#252: Mugen Shinshi - Bōken Katsugeki Hen (1987)

 

a.k.a Dream Dimension Gentleman

Studio: Gallop / JVCKenwood Victor Entertainment

Director: Hatsuki Tsuji

Screenplay: Izô Hashimoto

Based on the manga by Yosuke Takahashi

Voice Cast: Keiko Toda as Mamiya Mugen; Hiroko Emori as Atsuko "Akko" Fukune; Banjou Ginga as Alucard; Ichirō Nagai as Dr. Jutarō Tomino; Jouji Yanami as Doctor Lao; Junpei Takiguchi as Inspector Edogawa; Kouji Totani as Koho

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Among the many ultra obscure straight-to-video titles from the eighties, Mugen Shinshi is a distinct one I wish would have been a longer franchise, even if at first you are caught off-guard by the protagonist, a young man named Mamiya Mugen, a detective who when we are introduced to him looks like a kid but is a good sharpshooter practicing in his office. Without time to breathe, a fifty or so minute production, a young woman who we will learn is an exotic dancer runs in on him and his servant Alardo/Alucard, in the midst of being pursued by Egyptian crocodile headed behemoths.

This, the only adaptation in anime, is sadly a really tantalizing image of the source material of Yosuke Takahashi. The art style is a cartoonish style close to “chibi” in how, a style usually meant to depict tiny and cute figures in anime/manga, the cast includes a lot of fresh faced and young figures despite being clearly adults, but this is a work of a prolific pulp and horror manga author. He is capable of creating grotesque sounding (and looking) work like Man Eater (1997), a horror short story collection, but here with Mugen Shinshi, he was clearly tapping into Japan’s history of mystery story telling, especially clear as the comedic side character, a bumbling detective for the police, is named Inspector Edogawa. He is named after the legendary author Edogawa Ranpo who, whilst known for creepy and twisted tales like “The Human Chair”, was also writing detective stories for adults and children. Mamiya Mugen could have easily found himself a detective character in the centre of The Black Lizard (1934), a tale in which a mysterious femme fatale kidnapping women and turning them into statues to preserve their beauty, which sets the tone for this adaptation perfectly even if at times, like a plane versus hot air blimp battle with dynamite, you can even see a touch of early Hayao Miyazaki in the tone too.

Mugen himself is in a pretty diabolical tale of his own, the tone set in how this is also set in the Showa era after 1926, where the exotic dancer Atsuko Fukune, a key character in the manga, is one of six women of notability to be kidnapped and sacrificed in a melding of Egyptian occultism and science, all to resurrect the secret underground leader of Japan. The production is a one off, but it would have been a perfect pilot to a larger work with enough characters to work from, not only with Edogawa, but Atsuko, who come off as the antagonistic love-hate love interesting to Mugen, and Alardo as I had him in the subtitles, the giant manservant who in the manga is Alucard, a vampire who we see here is a gentle man who yet, when needs to, can turn into his more monstrous form for subhuman strength. Its heightened, slapstick tone is also, with all the humour, fun to experience; even the villains behind the kidnapping of women of all fields of talent, one and his bumbling assistant, are as put upon especially when their staff have gone on strike for having to look after the kidnap victims for too long. It is a shame we only have this, as right away, this could have been an extended episode pilot for a very good series, or an OVA one which had the world of possibilities to it. There is intrigue with Mugen as a very good detective, even able to disguise himself as one of the female kidnap victims, who has quests can vary between the supernatural and world politics, as here you have the German, the French, the British and even Japanese armies staging a blow for blow gun battle in a pyramid over this arcane resurrection secret eventually. The horror is also there too in touches like the crocodile headed thugs. Sadly this never got more than this, adapting one of the many different retellings of the characters in manga form by his creator, and we never got it in the West either, one resurrected through the power of the internet and fan archiving for a secret gem.