#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.