#128: The Burning Buddha Man (2013)

Director: Ujicha

Screenplay: Reo Anzai

Voice Cast: Nao Hanai; Chisako Hara; Moeka Haruhi; Shunsuke Hirai; Mitsuko Hoshi; Munemyôou Hozan; Yuka Iguchi; Reijirô Katô; Ryûki Kitaoka; Tomomi Nijii; Kazuyoshi Sakai; Labor Satô; Saori Takahashi; Minori Terada; Hiroshige Watanabe

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Named after green tea ice cream, Ujica is unique in the sense that, not since Hiroshi Harada mostly made Midori (1992) by himself, have we seen as with Ujica here and with Violence Voyage (2019) a figure making a Japanese animated work by themselves as a one person band, completely outside the confides of expectation even when the mainstream anime industry does allow for idiosyncratic projects to occasionally appear. Ujica has also acquired a cult interest in the West entirely outside of anime fandom entirely, Violence Voyage having gotten a streaming premiere in the USA in late October 2019, with The Burning Buddha Man available in iTunes. This is interesting as, not looking in the slightest like the stereotype of anime, he has managed to tap into the fan base for "unconventional" Japanese cult films, and being entirely alien to even anime in its popularity as we can see on stream platform.

Ujica calls his style "geki-mation", set up with a live action bookending prologue and epilogue in which a young woman, in a gothic Lolita scenario, is handed scissors and paper by a butler to begin constructing the world we witness. The style of animation here, with paper cut outs, draws back to a Japanese tradition of paper puppetry. "Geki" however is a reference to gekiga, a manga movement headed by the likes of Yoshihiro Tatsumi who wanted move away from children's comics (like Osamu Tezuka's early work) to work for adults, leading to the likes of Golgo 13, authors as acclaimed and notorious as Kazuo Koike, and even Tezuka himself going into a golden run of adult targeted comics in the seventies when he was being challenged by those inspired by this movement creating for more serious, sometimes more graphic and explicit work.  

The distinction comes in knowledge of how painstaking Ujica's work is, creating this bizarre body horror action story about people fusing human beings with Buddha statues for greater enlightenment power, the kind that would be impossible to actually animate with the level of detail to characters and locations this has in the current anime industry. It's also a premise which is entirely idiosyncratic and Japanese, leading to tangents on the craft of Buddhist statues yet re-envisioning the religion and its ideas into a violence tokusatsu work at some point where enlightenment is a goal attained by the bad guys just to be more powerful and strong. For the protagonist, a schoolgirl, the theft of a Buddhist statue in her parents' shrine connected to this evil scheme also leads to their deaths, on a journey from then on into a war, between those melding people to stolen statues to attain forced enlightenment, and the marginalised victims of this process who wish to stop this, assisted by her own grandmother who has affectively been in a form of coma over many decades to become enlightened. Said journey will lead her between virtual training and a jaunt into the realm of the dead along the way.

From https://screenanarchy.com/assets_c/2013/10/TheBurningBuddhaMan
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Already this is anime at its strangest, where the creator crams in a tribute to giant robots when a team of mutant heroes meld like a Power Rangers zoid to face the villains, but his art style just enhances it further, already showing you at the beginning this is a director with his own distinct world building in just how characters look. His paper-mation, where the characters are cut out 2D figures moved just off screen, had to be drawn multiple times to be able just to have expressions and movements, elaborate to the point as already mentioned that this detail would not be possible even in the best of current animation unless one had the time and budget to pull it off, the kind of ultra large-scale production you don't find a lot in the slightest. He creates a grotesquely compelling world where even the normal characters are exaggerated, even the protagonist as a schoolgirl having bulging eyes and usually red faced in most scenes, all before he lets his imagination run wild with the melding of human, beast and statue together. Arguably the sets, also paper backdrops, are the most naturalistic of the entire production of everything drawn, making a wonderful contrast. Adding to the tone is that, when gore or an effect is required, as if taking a page from Genocyber (1994) whose first episode infamously used clay for inter-cut shots to add to the splatter, Ujica uses liquids and other things for this, be it for gore to vomit, even in one scene actual hair and water to represent someone's tears as they have to cut their hair off to become the right person to protect the Buddha statues.  

Does The Burning Buddha Man have any depth? It's body horror sci-fi pulp at heart, and in another religion, it'd be profane to have symbols like this distorted this way, which in itself is a depth unintentionally to think about in terms of Japanese Buddhism in relationship with modern Japan. It also fits the genre of erotic-grotesque-nonsense perfectly; at first, it's just grotesque in the body horror and nonsensical in the plot, the ero eventually however appearing when mid battle heavy petting and certain types of nude religious statues are brought in.

There is also the underlying fascination which how much a tough, hard earned accomplishment the production would've been, alongside the fact it was done for this particular premise of all things. It has an errant absurdity, when the heroes push aside non violence to kill evil minions, but there's an obvious message that forcibly trying to acquire enlightenment even on a comic book pulp level, at the pain and mutation of others, is wrong, your nephew rebelling when he is a carver of Buddhist statues who takes honourable pride in his craft. All deeply silly yet told sincerely; this in itself is the type of Japanese film I'd rather have sold to Western cult film fans than the middling ironic wave of live action, low budget splatter films that were made by Nikkatsu intentionally for the West from the late 2000s. Its a theatrical film in anime, due to its circumstances, which is utterly idiosyncratic next to most anime from the same year it was released, and in lieu to the fact he's made a second film called Violence Voyage, Ujica has managed to be in a position where (depending on how long his work takes to complete per production) he's able to make these films without the pressure of the mainstream Japanese animation industry and already have a unique voice this early in his career. It's an acquired taste, but I have always admired the utterly idiosyncratic and champion it.  

From http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/wp-content/
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#127: Key the Metal Idol (1994-7)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com
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Director: Hiroaki Satō

Screenplay: Hiroaki Satō

Voice Cast: Junko Iwao as Tokiko "Key" Mima; Hiroshi Yanaka as Tomoyo Wakagi; Jūrōta Kosugi as Sergei / "D"; Miki Nagasawa as Sakura Kuriyagawa; Sho Hayami as Jinsaku Ajo; Toshiyuki Morikawa as Shuuichi Tataki; Akio Ohtsuka as Aoi; Chiyako Shibahara as Beniko Komori / Miho Utsuse

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

If you look at Key the Metal Idol altogether, this was such an ambitious and peculiarly project for the better. In anime, straight to video work (OVAs) could be multiple episodes released on multiple videotapes; Key the Metal Idol took a huge risk when at over fifteen episodes, it gives me wonder on what prices the viewers would have paid for all the tapes¹. Whatever the practical nature of the release, this was at least an ambitious tale of androids and robots, idol singing and conspiracy. The one catch to mention is that, after an initial set of thirteen episodes which are structured at a usual anime TV length of twenty five to thirty minutes, Key the Metal Idol eventually leads to two feature length conclusions, which meant many drastic changes.

With the time available for animation to be slicker than most television and for a more detailed plot than OVAs which have significantly less time to play with, it layers on an odd mix of science fiction, spirituality and all in the midst of a premise which initially suggests robot idol singers. Whilst there are episode directors, the chief director of the OVA is Hiroaki Sato, the animation director of the legendary Akira (1988) who sadly didn't helm much at all or even work in a lot of anime next to his peers, only directing one other thing in Yoshimune (2006), an utterly obscurity.

The titular Key herself is by all accounts, least for most of the show, a robot girl created by Dr. Murao Mima. On his deathbed, he passes on a message to his granddaughter Key she can become human by finding over 30,000 friends. Going to a metropolise, she encounters Sakura, who comes form the same rural village, but also the Ajo Heavy Industries and Production Minos led by Jinsaku Ajo, who are responsible for her grandfather's death ultimately and happen to be ran by a madman, one whose corporation is later revealed to be harvesting "gel" from unwilling victims, the homeless and their enemies, the solidified life force of human beings used to power robots which are remote controlled by people. In a curious plot choice, which is openly known before the details mentioned above in the narrative, is that their best way to test the robots is Miho, an idol singer who is actually remote controlling a robot version of herself, a pawn kept by Ajo as a pet who demonstrates some really creepy sexualised obsessions with robotics and playing God. Key herself, unaware of any of this, upon discovering Miho considers, despite being a timid and quiet figure, this the best director to find 30,000 people.

It's such an odd premise, if a compelling one, one which hangs on a huge cultural aspect that exists in Japan of idol singers. "Idols" don't necessarily have to be singers, but it's the most commonly known version, manufactured icons for managers and talent agencies. Idols have a dark underbelly too - they can be controlled by their management even to the point of any concept of romance and personal lives, not to mention that when it involves female idols (including teenagers) there's a really uncomfortable aspect to consider in this too. Satoshi Kon's 1997 film Perfect Blue was a fascinating take on this from the perspective of a member of an idol trio who, trying to grow as an actress in a new career, lead to a psychodrama which looked in the darker side of idol fan culture too. (And how fitting, without realising the connection at first, that voice actress Junko Iwao, who plays Key, also voices that idol singer protagonist in Perfect Blue). Here, there's a perverse metaphor, whatever your opinions of various idol groups and singers' managements, of a company who are literally controlling women, making robot versions of them, and with Ajo going as far as even assaulting their backup lead singers with violence or draining them emotionally until they are on death's door constantly.

Another factor of significance is that, in lieu to probably the original plan, the series until the final feature length episodes drip feeds its plot and never really explains a lot towards the final two pieces, which make up most of the OVA leaving many questions. Key when she briefly turns human throughout the series, in emotionally intense moments or in crowds, has incredible psychic powers. This leads to the introduction of Prince Snake-Eye, a cult leader whose characterisation takes a fascinating path, but to keep some secrets involves trying to sabotage Key's idol singer career, and leads to her literally healing a child from near death, which does raise some new issues at hand with who she is. The show, despite its science fiction plot, jumps fully into spiritual themes, especially in Key's back-story as a shrine maiden is a memory she has, from a curious slant as its going eventually be interpreted through science fiction details.

There's also the inherent fact that there's a very idiosyncratic attitude here to characterisation which at first requires a lot to get used to, might even be perceived as wooden or characters not actual like regular people, but I came to realise was individuals on the production staff trying to actually write characters who were more realistic even if it has to contrasts an inherently over-the-top plot. The character of Sakura is the best example of this, a figure who bites her tongue a lot despite having the brash and confidence attitude, one which leads her to conflict with Key's apparent robotic nature and nursing a growing affection for Shuichi Tataki, a handsome guy who is the head of the Miho fan club who slowly begins to realise something is very amiss with the star. Even the apparent villains have idiosyncrasies, figures having darker layers to them, where even if he is the outright villain Ajo is a former World War II veteran whose obsession with the opportunities with robotics became a violent God like mania. The dance choreographer and general artistic talent Hikaru Tsurugi, who is an abusive and cold man, is one of a figure distant to people, who attaches himself to Key when he considers her like him. Even Ajo's right hand man, a hulking former soldier named Sergi, is a man who thinks himself smarter than his employee, a man who can literally be described as superhuman but at a cost in his career of having becoming an addict to gel, which considering its solidified human life force really has a curious undercurrent meaning to it.

From https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1200x680/public/syfywire_
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Complicating the series was that, with the clear sense something happened in the production that forced the creative team to work on these and release them in 1997, which they had to have two feature length final episodes.  Before, not a lot of back story was explained, to which this means the first film is a giant exposition dump, where it becomes quite obvious the original plan had to be scrapped and this was the result. It's fascinating when you learnt the context, reaching as far back as 1950s Japan back into the story's modern setting in a web of characters like Key who get fully formed, but its sudden and involves two characters having a long conversation in a park to explain this all. A whole new character is even introduced just to add context to one side even, so I would not in the slightest hold back any person, if they go out to find this series, really has issues with episode fourteen, as it's such a sudden lunge into so much plot detail, even if it gets into a lot of fascinating material including a sub current theme of women being dominated by men and the inherently horrifying nature of it.

The final episode does do a lot though that succeeds after the fact, even against the obvious jarring change in pacing. It ultimately reveals as well how sad the story really becomes - only one major character dies in the whole OVA, but it's one you come to love, a normal person, and it's treated with the immense sadness even if the others have to move on quickly in dangerous circumstances. The result is one of the best attempts at depicting a death bed scene or a death when anime can bungle it so badly or, in the midst of an ultraviolent one, it just becomes a ghoulish background noise. The series altogether, even when it may come off as haphazard, does make the success of not pulling punches. Even when there are some contrivances when characters might've reacted fasted, most of the series thankfully has it there's a reason acts don't take place, like Sergi being too injured to actually continue, that a location when finally learnt of is immediately acted upon, or that it's known that, as the series progresses, Key's unseen abilities even scare Ajo and his lackeys. The show doesn't hide how dangerous the villain is, but there's reason to why he acts the way he does, even if the explanation like using his own scientists for gel extraction is the act of a lunatic. It is, in all honestly, a nuisance filled production that'll develop layers if I revisit the whole series.

The show is also elusive and slow burn for the better. I cannot help but think of the shadow of influence Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-6) had on this series and others as, whilst the OVA originally started in 1994 and is its own unique creation, the ending of Key the Metal Idol when it becomes a phantasmagorical head-trip, and a concert hall is entirely filled with purple life force gel, feels like something that could only exist after Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the unleashing of The End of Evangelion (1997) on Japanese cinema goers, took such strange and surreal risks with anime. As a result of when this OVA start, it technically doesn't belong to the school of unique and risky anime productions, mostly in television, that Neon Genesis Evangelion encouraged the creation of by being so popular, from Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to argubly the original Boogiepop Phantom series from the year 2000. I'd gladly put Key the Metal Idol as a prototypical entry, not to suggest that there wasn't this type of idiosyncratic animation before the mid nineties, but that as of yet my only knowledge comes from it usually being in theatrical work or experimental anime. The OVA market, when it first started in the early eighties, really helped the encouragement of idiosyncratic productions. Key the Metal Idol is nonetheless a curious being even here as, due to the structure, it's a lot longer than most OVAs I have encountered so takes on the pacing and structure of a regular anime series².

The OVA was created by Pierrot, a company whose track record includes a lot of huge mainstream hits in anime, some like the Naruto franchise probably known even outside of hardcore anime fan circles. A higher animation quality over TV is here as there was significantly less restrictive time scales per episode allowing for more. It also allowed for more mature content but its wisely used; there's nudity, but its matter of fact, and the violence is not always there but a sudden shock, surprising in how nasty it is whilst making sense as, if there was a super powered robot involved in a scene, it could crush a human head like a grape.

There's also a wonderful dark mood, one which is helped by the richness of the style in colour and character designs. Character designer Keiichi Ishikura's work is very idiosyncratic here, which helps provide the show its own tone, and even if there's a lot of day scenes, the style of Key the Metal Idol can definitely be seen in its very rich use of dark colours and a very slow burn pace. The main opening song is also beautiful, a jazz pop ballad whose moody female vocals about lovesickness befit the show perfectly. For a story where music is going to be of importance, it executes as well the music and the visual depictions of performances with considerable affect - the Miho performances, even the behind the scenes moments we see throughout the story, have their own strangeness to them, anything from giant unused plants to a robotic cello group among the artistic touches. And of course, for anyone who has seen the show already reading this review, a huge plot point involves a song called "Lullaby", initially a mere incomprehensible mummer when Shuichi acquires it through his sources, but is built towards with considering nuisance.

It's together a flawed but utterly admirable piece for me, where even the aforementioned flaw (mainly the fourteen episode) instead becomes part of its personality and thus no longer a detraction for me after contemplating the show. This OVA series is something definitely (sadly) not as well known despite having an English dub, licensed by a company named Viz in 2000 for the American market, although thankfully in 2017 another named Discotek released it in the United States again for DVD.

It's a series, honestly, that should be more wider known beyond this, to which why I will also give credit to Crunchyroll making the OVA series available in Britain in 2019, the time when I saw the show. To not time stamp this review, sadly a lot of Discotek titles, or older anime in general even from the 2000s, were not as easily accessible in the United Kingdom in 2019 as one would presume or hope, dominated naturally by new titles advertised to bring forth revenue. One of Key the Metal Idol's virtues is good old elegant hand drawn animation, and its time stamped by the era it comes from, just in one of Sakura's night jobs being a videotape rental store, it is nonetheless timeless because it's still a fascinating one off, something difficult to categorise in terms of genre or expectations, whose presentation is even idiosyncratic and eventually, yes, embraces the unconventional fully. That kind of work, even outside of Japanese anime, I fall hard for.

From https://i.redd.it/k56xzhgmpx331.png

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1) Of interest, considering how anime has notoriously been too expensive from what I have heard in terms for Japanese fans, price gouging to us Westerners if we looked at the prices and in comparison to content, Key the Metal Idol may have had its first episodes released at a significantly cheaper price if the Wikepedia page is right. Sadly this is unsubstantiated information, without a reference source, so I had to take this piece of the review out and warn you of its potential falsity.  

2) There have been longer OVA works if you are curious. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is probably the most famously long OVA work, starting in 1988 and ending also in 1997, with its main series being over a hundred and ten episodes. That's not including side stories, feature films and remakes.

#126: Lily C.A.T. (1987)

Director: Hisayuki Toriumi

Screenplay: Hisayuki Toriumi

Voice Cast: Chikao Ohtsuka as Dick Berry; Masako Katsuki as Nancy Strauch; Osamu Saka as Mike Hamilton; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Miss Caroline; Eiko Yamada as Dorothy Van Farrah /Farrah Van Dorothy; Hideyuki Tanaka as Gott Walt Coup; Hiroshi Ohtake as Dülar Delcassé; Kōzō Shioya as Guy Alcuin; Mahito Tsujimura as Dr. Harris Mead; Masako Katsuki as Nancy Stroustrup

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

[Major Spoilers]

After years of curiosity of this title, I finally come to Lily C.A.T. with disappointment to be honest. And note, this OVA feature has a handsome production team behind it, so there was hope even as a schlocky sci-fi horror film it'd have a high calibre group of names working on it. Director Hisayuki Tonuni directed the 1985 Area 88 OVA, which is still held in high regard today, and was chief co-director of crossover hit The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982), and helmed the original Gatchaman (1972-4) series, a man who started on Speed Racer in the sixties, by the end of his life at 2009 going between helping Mamoru Oshii develop the first ever OVA in existence, Dallos (1983), and even becoming a freelance novelist.

The studio behind this film Pierrot are veterans who've been behind huge series from Urusei Yatsura to Narato, and you have two figures by the name of Yasuomi Umetsu and Yoshitaka Ameno involved. Umetsu, future director of the notorious Kite (1998), was yet a man who even on that title was known for painstaking quality of work¹. Ameno, who has been covered before, eventually became so well regarded for his highly detailed illustration that he could live off being an actual artist for a career with work in galleries, cutting his teeth in the sixties too and in the eighties being a journeyman in anime, between working with Oshii on the truly under seen masterpiece Angel's Egg (1985) and random obscurities like Amon Saga (1986).

So why doesn't Lily C.A.T. work for me? Because it remakes Alien (1979) in a tired way even if it's well made. Ridley Scott's film is important but all the work that ripped it off has cast an unfortunate shadow over genre cinema when so many, for every good film that ripped it off in great or fun ways, just copied it lazily. Anime has done the same, to the point there's even multiple hentai based on this template²; Lily C.A.T's version begins with an international crew and plays off the idea of time distortion due to space travel, a theme explored later in Gunbuster (1988) in how for this crew, the Earth is left over twenty plus years whilst for them it'll only be months on their goal. One idea sadly underutilised is that, as per suspicions two of the crew have faked their identities, in this world this factor has encouraged criminals on the lam to go into space so time passes, leaving few to remember them.

Instead, we get another potentially fascinating plot in which, yes, there's an alien entity onboard but it has contaminated the spaceship's atmosphere and causes an alien version of Legionnaire's disease that rapidly harms a person's lungs, as the real life disease does as explained in the story, but also is connected to a being which absorbed all living matter. It does mean, as a warning even as an animated work, there is cat related violence along the way but also, designed by Yoshitaka Ameno, a really disturbing creature like John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) which is a mass of limbs and entities coexisting. As this is an eighties OVA too, not only is all this highly detailed animation, but this creature is really grotesque too.

However the problem with Lily C.A.T. is how bland it all becomes, when anime horror is moody, lurid and/or ridiculous. It is usually of interest to me even if it's terrible because it is unpredictable, entirely different from what this film does. The characters, a multinational cast, don't stand out even if a plot point is about two suspicious members of the crew; Umezu's character designs, very realistic, aren't as flamboyant as his work can be, he who is usually very realistic but also includes immense detail to them. This is neither helped by the cast not being written to stand out for what is initially a large one which could blend into each other, and since this desires to play Alien straight, it never has a surprise. The only quirk of the entire plot is also an incredibly silly one, imagining if Ash from Alien, the android who was secretly responsible for getting the alien to Earth, when played by an android cat. It doesn't succeed, and as a result, this was a huge disappointment as a film despite the calibre of staff behind it.

From https://fantasyanime.com/anime/images/lilycat/lilycat_shot20.jpg

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1) Still working too, which is great, as the character designs of Kokkoku: Moment by Moment (2018) are unmistakably his, and he's been involved as the animation director for many productions, which is a damn good figure to have on staff.

2) One could even be covered as it got a butchered British DVD release, called Alien of Darkness (1996), which envisioned Alien if the entire crew were female, tentacles and a heroine with a cute ferret.