#178: Birth (1984)

 

Director: Shinya Sadamitsu

Voice Cast: Ichirō Nagai as Bao Luzen; Kaneto Shiozawa as Junobel Kim; Kazuki Yao as Nam Shurugi; Miina Tominaga as Rasa Yupiter; Fuyumi Shiraishi as Mongaa; Jouji Yanami as Grandpa; Noriko Tsukase as Baby; Reiko Suzuki as Grandma

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

The eighties are held as a time when, with the Japanese economy riding a high, money was freely available to fund esoteric projects in the animation industry. The OVA released film Birth, for better and for worse, is a title you could only have gotten from that era as it exists today. Set on the planet Aqualoid, a magical sword known as the SHADE floats through space and finally lands on the planet, to be picked up by a young man named Nam who is immediately attacked by the Inorganics, a race of artificial figures who, threatened by the sword's power, are the opposite of the natural state of existence, the Organics, and would remove it from existence if possible.

This is a pretty simple plot, including a female friend Rasa being caught up in this, whilst trying to delivery breakfast to him from their village, and two figures in a spaceship, friends, known as Bao and Kim who were following the sword. The Inorganics themselves, robotic, change from humanoid figures on bicycles to giant machines storming the mostly desert environment the film is set in. One is immediately aware, however, Birth will be eccentric when, in its original uncensored form, it instead starts not with set up but with a yellow blob creature, which Rasa will befriend, being chased by a bigger blue blob creature with full appendages and armed with a trident. This lasts a while, a cartoon chase to begin our film here, setting up that Birth in context is tonally all over the place.

What is a very simple premise, an extended chase over the entire length, becomes an erratic mess alongside the fact that, even at just eighty minutes, it extends its content on to the point it has a strangely elongated pace. It is undoubtedly gorgeous to look at, Birth at a time when a weird production like this, whilst not to everyone's taste in its visuals, could at least have some quality to its gorgeous and distinctly cartoonish animation. It however also feels like it was made with a lot of absent mindedness, or was the result of many talented figures brainstorming what was on their minds each day.

At first it seems like Birth is going to be a very wacky comedy alongside being a sci-fi action story, with a lot of elaborate machines involved, but in its first half this gets into odd tangents already, even oddly sombre moments like an Inorganic, impaled on the SHADE, suddenly talking of the impermanence of life before its dissolves. An extended chase scene with Rasa, distinct in her red cat suit and getting the unfortunate nickname of "Jiggle-Butt" from a sexist Inorganic chasing her on a motorbike, suddenly has a tinier Inorganic on a bike the size for a small toddler try to help only to breakdown. This character ends up being a reoccuring figure, and suddenly you cut to a tangent of comedic existential angst including a lot of out-of-context scenes, like being at train tracks where a giant head of Rasa passes by, or a scene at a beach, with a lovingly rendered snail crawling past a drink with ice, and a cameo by a cartoonish giant pink octopus straight out of Parodius (1996)¹. It makes no sense, as neither cutting to Nam's grandparents, just to see them talk of tea or food for no reason, repeatedly even in the midst of action scenes.

If Birth had stayed a comedy, I could have expected a deeply silly project like this. It looks exceptional as a production, and whilst his career was mainly in storyboard and animation, the director Shinya Sadamitsu also directed an OVA like Dragon Half (1993). A beloved and incredibly silly fantasy spoof where one joke was a character having to watch a VHS tape of the first episode, all because the motivation for his revenge was a deleted scene excised from the narrative, you can see where the absurd humour comes from. It makes sense to have this level of comedy here as a result in mine to his future career, even if there is a flaw that it extends actions scenes for too long at times, to the point it has tonal problems. Also you have, of all people, Joe Hisaishi as your composer, a frequently collaborator with Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki, having worked on the score of the latter's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, released the same year as Birth was. Considering as well future director Hideaki Anno is credited as an animator on this project does also show Birth's web of connections to many talented people.

And as a result, no matter how haphazard this was, Birth did provide a few moments that even its own languid tone could not dampen, when you encounter a giant Inorganic that shouts "Asparagus" when launching a rocket punch against a horde of yellow blob creatures. It is as bizarre as it sounds and also, because this OVA feature film had the budget and staff, it looks exceptional as animation lovingly renders yellow blobs of Play-Doh with eyes charging on mass and glomping on a giant grocery obsessed Inorganic.

Where Birth gets even more peculiar is when it wants to become more serious but still has the comedy. It has lore, of the Organics versus Inorganics, leading to my beloved trope of an out-of-body realm where one of the members of the cast witnesses the death of a star. It also loses me however, whilst still being compelling, when it gets to the last half, the leads travel to a wasteland that was cordoned off due to being radiated over the decades. With comedic beats still there, you have a set piece in a ruined metropolis underground, with husks of buildings, abandoned cars and piles of skeletons everywhere. It involves a doomsday weapon, the shape of a red toy rocket launcher, and....well, never would I have thought you have so much comedy even up to an ending which is actually tragic. [Major Spoilers] How many anime, mostly set up as a comedy, end with an entire planet and the cast disintegrated, existing afterwards as spirits made into a new star by cosmic feminine figures that eat cakes in the galactic rainbow kingdom? An ending, for added emphasis on its randomness, only happening because they could not convince a child Inorganic not to fire the doomsday weapon, just out of spite, by offering to take him out for soy milk? [Spoilers End]

Birth is bizarre, a tonally erratic mess whose viewing experience was compelling, but I can understand why this title is not well known. Again, returning to the first paragraph, even if titles like this still exist in some form in the modern anime industry, how this one is was made would not be possible outside the eighties and all the money thrown around.

 

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1) I usually explain obscure references. Suffice to say, despite never really being a gamer, I had the niche Sega Saturn console as a young boy with Parodius one of the few games, a parody of shoot-em-ups by Konami where normal spaceships or eccentric characters like a bunny girl on a carrot missile shot at penguin ran pirate ships, giant showgirl dancers, and a lot of penguins and octopuses in general. It makes as suitable a tangent for an anime this tangent laden.