#150: Tokyo Revelation (1995)

Director: Osamu Yamasaki

Screenplay: Mamiya Fujimura

Based on the Megami Tensei franchise

Voice Cast: Hikaru Midorikawa/David Lucas as Kojirō Sōma; Nobuyuki Hiyama/Alexis Lang as Akihito Kobayashi; Hekiru Shiina as Kyōko Shibusawa; Hideyuki Umezu as Gagyson; Kōichi Yamadera as Takehiko Kuki; Kotono Mitsuishi as Saki Yagami; Manami Komori/Debbie Derosa as Marika Kusaka; Toshiyuki Morikawa as Yōsuke Miura

Viewed in English Dub

[Some Major Plot Spoilers]

 

Teddy bears and knives, kinda weird.

An odd choice a special occasion, but also fitting as, to my surprise, the director of this obscure OVA also helmed Gesalt (1997), an obscure OVA that was the first I had ever covered. Also whilst one could have celebrated a rounded number with a known title, something like Tokyo Revelation is fascinating as much for what it stems from in terms of anime especially from the OVA era.

Tokyo Revelation is also not as special as I remember it, but I still see the strange if maligned aura it had that intrigued me. This is also another title from The Collection, a DVD series of old Manga Entertainment licenses from their VHS era that I am probably the only person obsessed over. Out of all of them, this is definitely one of the weirdest. It is also an apt choice for a special occasion as it's alternative name is Shin Megami Tensei: Tokyo Mokushiroku, which means it is a piece of a multi media behemoth called Shin Megumi Tensei that some of you might have recognised. Video gamers may know this franchise more than anyone else, if not from the Megumi Tensei games, but by its spin-off Persona, which is a big title from the 2010s on at least.

Megumi Tensei originates from a novel series Digital Devil Story by Aya Nishitani. Notable, the pieces of this franchise are not all necessarily connected, but instead can have separate single tales. In fact, reading on the franchise, it has always been drawing on many different inspirations - religion, occultism, philosophy, even Jungian psychology - which offer a great deal of variety of influences to the material. It is a branching tree as a result that has allowed a vast number of narratives to grow from its roots. Tokyo Revelations was the second anime in this franchise's history to be created, originally a two part OVA production at only an hour altogether, compiled as a fifty five minute film by Manga Entertainment. There is immediately the issue that this leaves very little time for this peculiar take on apocalyptic drama, crammed in details including its dated interests in virtual reality and really idiosyncratic touches.

The protagonist is Kojiro, who is likely a reincarnation of Masakado, the guardian of the Kanto region. This is explicitly Taira no Masakado, the real life samurai from the Heian period of Japan (794 to 1185), and a figure referred to other source, notably the lengthy Teito Monogatari, a seminal novel series (and debut) from polymath Hiroshi Aramata. Alongside becoming a figure of supernatural folklore, Masakado can claim credit to having influence a novel series which was adapted twice to live action, including in Akio Jissoji's blockbuster Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988) and, in another Manga Entertainment license which did not translate over to the DVD era, the notorious Rintaro OVA adaptation Doomed Megalopolis (1991).

The villain, one of them, is Akito Kobayashi, introduced deliberately causing an airplane to explode midair to harvest a force known as "magnetite". He is an old childhood friend of Kojiro, coming to his school as the mysterious transfer student, a trope common to many anime, and interesting in his classmate Saki, a virtuous female student rich in magnetite, a magical essence of life needed to summon a major demon. There is another force trying to protect Saki. There is another, never really defined or detailed in the slightest, which stay out of this conflict and is only of note for another female student with supernatural abilities called Kyouko, a freshman who has a crush on Kojiro and wishes to protect him. Even if it means giving him knives imbued with moon energy on school grounds abruptly.

The OVA for me is both evident of the absurdity of the formal's golden era, but also how it could be brimming in creativity even if such examples like this are mocked decades later in YouTube videos. On one hand, when a group of four girls are immediately smitten with Akito, he has them brainwashed in a demonic ritual circle to have an orgy with each other until demons can possess their bodies and go kidnap Saki. It is utterly lurid and silly. On the other is the major plot point, even stressed in body language, that Akito is actually a tragic villain, explicitly attracted to Kojiro, his interactions (at least one clearly) with a romantic attachment that Kojiro sadly rejects. Of course, there is the stereotype of the tragic gay character, which is just as problematic if frequent by suggesting that not being heterosexual means a life of tragedy. That said the ending, with a huge spoiler, was always the aspect of Tokyo Revelation among others that stayed with me. That, redeeming himself, Akito is able to get his wish by way of what is effectively a synchronicity of souls, as he sacrifices himself but still exists in another body of a female character and her consciousness intermingled with his. Still potentially problematic depending on how you read it, but this no matter how rushed the production is stood out as surprisingly bold for a simplistic story.

Also this type of pulp, when it works or even has some nifty ideas, was always rich in creativity even when silly and lurid, even the ritual circle scene orgy matching the mood of the erotic and the grotesque anime is imaginative at. Another example comes when a female member of the good side is brainwashed, mouth to mouth, with an exceptionally phallic worm monster designed to spring out the same way at their base. It would work, with its explicitness, whether the host was male or female never feeling like it is crass or objectifying, all because the creature design and horror is appropriately nasty.

The other factor of interest for me, common in so much Japanese pop media, has been how these tales are always explicitly set, unless period tales, in modern Japan and especially in urban environments, empahsised more by how this obscure OVA even refers to a real life ancient samurai, a reminder that we forget that these are pieces of Japanese culture. It feels more of note when, for this one's OVA dub or any old Manga Entertainment dub (like many from The Collection DVD series), many of the voice actors are stumbling over Japanese names and terms frequently. True, we have tales like this in the West, but there is as much an attempt to distance them from us unless slasher tales, to the point we pushed the supernatural into gothic castles or underground clubs of the producer's imagination. Here, you have someone walking his dog in one scene in a park only to be attacked by a Cerberus dog at night in the middle of a city. In the logic of anime, even a messy and deeply OVA like this, you can have the atmosphere of the supernatural and the unconventional but spliced with the added later of the banality of modern life. Even the anime logic and clichés - a secret group of demon hunters, the mysterious transfer student, a second transfer student who is a cool motorbike riding young woman with pink hair - have to be threaded through these ordinary environments, helped as much by the fact (whether the case here or not) many productions have used real life locations and painstakingly copied them into animated form.

It cannot be ignored that Tokyo Revelation rushes along. Even without the Manga Entertainment dub, which has their notorious habit of additional swearing to the dialogue to up the age rating for the United Kingdom release, you have ridiculous combination of how much is just abruptly introduced and what exactly that entails. Such as the demons creating their own virtual reality back when that was a buzz word in the nineties, leading to one of my most beloved pleasures in anime of characters being sucked into strange environments, here one with a chequered black-and-white floor and floating metal orbs in the air, all whilst the characters are attacked by a jumble of mythological creatures like a harpy. The short space of time to cram so much of the plot, over what were originally two episodes less than thirty minutes each, including an apocalyptic scenario, is also one of the huge perils of the OVA format, even if this was a case with an actual ending. It feels hastily put together by the last act, ending in a battle between hero and a demon which you have no emotional weight to. In fact, the huge surprise for the story, involving the character Akito, is a virtue considering you could not give a damn about most everything else in the denouement.

Said ending is  also helped by how, in the final minutes, it is a strangely poetic one who's cast monologue in voiceover about the endless cycle back and forth between life and death, and how death comes to life again, befitting what in the plot for me was a sweet conclusion. If it is, truthfully, a deeply silly piece of pulp from this era, which did not mean it did not have its enjoyments and virtues.  So, add it in a growing list of animated guilty pleasures from Japan, doomed to be lost outside of web rips unless we think of them. The story is a generic mortal versus demons story crammed into 55 minutes which is not paced well in the slightest...and the results show. What makes it a pleasure though, aside from humorous moments that happen out of nowhere, is a surprising sexual streak in it that would give a Freud wannabe a field day and the surprising emotional layer to that area as well, all in spite of how abrupt it can be. Normally portrayals of sexuality in anime from what I have seen are toe curling at best, but here it is close to becoming surreal and in one case surprisingly progressive and inspired. If even this lurid OVA can pull that out of nowhere, then it says a lot of how good anime can be as a medium. Hence, it is perfect way to celebrate a hundred and fifty anime.