#206: Genocyber (1994)

 

Director: Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Emu Arii, Koichi Ohata and Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga¹ by Tony Takezaki

Voice Cast: Akiko Hiramatsu as Elaine Reed/Diana Reed; Kaoru Shimamura as Rat; Kazuyuki Sogabe as Grimson Rockwell; Kouji Tsujitani as Ryuu; Kumiko Nishihara as Mel; Masako Katsuki as Myra; Seizo Katou as Kenneth Reed; Shigeru Chiba as Radneck; Toshihiko Seki as Sakomizu

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Genocyber is a notorious anime, but this is a work, over five episodes, which is a bit more complicated as a viewing experience. To be honest, even saying it is an ultra violent sci-fi horror anime of notoriety is suspect, when arguably one of its five episodes is with lasting impact, and the gore itself is a slither a production which shifts content very erratically.

I was introduced to this by acquiring an old Manga Entertainment videotape of the first episode, watching it on my grandmother's VHS player by myself with shut curtains, all transpiring in my mid-twenties but, when there was a brief moment of finding obscure VHS tapes in British charity shops, having a lasting impact with titles which felt completely inappropriate to come from somewhere you buy second hand clothing from, alongside the two mid-era Godzilla films which proved more playfully memorable. And since this was the era of the internet, firmly, finding the other episodes of Genocyber online was not an issue, but it is the first episode then, and still now, which left a lasting mark. I will talk, for all this production's huge undefendable flaws, positively of this production least for the first episode. It is of its era and was a production clearly spat into existence with warts and all, which you can guess of knowing that Manga Entertainment, who only released this in VHS only in Britain, never released episodes four and five, and not because they were censored nor offensive but likely due to what was made in contrast to the previous three episodes.

This is a Koichi Ohata production, so this has an added infamy even with Shou Aikawa on the production as a screenwriter, the future author of some acclaimed anime narratives but also a writer on the likes of Urotsukidôji and Violence Jack. Koichi Ohata is more infamous, least for my guess, in the United States because M.D. Geist (1986), one of his most well known titles, became something of a lucky rabbit's foot and an obsession for Central Park Media, an American anime distributor, and its head John O'Donnell. Koichi Ohata, whose work in this era was released in the US by O'Donnell's company, had a moment in the OVA boom of the eighties and nineties to make lurid sci-fi orientated work with mechanical and monster designs, even if the production budgets and productions themselves could be a mess in the final results. Ohata is well regarded, to bear in mind, as a mecha and mechanical designer, on the likes of Gunbuster (1988) and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack (1988), but he has an infamy for the likes of M.D. Geist, which got even a "director's cut" helped by Central Park Media, and Genocyber, whilst anyone who has seen M.D. Geist II: Death Force (1996), also coming into existence with Central Park Media's help, can also attest to how erratic his work is even if I admit enjoying the accused thing more than the prequel.

Episode 1 of Genocyber, which is different from the other four in being over forty plus minutes long rather than less than thirty as the others, is a curious production by itself, already setting itself up as idiosyncratic with real photos being used in the opening credits. For all the flaws with this entire work, in plot and point, a trashy cyberpunk narrative initially in the first episode set in early 21st century Hong Kong, the first episode is memorable. It is surprising in the level of experimentation which transpires here, as much likely due to budgetary reasons but creative in inspired ways, alongside its nihilistic tone. The plot is over complicated, but can be boiled down to how, as a result of an experiment into what is the "vajra", a ritual weapon in the likes of Hindu and Buddhists faiths in reality, the psychic force all human beings could tap into in this anime, one scientist created a machine to fully access this and led to two sisters being born by his wife. One called Diana has a completely disabled body, able to move through a robotic one, who is kept with a sinister scientist, responsible for her father's death and working for the Kuryu Group, in his own world working on his own obsessions and with the Kuryu Group ultimately intending to take his project away from him. This project requires the other sister Elaine, effectively the protagonist, has a fully working body but a mind close between a little girl and a feral animal, who has escaped into Hong Kong who the group want to recapture, even if the Kuryu Group will send their own cybernetically enhanced mercenaries sent to get her alive. The Genocyber of the title, the intended goal of reuniting the sisters, is a form both sisters can fuse into, a horrifying humanoid capable of wiping out a whole country as an apocalyptic entity, the creation of humanity's worse tendencies as, linked to Elaine especially with pain and agony wakening it.

What stands out is that, for what was clearly made as much for the sake of gore, this first episode has the unpredictability I want from anime. Alongside the cool ethereal score, the production was clearly working against some huge budget restrictions, but found innovative ways to work around this. Early CGI is used, but also fine pencil still drawings for flashbacks. Live action is used for memories for characters, and sometimes the animated characters are animated over real images, such as Elaine and a boy she meets over a photo of a street, or the back-story of the machine to access the Vajra being an actual handmade model in the background. The most infamous aspect of the first episode, alongside its gore and body horror, is the use of clay, actual red clay, for certain scenes. A foetus sculpted in clay is one thing, but it is used to emphasis gore scenes too, including for a scene of a mercenary after Elaine, when psychically influenced to think there are insects inside his head crawling on his brain, cutting to fake insects on a clay sculpted brain.

The gore and the body horror is extreme if not constant, including episode 2 later on, where it is obvious despite the serious tone this is a work meant to reveal in the grotesque. A detective exists in the first episode, for considerable screen time, only to just be an excuse for an ultraviolent gore sequence. One where, with the scientist having a swarm of deranged masked surgeons out of Silent Hill on his side, they completely butcher the occupants of a hospital, intestines lovingly rendered stuck on the ceiling and, for a really obscure and grotesque reference, leaving someone alive to experience being a perverted version of a Dr. Guther von Hagens display². It is immature as an episode, but I find a work like this compelling for their tone. It is uniquely disturbing in presentation, including a brief moment of cybernetic body-horror, where the mercenaries distort and transmogrify into bio-mechanical monstrosities. That the episode takes no prisoners, with people killed off [Major Spoiler Warning] and Hong Kong being obliterated off the map entirely [Spoilers End], Genocyber for this episode does leave the screen with an impact I have to admire.

The episodes after is where Genocyber becomes complicated as, whilst the first episode could have been released by itself, the others do become less consistent. The art style of before, the experimentation, is entirely stripped away. The second episode, in its first minutes, is probably the most infamous moment of the OVA, where with Elaine in a warzone kids are graphically machine gunned down by a helicopter, still drawings but rendered in full graphic detail of organs that, traversing the taboo of killing children onscreen, can get away with mocking said taboo in animated form. It is after that, whilst with body horror content, a bog standard narrative from Koichi Ohata, where a cybernetic Vajra powered entity created to fly combat planes, as the United States is fighting the middle eastern country of "Karain", becomes more unstable and violent when Ellen is rescued and brought on the aircraft carrier it is housed on. Its creator wishes, corrupted, to further its powers, even if it means engulfing the whole ship and crew into a horrifying flesh-machine battleship, with the story becoming the third episode a kaiju monster versus monster narrative. It is of its time, still compelling for me but, even with the moments of gore, a narrative which feels like a side chapter, especially as it never gets into plot details brought up and disposed of in exposition, such as Karain having magnetic sand which makes it impossible to use modern weaponry, nor that war being of importance in the first place. Only the narrative of a female doctor on board, a figure who is connected traumatically to Genocyber's first apocalyptic attack, has a trajectory which is a little fleshed out, which can be best described as that of a Lovecraft protagonist for all that unfortunately entails.

It is a production which feels erratic, possessing aspects which made these OVA compelling for me over the years but feeling, especially as these were produced in relatively short time to each other, a work which feels abrupt in what narratives we got. As much as this is still compelling, it is a disjointed work where a lot of it is not as well thought out after the initial first episode. Even one of its virtues and a minor detail, a rocking end song, emphasises how this entire production is a mess, as the most inappropriate song to have in context, about "wishing you a rainbow" and called Fairy Dreamin', even if it is a hugely impactful song in mood to the production. This issue is more so with Episodes 4 and 5, which are the most contentious to deal with, with knowledge they were never released on the British VHS, and with only Central Park Media funding an English dub for them where they released the whole OVA series. They were episodes I was initially hesitant to revisit because, originally, these were an incredible low point to reach. Now I find virtues in them, and they connect to the entire narrative arch, what is there, with greater worth, but this is where the erratic nature of Genocyber is a huge aspect to deal with.

Because, far from being offensive, this is a huge tonal shift, a time and narrative shift with no ultra violence to speak of and feeling like an attempt at seriousness out of place. This is set in the post-apocalypse, when Genocyber finally destroyed civilisation after the Kuryu Group funded as much as it could to destroy the beast, a potentially fascinating turn of events for a larger series of narratives as a result truncated here. That at least a hundred years has passed afterwards, with humanity having rebuilt itself with a new city in the centre of the narrative called Ark de Grande. Run by a dictatorship under one politician who has secret police, it is obvious material but it has stuff of interest in this context. I have softened to these episodes for the few inspired aspects, such as the fact that there is a religious group, who is against the corrupt upper classes and with the rebels underground, who pray to Genocyber, believing them to have been a God that, if angered, will cleanse the corruption of the city, its form also petrified and kept in the further depths of their hideaway without them realising it is said God.

The issue with Episodes 4 and 5, and still is the problem, is how slow and conventional this arch is especially as this follows two new characters that are not that interesting. They are a young male knife thrower and his blind girlfriend, who he takes to the city to earn enough to help with her blindness and find themselves chewed up by the evil of the metropolis. They have no emotional investment over the two episodes to care for, and in plot terms their only real connection as is entirely how she, as a psychic, connects mind-to-mind with the Genocyber, specifically the reintroduced Diana, part of the consciousness with Elaine. Aside from this, this is very predictable and, with that lack of violence and gore, it is unnecessary. Even if I have been won over a bit more with its little lore for the whole narrative and melancholic happy ending, it feels a jarring tonal shift for a work which was already on shaky footing with what it wanted to do from the second episode. If Genocyber had lasted just its first OVA, it would have still gained an infamy even if, in the modern day, trying to sell a work only under an hour is less common in the market unless it is something very specific or a company like Media Blasters in the USA that can still release such title. It is strange to think, looking back, how this work ended up this way, and it cannot be ignored many people will find, for all this title's reputation, it becomes an anti-climax for the gorehound and is still a very erratic work in general quality.

I have a soft spot for Koichi Ohata, which is why this review even for a very nasty little work like this is still bizarrely whimsical. He is an example of a man fixated on his obsessions and an auteur in a way for anime, who got his way to produce his ideas for a brief window of time. He had an attempt at moving on in the 2000s, where I was actually introduced to Ohata as a director with Burst Angel (2004), an animated series I encountered at a formation stage as an anime fan when studio Gonzo were a thing. He works to the modern day, but bearing directing later seasons of the Ikki Tousen, a fighting show entirely fixated on softcore titillation despite its female cast being reincarnations of figures of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he is not commonly in the director's seat nowadays. His reputation outside of mechanical designs is not a well regarded one, truth be frank, but it is a sad tale to think that, as his career trajectory became obscurer, the type of anime made in later decades meant not even one Genocyber in a while alongside the good titles we could only get in the modern day. Again, Genocyber is a mess, but even something which kept this work's energy but avoided a lot of the mistakes would be appreciated once in a while.

 

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1) The original manga is worth bringing up as, a case of one that was cancelled barely into its run, but also getting English publication in the early nineties, its author Tony Takezaki comes from this older era of the likes of A.D. Police, which he wrote the manga of, among the many "adult" titles from this era.

2) Hagens, a German anatomist who invented the preserving technique of "plastination", is controversial for both the Body Works exhibits of persevered and dissected bodies, including human beings, and for how I know of him, that he had public autopsies including ones broadcast on the British channel Channel 4, terrestrial television and not satellite, one programme called Autopsy: Life and Death (2006) likely the one my patents watched and I remember. Hence, the obscure reference that felt appropriate for that one gory scene in Genocyber.