#81: Biohazard 4D-Executer (2000)

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

Screenplay: Daisuke Okamoto

Based on the video game franchise Biohazard/Resident Evil

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

Part 1 of the Koichi Ohata Power Hour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Screenplay: ORCA

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

Viewed in the English Dub

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

[Spoilers Throughout]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No 79: Gunbuster (1988-89)

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

Director: Hideaki Anno

Screenplay: Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga and Toshio Okada

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

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

[Major Spoilers Throughout]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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