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Director: Satoshi Dezaki
Screenplay: Kazumi Koide and
Toshiaki Imaizumi
Based on the manga by Kazuo Koike
and Noriyoshi Inoue
Voice Cast: Akio Ohtsuka as John
"Sleepy" Estes (a.k.a. Mad Bull); Yasunori Matsumoto as Daizaburō
"Eddie" Ban; Gara Takashima as Perine Valley; Takkou Ishimori as
Captain Allen; Masako Katsuki as Cindy Murphy; Naoko Matsui as Jaqueline Moyert
; Mitsuo Senda as Nichol the Electrician
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles1
It wasn't a good idea to revisit Mad Bull 34 in one sitting, over three
hours for all four episodes, yet it feels befitting in a perverse way. One
episode by itself is enough to melt the brain, mainlining the entirety of it is
insane but the only right experience for a truly notorious OVA series. The fact
that this is one of the first anime I ever knew of as a kid, from an
advertisement for the first episode (as released by Manga Entertainment) was included in a gaming magazine I had, is
sickly humorous if mortifying. It's the promotional image everyone knows for Mad Bull 34 if they know of it: the
iconic image of a New York police car approaching the viewer, a burly policeman
with a shotgun, woman (head unseen) merely wearing revealing underwear. Little
do you know, from a manga by Kazuo Koike,
that it wasn't really a suffice warning for the easily offended, as good God Mad Bull 34 isn't politically correct
or even palatable for me at times, hardened on weird perversity, and wasn't
really a warning for how, when it is at least entertaining rather than gross,
it's as mad as a box of frogs and then some.
The late Koike is an acclaimed manga writer, not the illustrator to which Noriyoshi Inoue drew Mad Bull, and its known whilst he has a
deserved legacy, from the likes of Lone
Wolf and Cub (1970-76), Koike did
belong to a type of extreme pulp that, forced on hard and short work schedules
and having to top his previous work, meant he was using a lot of extreme
content, which includes sexual violence which is problematic but not synonymous
to only his work, or even anime and manga for that matter, nor just Japanese
pop entertainment. Honestly the issue with Mad
Bull 34 for me and likely many, in which Episode One follows new cop Daizaburō
"Eddie" Ban on his first day with the worst cop to be placed with, a
veteran named John "Sleepy" Estes known for "shot-first,
ask-later" Dirty Harry tactics and working with sex workers for cash on
the side, is the sexual violence and threat of rape through the first three
episodes, worst as its depicted as titivating as it is lurid, always threatened
to the female cast only and gross.
I don't view it as a damnation of
Koike, director Satoshi Dezaki or anyone who worked on the OVA, especially aware that
there are significantly worse examples in anime, (the uncensored version of Ichiro Itano's Violence Jack: Evil Town (1988), for example, is probably more
deplorable by account), but unfortunately it became an easily plot point for
rising escalation to have female characters threatened like this, that this was
the only valid threat to a female character, and it was played for sexual as
well as plot reasons. American exploitation is as duplicitous for this, and
frankly even implied threats without any nudity or violence are a trope in
multiple forms of storytelling, even D.W.
Griffith with The Birth of a Nation
(1915) effectively having this, when Lillian
Gish's character is in peril, within a film with layers of other
significant problems a viewer has to deal with.
As a result, you have to endure
this material with Mad Bull 34. When
it isn't this, or the incredible sexism, the OVA is batshit insane and memorable,
where if those problematic details weren't there you would have plenty of
ridiculous, cheap but memorable schlock to ingest. For, you see, Sleepy is
actually shown to be a good guy, one who blows a masked roller-skating store
thief's head off with a shotgun, but loves his community and, whilst having sex
with all the sex workers he is with and steals their money, uses said money to
help them and rape victims. Yes, this is all in bad taste, and even this as the
first episode conclusion is enough to dismiss the OVA as utter tripe, but it
all comes off as absurd, the material which has nothing to do with the
problematic scenes having a tone so earnest inspite of their unintentional
exaggeration that the only reflect even for the gore and prurient content is to
laugh.
A pertinent idea to consider is
how Mad Bull 34 feels like an
interpretation of American exports of their television and cinema. Some have
suggested the OVA is an extreme parody, whilst I wonder this is just what
happened when Koike tried to make a
story set in New York City, with an insane amount of detail (like his original
manga) in terms of depicting the city, right down to the aesthetic of the cop
cars and locations. But the material instead blended together all the worst clichés
of American pop culture into this extreme distillation. Certainly, this is
still New York City before Rudolph Giuliani, whose public image is that when he
became major of New York City he cleaned up the cesspool it was at least
depicted and exaggerated in American cinema, rife with crime and poverty, to
the modern city we have now. Certainly, the material in this, even the more
overt sci-fi details as we will get to with Episode Four, isn't that far off
strange material that this had.
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I forgot so much. That it spliced humour in at even deeply inappropriate moments. That Sleepy Eddie who is slowly being won over by his senior's beliefs, prevent a near rape of a female reporter whilst dressed up as women. That the first episode has, and I kid you not, a James Brown song even on the Discotek DVD release over the end credits, Brown someone who would've been horrified if he found out his song (against three pop songs over the other episodes) was used for an OVA where someone gets minced by a passing subway train for the first episode's finale.
Animation wise, it's just better
than many titles from this era, but also part of the notorious amounts of
schlock from the late eighties and early nineties which was just competent,
still with detail and style but not exactly the highest bar of this era. It's
also made by Satoshi Dezaki - not, as
presumed, legendary director Osamu Dezaki,
but his older brother. The same who also directed They Were Eleven (1986), a
great sci-fi story which is the polar opposite to this in its mood, a tale
adapted from legendary female shōjo manga writer Moto Hagio, which (from a source originally for a young female
audience) locks various alien space cadets in a dangerous situation and, with
the creator's themes of gender politics within it, very feminist readings
especially for a character whose world has the young choose their gender
despite her initially being the sole woman in the crew, with all the biases for
women on her planet a burden to the choice. How he also, by all accounts, made Mad Bull 34 raises more than an
eyebrow. Screenwriter Kazumi Koide
too, who wrote Episodes Two to Four of Mad
Bull 34 but also They Were Eleven.
Episode two, introducing female
officer Perine Valley who Eddie develops a crush on, does show the schism you
do have to deal with. It's scuzzy, and with a mob boss with revenge desired on
Perine for leaving him mostly robot stuck in a wheelchair, the desired revenge
also unfortunately includes sexual violence of a leering, objectifying sort.
Yet there's also the insane detail that, if by itself, would've developed the
reputation Mad Bull 34 has but
without the caveat of all the uncomfortable details. Like Sleepy bringing hand
grenades to a stake out, hidden in his trousers tied to his pubic hair, or the
challenge of picking the right canned coffee that isn't actually an explosive,
introducing a fun side character who Sleepy can always pick out for his scent
of urine and sugar, a homeless (yet dangerous) guy who will help the good guys
later but still wants to be the guy who offs Sleepy in a perverse form of honour.
Or the death bed wedding, which in itself represents the famous odd logic of Koike, even found in the live action
adaptations where a Lone Wolf and Cub
sequel had the titular Wolf having to kill various people to be lead to the
target he is actually meant to be killing.
Arguably Episode Three is the
same story repeated, as a result the weakest episode, following a female
reporter chasing after a supposed rapist-murderer with a lot of power on his
side, again the ongoing issue still there of that theme being too much of an
obsession of the OVA. It does have a merciless (and openly suicidal) Chinese mercenary
gang that, possibly offensive or just from the Crying Freeman school of intercontinental ridiculousness, at least
offers something much more serious and a credible threat. It does also lead to
their leader bursting into the finale with a tank. As evoked, the 1988-1992
anime adaptation of Crying Freeman,
also a Koike manga originally, is
felt as a comparison and honestly, whilst there is one plot threat later on
which is offensive, Freeman despite
being prurient and lurid feels like Mad
Bull 34 if you felt less guilty for its uncomfortable content and instead
was on the right side of lurid weirdness which you could feel less guilty
about.
Thankfully, Episode Four, even if
it has the questionable ender politics still, thankfully changed the pace and
is arguably the most entertain episode, getting some actual atmosphere in the
first night time city shots before a Predator wanders onscreen killing police officers.
A literal one, as much as you could get away with for copyright reasons, just
after Predator 2 (1990) had an
actual one carved through future Los Angeles rather than a figure here in high
tech armour attacking the New York Police force. It becomes a convoluted and at times hilarious
melodrama, in-between a challenge in Yankee Stadium with a power suit borrowed
from Aliens (1986), and a finale of over
ripened drama which involved a marriage-suicide, and as a result its naturally
so much more compelling than repeating the grime of the previous episodes, even
with all the strangeness with a love interest/enemy that borders into strange incestuous
undertones adding to the oddness.
It thankfully also jettisons to
nastiness of the previous three episodes, still utter trash but with its final
shots of snow falling on the New York Streets set to synth pop ballad, it's the
kind of compelling absurdity which, in honesty, is what Kazuo Koike at least in adaptation should be. It's this we should
return to these infamous adaptations and as much why, whilst not a lot of his
career is actually published in English, his manga should be revisiting, the
heightened emotion and insanity of his male dominated stories which followed
his belief that character, not plot, was of greater importance. It's not that bizarre
in hindsight his apprentices can vary between Tetsuya Saruwatari, co-author of the original Riki-Oh manga (even more insane than the 1991 Hong Kong
adaptation), and Rumiko Takahashi,
the legendary and insanely successful authoress of the likes of Urusei Yatsura; maybe the gore and
luridness might not apply to both, but distinct characters and escalation is
likely what Koike drilled into his
students' heads. Mad Bull 34 is NOT
the best way to experience his work, for good reason, but let it be known the
infamy of the OVA, whilst also for tasteless material we could live without, is
also from a strain of hyper-storytelling whose ridiculousness is compelling to
say the least.
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1) Adding to Mad Bull's notoriety is the infamous English dub by Manga Entertainment, in which British
voice actors attempted playing their characters with New York accents. Honestly,
the prospect wasn't a tempting one, so forgive my sin of not watching these OVA
episodes in the way many have come to know and even love them through.
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