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.

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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...

#77a: Violence Jack - Evil Town (1988)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/
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Director: Ichiro Itano

Screenplay: Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga by Go Nagai

Voice Cast: Bob Sessions as Jack; Alan Marriott as Blue; John Bull as Saulus; Garrick Hagon as Tahei; Sharon Holm as Rikki; William Roberts as Kawamori;

Viewed in the English Language Censored Cut

Synopsis: After the world is decimated and Japan levelled by a mega earthquake, a post-apocalyptic society ran by marauding gangs who rape, murder and pillage have taken on whilst pockets of humanity try to survive. In the midst of them, let loose from the rubble, a mysterious and almost immortal goliath christening himself Violence Jack walks into this living hell as the personification of death.

[Due to the length these reviews would be altogether, I felt it wiser to review the three episode OVA in three small reviews. Be advised of Spoilers and potential Trigger Warnings as well]

Before I start this trip down the lurid world of Violence Jack, I'll clarify the version I watched is the censored English dub version. I did, for reference, view fuzzy clips of some of the gore scenes and read up on what was censored from the original Japanese versions of this infamous series. It does drastically change the tone of Violence Jack but that as much is an issue when dealing with these OVAs.  For starters, it was appropriate to cover the English version as, obsessed with Manga Entertainment's DVD repackage of old licenses called "The Collection", the version made available for that series was the drastically butched version clearly taken from a flickering VHS rip.

For a long time this English version was the only one available in the West - Manga Entertainment's reason for censoring the three part OVA are unknown but whatever spooked them was significant, and with good reason especially for the Evil Town episode. Another factor would have to be that, whilst this was the era of lurid and notorious anime releases like Legend of the Overfiend (1989), it was also the era when James Ferman ran the British Board of Film Classification; in this era, other areas like horror and action cinema were drastically effected by a man whose obsession with removing inappropriate material became the stuff of infamy, let alone anime which was frankly indefensible in its content. Eventually the company, known for releasing these ultraviolent and controversial anime in the nineties, would find their tactic for anime definitely not for children would bite them in the backside when La Blue Girl (1992-3) was rejected outright by the BBFC for release in December 1996, the same year they released the censored Violence Jack into the Western world.

The decisions behind releasing titles like this in the West was of the time - that with the likes of Legend of the Overfiend, for good and bad especially in the mainstream view of anime in the United Kingdom and USA, they were significant enough to warrant licensing these titles be they what the distributors thought they should sell or were selling well. And so Violence Jack, a three part Go Nagai adaptation which took over four years to be churned out, was one such title, one whose uncensored version was very elusive. For a long time the only uncensored versions was one early US VHS tape, from the same time through Right Stuff at the same time as the English dub release, for a long time only an Italian DVD afterwards, and then in the 2010s the uncut and cut versions put together by Discotek.

If I was only dealing with the episodes Hell's Wind and Harem Bomber, I might've bought that Discotek release or at least tracked down the uncensored versions. It'd still be an indefensible work, misogynistic and offensive, and especially with Harem Bomber an embarrassment to animation in general, but it would be a fascinating look at the era of eighties and nineties OVA anime which churned out so much that, for every artistic gem, there were oddities and perversities like this. Weighing on whether to track down the uncensored version was enough to even hesitate ever covering Violence Jack at all, debating whether it was acceptable to only review the cut versions,  seeing the gore scenes excised online at least even if not in the desired way (i.e. in actual sequence in the episodes). In hindsight, even the infamous necrophilic cannibalism that takes place in Evil Town, which is something I can only imagine rather have seen, wouldn't have been to too off-putting. That sort of material would just be tasteless, body horror material effected by the issue that these OVAs are excessively nihilistic in tone to be entertaining.

The problem is entirely with Evil Town, where the creators decided not only to depict lengthy rape scenes but went as far as having to have digital pixalisation, which raised alarm bells when I learnt of these excised moments originally. Having read a blown-by-blow written article of all the scenes removed described in clinical detail, which is not a pleasant activity even though I have always had a morbid obsession with the Violence Jack anime, didn't exactly defend any of this stuff for artistic value either. I fear I would feel morally disgraced inside if I watched Evil Town uncensored, a step too far and requiring a damn good argument to not stay away from it. Hence, stuck with an old DVD that will circum to laser rot, I hesitate to import that Discotek release for a very justifiable reason. There's a fine line in watching transgressive anime and that which crosses a line even for me.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/X7sDQnTIiJ0/hqdefault.jpg

Evil Town is the first episode of the three chronologically...already the strange production history of Violence Jack comes to mind as, logically, you start from Evil Town, which introduces the character of Jack found underground by a group of people trying to reach the surface world again. Then tonally, it should go to Hell's Wind, then Harem Bomber, the later with an actual ending even if it makes no sense. The truth is, in the Japanese release order, it was Harem Bomber first, and then Evil Town, then Hell's Wind, the convoluted order being rearranged one of the few good ideas Manga Entertainment had.

Evil Town is the notorious one of them all, the most censorship and arguably where this series went too far even for hardened anime viewers, where for myself the version which has necrophilic cannibalism (censored for the UK cut) wouldn't be an issue, but the eroticised and pixelised rape is why this review starts with a lengthy prologue. Annoyingly it's also the most artistically distinct of the three; Violence Jack is a case of something, aesthetically, in its cheap and nasty post-apocalyptic presentation which is compelling, but the material inside the work varies in different ways per episode to why it's bad.

The issues with Evil Town are enhanced by the fact that, for an incredibly simplistic tale, the extreme content especially the sexual violence is superfluous, as evidenced by the censored version (barring the clear cutaways from minutes that were excised) still working in pace in spite of their absence. It's to debate whether Go Nagai's original manga is as to blame, despite originally being a shonen work (for children) it was notorious back then for gore and sexual content, back in an era before drastic changes in demographics refocused material like this for adults and the likes of Naruto for children. As much of it is frankly the anime episode itself being to blame above anything else, by itself feeling like it went too far in obsessing over this content to a point that it was too repugnant.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gBpYz2fcghw/hqdefault.jpg

Even censored, with it very clear that material was removed in the cut version, its repugnant and against the very nihilistic view of the world on display feels uncomfortable. The cynical worldview does lead to an interesting plot based around three groups and Violence Jack - one group men proven to be hypocrites worse than the evil psychopathic gang against them, as depraved, whilst the women have decided to be their own gang after what had been done to them before - but the desire for a cross between an atrocity exhibition meant to be titillating against a Shonen Jump-like action story is a hellish combination to have to deal with. And frankly, we are dealing with a titular character who, whilst closer to a slasher movie villain than an actual hero, is also completed out of a childish power fantasy especially with his inexplicably yellow scarf, bandages around the waist and jacket combination, which raises questions of the entire premise of what the tone should've been.

If we were dealing with a Fist of the North Star tone, then things might've been different; in Evil Town, as most of it is set underground after an earthquake has levelled an entire Japanese city, children advising each other how to eat insects and a rat for dinner is the worth of gold, it's not the right time to discuss this aesthetic unlike in the other two episodes, but that tone would be acceptable here too. Even if it left grime on the viewer's eyes, there wouldn't have been an issue if it also embraced the inherent silliness of its villains being mohawk wearing gang members. It doesn't help that, in lieu of a homophobic streak a mile long throughout these episode, among them is an evil transsexual and an evil lesbian stereotype, but looking at times like outtakes from Mad Max (1979) and The Warriors (1979), especially with the figures of Mad Saurus, a behemoth, and Blue, the evil transgendered character but (if that unfortunate aspect wasn't part of him) also decked out like a bizarro Jem and the Holograms member, the materials wrong for this level of nastiness. Even reading a slither of Go Nagai's work, even if his attitude to sex and violence can be objected to, I know already his style is laced with black humour and deliberate weirdness which you definitely don't get in these OVAs.  

And tonally, the story itself falls into this as well as, suffering through even the implication of sexual depravity and gore, it's about two giant men (Violence Jack and Mad Saurus who, after eating his girlfriend blue in the aforementioned scene removed from the English release and turning into a monster) kicking the shit out of each other, which makes none of the horrifying content even in tone creatively in place. Any notion of darkness beyond this with a point, the men of Section A who are so monstrous for all their apparent civilised behaviour they'd drug and rape a group of women as told in flashback, is lost in a work where it's entirely about visceral gore and action in the first place, so expecting anything profound is lost within the sludge.  Instead it just makes things worse as the women are merely victims, left half naked and (between the script lines) more traumatised stood outside among ruined skyscrapers with no sense of real meaning.

From http://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/5/5c/
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The blame on why Evil Town is objectionably gross, even censored, is to be debated. All the following is my pure speculation, but it's like a Rashomon scenario where we have no one willing to talk about this production in honest detail unless someone had a gun directly pulled at their head, more so as in the Japanese version you have big names in voice acting among the cast, the likes of Norio Wakamoto appearing throughout all the episodes, a production meant to go somewhere but ending like this.

One possible explanation is that screenwriter Shou Aikawa went through a very dark period in his life. Long before he became the major screenwriter for the likes of Full Metal Alchemist (2003), he wrote scripts for ultraviolent work like Legend of the Overfiend, Genocyber (1994) and, with the same director of Evil Town, the notorious Angel Cop (1989-1994). The thing is that, in lieu of a career with the likes of Full Metal Alchemist, which are so drastically different and where his own contributions separate from the source material (like overt Iraq War metaphors) were acclaimed and drastically different from the likes of Evil Town, as were later anime he worked on past his blood and guts era like The Twelve Kingdoms (2002) and Martian Successor Nadesico (1996).

So it leads the question to the infamy of Ichiro Itano. As an animator, he is one of the best, immortalised by the "Itano Circus", coined after his trademark of (painstakingly) animated missiles in a scene to moving in individual directions. As an anime director, he is panned and notorious - Gantz (2004), his most well known work, is still a divisive ultraviolent work, and he is held up by his petard for the likes of Evil Town and Angel Cop; for the latter, whilst this has never be confirmed and is pure speculation, the infamous turn to full anti-Semitism in the story alongside its fascist nationalist turn, as an ultraviolent action sci-fi, has to be taken in mind that Shou Aikawa only wrote the first few episodes, or at least the first, whilst Itano wrote the rest when that turn took place. The third potential reason, which would be the most disturbing, is that adaptation of a very violent Go Nagai work they either reproduced it or exaggerated the content to sell the material, especially as anyone who witnessed the car crash that was Harem Bomber, which I will get to later.

The episode itself, removed of its nastier material, is pretty cruddy in honesty, any sense of enjoyment from its sickly tone undermined by knowing of the content being removed. That, far less extreme but as liable to put people off from the uncensored version, this anime goes to having a villain killing children in graphic detail or someone being split in half like a wishbone. Trying to deal with the misogyny on display, the female group not complex figures in the slightest and sexually victimised twice, is not even worth wasting time on to write on, it's that bad.

Curiously this is Violence Jack at his most eloquent, a curious anti-hero who will protect people if he isn't prevented by hulking gang members, but takes his punishment of villains to sadistic and gleeful extremes which drastically contrasts this. The English dub is utterly inappropriate as, whilst I liked Bob Sessions as Jack, this begins the conversation that will carry through this three part review, the infamous dubbing of the anime where Manga Entertainment amplified the foal language to a lot of their work but here went into even ridiculous territory, the one aspect of the entire work that could ever be "fun". They decided to have this gigantic monster anti-hero use the term "Captain Buttwipe" twice, as tonally in appropriate from an anime episode obsessed with offensive material as you can get, but you are grateful for the comedy to briefly relieve the tone.  

Sadly as well, whilst I might be in a minority, this is all within an aesthetic I like. It's cheap, but thankfully isn't as bad in animation as when I cover Harem Bomber, with music (barring one or two tonally inappropriate pieces) that fits the era and a grungy colour palette which stands out. It's an aesthetic that feels dangerous and edgy but, in another work, didn't need to actually make me feel grossed out like here but could've been instead better without it. Evil Town, as much as I hate its existence, has the one artistically stylish piece of the whole OVA series with a fight scene taking place with the participants in red outline against a black screen, one of the other moments which were vaguely interesting in the midst of the mire. Unfortunately, I have to extract these little virtues from something that doesn't deserve to be defended for many reasons. Thankfully, whilst the other episodes have their share of uncomfortable material, the worst was the first episode in the Manga Entertainment release before you get to Hell's Wind...

To Be Continued...

From https://i1.wp.com/hmturnbull.com/wp-content/uploads/
2017/11/Violence-Jack_Death-of-Mad-Saurus.jpg?resize=300%2C157

#76: Litchi DE Hikari Club (2012)

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjVmNDI2ZDMtOTM2Yy00ODViLWFkZjUtNTBjO
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Director: Masahiro Takata

Screenplay: Motoichi Adachi

Based on the manga Lychee Light Club by Usamaru Furuya

Voice Cast: Akiyoshi Nakao as Tamiya, Ryou Kimura as Zera, Daisuke Hirose as Kaneda, Hisanori Satō as Raizou, Kōichirō Tomioka as Dentaku, Mao Kato as Dafu, Norihisa Hiranuma as Niko, Ore no Graffiti as Lychee, Rin Honoka as Canon , Yasuko Mitsūra as Yasuko, Yuki Tamaki as Jaibo, Yuya Miyashita as Akobu

Synopsis: Nine boys in an all-boys school create a robot that runs on lychee fruit to kidnap the most beautiful women possible...however unlike the original Usamaru Furuya manga and stage play, the Lychee Club in this world are too busy bickering about commercialising robot Lychee for profit and other tangent delaying their plan to rule the world.

This'll be another confused review. Another micro-series, eight three minute long joke episodes, but peculiar in this case as it's based on Usamaru Furuya's controversial but acclaimed manga, an incredibly dark and disturbing manga which has yet developed a large reputation, enough that the experimental author's source material has been adapted both for this weird spin off and for a live action film. For what has been described as dealing with violence, transgressive sexual content and is generally viewed as a serious work it's managed a strong popularity or enough buzz to lead to these additions. Litchi DE Hikari Club is a perplexing little take whether you have read the manga or (as for me) haven't. Here a group of bishonen boys in uncomfortable fascist looking uniforms, (intentionally disturbing in the manga), have built a robot powered by lychees with the purpose of kidnapping girls, only for one named Kanon to undermine their plans, an important figure in the manga and here the only main female figure in the cast.

Clearly, obviously, context is lost when a gag spin-off to a serious work is watched by itself. These spin-offs are a curiosity which have a long lineage - in some context they make sense when the production staff decide to lighten the mood and have fun, be it the omake specials for serious series like Black Lagoon (2006), literally bonus material or if you have a franchise so vast like Gundam you can get away with a piss-take version with the characters out-of-context and arguing. Sometimes questions have to be asked who came up with some of these one-offs vastly different from their source. This one is still peculiar even in that context as it was made as an anime series in its own right, streamed on CrunchyRoll with the danger that people like me would've presumed it'd be a straight ahead adaptation and not a comedy.

From http://www.anime-kun.net/animes/
screenshots/litchi-de-hikari-club-97761.jpg

The other issue is that, even if you're going to be an in-joke leaden series for fans, like the Gundam parody, you still have to be a good series, and especially with my introduction with these micro-series, many don't even really use their three minutes or so well enough. One of the few exceptions was Gdgd Fairies (2011-13) which, despite being fifteen minutes per episode, was mainly a series of vignettes and made sure that a) the jokes were funny even if you didn't get the otaku references and b) got far more ambitious and weird over its two seasons. This anime has moments where its premise, about this serious ultra disturbing manga if the cast were mainly idiots, succeeds; in which all the cast baring Kanon and the robot Lychee, who are Best Friends Forever, are completely incompetent and spend their time on inane ideas. Ideas such as wondering if Lychee can eat anything else barring his namesake, accidentally turning him into a gourmet chef or the ill advised creative expansion into black star Lychee Club beach wear, ideas which are funny in any context especially with knowledge of the original source material. It helps that here, with simplified but distinct character designs, every member stands out vocally and in appearance, and all have idiosyncrasies that cause them to be dumber or weirder than the other, a group of immature man-boys who may want to rule the world with their violent ideas and fascist symbolism, but cannot see that sacrificing one's eye if not the same as gimmick objects from a magazine advertisement or a jar of scabs, much to the grievance of the member who sacrificed his eye for use in Lychee when every fellow underling offers the aforementioned examples.

But...it's still a slight work, and never lifts itself into something special or legitimately weird. Definitely not as strange as a band being created to interpret these characters through actual music and concerts, an idea which has all sorts of potential tastelessness behind it alongside being also of interesting or even great as a marketing scheme. This anime, rather than taking advantage of the material, or scared of trying to adapt a manga with the content it had, ended up being the least interest direction you could've gone, a shame especially as this review is another short and befuddle one, and in terms of genre its definitely not horror like its source material in the slightest, as ill-advised as the club leader's ghastly swimwear.

From https://ru.myanimeshelf.com/upload/dynamic/2012-12/19/_
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#75: Kai Doh Maru (2001)

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjIzMTBlNTktNTNhOC00NDk0LTk0
Y2EtY2Q4NjQ5ODVhZDE1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzM4MjM0Nzg@._V1_.jpg

Director: Kanji Wakabayashi

Screenplay: Nobuhisa Terado

Voice Cast: Mitsuki Saiga as Kintoki Sakatano, Showtaro Morikubo as Raikou Minamotono, Yurika Hino as Princess Ouni/Shuten Dohji, Ai Orikasa as Douji Ibaragi, Fumiko Osaka as Fuji, Hikaru Hanada as Sadamitsu Usuino, Ikue Kimura as Yamabuki

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: In the Heian period, a girl named Kintoki is rescued by Raikou from being killed by her uncle, who intended to take over from her family. Years later, treated as a boy as her family intended to, she is trained as a member of Raikou's band of warriors; unfortunately a figure from her past named Princess Ouni, who fell in love with her presuming her to be a boy, has come forth with vengeance in mind against all those on Raikou's side, with black magic and villains to assist her.

Kai Doh Maru was an OVA anime I once watched and had a really scathing view of; I had no idea why revisiting this years later, compelled by the work upon this revisit years later, until by the ending where the one major flaw with Kai Doh Maru appears. If anything, what likely annoyed me back long ago was that contrary to what the old Manga Entertainment UK DVD says, suggesting it is eight minutes long, Kai Doh Maru is only under fifty minutes, a usual OVA length from a decade earlier in the nineties but not obviously over feature length. Manga Entertainment's old style of anime distribution, for all my nostalgia, is also with awareness of how I despise the many things they did like "dubtitles", and how they were capable of this type of hucksterism, presuming the additional minutes are the extras, even into the 2000s, even into the 2010s when they're now respectable distributors of Pokemon films when I return to their old catalogue second hand.

Kai Doh Maru is nonetheless fascinating - long before (over) expensive Blu Ray releases for the USA, Aniplex was helping to produce what is as much a technical demonstration of new artistic flourishes as well as a very interesting and entertainment anime. Some might find it slow and dialogue heavy for an action samurai story, but for me the slow burn tone of introspection punctured by action was better in itself. Immediately intriguing, after showing Kintoki's rescue at a young age in the beginning, is that this follows a female character in the lead, raised as a boy and taught to be a soldier in a group including a former Buddhist monk who still wears the sacred garb and a cocky womaniser, treated as an equal if a younger member and once being called their princess who has teeth. Her gender is not used as a cheap emotional ploy. When it is of importance it's for more fascinating reasons - her clear unbridled love for Raikou, and the issue that the lead villainess is romantically in love with her but, rather than a homophobic slant, that its tragically a romance without her knowing Kintoki is a girl, desiring to possess the heroine as flashbacks show a naive childish love poisoned by her own clan being massacred and driving her to revenge.

From https://alchetron.com/cdn/kai-doh-maru-8cdcfaee-
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Action wise, when there is action, its solid and with a touch of the gorier samurai stories, where losing a hand doesn't incapacitate anyone just slows them down. The supernatural bent, veering near ninjas and other groups as supernatural beings as with the likes of Ninja Scroll (1993), is fascinating as the plot ramps this side further and further as it goes along. Kidnapping and brain washing children, using their bodies to house malicious spirits, is the start but it then turns into an entire town's population through masks becoming mindless, fire starting minions who move as if like zombies. All it is compelling, helped that, noticeably, there's a sense of the production tapping into their country's own spirituality and folklore, especially as Kintoki is a female interpretation of the folk heroine figure Kintarō. Even if, for a foreigner like me with little knowledge, this story made up details for artistic effect, there's still the better sense that the production was not pulling fantasy clichés out of their arses but using more carefully influenced supernatural and folklore material.

This drawing of culture is to be found also in the most divisive aspect of Kai Doh Maru, its art style. Washed out and light in tone, enhanced with CGI, the style is still unique for me immensely, still with a great idiosyncrasy especially in its combination with realistic character designs. It's revealed to be openly inspired by Japanese classical art, as the ending credits include tableaus, still paintings, of where the characters end up in a form of epilogue, with poetry drawn on and spoken at the same time.

From https://www.animeclick.it/images/
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The issue with Kai Doh Maru? An abrupt ending. [Spoiler Warning] now - it leads to Raikou facing one of his own, possessed by the evil group as a puppet, and Kintoki with the Princess. Even if Manga Entertainment didn't dupe me for a second time, thinking this was feature length, the conclusion is still brisk. Ironically, it didn't have to be over ten or twenty minutes longer, or feature length, just even five minutes in this case enough to have fleshed everything out. Five more minutes, in a rare case here, would've been enough for the emotional impact to fully succeed. One moment, Kintoki staggering out stabbed in the gut as she finds Raikou dead, is enough to suggest all that has taken place, but a minute longer in dramatic height for both sides, a snippet of a fight with Raikou even if its deliberately left ambiguous what happened, more weight on the Princess discovering Kintoki was a girl and the built to what happened to them inside, would've been enough. Literally, for this OVA another draft of this ending, just to clarify without even dialogue but just images, would've been enough for me to say Kai Doh Maru is a very underrated and neglected OVA from when straight-to-video anime was sadly passing out in popularity. [Spoiler Ends]

Now it's a case of a very underrated and neglected OVA from when straight-to-video anime was sadly passing out in popularity with one little caveat in terms of a vague shrug of an ending.  

From https://silentdivergence.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/121608-11.jpg

#74: Junji Ito Collection (2018)

From https://pm1.narvii.com/6695/
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Director: Shinobu Tagashira

Screenplay: Kaoru Sawada

Based on the manga of Junji Ito

Voice Cast: Hikaru Midorikawa as Handsome Man at the Crossroads, Hiro Shimono as Oshikiri, Kaori Nazuka as Yūko, Mami Koyama as Fuchi, Rie Suegara as Tomie, Yuji Mitsuya as Souichi Tsujii

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: An anthology that adapts stories from the legendary manga author Junji Ito.

I had been prepared that the Junji Ito Collection, after the initial excitement running up to its January 2018 premier from Junji Ito fans like myself, that enthusiasm had started to drain away, finishing with a lot of disappointed viewers, one YouTube video describing how bad the series is compared to Ito's original manga, and a general air of this being one of the biggest failures of 2018 for anime. I don't think this adaptation is the worst it could've been. I will agree with this series' detractors that, production wise, Studio Deen dropped the ball horribly in visually depicting the legendary horror author's work, but even in this state, Junji Ito's work is too good to prevent this anthology from being entertaining. As a fan of even schlocky anime horror, as long as it's actually horror and not an action story with monsters, I have a high patience with this type of episode tale, my own brand of catnip.

The problem with the Junji Ito Collection is the presentation, looking like a cheap show and with moments, having collected and read the source material that's been translated in English, where the drop in style compared to Ito's original pages does sting. I think however as much of the issue is that Junji Ito's idiosyncratic style is incredibly difficult to adapt unless you have the style and budget. It is neither that all his work is too difficult to adapt. Some of it is as with Gyo (2012), the adaptation of his robo-fish apocalyptic tale which is trashy and not helped by the look of the film even as an OVA being closer to a trashy cheaper one of yore amongst its other issues. In other cases, as with the Junji Ito Collection adapting more slow burn and less ambitious stories, there was no excuse for this.

From https://www.dreadcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Junji-Ito.jpg

Arguably the only adaptation which has succeeded is the live action adaptation of Uzumaki (2000), because Higuchinsky in spite of not having a proper ending, still compromising the adaptation, he purposely adapted the material into his own style. Ito is an exceptional illustrator as well as a good storyteller of bizarre and freakish events, and unfortunately in terms of adaptation, one of his trademarks is reliant on how detailed he is in his shading and etching of everything from facial expressions to the monstrosities he shows on the page. This is very difficult to animate, even in live action as was the case with Uzumaki, unable on its budget to adapt the truly surreal ending of that novel, and if you are not going to provide good OVA or theatrical level quality of production for an animated adaptation, even a healthy TV anime budget, this is going to be impossible to recreate perfectly especially in a tight schedule.

It also didn't please many that, whilst the first episode ends on a short minutes long story of a girl turning into a puppet, it is mainly devoted to a comedic story of Souichi Tsujii, a creepy boy who knows how to induce curses and hexes on his fellow school students. He is the character who appears the most in multiple episodes, even over Tomie, and is a character that hasn't to my knowledge ever been adapted into English publications, which would make this abrupt beginning in farce a jarring choice for many expecting the creepy and disturbing material Ito is most well known for. I grew to love Souichi Tsujii - a character who is lovable even though he is obnoxious and spiteful as much because he always gets his comeuppance every time he appears, the first story taken from Souichi's Diary of Curses (1997) and many others shown in this series belying that Ito has written a lot of eclectic material over his long career, only really known for us in the West through Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu (2009), his autobiographical book on raising cats with his wife, being released.

From https://asianmoviepulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Juniito3.jpg

The eclectic nature of the Collection helps with the series' major flaws. When a story like Long Dream - where a patient in a hospital feels like his dreams for what can feel like days to eventually years - loses its potency due to the average art style, you are yet introduced to Smashed, a tale where a sacred nectar can only be eaten when not noticed - if you are, it's a grotesque and sickly humorous tale reminiscent to the Monty Python foot from the sky, squishing people like strawberry jam for a reason which is even more perverse when revealed. Two very sombre Ito stories appear here and they are among the best - Gentle Goodbye (available in English in the Shivers collection as Lingering Farewell) is about a family who wishes their recently deceased into copies, a story which stands strong even if seeing it in this animated version raises logic gaps in the plot twist, while Bridge is about an ill advised funeral custom of floating the recently dead under a bridge, emphasising as well Ito's really wide talent for a variety of tones. One story, Used Record, benefits from being able to hear the song on a mysterious record which causes people to go insane to try to possess it; whether the song played is actually appropriately macabre or not, it at least gives a hipster's nightmare actual sound. One other story Greased, which is entirely about the most disgusting ways Ito could talk about grease (natural in the skin or cooking oil) and even made me feel ill in this animated adaptation.

And in spite of everything, you cannot diminish the perverse imagery of Ito's work, just softening the blow enough with the production and still hooking a fan of the author's work like me regardless. Here the [Spoilers] have to be implemented to describe such nightmarish imagery such as an entire century of family continued through their brains and foreheads being connected on the next heir, or blood fruit that grows from your wounds, or the results of trying a growth serum causing a horrible elongation effect all in the midst of dealing with your doppelganger from another realm... [Spoilers End] here but that is just part of the many a horrible yet utterly imaginative thing that Ito could come up with, all of which is still grotesque even in this anime series. If anything seeing these stories, new or old material together, Ito never lost his creative juices. In fact, this anthology's one success is that the variety of Ito's world, from cosmic horror to black humour with a few morality tales thrown in-between, emphasises both his talent but also makes this one anthology work with enough different tones to never get boring. You couldn't when one episode can go from the bizarre episodes to spring up in a town when a transfer student appears, like every cliché of anime supernatural high school appearing, but also has a sombre tale of the dead being idolised by scarecrows.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwQjHbdmHsHrZoyvRznAJBbHEpFgBn7goGIRlS6ExvPAmv4XNJiHyE25UKqd4U6pazipFnE8fJ-w99M9BT3fEzCDKnXK6mxY8CVqNQjvcQ6Iy5iVvPgp9yhDICGrXks0_WRhbnpezjYGw/s1600/Junji-Ito-Collection-The-Ongoing-Tale-of-Oshikiri.jpg

The fact many of these tales, those available in the West or not in their original manga form, are not the biggest titles in Ito's career is to the Collection's advantage as well. With one exception, which is the character of Tomie, the Junji Ito Collection whilst it could've done with a lot more care in its animation and design is still a very good introduction to Ito in terms of his prolific output. Noticeably each story, always two per episode of varying lengths, is numbered but vary leaving gaps, as if this numbering is actually the real chronological order of when Ito's manga were first published. The choice in tales is enough to encourage some to take an interest in Ito's work, making this as an Ito fan still a good work to have been made. And if anything, at least the music's interesting - the opening title is good but the real standout, in front of end credits which include the figures of both tales of that episode appear together, is a fascinating and memorable little song with math rock rhythms that's wormed itself into my head.

Since it hasn't been brought up, yes Tomie is one of the stories adapted, once in the main series and with two of its tales in the OVA thirteenth episode, split into two halves strangely with the question of, if they were released separately, how much the Japanese fans were ripped off in terms of money to get those fifteen minute pieces. Tomie was one of the biggest draws in terms of promotion especially for the Western fans as Tomie is a major work in Junji Ito's career. It's also one of his best as, what could be initially a deeply misogynistic story about an evil temptress who eventually drives men to slaughter her, has a deeply complex side to it about the worst in men who obsess over her and, yes, usually kill and dismember her, only with the issue that not only does she come back to life and regenerate, but that dismembered pieces grow into their own Tomies, multiplying her over the landscape. The first story of the OVA, the first Ito ever drew, even takes the story to an entire class male or female being drawn to evil by their worst emotions. There is a potential controversy that, for an OVA, how this evil is shown is censored, obscuring what would be the most horrifying moment in the entire Collection with a disposal of a body, but there needs to be emphasis that, no matter how horrifying Ito's work can be and even gory, he has never been about splatter, not only the implied nature of the scene (with sound and dialogue) being more horrifying than drawn intestines, but actually more faithful to his source material as a result. It neither stops the final half, another Tomie story but with a reoccurring character, ending the Collection on a high if gruesome note, a head where it shouldn't be conversing with the doctors involved. That the end theme song is a one-off, a freakish electronic string piece, fits the spike the ending provides even for disappointed viewers of the series.

From https://100wordanime.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/junji10c.jpg?w=648

Altogether, I liked the Collection. In spite of the elephant in the room - that Studio Deen should've made a series with a significantly better production style if they were going to adapt Junji Ito - the material is still too rewarding despite this. As much because I lowered my expectations approaching this series, the merits outweigh the anger other fans have shown.