Bonus #9: Blue Seagull (1994)

Director: Jung-il Oh

Screenplay: Kyoung-woo Kim

Voice Cast: Choi Min-soo as Hail; Kim Hye-soo as Chaerin; Jeong-hwa Eom as Joshua; Yeong-guk No as Alfonso; Jo Hyeong-gi as Joey

Viewed in Korean with Subtitles

Synopsis: When an ancient sword is stolen, Hail (Choi Min-soo) is hired to travel to the USA to retrieve it back from the Mafia, finding himself against the criminal underworld.

Author Note: This review will spoil the entirety of Blue Seagull. A very difficult film to see, this decision is as much due to the negativity of the review, finding its worth just reading the entire text here rather than for you the reader to sit through the film I experienced. If you still want to see Blue Seagull, at least you was warned. Also, trigger warning for discussion of sexual violent, and also warnings in general as even a description of how bad Blue Seagull could affect you badly.

And I wish I could open the review without those notes of cautious, but unfortunately Blue Seagull is really that bad. A film halfway through, due to a certain plot event I will sadly have to discuss, where even my love technically abhorrent animation has to give over to revulsion or (in the time past since viewing the feature film) a sense of distaste and bafflement at how a production collapses to the extent it does here. Even low rent animation I have sat through over the years, like Beauty and Warrior (2002) from the producer of Ninja Terminator (1985), could look at Blue Seagull and realise it's better than it, and tragically it only takes someone to see this film and the important contributions South Korean animation studios have made in outsourcing of American and Japanese productions to be undermined in comparison. Even next to Armageddon (1996), another failed Korean animated production from only a few years later, and this attempt at an erotic action thriller looks like the Hindenburg disaster.

For three-quarters of its length, even if still an embarrassment, I was willing to still enjoy Blue Seagull as attempting to match the type of sleazy, dumb straight-to-video anime from Japanese from this era, only with a lesser animation quality and meant for theatrical release. For that length of time the film's memorable for all the wrong reasons in a way that's entertaining. At first its deceptive with its stylist opening, turning the voice actors' portraits into their animated characters, only to afterwards jumps right into the kind trashiness Japan was doing at the time too, a mass gunfight and massacre which leads to the McGuffin (a sword) being stolen and the plot to hurdle on in a ramshackle way. With a lead hero, named after a of weather phenomenon, whose only personality trait is stoicism, the film leads to a mix of violence, gore and as per the erotic genre tag sex. Obviously a question arises. Most will ask what "Blue Seagull" as a title actually means, which I have no idea how to answer unless it's an euphemism for something dodgy I have no knowledge on. The other question, more pertinent, is that as this is meant to be an erotic thriller, is it actually sensual or titillating? When the first scene, even before the film starts proper, is of a woman (whose face we never see) being leered at on a motorcycle, a purely animated figure, then the answer is no, it's just tacky and misjudged lavicious behaviour.

From http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/korea/
specials/images-lost2/blueseagull-1.jpg

Even before the problematic scene I will eventually get to, you are watching utterly cheesy softcore images of characters than actual people. It neither helps Blue Seagull's animation is poor. It's the character designs more than the backgrounds which are the issue, alongside how their facial expressions are both between bland and becoming overtly cartoonish despite the story being gritty. One scene in a strip club, meant to be sensual, is closer to the Tex Avery cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) but crudely produced, so much so the stripper is able to use her breasts to give an over- amorous male patron a black eye as if a sentient body part, the kind of tonal shift (and body morphing) that catches you off guard in a negative way.

It also doesn't help when, to add to the titillation, they include a former love interest named Chaerin (Kim Hye-soo) who has no plot connection onscreen whatsoever with Hail despite sharing flashback related back story. They cross paths but she never encounters him fact-to-face even when the climatic skirmish is a floor above a car show she is part of. It's merely an excuse to draw a voluptuous female character who, bizarrely, has a comical introduction having an erotic dream on a bed  about Hail whilst her pet dog (drawn more overtly cartoonish) licks her to amplify thus fantasy. There are a lot of plot digressions like this which are to be questioned, especially as the film is only over an hour long. The sword, when found, is connected to a deity that appears and abruptly tells Hail he's the chosen one, a point never brought up again. Loose threads are found throughout, the sole fleshed out character within the entire film being Alfonso (Yeong-guk No), who with his red ponytail and facial scaring is also a racist psychopath, an issue I will get to later too.

From https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/f/f0/
Alfonso.png/revision/latest?cb=20140616184031

If it was all this illogical chaos I would've enjoyed Blue Seagull. Utterly irredeemable but so absurd I would've found something to enjoy. The sort of insane material where, to chase the hero, Alfonso indiscriminately mows down a men's bathroom with a machine gun whilst, part of a tendency in South Korean cinema of all kind, it splices in comedy with a frightened attendee watching this transpire. The plot barely ties together in spite of its simplicity and even minor characters are full of quirks, like the arms dealer who sits in the same chair in the same dingy warehouse watching porn when no one's there. Blue Seagull also has CGI animation, animated scenes involving cars and vehicles entirely done in computer animation, so the environments (like an airport) are also a basic, crude digital construction around them. It's not that different, honestly, from other computer effects from the time so I can let Blue Seagull off the hook, particularly as it adds to the trashiness. Watching the film in Korean, admittedly, also adds unexpected class to material that doesn't deserve it. Interestingly despite her character Chaerin being utterly pointless, Kim Hye-soo would have a prolific career in Korean cinema, as would Jeong-hwa Eom as Joshua, an American secretary who helps Hail and more charisma as a character than many. Eom's involvement is surprising, considering how bad Blue Seagull is, as she is a prolific actress and singer/dancer. Someone of a huge reputation in Korean music who has won awards for her music, has starred in a lot of television and acted in many films, and is considered a major figure in entertainment in the country.   She is possibly recognisable for readers outside of South Korea as  well for playing the lead character in Princess Aurora (2005), a film which rode on the back of the Tartan Extreme influenced popularity for Korean cinema, a revenge film where she presides on the promotional material in a leather jacket and clinging black hair. Even the dodgiest animation gains a lot when it's not the broad, wooden English dubs you're listening to but the original language dubs with named talent, even when that might prove a poisoned chalice for said participant, when there are filmographies of Eom which don't even mention this film, showing a potential sign of utter embarrassment about it as well.  

Then the problematic sequence takes place, which is pertinent as it involves a rape scene with Eom's Joshua character. Joshua, even as a stereotypical attractive figure, is vague interesting as an African American (or mixed raced) woman with bright red hair who gladly helps Hail and introduces him to the world of the US. who becomes a romantic interest for the hero. Unfortunately, when Alfonso has her kidnapped for transgressive against his boss, it leads this scene which thankfully implies the sexual violence but is prolonged in the moments before with him chasing her, arms tied back, around the room in a way that stops being nasty but just uncomfortable in a troubling way, of how the film itself is leering at the moment. Worse, when the deed is committed he flippantly kills her with gunfire, this turning her death into a "woman in the refrigerator" moment where she is merely meant to be a figure to get revenge for, left for a long time as a bloody corpse on the bed before anyone finds her. The entire plot point sucks the life out of Blue Seagull as, alongside her life flashing before her eyes, the entire series of events is the film making a mistake too many, worse when its intercut with a helicopter versus helicopter battle with no sense of story priority involved, merely part of the action.

From http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/korea/
specials/images-lost2/blueseagull-2.jpg

It does cause me to self critique myself, having defended anime which have had similar if not worse scenes of this within them. The first answer is that I've never defended any scene of sexual violence or rape in animated or live action film, and wish they weren't included if not depicted in a way that takes the severity of such an act seriously, a problem in anime of a certain era where (like manga) where it was always meant for shock value rather than carefully thought of. Even a work like Urotsukidôji:The Legend of the Overfiend (1989), where there's the issue of the transgressive tone being deliberately, is the kind of understandably condemned animation I wish hadn't taken the route it had and avoid this leering misogyny within itself. The second answer, based on the first, is also that the context and content around the problematic scene even in a trashy work with debatable artistic value can drastically effect one's reaction to the material.  Contrast Blue Seagull to the 1988-1994 anime adaptation of Crying Freeman [Reviewed here for contrast]. Also an erotic action thriller, there is one rape scene directly taken from the manga which is worse and I wish wasn't included. It was however a single scene in a multi episode series where, whilst it's still lurid and arguably sexist, the sex within the rest of the episodes are consensual or involves characters, male and female of all shapes, inexplicably taking their clothes off even for a fight. There is the context that Crying Freeman is so absurd and ridiculous as well that, even if that scene is problematic and should be condemned, it is dampened (and practically drowned) but how utterly silly the series before and after is, to the point anyone can distance themselves from that moment¹. With Blue Seagull however, from its rape scene onwards, collapses completely and wasn't even worth trying at all before the sequence even happened. In general, the moment that problematic sequence happens the film gets worse, becoming a rare example of a true trash fire as the plot starts to get more garbled and the production falls off the cliff it was barely hanging on to.

The severity of Blue Seagull, jarring against the tone, causes one to feel dirty and is visibly unintentional in desired reaction. It neither helps the perpetrator Alfonso is the only vaguely memorable figure throughout. His voice actor is the one who adds flourish to dialogue. The character has charisma barring Joshua. He gets the kind of heroic moment the hero should've, surviving being stabbed in the eye and inexplicably falling out of the window of a skyscraper at the same time, climbing up from outside by pure will power. All which is a problem as he's a sociopath who is openly racist to the Korean and African American characters with his slurs, a murderer and eventually a rapist. The worse part, which makes the use of a rape scene much worse in Blue Seagull than other tasteless anime, is that neither Hail or Joshua's brother, who gets involved are the ones who kill Alfonso despite the deliberate using of her death for cheap emotional effect. No, a mysterious bystander who is also after the sword, seen in the background of scenes, creeps up behind Alfonso whilst he's monologuing to the heroes and snaps his neck instantly. By this point the film's a mess more than before² - what with the sword's inexplicable (and never mentioned again) mythological side and  Chaerin seeing but never talking to Hail, only adding to the distaste of these particular events. An abrupt conclusion at a gravestone with the heroes crying at Joshua's grave just adds to the horrible experience with an exclamation.

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

And its becomes a tragedy as the end credits are live action behind-the-scenes footage of Blue Seagull's production. There's a growing sense of despair to be found watching the creation of a film knowing said production, watched beforehand, was dreadful. The intricate illustration of animation cells. The promotional posters for Blue Seagull on the walls. The voice actors in the recording booth. Animators working hard in a small room, each side facing away from each other at their tables, all with the horrible realisation they worked on a project which fails on all levels. The kind of bleak though to possess that just confirms how utterly awful Blue Seagull was. Utterly compelling to witness, compelling to write about and perversely worth having seen, but so toxic as much of this new obsession of mine is potential psychological trauma. Its not even a case of "so-bad-its-good", a childish suggestion and an ill advised one as no one should readily want to watch a film this dreadful to sit through.

From https://s1-ssl.dmcdn.net/-V9J/x1080-04P.jpg

==

1 - When the male anti-hero decides to take revenge against the perpetrator, a wrestler, by going to a wrestling show, wearing a Lucha Libre mask, and challenge him to a match, it doesn't defend the offensive scene but it becomes bizarre in a way that diffuses the material completely.

2 - This is also when the English subtitles, fan made, started to become vaguely incomprehensible in an almost symbolic way of Blue Seagull fully collapsing into a nightmarish experience.

#56: Darkside Blues (1994)

From http://garaitimi.hu/blog/wp-content
/uploads/2011/03/darsideblues.jpg

Director: Yoriyasu Kogawa

Screenplay: Mayori Sekijima

Based on the manga by Hideyuki Kikuchi

Voice Cast: Akio Ohtsuka as Kenzou; Hideyuki Hori as Gren; Kotono Mitsuishi as Mai; Kouichi Yamadera as Enji; Masako Katsuki as Tamaki; Maya Okamoto as Selia; Natsuki Sakan as Darkside; Nozomu Sasaki as Katari; Shinichiro Miki as Chris; Yasunori Matsumoto as Tatsuya

Viewed in English Dub

Synopsis: In dystopian Japan, one giant corporation named the Persona Century Corporation rules the world, their lair high above the planet Earth on a satellite with its own giant laser. However, in a world where science and magic have intermingled, a figure who dubs himself Darkside appears on the street of the same name one night, out of a void in a horse drawn carriage. Living within a hotel, Darkside only intermingles as a psionic healer, but his influence on Mai, the youthful leader of the anti Persona group dubbed Messiah, is going to have an immense effect on her and those she stands side-by-side with.

Opening scene, fearing this would turn into something gristly when a woman is stripped to the waist about to be tortured by another, more so as Darkside Blues' original author (both the manga and short story) also wrote the source material for Wicked City (1987). Instead, whilst it's still nasty, the villainess, as she monologues with a pet bird on her shoulder, plans to torture what is revealed to be a female rebel against the Persona Century Corporation by slowly turning her into gold whilst alive through a science-meets-alchemy pincher machine that sticks in both sides around her stomach. This is fair warning, and apt introduction, to the curious world of Darkside Blues, a world where futuristic sci-fi is intertwined with mysticism, robots against magic welding mutant assassins. 

It stresses that, in terms of anime of a certain generation, novelist and manga author Hideyuki Kikuchi has had such a profound influence. I've mentioned one of his more infamous works, at least with the anime adaptation with its transgressive content, but he also (with the vital contributions of legendary illustrator Yoshitaka Amano) created Vampire Hunter D, a series which has had a lasting legacy. Alongside other titles I will inevitably get to, as he has had a lot of material adapted into anime, his style of crossing various genres is very idiosyncratic to any project based on his work, allowing animated adaptations a lot of leeway to work with.

From https://www.film-rezensionen.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/
02/Darkside-Blues-Frontpage-720x400.jpg

Darkside Blues is such an example but with the warning that, sadly, this is all we got in terms of a proper adaptation of Kikuchi's source material, throwing the viewer in media res in the midst of the world and not having a resolution that resolves the dystopian world it begins with. It is not a film which ends with good triumphing over evil, but a character, not even the protagonists, deciding to join the fight against the big bad. Like a lot of anime, it's a film which teases you with such an enticing world only for it to be a mere slither of the source material. So many anime have been promotional material for manga, sometimes (a lot of times) without the original novels or manga even being available in the West. When it is good, it's always tragic to witness.

What you do get with Darkside Blues thankfully repays the patient viewer with pure atmosphere. The hybrid of genres which is common in anime but adaptations of Kikuchi's work are distinct. This particular one is even different by itself because it is laced in a slow, deliberate mood and emphasises characters, surprising for a film merely eighty minutes long. Immediately made clear is also the sharp contrast between its dystopian story against gothic production design, a fascinating melding which works beautifully as it does in the 2000 adaption Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, only here it's not the post-apocalypse but pure urban sprawl as a setting within one of the last environments the villains haven't bought. All of this story is whilst, in spite of having some actions scenes and gore, being a deliberately moody work, intercutting moments of a spider in a room with red lace or silent contemplation against those aforementioned action scenes. That it's a mere snapshot of a larger world is both despairing but also adds to the power to the film. In anime, for whatever reason, you can have these titles (especially from the nineties) which never had proper endings but still developed fans, all of us gnawing at our knuckles as to why there was never a sequel, but loving the final result nonetheless. It immediately won me over, when the opening credits are finally shown, but scoring the first shown down between heroes and villains to an honest-to-God American blues song.

It's rewarding as well as, for what little time you spend in this world, its characters are unconventional for anime. Darkside, despite being your typical dark and handsome stranger with unnatural powers from the void he came from, is intentionally passive. He feels like he's from the same template as D, Kikuchi's most famous creation in his quiet manner and elegance, but taken to a further extreme that he deliberately inert in his involvements. He will lash back, but always deflecting bullets and magic missiles fired at himself, instead deliberately stays off to the sides, intervening to heal other characters and stop the villains from harming people. He spends most of his time throughout the film, in the most intriguing aspect of the world building, within a motel ran by an old woman where characters are pulled by a magic force to the room they want to go, where among his potential abilities (including maybe even extending the life further of the old woman's pet cat) is counselling of clients' memories and dreams, healing them and (even outside the hotel) using this ability to push the protagonists to major decisions but pulling them into their traumas and memories. Literally he's a counsellor to the real main characters, who just happens to be a quietly spoken man capable of horrifying dark void abilities if anyone was insane to push him. Even individuals specifically sent in by the Persona Century Corporation to deal with him that have their own special abilities, able to turn entire crowds of bystanders into stone which break to pieces (and presumably die if not already) in the combat soon after, find themselves against someone very conventional as protagonists within this type of nineties adult anime. In another twist, although its sadly lost when it comes to the English dub, is that a female voice actress named Natsuki Sakan voices Darkside rather than a man, which adds a unique dynamic for viewers.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nZh2z2xZsBY/hqdefault.jpg

Instead it's the female characters who are the most interesting. That's not to say there's some curious characterisations for the better, most if not all the characters even for the few minutes they have curious and unique, such as that enforcer sent against Darkside having a heroic moment rescuing a woman from a group of men which complicates things, or the mutant magic welding assassin who literally looks like an older, chubby Japanese salaryman. But in terms of complex characters, Mai as the leader of the Messiah group, who holds a vaguely told back-story of trauma, is interesting as the strong willed but thoughtful leader, she and her motley crew finding themselves further against Persona especially when a militarised rebel escapes into their midst. Another character, a nurse named Selia, is even more interesting and is the figure who gets the real ending of the adaptation; with even greater trauma in his life due to her family being victims of the giant space laser Persona own, she keeps her father's rifle as a traumatic memento, her progression from being a mere friend to Mai's cause onwards where the resolution of the film comes from. Thankfully this means Darkside Blues, unlike other anime, actually has an ending but it's fascinating that this ending is a miniscule character drama set within a huge world left untouched, as if a fragment of what could've gone obviously for longer. Again, the slither of virtues is rewarding even if I wished this had lasted onwards to more.

Production wise, its gorgeous. This era of anime gladly lavished even the most lurid of stories with a distinct production design, and generally have a sense of flair both in background and character designs that stood out, details that could easily be ignored especially in some of the worst, less cared for OVAs from this same era. All that would've been as painstaking as everything else to include,  such as having the lead male villain wear a golden mask in public, deliberately designed to look robotic and faceless for ominous. It's a style that could've easily turned into clichéd Goth aesthetic, a lot of black and moody characterisation, were it not for the curious inclusion of genres like science fiction. Arguably, when it comes to adapting Hideyuki Kikuchi's work, there's no fear in the slightest of it ever become clichéd, even the more cartoonish 1985 anime of Vampire Hunter D being distinct. So much so that, yes, that it has no large scale resolution and never had any animated sequels or remakes is disappointing. [And the likelihood of finding the ADV Manga translation of the manga adaptation is only through pure luck and an excavation through countless second hand dealer boxes and warehouses of stock for long dissolved companies.] So one has to gnash their teeth, like I have, when the material is as compelling as this.

From https://www.animeclick.it/images/
Anime_big/DarksideBlues/DarksideBlues33.jpg

Bonus #8: Wolf Guy - Enraged Lycanthrope (1975)

From https://ireallyhavenothingtosaybutiwanttosayitallthesame.files.
wordpress.com/2017/05/wolf-guy-poster.jpg?w=750

Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

Screenplay: Fumio Kônami

Based on the manga work of Kazumasa Hirai

Cast: Sonny Chiba as Akira Inugami; Etsuko Nami as Miki; Kyôsuke Machida as Kato; Saburô Date as Tsukada; Kôji Fujiyama as Seizo; Tooru Hanada as Inoue

Synopsis: Akira Inugami (Sonny Chiba) is a journalist who becomes embroiled with a string of inexplicable murders by an invisible force, connected to a woman Miki (Etsuko Nami) left traumatised and vengeful by a corrupt businessman, and a shady organisation interested in her and Inugami. Inugami however is also the last surviving member of the clan of people who were lycanthropes, Inugami able to gain invincible power during the full moon.

[Author's Note: This will be a convoluted review in terms of choice of subject. I usually cover live action adaptation of work that had anime of them, be they the original source material or not. Kazumasa Hirai's character of Akira Inugami, among the legendary manga author's other creations like 8 Man, was written of within two different titles, one about him as an adolesent and as an adult, not to mention a remake of the manga character decades later that is more adult. There are adaptations of these multiple versions including a 1993 anime also called Wolf Guy. The 1975 Sonny Chiba film is based on Adult Wolf Guy.]

Wolf Guy, or my preferred title Enraged Lycanthrope, does promise the legendary Sonny Chiba will turn into a werewolf. That sadly never happens, but when you have one of the most charismatic and hardest working men in Japanese cinema in his prime, eyes burning through the viewer as he moves onscreen, so no one should complain, especially as he looks like a half-wolf man anyway with his giant eyebrows and mass of black hair. Wolf Guy itself is a deeply flawed but curious example of adaptation manga, showing how even the most pulpiest of material is belied by the advantage the original printed material has in having more time to tell its story than a film. That's not to say Wolf Guy doesn't try. For all my issues with the film, for three-quarters of the length, you have a lot to take in as an inventive and imaginative production. When a psych rock guitar solo blares over the iconic crashing waves title for Toei studios, it at least shows the enthusiasm was there even if it was too ambitious in the end.

From https://uphinhnhanh.com/images/2017/06/02/Wolf.Guy.1975.1080p.BluRay.x264-RedBlade.mkv_snapshot_00.16.39_2017.06.02_13.01.24.jpg

It fully envelops itself into the style of many Japanese genre films from the seventies. Dutch tilts of the camera throughout, a vibrant aesthetic matched by shooting between the neon drenched, Japanese cityscape for most of its length and a killer soundtrack. Chiba is a magnetic figure who can even make the ridiculous moments credible, watching on as a person is mauled by an unknown force, with gruesome practical effects, and show shock that is credible, or show slow burning rage when learning of the tragic back-story of Miki that is subtle. Able to make regenerating his own guts back into his stomach credible, able to make himself look credibly like a half-wolf man without turning Lon Chaney into one. It emphasises why he became a phenomenon not just in his homeland. So much so it probably explains why this film's first ever DVD release is not in its home land but the UK and USA in 2017, because Chiba has made so many films just in the seventies that Wolf Guy was probably lost among the herd.

To the film's credit, for an hour or more its completely plot orientated and manages to juggle its various strands with interest. There's the inherent absurdity there, common in Japanese pulp cinema, but fans of these type of films like myself come to them for this exact reason. Its a form of pressurised pulp storytelling created by short deadlines and having to keep the viewer engaged even if it will be bizarre. Sometimes it falls into the potentially tasteless or even offensive, but Wolf Guy is an interesting example of a weird action film which never falls over that line. Moments are of their time, when a mysterious female motorcyclist rescues Inugami from yakuza only to reveal she is wearing nothing under the biker leathers for an abrupt sex scene, but other details like the whole invisible tiger subplot, which has to be done with a superimposition of one and eerie music, are timeless in their strangeness, always able to raise an eyebrow without coming off as idiotic. More so when, as the Arrow Video interview with director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi revealed¹, he had reservations with adapting the material and had no idea how to go about making a werewolf film, which even if this is not viewed by him as one of his best productions, says something positive about his working director's style when it's still exceptionally well made.

Surprising Wolf Guy is very serious in tone too. Only when the secret group planning to weaponise the hero come into the fray fully does the more openly ridiculous moment increase. Most of the plot before, even with the invisible tiger, is a pretty bleak crime story with supernatural elements. One of the most fascinating details about Wolf Guy is the character of Miki, set up as a major character who was left with syphilis and traumatised after a gang rape, a completely sympathetic figure even as she mercilessly kills her aggressors with the invisible tiger, a manifestation of her trauma emphasising her state of mind especially when the shady governmental group plan to use as it a literal weapon to assassinate political figures gruesomely, even more sympathy for her and emphasising their evil. Helped because the protagonist becomes bend on helping her get revenge, Etsuko Nami gets a lot with the character to work with,  just from her proper introduction performing a song about scorn at a strip club to the bemusement of the patrons as they rain money on her prone body laid on the stage. (And thankfully, compared to other Japanese films from the seventies, the rape scene is both done tastefully and is entirely depicted as awful, emphasising the trauma involved). It evokes, once there is the brainwashing involved, an entirely different work named Elfen Lied, at least the 2004 TV anime series, of female characters with unnatural invisible forces capable of destructive tendencies, most if not all of them traumatised towards violent behaviour by a shady, morally abhorrent group usually consisting entirely of men.

From https://www.mondo-digital.com/wolfguy4.jpg

For the first hour or so Wolf Guy's perfectly paced. Even within the limits of its less than ninety minute running time it feels properly put together. Inugami's own back story, done in the opening credits and in flashbacks as a monochrome depiction of his clan's massacre, is appropriately sombre and economic in their storytelling by visuals. The constant warnings to the viewer in text of when the next full moon is about to appear emphasises his unnatural power, a ticking clock to them, whilst throughout what begins as Chiba doing crime story narration has an appropriately pulp philosophy to it to match the more sombre tone. Clearly the film was trying to marry the more fantastical manga elements to his history of gritty action films, and the result works to its favour in mixing the two sides. This is of course an action film too. Chiba's style, involving his Japan Action Club stunt team, is not the graceful martial arts of the Chinese and Hong Kong films but a nastier, Japanese martial arts closer to brawls, flourished by quirks like Inugami using coins as projectiles, a trait of manga heroes but also a trope in a character needing a fighting style gimmick found in countless Japanese pulp stories of any form.

There's of course, when the government group is involved, a change to when Wolf Guy gets stranger. The immediately greater amounts of gore, when it was already explicit with giant claw marks appearing on victims out-of-the-blue, and in a queasy and strange moment to get Inugami on their side, torture by performing surgery on him without anaesthetic, done with grainy and very real surgery footage spliced in. It is illogical why they would act it out, but its compelling and somehow makes senses in a nonsensical way. There's even a touch of the even more overtly symbolic, literal blood rain during a wolf guy versus wolf guy that is the kind of evocative moment, the little touch, that stands out in Japanese pulp cinema and gives much more of a thrill as a result.

The problems arise with how the film ends and resolves plot details. A new plot event happens very late in the film which has the potential to work, where Inugami flees to the woodlands of Japan and meets a potential new love interest, an emotional context as she is connected to his clan's past. It does contain one of the strangest sex scenes I've seen in a while, next to a subterranean lake, where it intercuts the scene with flashbacks to him as a baby being breastfeed by his mother, the dialogue explaining her as both his love and new mother figure even liable to make Sigmund Freud roll his eyes in response. Unfortunately, there is only ten minutes left to Wolf Guy when it gets around to concluding the film. Ten minutes is enough to conclude a straight forward action film but there's been a lot of build up of more idiosyncratic and interesting details which get abruptly ended. The girl in the refrigerator phenomenon, coined in comic books to denote female characters killed merely for the sake of an emotional register from male characters, plagues the ending as does the entire discarding of Miki's subplot, the most engaging in terms of a vaguely complex, tragic plot but rushed and completely wasted. It turns into generic action when Wolf Guy was much more interesting than this even as mere pulp, and as a result it spoils the virtues found before immensely.

From http://blueprintreview.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/wolf_guy_ee_3_758_426_81_s_c1.jpg

===

1. From the 2017 Arrow Video Blu-Ray release.

#55: Psychic Wars (1991)

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTYxMTk3NDQ3N15
BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTU1MzIyMQ@@._V1_.jpg

Director: Tetsuo Imazawa

Screenplay: Yasushi Ishikura

Adapted from a novel by Yasuaki Kadota

Voice Cast:

[Japanese] Hideyuki Tanaka as Retsu Ukyo; Hiromi Tsuru as Fuyuko Asahina; Hiromi Tsuru as Yashaō; Toshiko Fujita as Shun'yō-ni/ Youni Shun; Daisuke Gouri as Demon of Earth; Ikuya Sawaki as Demon of Water; Junko Hagimori as Shunmin-ni; Masaharu Satō as Demon of Sky; Masami Kamiyama as Shunkō-ni; Ryūji Saikachi as Elder; Shigeru Chiba as Prof. Takase

[English] Alan Blyton as Ukyo Retsu/Demon of Sky; Julia Brahms as Fuyuko Asahina; Lisa Ross as as Shun-You; Roger May as Prof. Takase

Viewed in English Dub

Synopsis: Surgeon Ukyo Retsu finds himself embroiled in a Millennia old struggle between human beings and demons, from a period before the birth of Japan as a civilisation, when he treats a mysterious old woman for a monstrous cancer.

Throw a pebble into the water and you'll hit an obscure OVA. Some of them managed to linger into even the DVD era, the likes of Manga Entertainment licensing titles from the video era and repackaging them into trailers sound tracked with The Mad Capsule Markets. As a result, among the obscure Psychic Wars is pretty known for an older anime fan or the curious who dig second hand bins. Enough to warrant a permanent place on the Anime News Network worst-of list, voted by all its users, alongside being generally pissed upon. It's strange as, less than an hour long and amongst some true duds in Japanese animation, I have suffered through worse. Although that could be bias as I've inexplicably bought second hand DVD copies more than once of the fifty minute anime.

Like many, it's a strange mix of various genres and tropes that are found within anime and still rear their head into the modern day. They intermingle and create weird hybrids you can decipher and pick apart from older titles, from ancient lost civilisations, in this case an alternative history of one back when Japan was merely land full of primitive early men, demons (as in many anime), time travel, science smashed head first into esoteric weirdness, and the fact that Japan's religious background (Shinto at least) feeds into the symbolism even if not explored with remotely any depth here. Psychic Wars also has the unique distinction, which gives it some infamy just from seeing it in the Manga Entertainment DVD trailer, of our hero Ukyo Retsu, who looks like Kenshiro from the Fist of the North Star series in glasses and a doctor's white coat, punching flying cancers to death.

Hands up, I confess a love for these cheap anime productions for their gaudy horror/fantasy aesthetic and plots, colourful in a tacky way and the monsters all bulky toothed ogres who could be found in a Monster in My Pocket fanny pack. It is from Toei Animation, but could've been done by anyone. So much so that the one stylistic touch is so distinct, when Retsu first enters primitive Japan and the scene is entirely in monochrome until he defeats the horse riding demons, that you don't care if it was deliberately or cost effective. The other aspect I like from this anime, and is a personal obsession, is whenever a character finds themselves in a psychedelic alternative reality with weird landmarks (usually floating in the air) and backgrounds consisting of a couple of bold colours, be they in a phantom zone or being enlightened on a task by a mysterious figure. Here it's a kaleidoscope time vortex with priestesses floating in the air, part of this curious obsession of mine where, even with little to work with, animators were given a moment to be artistically creative regardless and without need for logic involved.

From http://i.imgur.com/KnmDoAj.png

The anime despite its short length is sluggish. Ultimately, it's not offensive to the eyes but among the many anime from this era that were churned out, even if they weren't carefully scripted or planned out, Psychic Wars is pretty rudimentary to stand out. Even considering its plot, depicting a period before Japan, one of the oldest civilisations, came to be even if that's depicted mainly through field and a demon city, it's not that different from other titles where alien entities intend to eliminate mankind and take over. How its managed to gain a reputation is arguably luck, and whilst I enjoy it immensely, I won't say it sets the world on fire even as a notoriously bad production. The tale of an evil demon race against human beings, its only the subplot with a generic nurse character which stands out in the end due to a cruel dynamic twist, one that's unpredictable to give the anime credit when it's pretty predictable everywhere else.

The rest is interesting because of the unintentional moments of humour. Punching cancers, which have giant teeth and turn into fleshy starfish, has already been mentioned, but there's also the fact that you can kick a giant, purple ogre demon in the testicles and still have an advantage over them. The minor character of a historian obsessed with his own theory of a secret civilisation, only to lament in horror at said destruction of a lost civilisation by unexplained destruction, or that the demons for all their advanced cityscape still keep enough explosives in one place to cause traumatic damage to the foundations. That the Fist of the North Star reference cannot be ignored as, whilst he looks vaguely different in the face, our hero's still a muscle man with unexplained martial arts and sword welding ability, the only difference between the North Star hero being that he needs  rifle to take down horseback riding demons rather than be able to make them explode with a mere touch.

I have used in regards to these types of Manga Entertainment release the term "beer and curry anime" in regards to their promotional tactics for them, attempting to sell them like a straight-to-video action watched drunk on a Friday night. I've probably overused the term, learnt from a long gone British anime review site, as it clung to me that Manga Entertainment were so adamant to try to sell even the likes of Psychic Wars as a commercial release. When released on DVD, there was always a sense alongside all the other titles in The Collection [A growing list already covered HERE] they were still after this market as well as exploitation old catalogue titles they still had the licenses to. It predates the growing gender balance and recognition of female anime fans, but I cannot help but view Psychic Wars in the same way as the stream of straight-to-video C-movies that came out in the nineties too, lurid edges usually with a little gore and sex, as is exactly the same here. (This even replicates a trope from American action films of its sole sex scene being all silhouettes in the dark). Something you need no context for, and anime would be released even when it had no proper ending anyway, exactly the same as those action films even if they had resolutions which were as predictable in plots and events as all the others, but you could still gain a lot from flooding the market with them. That sounds harsh but I look back to it with sympathy for these titles. As there's a fan base for those old action films, so I'm one of those individuals who are falling in love with the likes of Psychic Wars. Low hanging fruit in terms of taste, but it's not ironic love, instead understanding its place in the world and wanting a rerelease one day, no matter how illogical and unlikely to make back the cost of restoration that sort of decision would be.

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjMxNzY2ZmItZ
Dk0ZS00MTRmLTg5NTEtNDhk
YjNmYjEwOTQwXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzM4MjM0Nzg@._V1_.jpg

Bonus #7: Armageddon (1996)

From https://myanimelist.cdn-dena.com/
images/anime/3/8745.jpg

Director: Hyunse Lee

Screenplay: Hyunse Lee

Based on the novel by Hyunse Lee

Voice Cast: Alexis Lang as Heisung, the Delta Boy; Wendee Lee as Marie Kim/Pandora; Abe Lasser as Hades; Steve Blum as Commander Kaseros; Dougary Grant as Narrator; Gil Starberry as Tantharos; Jackson Daniels as Gamma 66-66; Melissa Williamson as Queen Hera

Viewed in English Dub

Synopsis: Heisung, a South Korean student, finds himself the one true hope for Earth's future called the "Delta Boy", part of an Millennia old tale of Earth being one of many planets created as part of an experiment. Rhose who evolved from dinosaurs on an alien world, the 'Eed', will soon to invade Earth and eliminate most of mankind in the future. Thrown into said future, when most of humanity has been wiped out, Heisung must become the chosen one to prevent this.

[Warning: This review will include a spoiler for a early plot twist. I will include a warning where it is and ends in the review so you, the reader, can skip it if you want to keep it secret to yourself.]

Cue a film that looks like a seventies rock album cover crossed with a remake of Space Adventure Cobra (1982). Yet the production is from South Korea, part of a very complicated history of the Korean animation industry. South Korea is famous for its studios which do outsourcing work for anything from anime from Japan to even The Simpsons, the later emphasised when artist Banksy's infamous couch gag, depicting their studio as a sweatshop, actually offended Akom, the Korean studio which has been helping to animate the legendary American series since 1989. This is complicated because, in spite of this or that they have created characters like Mashimaro the rabbit that are popular in other corners of the world, very little South Korean animation is known in the English language countries in the West.

Because of this, I could never give a proper history because I myself know as much (i.e. little) as many would. To however attempt to time stamp Armageddon, before its release in 1996 there have been many animated films made within that country, and not just Robot Taekwon V (1976) or the various infamous examples of studios copying directly from other sources (such as Space Gundam V (1983), a TV series which openly includes details from the likes of the Macross franchise from Japan). After Armageddon, things start to slowly expand out into the West in terms of knowledge of South Korean animation bit-by-bit to the current day. Armageddon was picked up by Manga Entertainment, alongside Red Hawk (1995), within that period. Things picked up considerably when Sky Blue (aka. Wonderful Days) (2003) was picked up by Tartan Video for Western release in the UK, which was arguably big in terms of international recognition. [Sadly Aachi and Ssipak (2006), a film included in promotional materials for the former Optimum Rising (now Studio Canal) DVD distributor, never came to British DVD]. Things picked up even more considerably in the 2010s when The King of Pigs (2011) gained critical buzz as well as international distribution. We are awaiting in terms of South Korean animation to be more widely available beyond this, the question of whether it will be as prolific in availability as with Japanese animation.

Now we return back to the nineties, when Manga Entertainment decides to acquire the licenses to a theatrical feature named Armageddon (1996), predating Michael Bay's tale of miners on an asteroid by two years. One has to be aware that, knowing Manga Entertainment's legacy for tampering with their acquisitions, such as adding gratuitous swearing to English dubs, that Armageddon as we know of it and can only really access it in the West on second hand DVD and video tape is probably different from the original version even if it terms of tone of the dialogue, so that must be in mind too. Credit where it's due, if we're talking about the production designers and background animation, they are to be applauded for at least trying their hardest with this theatrical production. Except CGI from the period, no one should complain about the elaborate intergalactic backgrounds or the details of the spaceships. Even if the dino-robot monster that appears at one-point, and the alien life forms in general, look like children's toys they have character, someone having fun designing them.

When this production is being imaginative, it musters a lot of ambition, especially as the director Hyunse Lee was also the author of the source material. It belongs to the kind of psychedelic, out there sci-fi I prefer over hard science fiction anyway, where the universe is a bizarre spiritual/gonzo reality of elaborate bright colours and strange entities. A galaxy, no matter how silly it sounds, where the main villain is ultimately revealed to be a giant brain in a jar. Even the protagonist's own brain upon entering it, when Heisung is briefly killed at one point, is a world of pulsating bio-bizarre environmental flesh and strange sights, feeding into my love even in the dodgiest of animation of whenever characters enter phantom zones, to either be instructed on their fates or because they've been trapped there, an excuse for the production designers to create the most intentionally unnatural places they can. (Usually with everything floating in the air, which sadly isn't the case here).

There is as well the deeply silly moments which also, in honestly have charm to them, this type of sci-fi being so over-the-top you have to admit it gets ridiculous too. You cannot take serious a film where said giant dinosaur robot does have a name you'd expect for a child's toy. Nor the inexplicably giant shark massacre, a pointless training scene for the protagonist which ends with him and another character getting into peril underwater, defeating the purpose of the practice, and gunning down giant sharks in gory detail for no justifiable reason.

From https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ3eKT8HupZLiSSNMhkehleFs_qoti39o95mu2f9tuprBfefGFj

However I will confess that, whilst Armageddon has charm, it's also plagued by the many traits of bad sci-fi in general. Whilst I admire its bright and colourful look, if we're talking about the humanoid characters however, stretches and limitations are there and they are awkward. Alongside the plot itself, the film stretches its limitations with some amateurish issues. The character's faces, especially their facial expressions, are just amiss even for a viewer like myself with no animation training in the slightest. This is more so as even into the final, more serious thirty minutes of Heisung going to fight an evil alien computer in a far off galaxy, there are still random slapstick comedy moments which are abrupt and, in attempting to crowbar a love story which is inherently with huge moral issues within it, enforce this problem when characters are acting comedically with exaggeration at one second and then have to be serious. The switch in plasticity in mannerisms is not well coordinated and, unlike the exaggeration in Japanese anime, a lot of it in this production (or another like Blue Seagull (1994)) feel like they're inspired by old Looney Tunes animation, which feels tonally off. The less said about your secondary villain Commander Kaseros - stoic and boring, a member of the Eed forces who starts to question his place in the world but ultimately wasting time in the plot - never being seen without his black sunglasses the better. It might work for Corey Hart to wear sunglasses at night, but here even when floating in outer space without need for suffocation, as he is at one point, its comical. More so when, due to plot reasons, he's a giant entity barechested and waving a sword, but still got to keep the sunglasses in his new state.

Baring in mind Manga Entertainment may have taken liberties with the script, Armageddon also has the script which crams so much into less than ninety minutes, that  there are plot turns which will give you whiplash. Ten minutes is all that you get for Heisung's personal life as a kid living in present South Korea. His family is briefly kidnapped early on by Eed assassins only to whisked away to safety and never seen again, likely long dead when Heisung travels to the future. Even then his mother's reduced to the Obi-Wan Kenobi state of passing on meaningful encouragement from flashbacks. Heisung's brief moments in his normal is also means he looks like a ten year old, his alien protector and potential love interest Pandora looking like an adult in contrast when she appears to protect him, which makes their romantic montage scored to K-pop weird. Even when he's fully developed into the hero with muscle and gruffness, the man-child's romance with Pandora is so limited in development that the emotional scenes can only use footage from earlier in the film for later.

[Spoiler Warning]

Which is worse when Pandora is killed half thirty minutes in. The sad montage Heisung has, when looking at a replica of her in included in her home planet's hall of heroes, involves all the footage within the previous length of the film that isn't even from romantic scenes with the hero, causing one to want to shout at Armageddon that it hasn't earned the emotional beat. Insult is added to injury when her twin sister, and ruler of her home planet, becomes the new love interest in a way inherently problematic as if one twin can replaced the other. Even her aide and guide for Heisung on his way to becoming the Delta Boy gets into the creepiness by desiring to get the two to fall in love merely to propagate a child, clearly as an alien not used to this idea that one should naturally becoming romantic at least from the beliefs of human beings.

[Spoiler Ends]

The abruptness of the plot twists is intermingled with how the inherent ridiculousness of the plot. An example of sci-fi which blurs scientism with post-New Age tone in imagining giant computers creating worlds, our true villain a literal giant brain in a jar, yet with all the cod-philosophy of such a horrible concoction and a figure literally named Gaia who is the soul of the Earth...in spite of the fact it's within the same story as Earth being micromanaged by a giant computer. If one ever wanted to see, in CGI of the time, giant sperm entering a vortex in space and (by intentional suggestion) give birth to a giant dinosaur head sticking out in space, and then a primate head, than this is the film for you, but after that its why that as much as I love out there, idiosyncratic (and sometimes utterly corny) sci-fi when its cosmic ideas and willingness to bend conventions of reality, when the tone's muddled like this I realise why I have very little interest in science fiction of any sort. Armageddon as a result is the kind of animation, if you can still appreciate some of the production, that's better with the sound turned off. This is not the horrible disaster that is Blue Seagull, just a film from some time later which is undeniably bad but one can still gain some satisfaction from in places. As a result, its definitely a guilty pleasure, as all the flaws mentioned are impossible to dismiss.

From http://www.craiglotter.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/
armageddon-korean-anime-screenshot.png