#256: Campus Special Investigator Hikaruon (1987)

 

Studio: AIC

Director: Kazuhiro Ochi

Screenplay: Kazuhiro Ochi

Voice Cast: Mika Doi as Adzumi Hadzuki; Toshihiko Seki as Hikaru Shihodo; Kazuyuki Sogabe as Shirou Amakusa; Miina Tominaga as Yayoi Shiina; Shōzō Iizuka as Demonic Beast; Tesshō Genda as Kyousuke Gomi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Continuing into the catalogue of obscure eighties OVAs, this is the last of the "Pink Shock" trilogy which I have seen all of. Produced by AIC, it was a brief series which came with no real consitent aspect to them barring some eroticism. One was Maryū Senki (1987-9), a three part horror-action release of interest in that genre. The other Call Me Tonight (1986) is one some viewers may have learnt of as it has gained interest in the internet age, a fascinating short predating the notorious Urotsukidôji anime adaptations by parodying it, by way of a lead male character who turns into a tentacle monster when horny and the female phone sex employee who can tame his heart, all in a work that is more progressive for the time then you release. Campus Special Investigator Hikaruon, in vast contrast, feels like a pilot to a show that could have been, a tribute to the likes of live action tokusatsu "Metal Hero" shows like Space Sheriff Gavan (1982-3) only with a darker slant.

At a school an alarming number of suicides are transpiring, and a young male hero, able to turn into an armoured battler, has snuck in as a new transfer student with his female colleague there already as a teacher. There is a female student pulled into the secret force harming the students, and the sense of this feeling like one episode to a longer work than never came to be is felt. The more adult tone is that this entity, masquerading in the school, drives people to suicide or to be devoured by a supernatural force. There is a sense of style to this anime too; the opening, set in a train station almost white with just outlines, the patrons all blank faced, has the one character in colour and fully drawn jumping in front of a train, an inspired opening for any production which emphasises the shock of the scene as a set up. There is also my favourite trope of the older era of anime, maybe still into the modern day if I ever encounter it, of characters being transported to an alien realm, here a surreal chess motif of black and white tiles, and gravity defying steps against a crimson sky. Add to this that the villain is at first a harlequin Pied Piper in appearance, tempting a new victim with wine of her demise. The best of these sequences cross into another of my passions as, with the best of these older anime of strange alternative realms, you could imagine them as the art appearing the front of a metal or prog rock LP.

Hikaruon also has an uncomfortable of victimising the female characters sadly. The other Pink Shock titles as mentioned had an eroticism, and here this is sadly an implicit threat of sexual violence, be it a group of bullies targeting the female student, or how the female heroine, when the number of goons in a bar are too many to fight, is left with clothes shredded and on the floor implicitly suggesting a rape scene to transpire. She is brainwashed to fight the hero thankfully, in another cool aesthetic choice in a paper walled pastiche of samurai combat, wearing an omi demon mask, but that hint is tonally out of place. The hero also sexually harasses her, such as groping her behind, as humour which definitely has not aged well at all. Out of the three Pink Shock entries, this feels like a contractual requirement and out of place, as this feels like a tribute to this genre it is recreating, and only is darker in the villains' plans, not the special abilities or how the episode finishes with fighting a monster.

Maryū Senki has sexually crossing with the grotesque which could be accused as offensive, and out of place for something meant to be erotic, but felt more befitting as ero-guro, a horror story where the sexuality is more for the horror edge than meant to be sexy, whilst Call Me Tonight as mentioned is surprising for what themes it covered in less than thirty minutes. Hikaruon, whilst entertaining, is a disappointment in how I do need to advise a trigger warning for those watching this, and how it really is undercut by this undefendable, and arguably pointless, way to still sell eroticism like the other Pink Shock titles did. It does not even, if the eroticism was not problematic, seem a fit, where it would been more appropriate if this had been a more explicitly erotic pastiche or take on the tokusatsu genre. Considering the opening credits is a sincere animation of the show it could have been, like the pilot of a longer production, shows it is an odd production in some of the creative choices. It becomes, out of the Pink Shock series, the weakest of the trio for the reason it feels like a pilot for a show we never got the whole of.

#255: Alice in Cyberland (1996)

 

Studio: Vega Entertainment (Episode 1); Kyoe Sung Production (Episode 2)

Director: Kazuyoshi Yokota

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka

Based on the videogame by Glams, Inc.

Voice Cast: Yoko Asada as Alice; Kae Araki as Lena; Kikuko Inoue as Rucia; Yūko Miyamura as Juri

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Once ago we envisioned entering an isolation tank full of water to enter cyberspace, to defeat hackers masquerading as monsters, as explained here in the opening credits animation to this obscure production. Alice in Cyberland in this particular case this is a tie-in to a videogame which came at the same time. With the scenario worked on by Chiaki J. Konaka, better known for his work on Serial Experiments Lain (1998) and The Big O (1999-2003), the game was a Japanese-only adventure game from Glams, Inc., who also co-produced the anime. They have unfortunately not a prolific list of titles under their belt, and I half suspect with the tale of Alice in Cyberland, just in terms of the second of the two episodes having been M.I.A. in existence, that they took a risk at a time where many groups who had never made games jumped onto the original Sony Playstation bandwagon. With the game and anime released in 1996 together, they unfortunately burnt out, not releasing a lot more else barring a couple more games including for the Sega Saturn.

Twenty years into the future, from this anime’s release, and the titular Alice is playing virtual reality games with her female friends. Establishing a multi-media franchise, the first twenty-plus episode cannot do much but establish her, that with an estranged father, she is a stereotypical anime female lead but one with a talent for computers and dealing with hackers. This is useful in a future, for all its technological advancements, that has greater concern from hackers. Ironically it is the second episode, which was once presumed lost as we get into, which explained the context to make sense of all this, that like Serial Experiments Lain, the internet has become a huge entity where people can exist within it as virtual figures, predating the reality of advancing technology in its own exaggerated way and with the potential to be relevant still. In this case, the concern for episode one is cyber-anarchists from Eastern Europe. It is an odd choice, and it does show a cartoonish air to it, where in causing anarchy to important technology in Japan, they are focused on sabotaging school pools by hacking the disinfecting system for the water, and playing music through people’s headphones to cause violent memory erasing amnesia. The other clear influence on this is clear as a magical girl story, only with an internet theme, so there is an air of complete fantasy to this premise still, trying to make a version of this genre that is decades old into a new era of technology.

There is a virtue to this, where we can literalize cybercrimes with a data eating tentacle monster, alongside providing me with my favorite trope of surreal unearthly worlds the protagonists are sucked into. With its title this is nodding to Alice in Wonderland, the later aspect could have been embraced further, as Alice has received emails from a mysterious figure name Lucia who comes to her aid and provides her the ability to freely enter Cyberland, emphasizing this as a more cartoonish take on the subject than the metaphorical and abstract nature of Serial Experiments Lain’ symbology. As with a lot of anime, it is a premise that has a lot of promised, its take on the magical girl genre of its time, especially with the crowbarring of terms like “disinfection sword” to combine the two, but lovable as an idea. Even in a work which does have fan service, such as the female leads looking like their idealized and most attractive ideals in the online world, it also has a cool female lead as for all her goofball moments this is a very smart and computer savvy protagonist able to get the hints to snoop after cyberhackers, which is progressive in its own way back at a time when the internet was a new and exciting concept alongside virtual reality in the west and the east.

It is however a teaser, which means a lot was left off the table, particularly as in the version I was able to see. Alongside the goofier slapstick in the game cut scenes you see previewing the other part of this production, there are preview to other Glams Inc. games including for the Saturn, emphasizing this anime was always going to be an advertisement for the game. It is here that there was also the issue that the second episode, previewed too, was not readily available to see. Only really becoming available online from October 2021¹, you become aware that something went very wrong with the production of this anime for the worse, not surprising as Glams. Inc has very few releases after this period in the videogame console generation. (According to Chiaki Konaka himself, they even went bankrupt²⁾. The first episode is nicely animated, with original character designs by Daisuke Moriyama, the author of the original Chrno Crusade manga later adapted into the 2003 series from Gonzo. At first nothing is seemingly amiss with the second episode, starting with how episode 1 ends with repeated footage, and explaining a lot of the context of the world, only to reach its first original scene and everything to be clear. The production dropped in a way I have not seen barring some of the most notoriously disregarded anime I have gone out of my way to see.

Knowing how the later episode was seemingly lost to time, that likely explains why it has not gained the infamy for its animation quality. Starting with the amusingly dark opening where, at a children’s fantasy zone, a figure is deleting anything in his path and traumatizing them online, with no pink dragon or princess safe from disintegration, soon my attention was drawn to the animation quality even in terms of the faces of the leads being differently drawn. Animation faults, especially TV series where one has to get the episodes done quickly, have existed with similar issues, of less than stellar depictions of characters’ face, like they are melting off their necks, and the artistic quality visibly having to take shortcuts, which are usually not this frequent and are removed in the modern day for physical media releases. With absolutely respect for the animators on this, it is obvious that this was a) rushed and/or b) undermined by an unfortunate production disaster, neither helped that this is a promise of a story that is slight. There was a prominent change between two different studios for animation production between episodes; episode one was by Vega Entertainment, whose most prominent work is throughout the Doraemon franchise, a huge one in its homeland, but even with the second company hired for the second episode, Kyoe Sung Production has a prolific career into the decades afterwards³. It instead offers the sense that, having to help finish the second episode, no one is to blame but an unfortunate circumstance where people were forced to produce and release a final episode with this level of quality to it.  

With both written by Chiaki Konaka, the second episode still offers a fascinating premise, of artificial intelligence being able to blend in with humans, but with the danger that this one can replicate infinitely and will need to be deleted to prevent significant damage to cyberspace, even if through a potential skuzzy premise of a young boy one of the secondary female leads is smitten with. Alongside the sense of this being a dry run for Konaka to take this premise further, and that the ideas are simplified here through a monster of the week scenario, thus preventing it from getting more elaborate, the drop in animation quality is so surprising it undercuts the interesting ideas. Even if you do get a giant talking turtle, which is funny especially as it is a nonchalant and rude programmer named Bill in disguise online, few would get past however pointless the episode is by its end, and how you cannot get pass the quality drop in production to the first episode.

The one lasting legacy to Alice is Cyberland is the tantalizing realization this was a predecessor to Serial Experiments Lain itself directly. There were plans for a sequel to the video game with Chiaki Konaka² which never came to be, but alongside Serial Expeiments Lain coming in its place, the protagonists of Alice in Cyberland returned in an entirely different context. There is an Alice Mizuki, one of the main characters, also voiced by Yoko Asada who plays the original Alice, in Lain as an important character to the titular lead, alongside a Juri and Reika like the two other female leads from the older work in other roles.  It is a lovely discovery that this forgotten production, the game and the anime, managed to relive again as clearly Konaka found something he wanted to push with the premise. Serial Expeirments Lain, whilst of its era, has lasted as a relevant and startling series that has lasted, whilst Alice in Cyberland is a fascinating nineties obscurity. The production problems with episode two are tragic, but even that raises so many questions to what happened to Glams, Inc., one of the many who came at both a fascinating time in Japanese videogames and in the anime industry only to disappear so quickly afterwards. Their tale would be fascinating to learn far more of, but what we got at least was this curiosity.

 

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1) Quoted from the review of Alice in Cyberland, published originally on September 2nd 2018, from the blog Collectr's Blog and one of its later blog revision updates:

“Update October, 2021: the complete Alice in Cyberland TV broadcast showed up on YouTube, episode 2 intact. The quality is not as good as the laserdisc, but it's good enough. Now to find a translator...”

2) From the page on Alice in Cyberland 2 Seventh Protocol, from Chiaki J. Konaka's site on his career, Alice 6, written 2nd September 1999. It mentions as well that that subtitle “The 7^th Protocol” was inherited by Serial Experiments Lain, which does indeed connect the two, as it becomes “Protocol 7”, a key McGuffin to the narrative.

3) Anime News Network’s page on Alice in Cyberland, which is the encyclopedic page for the anime to refer to been two animation production studios on the project, Vega Entertainment for episode 1 and Kyoe Sung Production for episode 2.

#254: Zone of the Enders - 2167 Idolo (2001)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsuya Watanabe

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Based on the videogame franchise by Konami

Voice Cast: Takehito Koyasu as Second Lieutenant Radium Lavans; Chiharu Tezuka as Viola; Houko Kuwashima as Dolores; Rumi Ochiai as Melissa; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Dr. Rachel Links

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Idolo as a tie-in does suffer from the issue that, separated from its source, you are aware of the wider franchise it can grow with or lost virtue from, and the inherent concern that if the rest of the multi-media franchise is forgotten, these type of tie-ins rarely get re-released. Only months after this was released, the 2001 animated series Zone of the Enders: Dolores,i was already being broadcast, so there was a considerable push for adapting in animated form the world of Zone of the Enders, a videogame released that year in a big marketing push. Set in a future Earth and its relationship to other colonies, which Idolo deals with from the Martian colony, Z.O.E. as abbreviated was sold as a killer app from Konami for the Sony Playstation 2, a big cultural phenomenon within itself as a videogame machine riding the height of the original Playstation. Zone of the Enders even had Hideo Kojima as a collaborator, which would have hyped the game even in the West when it was released. Ironically though, the legacy of this franchise is more likely held by Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003), which was a much larger work in scale, length and virtues for critics, even having animated cut scenes sourced to studio GONZO.

Obviously, in context to this, Idolo is a tie-in meant to sell the first game as well as expand the story with a prologue, in this case setting up an enticing premise in its sleight original-video-animation length of fifty minutes. That it is produced by Sunrise, the Gundam creators and frequent studio for robot and mecha animation, offers an enticing prospect too this merely touches on. In the future, whilst we have colonised the galaxy there is also unfortunately bigotry, in this case to oppression of those humans born on Mars by Earth, who treat them as second class citizens least when it comes to their army on Mars even beating up Martian soldiers for fun, worse as being born on Martian gravity causes Earthlings to have an advantage in incredible strength. What is enticing to this anime, and is a slight spoiler, is knowledge that this is actually a prologue from the perspective of the future antagonists of the first video game. This sets up the BAHRAM, the military force that will invade and destroy the Jupiter colony the first game's lead survives, setting them up from the perspective that BAHRAM are the product of previous evils; colonial discrimination of the Earth forces sets forth those in this story, lead character and soldier Radium and the character of Viola, one of the more important characters herself from the first game, as those fighting back oppression only to become a destructive force in the future of the narrative. That in itself is really interesting, and this Idolo prologue in itself is tantalising in what you get as, whilst none of this is subtly told, it is a context distinct to tell this narrative from, as wishing to free themselves of the Earthlings, scientists on Mars are covertly developing the titular Idolo, a mecha built from the mysterious material Metatron, which presents a dangerous result both to how it influences the pilot and when the Earth forces catch wind of this machine, wanting to claim it for themselves.

As a piece of a full multi-media project, including that there is a twenty six episode television series which runs from Idolo, set before and after the 2001 game, Idolo does suffer from the fact that it is a slight story, where the scenario is  a prologue to a wider document. As a one-off by itself, I credit this with doing a lot to stand out; it does not, truthfully, have as much visual punch as one could wish for at times but including its bleak ending, which sets up the necessary context for later parts, it has a lot to admire. As a prologue to a larger work, it cannot go further, but beyond this there is a lot to admire in terms of the boldness of its story, as Radium's tale is there are someone being more controlled by the Idolo by its special properties, and simply the entire idea of this being a prologue to the antagonists of this franchise is something distinct, as it forces context of how even villainous figures can be moulded by similarly villainous acts, moral complexity something to admire when done like this and actually succeeding in its little form. Violet in particular, without additional context, would be left a character you wish was developed more, a figure harmed by the evils of the Earth forces, including being a victim as a child of "Space Radiation Sickness", causes by an Earth terrorist attack on Mars' colonies, but who even if a mere fragment has the fascination of where her arch is intended to go. Her emotional attachment to Radium, who brought her into the Special Forces after she tried attacking him on the street as a confused young woman, will become a huge emotional trajectory with the bleak outcome of this story, which does get even some visually striking aspects and a twisted bleakness when it involves the artificial intelligence taking personalities and a hallucinated wedding reception. Considering what the epilogue in the future brings up, and whom Violet comes in the franchise, a key antagonist for the first game and the franchise, and this proves one of Idolo's best aspects.

Even in terms of production, whilst the look and style of the show is not the most elaborate, it is solid, and the music especially by Hikaru Nanase is a stand out from this project, alongside "Kiss Me Sunlight" by Heart of Air as the ending theme a little gem, the group collaborators through this franchise.  Idolo is tethered to this franchise, with its director and key screenwriter continuing with the television series, and these adaptations are obscurer nowadays whilst the games were well regarded. The Zone of the Enders HD Collection in 2012 preserved both games, but it is Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, the sequel which continues this narrative, which clearly left a huge mark for many, including a remaster, called The 2nd Runner M∀RS, which was released in September 2018 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. This does place concern that Idolo is forgotten among this, which is a shame as, in terms of what it was meant to achieve, it does a commendable job. The series, which follows on with this its own prologue, is an entirely different narrative structure in length, and has new challenges as a long form narrative to deal with, but Idolo by itself, as the only one, would have been commendable as a one-off tie-in worth resurrecting.