen Lied (2004), an anime I accept is deeply flawed but would defend to the death for its complex and uncomfortable content, let alone the greater nuisances in style including the Klimt referencing opening credits he was able to do with a TV series rather than an OVA which presumably had more creative control. That's the oddest thing is how Psycho Diver is not an anime which stands out in spite of its premise, its plot in a nutshell, and how people behind the production went on to have long and diverse careers. That it's a Madhouse co-production from the nineties makes this even stranger in its inaneness, even at their worst always striking out memorable material from this era into the 2000s in terms of their catalogue. It's a paradox nothing more vaguely interesting came from this raw material coming together. More time is actually spent, in terms of care, on the full music video with a film Yuki has where, Madonna-like, she is a rebel sent to jail. Sadly, the rest of the production isn't as unexpected as that entire sequence abruptly playing out.

Because of all this, Psycho Diver is going to have another short review, probably shorter than anime which lasts for even shorter length of time than Psycho Diver itself, who pads itself out with an elaborate music video but skimps on the nightmarish nightmare sequences, whilst stylish as they are, the story promised. There's really a sense that the production was stuck between Crying Freeman (1988-1994) in terms of action absurdity, pulp crime clichés set in the future, and the more interesting horror-science fiction premise, and not prioritising the best moments from one of these or all the base influences. Psycho Diver is still entertaining, in the lurid 90s anime OVA way, but there's far more worthwhile anime and far worse anime that's more rewarding in its awfulness, leaving Psycho Diver in the unfortunate middling middle. Even in terms of Manga Entertainment scraping the bottom of the barrel, as Psycho Diver is an obscure MVM DVD release in the UK, it's not even as memorable as those oddities and failures. A part of me says this knowing my reptilian brain might look back on the OVA and think it wasn't as bad as I thought, still horde the disc, but for you the reader just be aware that whilst a part of me might one day recant this review and wish Discotek re-released it, Psycho Diver even among its ilk from the nineties OVA era is not one of your priorities to begin with.

From https://pm1.narvii.com/6305/
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Bonus#10: Avalon (2001)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pNL6aOmmUX8/U6DxOrukkZI/
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Director: Mamoru Oshii

Screenplay: Kazunori Itō

Cast: Małgorzata Foremniak as Ash, Władysław Kowalski as Game Master, Jerzy Gudejko as Murphy, Dariusz Biskupski as Bishop, Bartek Świderski as Stunner, Katarzyna Bargielowska as the Receptionist, Alicja Sapryk as Jill, Michał Breitenwald as Murphy of Nine Sisters, Zuzanna Kasz as the Ghost

Viewed in Polish with English Subtitles

Synopsis: In futuristic Poland, Ash (Małgorzata Foremniak) is a successful player of an illegal virtual reality game named Avalon. Her awareness of someone who has been watching her from afar within the game, who cannot be identified, leads her to the search for the Seven Sisters and a secret level of Avalon only accessed by a literal ghost in the game.

Mamoru Oshii's career trajectory is fascinating. On one hand, he's known for the likes of Ghost in the Shell (1995) and works like the first two Patlabor theatrical films. For most of his career however, with the exception of starting with the likes of the Urusei Yatsura franchise, he's always been an experimental director who yet managed one major success, one that broke into the mainstream and altered pop culture as a result, and has thankfully had the ability to be constantly in work even if his post-2000s work is mainly difficult to find and divisive even for Oshii fans. Beyond this, he was always this experimental director even at the beginning, one of his contributions to Urusei Yatsura the feature film Beautiful Dreamer (1984), a experimental rumination on reality, or Angel's Egg (1985), exploring his own lapsed religious faith by way of Yoshitaka Amano's gorgeous art. He was always "difficult", even in Ghost in the Shell with its turns into philosophy in the middle of action scenes, especially the divisive 2004 sequel. He's also made a lot of live action work since 1987's The Red Spectacles.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7H1KKPrQIts/U6Dzngw7k0I/
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With this in mind, Avalon's an interesting one-off for Oshii as its a Japanese production but set and co-produced with Poland, a curious choice that yet works to Avalon's favour. The spectre of Communist Europe is felt large in the mostly sepia tone and futuristic drudgery of this world, lost in time and with Avalon the whole point of life for many in response to this, an illegal game where many devote their time and can be able to afford luxuries with the pay from, in spite of posters on the walls proclaiming it should stop. The VR game itself is a constant war zone which exists in ruins and isolated industrial environments, evoking the Cold War era but also World War II. Also, it should be kept in mind that Mamoru Oshii has always been influenced by Western culture - as a man who has packed so much philosophy in his world, he references Western culture as much as Japanese culture so it's not surprising he'd eventually make one film outside his homeland once. Avalon the film is entirely about the search for the titular "Avalon" as well, the afterlife realm for heroes found in Arthurian legend, at one point in his trademark exposition dialogue linking it to another similar idea in Norse mythology too, in this futuristic world the closest thing a virtual reality game which allows Oshii to play with the notion of our perception of what reality truly is whilst offering a world for a player to find those lost in a form of afterlife.

If Avalon has a message, it is still a very relevant take on both the subjectivity of reality, as Ash ultimately ends up in an experimental stage where the film manages to pull a rug under another rug it pulled at the start of the segment, a rarity it manages to make work, and also the increasing sense as video games and virtual reality become more precedent in terms of their relation to reality and our lives, where one can make a career out of it and feels more true life than ours out of it. The decision to depict it through an antiquated, post-Cold War aesthetic absolutely helps avoid technical obsoletion in the themes, the computers here inherently old back in 2001, and the world in and out the Avalon game is barring flashes of colour in sepia.

From https://thefunambulistdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/avalon8.jpg

As with all Oshii works, unless we're talking about the reoccurring Bassett hounds in his work (an animal lover by all accounts), all his films are precise in their references and symbolism. Arguably, Avalon is one of his simpler stories to understand, one that would reward upon repeat viewings but can be absorbed on the first viewing in story and in terms of the spectacle. The film, deliberately artificial in its CGI, dating with grace due to this factor, is matched by its sense of the grandiose, emphasised further by Kenji Kawai's score or the use of classical music especially in the most emotionally powerful moment, an entire performance of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra intercut between an important dramatic incidents in the plot. Whilst known as a cerebral director to a fault for some viewers, Mamoru Oshii was always concerned with human drama and happy to blend it with action, and in this world this is implicit throughout.

This is as well with the danger of the virtual world being unable to be taken seriously. If videogames have a distance to them, then one could never be able to take any threat seriously or any drama involved with it without any sense of absurdity. Here the threat is there, especially when a giant monolithic moving fortress appears at one moment; the drama is here too, Ash part of an undefeated group who collapsed due a moment of failure, or how one member with her in that group has been left comatose in a hospital, the game of Avalon and VR in this world with danger to its use. Whilst it may sound ridiculous to have this type of seriousness to games, Oshii sees games as being worthy of elaborate existentialism, as with even his more light hearted material of yore. And Avalon ultimately succeeds, enough that I wish the film was better known. Unfortunately, Oshii's availability especially from the 2000s, and his career in general, in terms of filmography, is still an issue. A shame especially as Avalon proves worthy of re-evaluation as with a lot of his career.

From https://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/vlcsnap-614491.png

#77c: Violence Jack Part III - Harem Bomber (1986)

From https://orig00.deviantart.net/640f/f/2017/138/
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Director: Osamu Kamijo

Screenplay: Mikio Matsushita

Based on the manga by Go Nagai

Voice Actors: Julia Braams as Mari; John Bull as the Slumking; Nadia DeLemeny as Yumi; William Roberts        as Harem Bomber; Liza Ross as Rose; Bob Sessions as Violence Jack; Barbara Barnes as Sabu; Colin Bruce as Yamaguchi; David Jarvis as Kenichi

Synopsis: In the post-apocalyptic world, the Slum King rules it with an iron fist with his vast hordes; in the midst of it is Mari, captured for his vast sex slavery group, and one of his soldiers named Kenichi, who were a couple before a comet from outer space destroyed civilisation, find each other and attempt to escape the Slum King's minions like Harem Bomber. Whilst this takes place Violence Jack, the personification of death and mayhem, approaches the Slum King's territory.

[Spoilers and Trigger Warnings Throughout]

After the gruelling content of Evil Town, than the more rewarding but still tasteless Hell's Wind, there's Harem Bomber, or the Slum King as its Manga Entertainment release dubs it. By this point Violent Jack is just a personification of violence with supernatural powers, all in the shortest of the episodes, the first released and the one with the least censorship for the English release barring a minute or so. It's also so badly put together you could put it on in an art gallery and be compelled by how low a bar in terms of eighties OVA anime is in terms of quality. Revisiting these edited versions, censorship or not, it's a strange emotional trajectory when you don't dare try to marathon all of them, which I made the mistake of for the first time - Evil Town even butchered forcing one to want to take a shower notwithstanding, Hell's Wind watchable, and Harem Bomber so hellishly awful I am amazed I never noticed had bad it was until now. It's bad to the point it's amazing it ever got sequel episodes.

The script's sleazy pulp, Jack versus the samurai helmeted Slum King, all whilst a young couple find themselves in the midst of sexual slavery and Jack causing mayhem, rife in issues and not even ending with a fight against the Slum King, but one of his minions Harem Bomber, a giant nondescript man whose minions (including a bisexual dominatrix with a metal Phantom of the Opera mask who runs the sex slavery harem) are more interesting than him. It also ends anticlimactically as, to defeat the Harem Bomber, Jack throws the helicopter containing the young couple at him, killing the male love interest who decided to help. That in particular stands up as one of the more ridiculous moments of the OVAs, one of the few plot points which is closer to the absurdity found in most "bad" anime from this era rather than distasteful grim. That, and whilst its connected to the grim sexual slavery subplot and the homophobic evil lesbian figure who molests a captive to the point she has instant Stockholm Syndrome, that her male staff are all large men in really, really tiny leather briefs straight out of the infamous Frankie Goes To Hollywood "Relax" music video.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5DsDxGLZFiU/hqdefault.jpg

The animation is also dreadful even by my tolerant standards, a side to myself I openly admit takes masochistic (even sadistic) delight in bad animation and production value, but even here cringed in horror. It's bad to the point that one of the truly infamous lines of the English dub, a case of verbal tourettes, was actually to cover up an animation mistake. The dub, only covered barely so far in these Violence Jack reviews, is ridiculous; whilst its totally inappropriate for the nasty material at points, intentionally and unintentionally, its ironically one of the reasons why the anime is even re-released by Discotek in the current day, its mad failure one of the few reliving aspects to sooth the septic viewing experience. This line, a stream of verbal insults at Jack's way that (in the one single amusing aspect of Violence Jack for myself) I have considered using as an alarm sound, was forced out due to the lip movements of a character being accidental, just as that young male hero Kenichi  abruptly develops a twitch in an eyeball in one shot. This amongst the general presentation is truly bottom of the barrel for anime, compelling but utter trash even technically, ending with Violence Jack not only able to regenerating a lost eye but turning into a phoenix for reasons I don't understand.

The entire Violence Jack project is an inexplicable creation that came from the eighties OVA boom. One that is morally repugnant yet developed a reputation for many to get re-released and even I would wish for a real explanation to why it even came about, the kind of details that would not be revealed by people who worked on this unless forced out of them in a very awkward conversation. Thinking of the individuals behind this, why they made the series even with the fame of Go Nagai behind it, why it took four years and was this sporadic and wildly bad in various ways. The poor female animators having to work on some of the material in the uncensored version, the poor production staff and voice actors of both genders having to work on certain scenes I thankfully never saw, how this project, clearly brought into existence because Go Nagai is an important figure in all manga and anime, blundered along, ended up taking the artistic decisions that happened.

From http://ekladata.com/zF1eojHKulnC49_tyUIHjRQ-NAc.png

And this is all with knowledge the uncut versions, especially with Evil Town, would drastically effect my opinion further, with Evil Town potentially spiritually and psychologically scarring me if it's as bad as I've read it as. If anything, Violence Jack is synonymous now with how for any good or obscure curiosity found in eighties OVAs, it let problematic and artistically incompetent material in the door too, from this to the extremes of hentai porn anime that began when straight-to-video allowed a liberation of content restrictions. The irony is that, even if it was tasteless and offensive for some still, if Violence Jack's worse moments were toned down or flat out removed it would've work provided the quality was improved artistically alongside fixing major script problems. As I'd gladly had Legend of the Overfiend (1989) without the censored sexual violence, Violence Jack even if it has far less defendable content in plot complexity could be remade into something better. Hell, a remake which didn't fall down the same pit holes this did could make sense, especially as of all people the experimental cult anime director Masaaki Yuasa was chosen to helm a Devilman remake in 2018, and that did very well. (And, not knowing enough about the material and not wishing to spoil it, I'd be reprimanded if I didn't mention Violence Jack is secretly a sequel to Devilman in story, so the remake idea isn't that weird).

Go Nagai, frankly, made some dubious creations even if you only watched the anime adaptations rather than the original source material, but it's noticeable that, for every Kekko Karman (the super heroine who wears no clothes) that was originally a joke that backfired, or a Violence Jack, he also made characters like Devilman and Cutey Honey that can thankfully be interpreted in a variety of ways, still flexible as stories and characters for a variety of tones. Nagai's reputation is too important to dismiss him, as important to anime and manga arguably as a Hayao Miyazaki or an Osamu Tezuka, and if it's unfortunate he likes extremes in gore and sex, he at least has characters and properties which can be malleable and reinterpreted in various ways in contrast to this. The same could happen to Violence Jack, the proto-Mad Max apocalypse still a profound advantage even if everyone's done this material over the decades now. Until then, Violence Jack so far is the infamous punch line that has made even the most hardened of anime fans green in the face viewing its content.

The End (Finally...)

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hzVIq6agNIk/hqdefault.jpg

#77b: Violence Jack - Hell's Wind (1990)

From https://orig00.deviantart.net/f5dc/f/2017/144/9/f
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Director: Takuya Wada

Screenplay: Takuya Wada

Based on the manga by Go Nagai

Voice Cast: Barbara Barnes as Jun; Sean Barrett as Dante; Julia Braams as Keiko; Adam Henderson as Saburo; Bob Sessions as Violence Jack; Jesse Vogel as Gokumon

Viewed in the English Dub Censored Version

Synopsis: After her boyfriend is killed with a gang and she is raped, Jun decided to hone herself into a stronger figure to take revenge, targeting the same gang as they move their evil intentions to target Hope Town, a community trying to survive in the post-apocalypse. In the midst of this, the monstrous Violence Jack appears and even makes the gang nervous, teaming with Jun and a young boy named Saburo from Hope Town to rescue the boy's teacher, and advocate for a better life, named Keiko.

[Spoiler and Trigger Warnings Throughout]

The obvious question, to ask of Violence Jack in general, is whether the premise was actually any good. Go Nagai is too important and interesting to merely dismissed, even in the little I have read, that even if he sadly relied too much on sex and violence his work is compelling for me to begin to explore. There's also the fact that, unless any older example is brought up, this manga when began in 1973 is the first to ever depict the post-apocalypse as a wasteland full of marauding bikers and gangs with Mohawks, leathers and eccentric costumes. The first Mad Max film was released in 1979, whilst the Japanese equivalent Fist of the North Star only began being published in manga form from 1983 onwards. This means this is the nucleus for this idea, which is continued to this day, unless there are equivalents found in literature. Even Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), whilst more mainstream and progressive, deals with subject matter and aesthetic you find in Violence Jack, even the forced sexual slavery of women as Immortan Joe, the villain of Fury Road, has female brides to sire his children and is just one samurai helmet away from looking like the Slum King, a character introduced in Hell's Wind's coda despite the fact Harem Bomber, the episode about his kingdom, was released four years before this one.

From https://vintagecoats.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/
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This is poignant to talk of with Hell's Wind as, even if it's still offensive and misguided, there's the germ of a much more interesting anime here, Hell's Wind the one out of the three Violence Jack anime OVAs that can be "watchable". The issues with these works are still rife here, to discuss, and the censorship was just as severe here, if with the caveat that after the depravity of Evil Town that few would defend, reading up on the exact material cut and seeing fuzzy clips on YouTube, the later in some cases unfortunately set to generic heavy metal riffs and following the worst stereotypes of the gore hound fan base, there's just nasty violence that was edited out here. Some of it awful by the descriptions, others like the boyfriend of a character called Jun being lopped into pieces with a chainsaw awful as well but more in the juvenile gore tone. In context, it'd probably be miserable for myself to sit through, regretting those words, but against we've thankfully strayed away from Evil Town to the kind of nastiness that is more usual in ultraviolent anime from this era, obsessed with hand drawn intestines as the basic form of guts on displayed. It's not necessarily to be proud of, especially as Hell's Wind isn't even comparable to other anime in this lowly sub genre, but we've had worse.

Considering the low budget nature of these trashy episodes, the transgressive pulp with its synth score would be rewarding for me if it wasn't for the guilt for these episode's nasty content, right down to the opening title credits being live action footage of "Violence Jack" being burnt through metal with a blow torch, touches that in a type of anime like Genocyber (1994) which, even if its off-putting for many, has more going on of interest than the tone these Violence Jack episodes sadly fell onto. It's more the case as, boiled down, there are juvenile plots in the midst of all this debauchery. If Evil Town ends with Violence Jack massacring gang members gruesomely, Hell's Wind is the same only with a "Violence Jun" out for revenge against the gang too, all with the sense that its generic bad guys to get their comeuppance, literally figures you'd find in a Mad Max  film that get destroyed only with less gruesome gore on display.

Despite the fact it's a dark story, where (in that unfortunate of stereotypes) Jun's growth is caused by revenge for her rape and the death of her boyfriend in a gruesome chainsaw limb lopping sequence removed from the English version, the story's tone eventually comes more and more cartoonish. For all the death Manga Entertainment had to excise, not as bad as Evil Town but still severe, it leads to Violence Jack having a rocket launcher missile fired directly at him, Jack catching the missile mid-air and surviving even when the rocket still blows him up. It's the kind of sequence you'd get in a JoJo Bizarre Adventure chapter and the tone for that sort of thing, even if it's still gory, is vastly different from what takes place around such scenes here. Frankly the tone is off throughout, between the optimism of Hope Town, and the slither of good found here in the young boy Saburo wanting to help beat the gang, and scenes (also excised from the English version) like hanging a person between two motorbikes and ripping them asunder. If this was a more overtly absurd tone, and wasn't obsessed with fetishising the gruel as all these episodes let alone this one does, maybe it might work but that's the most questioning of "maybes" I could say.

From http://ignis.anime-sharing.com/vault/thumbs/large/84320_f1fz3/[A-FanRips]_Violence
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The misogyny is still rife, worse as Violence Jill never gets revenge, incapacitated and suffering a scene of mutilation whose removal from the censored version is so abrupt and jarring in being snipped out even the blind would notice it, making her brief moment of power taking people out with explosive arrows a cruel tease. (And again, empowering characters through sexual violence is understandably problematic). The issues with the tone make things worse as, ironically, this has the most fleshed out of the plots, where Violence Jack is an actual hero, the kind so inhuman he can have more holes in him "then Swiss chess" per the English dub when hundreds of rounds are fired into him and still survive, even the blood splattering on a horrified Saburo in the midst of it not straying too far from this in terms of extremeness but closer to the more cartoonish ultraviolent anime where it's never an issue for myself. The real issue is that it's still about depraved material, mostly excised, when frankly Violence Jack should've been the more absurd type of ultraviolent anime, which turned down the grotesque material and been more about the exaggerated gore. In general, the ultraviolent anime from the eighties and nineties, even if they have issues in their material, managed a balance in the best and most interesting in them which never left a bad taste in their mouth.

More so as, whether it's too nihilistic or not, you could've wrangled an interesting plot here from such simplistic material about trying to survive the apocalypse, the good hearted female teacher trying to help lead the children to become better people whilst their parents are obsessed with just surviving as they are. The nastiness the gang deals too them, if toned down a little, wouldn't be inappropriate especially as, in spite of it, the town joins Violence Jack to take them on. A shame that really doesn't happen, as Jack fights everyone and a helicopter by himself, but it's the right frame of mind to have gone to and made something that even simplistic would've been more rewarding. Considering Go Nagai is the creator of more exaggerated, hyperactive works like all his contributions to the giant robot genre, a salvageable version of this entire OVA episode would've taken this direction.

Production wise, it's pretty average although in Hell's Wind defence, arguably it's the best technically of the three episodes. Stuck with what we have, rather than an armchair theory of what the OVAs should've been, Hell's Wind is arguably the one of the trio you could survive with the least trauma - even if I had watched the uncensored version including the graphic removal of limbs with a chainsaw, merely seen in the Italian dub in bad quality, or the other little cuts, even the bad taste on the tongue and distressed would've not been as awful as the many other things I can sadly imagine myself suffering through, like the aforementioned uncensored version of Evil Town. It's just a shame, from the laundry list of material, it's still not great and the notion of defending any of Hell's Wind is pointless barring suggesting the materials could've worked if it was done better, a really desperate argument for any to fall on their swords (or jack-knives) for. It would also be criminal not to mention that Takuya Wada, the episode's director, is listed as well for the screenplay, for the storyboards, for the character designs and for animation director, alongside working on Evil Town. Unfortunately, he would not direct anything else in the anime industry, only as an animation director, so if Violence Jack claimed one confirmed victim, it was he.

Sadly there isn't any funny lines in the English Dub to soften the viewing experience of Hell's Wind, but this screenshot thankfully makes up for it.
From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NCbDHFpQtOg/hqdefault.jpg

To Be Continued...