#198: Ping Pong the Animation (2014)

 

Director: Masaaki Yuasa

Screenplay: Masaaki Yuasa

Based on the manga by Taiyo Matsumoto

Voice Cast: Fukujurō Katayama as Yutaka "Peco" Hoshino; Kouki Uchiyama as Makoto "Smile" Tsukimoto; Masako Nozawa as Obaba; Mitsuaki Hoshi as Takamura; Shouhei Shimada as Yamada; Shunsuke Sakuya as Ryuuichi "Dragon" Kazama; Subaru Kimura as Manabu "Demon" Sakuma; Takanori Hoshino as Ota; Yosei Bun as Kon "China" Wenga; Yūsaku Yara as Jō Koizumi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Sports as a genre of story can have an appeal even beyond their subject to a universal concept which using the structure to explore them. For an example, chosen as I saw both of them for the first time within each other with today's subject Ping Pong the Animation, was Hanebado! (2018). Hanebado, set within all female badminton competitions, was a controversial show for drastically rewriting the original manga, but by way of more heightened melodrama, it dealt especially in its most controversial aspect, turning the lead into a much more emotionally destroyed character, of how being taught to become the best can cause harm, in a theme of parental neglect or the cruelty of competitiveness. Ping Pong is significantly more light-hearted, or at least whilst with one very tragic back story and another character with severe homesickness, one where no one is broken, only needing to find their real desires to become a better person. More faithful to its source manga by Taiyo Matsumoto, this may be about the sport of its title, with a lot of scenes of even casual spats between players in table tennis clubs, and treated with the respect and accuracy of getting into consultants, but it is definitely a drama first of young men finding themselves first. It is one which just happens to have their existentialism transpiring around ping pong tables.

Not surprisingly, from director Masaaki Yuasa, who also wrote the screenplay, this was going to be an integral part of the adaptation. This is fascinating in terms of his career¹ as, a year before with Kick Heart (2013), he needed to be funded on Kickstarter to create a short film, but in 2017, not only did the theatrical film Night Is Short, Walk On Girl came to be, which would become a film of great interest for many getting into his work, and a certain television series named Devilman Crybaby also came out in Netflix, which was the title which thankfully meant a cult director, held in high regards but difficult to access, broke through the glass ceiling to become a very busy auteur. After Devilman Crybaby finally gained his due, Ping Pong is interesting to see from just before that turn from an obscure and admired anime auteur. He is, as mentioned, also adapting the acclaimed manga author Taiyo Matsumoto here as well, with a work which even if unconventional as a subject matter has a lot of emotional depth within itself. 

Even as a show whose tone is eccentric, and very funny, this is very mature and thoughtful as a tale, clear when you reach the point no one is an antagonist or a villain, just very confused young men in certain cases. Two childhood friends are the leads, Yutaka "Peco" Hoshino and Makoto "Smile" Tsukimoto. Peco is the boisterous and cocky ping pong prodigy who will be humbled early in the show, needing to find himself and his skill in the game, whilst Smile is a quiet and extremely guarded young man, viewed as a robot by others. Smile is very good at ping pong but also incredibly isolated, turning into a cold and ruthless player. Even those against them are complex. Chinese player Kon "China" Wenga, who feels exiled in Japan, is a figure who is a tough player but openly misses his home, the games with a greater risk if he loses as it will mean he will be stuck from his homeland, whilst Ryuuichi "Dragon" Kazama, head of the dominant Kaio ping pong school team, has the most tragic back story despite his depiction in games being a behemoth who is larger than his opponents as he crushes them. A young man who has to play, and dominate, as much due to the failure of his father's passion in flower selling, that is implicitly likely to have led to suicide, as it is compensating from a background where he hides in the toilets whenever he needs to express emotion.

To try to describe Masaaki Yuasa's style following these characters is difficult, as always has been the case for myself as Yuasa's style always experiments with all his work. The influences on him are known, but he varies per show or film, with this having the added fact he is indebted to Taiyo Matsumoto's distinct character designs which provide their own personality. This show nonetheless, even next to the ambition of his debut Mind Game (2004), feels a high bar. For what is such a secretly emotional and quiet narrative, in terms of his experimentation it feels more distinct straightaway with the opening and ending credits, the former a highly detailed sequence that, in monochrome, feels like it is in chalk drawing at times, whilst the later is a bright almost expressionist look at a bright coastal town. Whilst the ping pong action when shown is lovingly rendered, and the drama is treated seriously, metaphor and blatant symbolism are embraced and exaggerated. There is style to burn, be it scenes telling the story within one shot between multiple images at one, to how even points of great drama have exaggerated symbolism to tell the material, such as Smile's literal robotic outer skin or how Kazama's weight is literally a masochism with a nihilistic edge, his battle with a certain hero of ping pong who finally comes to be ([Huge Spoiler] Peco when he gets his act together [Spoilers End]) is a man struggling up a mountain being forced to fly and enjoy himself in the game again, as the music becomes more chirpy and heighten.

The music here is a huge virtue to Ping Pong in Yuasa's catalogue, such as that sequence where, as Kazama is given light, it becomes more chirpy and heightened. Considering Yuasa's use of music in his previous work, such as having Seiichi Yamamoto of the Boredoms score Mind Game, he has always had good music, and composer Kensuke Ushio (who would work with the director onwards) adds a great deal to the material. Here it is a huge virtue among many, and in truth, the entire show is fascinating in that, for all the more dramatically elaborate work in his CV, Ping Pong among them hits so hard with its emotional depth. In just eleven episodes and only two tournaments, quickly getting through a lot without hassle, the show alongside its elaborate production style does stand up in a career that already had big surprises among them. In just eleven episodes and only two tournaments, the show quickly gets through a lot without hassle, alongside its elaborate production style it does stand up in a career that already had big surprises among them. Yuasa in the beginning with Mind Game lived up to the notion of throwing everything including the kitchen sink into his work, and likely a huge factor in his favour, by the point of The Tatami Galaxy (2010), was how he was focusing this material carefully whatever genre he was in.

And in areas here he, and the teams he worked with, still should levels of grace here with one show you normally do not get. Replicated in the English dub, they went as far as casting Kon and his coach with actors who fluently speak the characters' native language, which is rarely done when, honestly, you usually have native Japanese actors trying to work around a second language phonetically or with random words brought up in the script. Even the show's sense of humour, following from its source material, feels more mature, a playfulness of banter, bickering or Smile's mentor, a retired ping pong tournament player and an elderly man, starting their love-indifference relationship to improve him like a crush trying to be noticed in a high school romance, all done with an amusing air.

And as mentioned, this only is eleven episodes, which is curious when they are traditionally around twelve or so, but in mind that this was screened for Fuji TV as part of their Noitamina block, of "alternative" anime (including some of Yuasa's) which stretches the storytelling type and targeted audiences, this varying episode length and how idiosyncratic these shows could be is a common trope from their screening block. Ping Pong manages in quite little time, able to be binged in a day or two, to encompass a lot more existentialism in episodes than some anime have at all, boiled down to its basics a narrative of trying to find oneself. A random male character, a random opponent who loses, is even treated with a journey of renouncing the game, feeling he is not good enough to compete, only to find he has literally having wandered the world only to return to his mistress in the last episodes passionate for the game again, little details like this among the many that make the series as good as it is.  

Ping Pong the Animation altogether is an exceptional work, which considering Masaaki Yuasa has quite a few gems in his catalogue, from before this series and after, also shows how the series has managed to stand out for me as well considering the strength of his other work. Again, as stressed in the first paragraph, sports narratives can be as much metaphors for other themes as they are the subject, and especially in this case, you have the reward of a very idiosyncratic narrative premise but one you can also connect with. Certainly, it is a hidden gem for its creator for me.

 

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1) Yuasa did direct an episode of Adventure Time in 2014 too, so this was definitely a sign the tide was turning in his favour.

#197: Dear Brother (1991-2)

 

Director: Osamu Dezaki

Screenplay: Hideo Takayashiki and Tomoko Konparu

Based on the manga by Riyoko Ikeda

Voice Cast: Hiroko Kasahara as Nanako Misonô, Keiko Toda as Kaoru "Kaoru no Kimi" Orihara, Kenyuu Horiuchi as Takashi Ichinomiya, Mami Koyama as Fukiko "Miya-sama" Ichinomiya, Masako Katsuki as Aya Misaki, Sakiko Tamagawa as Mariko Shinobu, Sumi Shimamoto as Rei "Hana no Saint-Just" Asaka, Tesshō Genda as Takehiko Henmi, Waka Kanda as Tomoko Arikura

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

It is sad knowing Dear Brother is an obscure title. Thankfully, over the decades, the show has been more readily accessible in the West, but even in 2021 when they announced a Blu Ray release in the United States, classic anime distributors and restorers Discotek Media even kindly warned fans that theirs would be a limited print run due to the rights. The interesting thing is that, with fingers crossed, Dear Brother will one day become a much more talked about show, hopefully a more readily accessible one as word of mouth grew. Considering how much the industry has changed, this lavish NHK produced production by directorial auteur Osamu Dezaki and based on a work by Riyoko Ikeda, a high school melodrama, time has made this nowadays ready for an audience.

Everything, and everyone working on this thirty nine episode series, succeeded and I will say this now immediately, but since Osamu Dezaki was the figure who brought me to this series, not Riyoko Ikeda who this is my first introduction too, he warrants his own credit. A working director, prolific until his 2011 death, Dezaki worked in countless genres of anime, and he was a collaborator, especially when his work with character designer Akio Sugino is some of his most acclaimed work. Even that pair, let alone Dezaki himself, were not always successful, as whilst (especially in its English dub), the OVA Sword of Truth (1990) is not a "great" work of samurai pulp, which is funnier now knowing it was released only a year before Dear Brother. But when he succeeded, he hit it out of the park, and a huge reason why he deserves auteur status is he had trademarks, both a taste for melodrama, and also distinct artistic touches. The "postcard memory" is his most famous, uses throughout Dear Brother multiple times in single episodes, cuts to more detailed still shots at moments to heighten the drama. It is strange that, yes, due to his working style, Dezaki could have this high school drama, set at an all-girls school Seiran Academy and focused almost entirely on young women, but also have adapted Golgo 13, Takao Saito's very macho and adult assassin manga, for the sleazy and over-the-top 1983 theatrical film, but like that film being unexpectedly experimental and artistically bold, Dear Brother is as bold and dynamic in its own way. He was an eclectic figure, working on classic literature to pulp manga, even adapting Herman Melville and the Old Testament.

Whilst thirty nine episodes is a large scale to work with, the plot of Dear Brother could have been told in thirteen. Where that length comes into play, alongside being a rare experience as someone who normally does not watch long length shows frequently, is that Dear Brother is a slow burn drama which leads you to experience one school year of Nanako, a new graduate who will struggle through bullying, her conflicting relationship with the sorority she is inducted into, and the struggles of the classmates she means, including her own complicated family history as she pens letters to Takehiko Henmi, a teacher she bonded with but does not realise is her step brother. The length of the show in itself means Dear Brother will breathe, allowing you to engage with these characters, and wrench every little moment of heartbreak and angst for what it's worth.

Writing to her "brother" throughout the narrative, and also the narrator, Nanako is thankfully not a generic lead, her own conflicts and self-doubts in herself fleshing her out, but she is as much a bystander to a world where even people who do detestable things in this school environment are shown to be flawed figures you will eventually sympathise with, their bullying or even their questionable behaviour due to pressures, neurosis, or eventually causing incredible guilt. Even a stabbing in the arm becomes less a moment of someone committing a criminal act in class, but a moment of the glass ceiling finally breaking. The bleakness of the show, when it does not pull punches, is to be emphasised in how it tackles subjects like suicide, enough that for the 2021 Blu-Ray release Discotek does include messages on the discs before you reach the menus, recommending suicide help lines for any viewers affected by the content. The show drastically juxtaposes its flawed human heart with its elegance, the opening credits a montage of symbolic images pulled from Western iconography - porcelain dolls, elaborate gowns, and in mind to Riyoko Ikeda's other famous series being The Rose of Versailles, a manga adapted to anime around the French Revolution, a lot clearly indebted to that era of French culture. That will even play out in direct nods as, among the many figures we will encounter, one girl named Rei Asaka is even nicknamed "Saint-Just" after Louis de Saint-Just, a real historical figure from that time whose own tragic end in actual history shadows a metaphor for the young woman bequeathed that name.

By the fourth or fifth episode you are already aware of how heightened this show will be, when a flower arranging tool dubbed the "Spiked Frog", a literal pad with metal spikes, is deliberately dropped on someone's hand, but the show will force you to see how these characters became how they are, even those seemingly monstrous like Fukiko Ichinomiya, the head of the sorority whose cold demeanour and her sorority's draconian "dog-eat-dog" mentality of forcing girls to fighting and backstab each other for entry is inherently evil. Contrasting them are Saint Just herself, a very masculine figure Nanako becomes close to, looking in her suit clothes like the self-destructive libertine artistic of 18th century Western culture with a drug habit and death wish to match and contrast her nobility. A star who gathers other girls in the school around her in crushes of idolisation, her mirror and best friend is "Prince" Kaori, nicknamed after a character in The Tale of Genji, another star of the school, both in prescience and being a basketball star, whose severe medical issues place her in a fragile place contrasted by her strong will, antagonistic to Fukiko's sorority and a hero to Nanako in moments of danger.

Alongside Nanako's childhood friend Tomoko is also Mariko, who at first to a modern viewer, with her clingy nature, and what can only be seen as an early episode of her being obsessive in a toxic and sexual, may ring alarm bells of her being a predatory lesbian stereotype, but again this show comes from a source which is more progressive and intelligent than this. Mariko's back-story, when fleshed out, makes her a very sympathetic character, alongside the fact, knowing this is based on a 1975 manga, and an early nineties anime series, this show does not hide at all how much of the show is an LGBTQ narrative even if characters stayed heterosexual and one even marries in a Western church in the final episodes. Crushes among classmates and peers are common, and with Nanako crushing over Saint Just especially, you have an explicit narrative even if it never reveals a hand in the last scene what that influenced in the protagonist's life. That relationship even has a Freudian level of symbolism over the cigarettes Saint Just smokes, how smoking is banned off campus, and Nanako even keeping one of her cigarettes in her possession, this show not even using subtext and clearly coming from the school where subtle metaphors are for cowards.

There are moments where Dezaki is heavy handed. An episode called "Bad Apple", as the sorority is eventually challenge in the school and starts to devour itself, has shots to a literal rotten apple floating through the city river among flotsam-and-jetsam, but credit is to be given for Dezaki for being that upfront in a grandiose and artistic way, alongside the individuals who painstakingly animated those images in the first place. Dear Brother as an animated show looks sumptuous, probably not a surprise both as a production by NHK, a major television broadcaster known as much as an institution behind documentaries and highly artistic programming, and Riyoko Ikeda, a legendary figure whose control over her work is likely why they have been difficult over the years to access in the West, but again someone just from this one show who shows an incredibly storytelling hand. She belongs to the Year 24 Group, female manga artists who heavily influenced shōjo manga (Japanese girls' comics) beginning in the 1970s, a list of significant names where Ikeda herself is just one by herself of a huge reputation, let alone bringing in others¹.

Belonging to the Shōjo genre, more than anything this show does suggest that, whilst it should proudly include that genre tag, it is pointless segregating it from shōnen (boy's) genre work, as Dear Brother in itself can grip anyone, regardless of genre and country of origin. In mind to how diverse Dezaki's career was and yet how they all feel of the same creator's CV tells a lot. This show's slow growth in awareness in the West is only a good thing, and once it concluded, this set a high bar in terms of just how good an anime television series is. From Dezaki this is a high quality work, which considering how good the work I have been able to see says a great deal of Dear Brother's worth.

 

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1) Aptly Osamu Dezaki's brother Satoshi Dezaki, whilst also know for directing the infamous Mad Dog 24 (1990-2) OVA, also co-helmed They Were Eleven (1986), from another pioneering shōjo author of the Year 24 group called Moto Hagio, whose work really undercut stereotypes of what comics from young girls and women were by the fact, alongside other genres she worked in, They Were Eleven is science fiction set around a group of space cadets, of various races, trapped in hazardous spaceship environment paranoid about a mysterious extra member unaccounted for among them.

#196 Part B: Urotsukidôji IV: Inferno Road (1993-5)

 

Director: Hideki Takayama (eps 1-2), Shigenori Kageyama (ep 3)

Based on the manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Tomohiro Nishimura as Amano Jaku, Yasunori Matsumoto as Buju, Yumi Takada as Amano Megumi, Ken Yamaguchi as Münchhausen II, Masami Kikuchi as Ken, Miyuki Matsushita as Himi, Rei Igarashi as Yoenki, Takumi Yamazaki as Ruddle, Tsutomu Kashiwakura as Idaten, Yumi Takada as Yumi, Daisuke Gouri as Makemono, Ken Yamaguchi as D-9, Miyuki Matsushita as Kyō-Ō, Norio Wakamoto as Suikakujū, Tsutomu Kashiwakura as Kuroko

[Major Spoiler Warnings Throughout]

This will not be a proper review of Inferno Road. As much of this series was to cover how this notorious series, Urotsukidôji, was released in the United Kingdom as it was to get to the later seuqles, and here is the moment this is more of a scan of the period of early DVD anime releases than the former. The little we got provoked a strong reaction, enough for a semblance of review, but the elephant in the room is that, continuing as three episodes, Chapter IV in this franchise only came to us in the third episode by itself. Rather than attempting to explain this in detail without their voice, the British Board of Film Classification themselves should speak their minds on what happened when Kiseki Films tried to pass this through them for its DVD release:

"Before rejection, the Board carefully considered whether cuts would remove the dangers. However, they would have to be so extensive that no viable version of the work would remain. Indeed, it is doubtful if any version of the work would be acceptable."¹

The reason why is not hard to realise, when you realise what the narrative of the two episodes were and in mind, even before the "Dangerous Cartoon Act" passed in 2010 in Britain that included non-photographic images being possible to prosecute, the United Kingdom's law has been very cautious when it comes to what it feels, to be blunt, pornographic depictions of children or anything which could be considered as such. Even in mind a lot of anime has passed unscathed through this country well off, despite one of its bad habits being having teen characters in very lewd scenarios, the narrative of the first two episodes of Inferno Road, The Secret Garden and The Long Road to God, knowing full well how explicit this franchise had been crossed the BBFC's line where the episodes could not be even have content snipped out.

From what is included in the DVD extras, the English dubbing scripts which do not completely tell the scenario of the episodes but were kindly included in the release, Inferno Road was meant to start as Part III ended with the surviving characters on a journey from post-apocalypse Tokyo to Osaka, for the Kyo-O, a magical female figure, to meet the Chōjin, a God who intends to wipe away the world of before for a new one². The events, one plot line over two episodes, led them to a city when the children took over, ruled by two evil child brothers with magical powers whose society has their parents and adults breed to sire new children, and puberty or the desire to leave are punished by a tentacle monster. This, only going off speculation than any images, is naturally going to be a problem for the BBFC, and this review is not going to discuss the morals of art, whether defendable or not, tackling this very taboo subject of children and sexuality even in animated form. In the area where they are merely drawings, with adults voicing them, and the result when they are put together in audio and visual is where the ethical question lays, there is an even bigger moral quandary in terms of imagination and purely fictional imagery which I feel has to be raised, i.e. the human imagination when on paper than actual events, but that is as far as I will go, knowing this is a troubling subject to discuss for anyone.  

How episodes one and two are depicted on the UK DVD.
Not as elaborate as I always envisioned it.

All that will be left to say, not going into a hypothetical argument for or against, is with awareness the US release was censored too, whilst the German release was uncut³ as far as excluding the censorship you would naturally find in Japanese media as, ironically, even actual pornography in their country is blurred. The bigger issue in hindsight, with the one episode we got merely having a bit a material edited from it, comes with the stark realisation that, after Part III set up an incredibly elaborate follow up, this franchise whether due to production issues or management capsized horrifically. This review will not trivialise the circumstances of how this was censored this significantly in my country and the uncomfortable question of whether those episodes, for anyone who has seen them, can be defended or not. But good grief, I should have realised that, after Part III, three episodes for this conclusion was not a lot and, taking three years to finish, something went amiss and failed miserably.

There is a sense this project should have been longer. The subtitle script evokes, with Kyo-O (dubbed Himi) having rapidly aged and grown from the last episode of Part III to throughout Part IV, that she will have to face these various hurdles that will hurt her emotionally, on her way towards the Chōji.  Forgiving the potential tastelessness of the joke, considering the content of the first two episodes, the set up for Chapter IV is like a regular television series of the past of a merry band of misfits getting into adventures, for as long as the series last, in a variety of towns and environments, based on the McGuffin of finally meeting the Chōjin. The one story we ever get lasts two episodes, gets forced off the UK release and was censored for the American releases, and you only have one episode released after three years, in 1995, called The End of the Journey to tie this narrative up. It is not even directed by Hideki Takayama, who worked on the first chapters of this franchise, which is not a dismissal of Shigenori Kageyama, but felt with an e in hindsight that this chapter did not go the direction it was meant to.

The third episode is immediately off to a questionable start, with a flashback to a conflict from Legend of the Overfiend (1989) between Amano Jaku and a demon named Suikakujū. Only here, when Amano has been generally a good person throughout the previous chapter, he willingly kills civilians in a subway and even throws a baby in front of a subway train to get Suikakujū harmed and finish him off. One would presume this was a fabrication by Suikakujū's sister, introduced wanting to get revenge on Amano, but this is canon in this chapter, and should have been an even greater alarm bell to how tonally off this chapter would become. One of the least expected results of Inferno Road would be that the censorship this got in my country is far less concerning that a chapter managing to chuck the entire franchise's lore down the toilet.

It feels like a production stretched to a breaking point, the look and animation notably lacking in quality, as this has to quickly set up the Kyo-O encountering the Chōjin, deal with a large cast of characters wandering the wasteland in a tank, and a lot of plot points from before. Part III contained a lot of loose ends, even if it could have worked as a finale itself, such as Amano's sister Megumi having been made a conduit for the Chōjin's will, let alone splicing a new plot point, the desired revenge of Suikakujū's sister Yoenki, whose desires reintroduces Münchhausen II, returning as a major character hoping to use the Kyo-O to rule the worlds, more so now as she in her rapid aging has now entered puberty. The lack of time to tell this story is a huge handicap, even in mind that there are a few things of reward, some grotesque character and monster designs, to still keep some virtue to this entry such as a giant monstrosity whose form is built from victims forced to stay alive to sustain it within the flesh. Characters introduced from Part III will have to be hastily killed off, and unfortunately, even figures like Munchhausen II, brought into this franchise far earlier and established, have their narratives conclude in a way that is insultingly disposable.

There is no real point either to raise the concern of whether this Chapter has overcome the problems this franchise had with its transgressive content, which goes to show how hastily this is wrapped up. The little we get even censored is explicit, to the point you have actual swirling distortions in the image to hide very well defined anatomy, but with the sole exception of a female demon being able to transport people to the moon mid-sex to suffocate them, there are greater concerns to raise in how Inferno Road looks likes a cheap knock-off of this franchise and eventually finishes this entire franchise on a terrible series of conclusions.

All the lore, all the aspects of this franchise that were worth defending, are shattered in the finale after it rushes through the plot points, the spoiler warning at the beginning here for a reason. The Chōjin, when he appears in the final, as our Godlike entity that destroyed three worlds within intentions to build them, does not properly meet Kyo-o, and with the tiniest drops of menstrual blood, is evaporated within an instance. And, almost deciding to top the "this was all a dream" ending twist that is infamous whenever brought up in any media, the final shot of this Chapter, when major characters have been hastily killed and everything rushed, is Amano regaining consciousness only to realise he is back in 1988 Osaka and almost, looking to the heavens, ready to scream "Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!" if not something similar.

The sense this chapter misfired so badly as to wreck the franchise is clear with the existence of Urotsukidôji V: The Final Chapter (1996). With only one episode completed, and by accounts not even finished in animation entirely, it retcons the ending of Chapter IV, having had to tie itself in knots to explain the Chōjin we find in the previous chapters was a fake. Gone are characters from part III and IV, returning to figures from the first two instalments, and with mind The Final Chapter was never finished, left an unfinished book, there is the tragedy, for all the undefendable moments of this franchise, of arguably one of the most ambitious in its genre collapsing in a way that is frankly tragic. Chapter V was never released in the West, and the only follow up beyond this in animated form was a reboot, 2002's New Urotsukidōji: New Saga, which never got a sequel for itself as a set-up of the new narrative. It is, in its own way, sad that for all the moments that failed this franchise, one which left a lasting mark in the West in its notoriety as much as what did work ended up eventually winding down this violently itself.

I did not expect to end a review of Inferno Road to be this sad. I openly admit my interest was the morbidness of this as one of the extreme examples of anime being censored in my homeland, back in the early days of the British DVD industry at its crudest form when a glut of titles, regardless of cuts, was released. Instead, when this should have been a dissection of the censorship, we get in one episode we did get in the United Kingdom a franchise kill itself in a massive cock-up.

 

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1) As replicated and archived on the censorship documentation site Melon Farmers HERE. Search for Urotsukidôji IV: Inferno Road, and the other entries, for more details.

2) I will not say this is confirmed, but so this is on record, information does exist online, like in the following HERE, that the first two episodes were penned by the original creator Toshio Maeda as "a vestigial meander in the overall plotline", which if ever fully confirmed would fully raise issues of this chapter having hit something amiss in its production history.

3) Referred HERE, though with a warning that, just text based, Movie Censorship does go through descriptions of what was exactly cut, which may be upsetting for some to read.

#196: Urotsukidoji III: Return of the Overfiend (1993)

 

Director: Hideki Takayama        

Based on the manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Tomohiro Nishimura as Amano Jaku; Yasunori Matsumoto as Bujū; Yumi Takada as Alector; Hirotaka Suzuoki as Chōjin; Kazuhiro Nakata as D-9; Ken Yamaguchi as Münchhausen II; Kumiko Takizawa as Pedro; Miyuki Matsushita as Himi; Ryūzaburō Ōtomo as Caesar; Takumi Yamazaki as Ruddle; Tsutomu Kashiwakura as Idaten

Viewed in Japanese with English Dub¹

 

[Some Major Plot Spoilers]

Urotsukidôji for myself was always the original Legend of the Overfiend (1989), the most known and notorious, and Legend of the Demon Womb (1990-1), which was helped considerably in the United Kingdom as Manga Entertainment also released it. However, the franchise continued on the straight-to-video format into the mid-nineties, and Kiseki Films, bought out by Revelation Films, brought the two finished sequels to the early British DVD market. This is alien, fascinating territory to get into as, whilst Urotsukidôji is a divisive and uncomfortable to watch narrative at times, here is where you get into new territory as, Legend of the Demon Womb being a side story, we are into the post-apocalypse set up after the original narrative. The prologue, set just weeks after the destruction that climaxed the original's bleak ending, is immediately alien in a tantalising way in imagining the narrative going forth, rather than just reading of this. There is a last ditch attempt to destroy Tatsuo Nagumo, a character reduced to a horrifying monster intended to cleanse the earth for the Chōjin to remake it, alongside the worlds of demons and the beast-people. There is even the sight of the US president being a lascivious tentacle demon fled in his satellite station before he buys the farm, which I cannot help but wonder was political from the part of the creators.

The narrative proper for part three is set much later on, humanity trying to pick up the pieces and a new race called the Makemono, half-beast and half demons, appearing. Caesar, a human who rules Tokyo with an iron fist, intends to take on the Chōjin with his empire, with any Makemono he could enslave becoming slaves, whilst the world around his territory has naturally descended into small communities with rampaging groups committing horrifying acts within them. In amid this, to the surprise of Amano Jaku, one of the central protagonists of all the previous chapters, the Chōjin has been born prematurely than intended in Osaku, as he has reacted to the birth of the Kyo-O in Tokyo, a figure said to be able to destroy the Chōjin. Even in mind to the narrative lore of the series so far, there is a sense that, at a huge change in the world's narrative, we get an ambitious story at hand, with four forty plus minute episodes to work with, even with censorship cuts to appease the British censors, and it does get interesting.

For part one, you do see it initially struggle with its narrative goal, that one of the Makemono raping and pillaging the environments, a giant named Bujū, is introduced as one of the new protagonists, an antihero who will transform from a brute to one with humanity. Execution is always something that has been this franchise's key issue, and this first episode does rush an attempt at complexity. Bujū, whose nickname of the Chōjin of the East leads to him being kidnapped by Caesar's empire, has an inherently interesting narrative from being a monster who escapes, taking Caesar's daughter Alector with him, to becoming a person with empathy when he finds the Kyo-O. Even under the absurd circumstances of having sex with Alector in a Buddhist temple, he finds an infant girl, the Kyo-O, and finds himself slowly developing empathy for a figure that makes him their guardian. Execution is the issue in that his behaviour, including forcing himself on Alector for payment for letting her see the world, is not elaborated on enough for the moral turn. Many will not find it acceptable still, but the idea of a monster finding humanity is a fascinating narrative strand, and for all the mistakes Return of the Overfiend still has, it makes up for this rushed first episode in doing something I never expected from this franchise. That for all its death and sexual violence, this chapter is streaked in humanity and empathy even with the villains and outright monsters.

It is all in the realm of hyper-violent pulp, which is an acquired taste. The fact the franchise has always been sold as porn, likely to get the project off the ground, has always been a cursed aspect too, even if the edgy erotic side is as much part of the franchise's themes. The plot however surprises in how elaborate and dynamic it becomes, where (almost) everyone has a trajectory of great interest. Caesar, whose back-story is told, is a fascinating antagonist to have in that, a stereotypical large man confined in a robotic chair, he was once a young cult leader who, even in another absurd moment of the narrative, trying to kill the Chōjin by way of a super computer powered by a hijacked NASA power supply, lost his daughter Alector as a result. With Alector now an android, one with a consciousness but programmed to love him, you have a suitably Greek tragedy here, with ancient Greek legends and plays happy to deal with very transgressive subject matter centuries ago, where you feel emotions for Caesar as a man literally facing a God even as a megalomaniac, and his complex relations with a daughter figure that is her own person, even if he is a monster in his own right.

There is still a lot of content which is problematic, with the added irony that large parts of the chapter, even if the sexual content is important to the franchise, really have little interest in the hentai genre it originates from before. So much is now focused as a dark action fantasy in a sci-fi world, where there is a lot at stake here in its heightened, over-the-top tone and is elaborated animated in context, making the fact this is still hentai (censored or not) really perplexing in hindsight. More so as Munchhausen II, the antagonist of Legend of the Demon Womb, returns as Caesar's aide and magician, with intentions to use the Kyo-O for dominating the world and slaying the Chōjin, which becomes the central plot point. Not even denying how ridiculous it is, they have created a monstrosity from the souls of anguished dead, in a bloody vat where the Makemono slaves keeping it topped are also thrown in, and "hyper nuclear missiles" they intend to fire at the Chōjin and Osaka, which is bonkers but cannot help but have implicit nods to Japan's real, tragic history with atomic bombs.

There are moments, even with the sense the OVA is shackled to its erotic origins, where the sexual content does actually make sense to include, Toshio Maeda in his adaptations (such as La Blue Girl) clearly fascinating with sexuality as a destructive and magical force, a concept even if unappealing for some viewers (either romanticised, humorous or grotesque) is a concept to deal with. One female demon on Caeser's side, whose real form is a humanoid cicada insect with her torso and head on top, literally traps a victim inside herself, to take as a captive prisoner, after coitus, and whilst sadly Megumi, Amano Jaku's sister, is marginalised again, she is part of a literal use of the sex act as a force, a conduit of a god where the female orgasm is weaponized, even its grotesque touch of a form made from reanimated corpses not tasteless. What is tasteless of that scene, and still mars the franchise, is when degradation, specifically of the female characters, is clearly done as a lurid selling point to sell the anime, which is merely a touch to that scene, but is found more clearly in places and has, alongside the lack of equality and subversion in its transgressive content, been the problem and why people have rightly called the franchise misogynistic. It is unfortunate monkey's paw, that it was sold on the back on this content, found at its worst when the later episodes merely introduces a female solder on Caesar's side merely for this victimisation, even if her lover, an abruptly introduced experimental cyborg, and their relationship if dealt with properly would have been another inspired dramatic beat to deal with.

This is especially a problem here for Return of the Overfiend as I was taken by surprised by how dynamic the four episode narrative got, even next to the previous ones in this cast. All of them are archetypes from the anime medium seen before - Bujū becoming a humane protector of a magical female infant, his romance with Alector, the Makemono who just want to be free and live, Amano Jaku the one man Greek chorus who gets involved to stop Munchhausen destroying Osaka - but all these dynamics work. A sense of this standing on its own feet with intent is found when Tatsuo Nagumo, only seen as the monster he turned into, is killed off in the first episode by Kyo-O unintentional, the show raising the stakes to a new narrative. Even transgressive touches dramatically make sense, such as Caesar's incestuous touches to his relationship to his daughter, and lashing out at her falling in love with Baju. The problem with such an example is when, in a sequence censored from the British release, it led to an explicit scene with mechanical tentacles; the idea of it, even if distasteful, as a dramatic and psychodrama touch, and that even this monster and she love each other as family, is dark and complex in a way that is enough in itself without pushing too far in actual explicit onscreen content. It already has its cake and eat it without these moments, with its drama and having this drama be over-the-top and Caesar even turning into something from Koichi Ohata's Genocyber (1994).

This may have just came from low expectations, but in spite of being ridiculous (those hyper nuclear missiles), being gory, being unpleasant and at times undefendable, Return of the Overfiend really packs a gut punch in its final episode where you suddenly have a lot of humanity and tragedy involved. The doomed nature of Alector and Caesar's love for each other, even if it is a sick one, the fact that Kyo-O becomes explicitly a figure of humanity as much as destruction, where her powers includes resurrecting the dead but also causing the evil to lose their minds in violence, even a scene completely unexpected in this franchise of humans and Makemono bonding in the horrible aftermath of the series where there are maimed and dead everywhere. Even the actual ending, opened for the sequel Urotsukidôji IV: Inferno Road (1993-5), is an optimistic one where the surviving cast with Kyo-O go on a road trip, a trip of heavy significance for all of them to learn their existences as they take Kyo-O towards for Chōjin for their eventual encounter. I will get to Inferno Road, or what little we got of it in the United Kingdom, and that in itself adds a bad taste in all the good will this set up. But as an ending in itself, with few of the characters from the first chapters of the franchise, and a distinct (if still evocative) change in aesthetic look, this was a perfect way to keep the franchise on with a grandiose tone and a weight to it. 

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1) Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles, this is inherently better without the ridiculous English dubs of the previous entries.