a.k.a. Daimajū Gekitō: Hagane no Oni
Director: Toshihiro Hirano
Screenplay: Noboru Aikawa
Voice Cast: Toshio Furukawa as
Takuya Gloose; Kazuhiko Inoue as Haruka Alford; Mayumi Shō as Lyse Morn; Osamu
Saka as Galun Hayetz; Sakiko Tamagawa as Rui; Shūsei Nakamura as Kim/Narration;
Toshio Furukawa as Takuya Gorozu
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
Demon of Steel is an okay work, an obscure straight-to-video animation which is surprising in regards to who worked on this. An AIC (Anime International Company) production, the studio behind the likes of the Tenchi Muyo franchise, directed by Toshihiro Hirano, who would be known in earlier decades for the likes of Vampire Princess Miyu (the 1988-89 OVA or the 1997-8 television series) or Fight! Iczer One (1985-7), a director I have liked for idiosyncratic work, even for the notorious Apocalypse Zero (1996). A nice turn has come in his career in the 2010s when, an older veteran, he directed the newest original net animation adaptation of Baki (2018-2020), a Keisuke Itagaki manga adaptation which streamed to success on Netflix. The screenplay is by Noboru 'Shō' Aikawa, who around this time was behind notorious work like Urotsukidôji: The Legend of the Overfiend (1987-9), but decades later would become an admired writer for the likes of Full Metal Alchemist (2003-4).
This is fascinating then, even as a dry production which could have gotten to its plot quicker and with more bombast, that Demon of Steel is a work clearly with a bit of production behind it. With names of weight, it is however forgotten and was obscure even for myself. The economic bubble Japan had in the eighties, and the animation industry benefited from, allowed the industry to produce the likes of this, this for everyone involved just part of their full filmographies. Nearly an hour long, Demon of Steel is categorised as horror, but for me really is not. Here, an experiment with a mysterious energy, the "Quark of Malhuder", leads to an incident three years prior to the main plot when, using a weaponized version for a satellite in a test in destroying a battleship, a giant form suddenly falls out of the sky into the ocean.
In the present, a former member of an island research base Takuya reluctantly returns to it when a male colleague still working there, Haruka, has sent him a letter in a desperate plea of help. The problem with Demon of Steel is simply that it takes too long in exposition to set up a very obvious plot trajectory. That, feeling like a bromance with Takuya throughout despite there being a female love interest working at the base, Haruka has been working with the strange discoveries found as a result of the Malhuder energy experiment which is altering him. All based on a theory that the Malhuder can open alternative dimensions and that strange entities were summoned by accident. The horror aspect is that Haruka is changing, acting weird, and eventually reveal with superhuman strength and a violent temper as the entity he is working with has influenced him. In truth, this is just sci-fi, specifically that this is actually a mecha narrative, as the entities that fell into our world are sentient bio-mechanical figures of monstrous height you can pilot. They in themselves are only really horror, especially because of Haruka's, due to mecha design possibly indebted to H.R. Giger.
It is an entertainment piece, and if this review seems dismissive in its slightness, that is only because the story takes too long to explain the obvious, and loses the chance to expand its denouement. It feels idiosyncratic to another time, a very serious sci-fi with adult characters, and is still a solidly made production with reward in just that. Even without the absurd rock song montage near the end, this is a pulpy genre work. The score by Masahiro Kawasaki is a snappy soundtrack full of moody synth, and nothing in the OVA is bad, just okay. Again, many titles were being created back at this point, of an hour or less, so this is one of many you could find from back then. It is still, among them, a fascinating curiosity to have found.
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