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.
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