#266: Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (2004)

Studio: Daume

Director: Akiyuki Simbo

Screenplay: Mayori Sekijima

Voice Cast: Marina Inoue as Cossette d'Auvergne; Mitsuki Saiga as Eiri Kurahashi; Kumiko Yokote as Hatsumi Mataki; Megumi Toyoguchi as Shouko Mataki; Rei Igarashi as Zenshinni of Shakado; Ikumi Fujiwara as Michiru Yajiri; Isao Yamagishi as Hiroshi Hakuta; Junpei Morita as Yukata Enokido; Mamiko Noto as Yuu Saiga; Masashi Ebara as Marchello Orlando; Shinnosuke Furumoto as Michio Hisamoto; Susumu Chiba as Naoki Katou; Yukari Tamura as Kaori Nishimoto

Viewed in Japanese in English Subtitles

 

Eiri Kurahashi is the lead of a one-off horror story about items, including a painting, of the daughter of a French family which is imprinted with her soul, a beautiful young woman named Cossette who he encounters first in his job at an antique store with a Venetian wine glass that starts to bring forth visions of her. Cossette was murdered by an Italian painter who became obsessed with her beauty, following the idea of how her soul or a form of her, especially after her traumatic death, has left her ghost in various items acquired and brought to Japan centuries later. This is a project, notably, from Akiyuki Simbo, is still early in his career, in context that he had already directed a lot of straight-to-video content and television series, but before he made a certain set of projects that caught on in a huge way. Undoubtedly, when work like Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) was becoming insanely popular, people would have not ignored him, and you see here already with Le Portrait.... the style and heightened melodrama that he would bring to that production. Other titles of this period, even when of different genres, like the surreal school comedy Paniponi Dash! (2005), showed his obsession with the style of his work, but this shows him bringing forth this surrealism with the horror genre.

The story, even if split into three under forty minute episodes, works entirely in the structure of a theatrical film, where after a blood pact Kurahashi takes the poisoned soul of the painter into himself, willing to become the sacrificial guinea pig to bleed and purge each of the cursed items connected to her death. This does have a melodramatic side more common, in how it is depicted, in anime such as how he transforms into a monster when the painter's form takes over, and how attempting to purge the curse items, including the attempt by one of the women surrounding him trying to help him, leads to magical noise and energy blasts. It is also however, in premise, a story you find in gothic literature and cinema, of becoming obsessed and falling in love with someone who is beyond the grave, abstract, an obsession with this love which robs him of his connection to reality. It is a timeless tale, retold here, as a quartet of women in his ordinary life, including one who is smitten for him, are trying to help someone who has fallen in love with a ghost and the memories he inherits of her.

This is over-the-top, where someone will literally paint in their own blood for the dramatic moment, but returning to this production, even as a pure style piece this feels like a nice production for horror anime in terms of unrestrained imagination and mood. As someone who gets a kick out of the trope in anime of figure entering phantastical worlds between realities, usually an eighties and nineties trope, this is full of such scenes, a feast of the eyes even if the strains of early computer effects are occasionally seen. Giant dolls, masses of sentient floating eyes, and a place where the living and dead can co-exist, built in the image of Cossette, which is both of a Gothic landmass, with so many hundreds of lit candles inside, and has flesh walls with pieces falling off. It is a cavalcade of stylistic tropes brought together with studio Daume, who produced their own work as well as in-between animation, only to sadly not do much into the 2010s onwards. As an original premise, barring a manga tie-in between episodes, this is the kind of production which has to be praised for its attempt at creativity, including moments in the first episode bleeding time and place to depict Kurahashi's disconnect from reality that create a sense of ill-ease.

Returning to this, even with music which evokes the use of the band Kalafina for Madoka, I see a lot of the gothic and horror aesthetic that seeped into that production, a taste for the aesthetical in beauty matched with deeply macabre storytelling. In the end, adding to the curiosity and worth of this production as its own story, Le Portrait... depict torture and has sever blood loss, but is not a work of gristly death but tragedy. This is a fascinating turn as the story progresses, becoming a psychodrama about our male lead trying to deal with this love beyond his mortal reality he is embroiled in, and how it ultimately becomes about the difference between a person and their image, literally an antagonist by the end of this. It is, for its over-the-top tone, pure romantic horror drama and really stands out.

#265: The World YAMIZUKAN (2017)

 

Studio: ILCA

Director: Noboru Iguchi

Screenplay: Noboru Iguchi, Oolongta Yoshida, Takashi Iizuka and Uuronta Yoshida

Voice Cast: Takumi Saitou as the Storyteller

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

A micro-series of weird tales, this has made me more fascinated with its creator, studio ILCA, who come off as real experimenters with what can be described as a magnificently bleak and screwed up tale of alien abduction in less than four minutes. With a company name that literally is “I Love Computer Art”, they have worked in video games, supporting the production of the likes of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (2021), as well as animation, specifically in terms of what I have called “micro-series”, productions where the episodes are less than fifteen minutes, where I have encountered their work before. They have worked in a variety of genres, such as with animator Takashi Taniguchi, the original creator of such idiosyncratic looking titles like Onara Goro (2016), a deeply strange set of stories about sentient farts, but have made a name for themselves in horror. Alongside titles like Kowabon (2015), their most successful franchise in terms of number of series is Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories, directly inspired by the kamishibai method of story-telling, street storytellers who used illustrated miniature stages, which started in 2013 and continued into the 2020s. Yamishibai is explicitly about Japanese folklore and ghost stories, whilst YAMIZUKAN is its one-series sibling, which is affectively an interpretation, with exceptions, of American horror tropes.

To give an accurate description of what this visually looks like, most of this series is still images, clearly influenced by the kamishibai storytelling style as well – some paper cut animation is used, but mostly it is hand drawn images, set to voice acting, the score and the narrator. Each episode however takes on a different art style, something seen in the contrast from episode one to two, the later even more misanthropic in tone in suggesting the 1982 animated interpretation of Raymond Briggs's The Snowman, a Christmas tradition in Britain, if the snowman was more likely to eat the child. One aspect about YAMIZUKAN, alongside the bleakness of many of these narratives, is how ridiculous some become, and there is a sense as much of this is a pastiche, where the plot twists are more entertaining the least conventional and strange they turn out.

I think everything is explained by who the chief director is, an unexpected surprise for me as it is Noboru Iguchi, a man I only knew for his live action work and was surprised to learn has worked with ILCA with the likes of this and a season of Yamishibai. Iguchi is a man, part of the Sushi Typhoon group of cult Japanese cinema in the 2000s on, behind films like The Machine Girl (2008) and Dead Sushi (2012), knowingly ridiculous genre films which do wink to the audience. These films can be hit and miss to me over the years, but here Iguchi’s sense of the strange, writing many of the scripts with others, works entirely for me. The emphasis on American tropes, with all Western named characters, with some exceptions based on European tropes is clear, obsessions with fortean concepts of UFOs to the perils of hitchhiking, even for episode five with a very distinct art style based on American pulp illustrations the sci-fi trope of mechanical man for a gleefully nihilistic narrative. This is a really good series to show how the micro-series as I have called them, short multiple episode works, are at their best in allowing experimentation and artistic creativity. Still images, mid-show, stand out as incredible and gleefully weird here, where here you have to take a pinch of salt at how deliciously ridiculous this can get, like man-eating cars or mimicking Akane Shimizu’s series Cells at Work (2015-21) in anthropomorphising antibodies, but the art and craft behind them are magnificent.

Throughout, there are a lot of memorable episodes. Episode seven, about a dangerous clown who travels in reflections, is even live action, with actors photographed in a series of still images. One episode is the entire premise for an American horror film, about a cursed musical box, that even brings in The Exorcist (1973) and becomes an over-the-top tribute, or pastiche, of the country’s genre films, as is the throwback to older b-movies about a mad scientist turning people into a gill man army. The two inspired by European tropes make nice contrasts too, like the case of a cursed mask that sees the end of many found in an antique store, like a pulp tale from the eighteenth century, or the last episode, a bittersweet tale of an orphan girl which is actually haunting for all the content here, a great end tale and a surprise change of pace as it is one of Noboru Iguchi’s stories. For a work up to fifty minutes long altogether, these breezed pass with such a vibrancy, and sense of fun, where I have come from the end of YAMIZUKAN with a greater respect for ILCA and so much of their productions I now want to see.

#264: Demon Prince Enma (2006-7)

 

Studio: Brain's Base

Director: Mamoru Kanbe

Screenplay: Takao Yoshioka

Based on the manga by Go Nagai

Voice Cast: Yukitoshi Tokumoto as Enma; Saeko Chiba as Yukihime; Setsuji Satoh as Kapaeru; Yūichi Nagashima as Grandpa Chapeauji

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

There have been a few different versions of Demon Prince Enma, a Go Nagai creation first from a 1973 manga called Dororon Enma-kun, which has appeared in a variety of different forms over the decades - animated television series for kids from 1973, very child unfriendly manga from Nagai with a gender swapped Enma, Dororon Enbi-chan (2000-1), which would cross over with a version of Enma in animated form in 2011, for a more wacky and lewd comedy series, and this, based on another Nagai reinterpretation, a 2006 manga, followed by this 2006 Bandai produced work. Four straight to video episodes, it is a significantly more adult and serious take which unfortunately feels too swift in concluding it when, truthfully, playing as just four episodic stories of its leads dealing with demons in a Nagai-approved misanthropy would have been better. As with its source manga, Enma is a prince of the underworld sent to deal with yokai and demons running amok in the human world, with this the more horror leaning interpretation as he either drags back the demons and monsters who have already killed, or jus destroy them as here, accompanied by Kapaeru, a kappa of Japanese legend, and Yukihime, taken from the Japanese legend of the Yuki-onna ("snow woman"), beautiful women in legend who exist in snow covered environments and in some stories take victims, here instead a figure whose metaphorical coldness to Enma is however contrasted by the crush she has for him. There is also Enma's talking hat Grandpa Chapeauji, who is a grumbling entity that usually is asleep, all them finding themselves in modern Japan and in a work directed by Mamoru Kanbe, someone I have grown admiration for in contributing a lot to horror anime through the late 1990s to the next few decades. They are a director who has worked in a variety of genres but also had a streak of titles from the late nineties OVAs to Elfen Lied (2004) to The Promised Neverland (2019–2021) in the horror genre, adding titles to a genre which for a while had fewer entries than you would presume for the medium

There is a lot to this premise, especially as there is still some corpse humour. A bit of the humour has not aged well, from the source of Enma being a pervert, something Yukihime will reprimand him for, but other aspects when the serious tone shift to goofiness thankfully have. Despite being the Prince of the Underworld, Enma like Yukihime is oblivious to modern human society, in one of the running gags which is however aged like fine wine, where it is the kappa who is keeping up to date with mobile phones and modern ways of sourcing information, like off the internet, for connections of ghost stories and rumours they can chase up. Setting up a supernatural detective agency to catch the enemies, there is a great premise here in a trope found in a lot of anime, where horror and supernatural tales are interpreted as episodic morality tales where the one-off characters can suffer the consequences and these supernatural entities are there to clean the mess up. Add to this the two leads being clueless of human terms whilst Kapaeru struggles with the practicalities, and having to take jobs where he can pretend he is in a kappa disguise, and you have a throwback to the old era of horror anime - the gore and the moments of salacious nudity - with the nod to a humour where these entities have to adapt to the modern day.

The first two episodes, forty plus episodes each, present this well, introducing the leads chasing a woman only to banish a baby-like monstrosity from her mouth before burning it up. Episode one proper deals with a vampire-like entity killing people and creating gristly crime scenes, dragging mortal characters into the arching narrative like a detective who, hearing of a young man in a strange witch hat, naturally finds himself as a potential antagonist. The lurid nature of the anime, as alluded to, only really comes with Enma's less than tactful attitude especially to Yukihime, content which becomes more problematic in terms of sex comedy in the medium, whilst a lot of the narrative context, until you get into something just over-the-top in the last two episodes, is in contexts like a hostess bar which becomes the central location of episode 2, or a character who is a sex worker in the first episode, or a scene in a bathtub for episode one, dealing with a Japanese-German woman who is finding herself slowly disconnecting around reality, where of more concern is reality literally bleeding into the bathtub than explicit nudity.

The gore is strong, but even next to its forefathers, which had lovingly hand drawn intestines spilling out in low budget efforts, this is not even as extreme as Elfen Lied, Mamoru Kanbe's television series, with the same screenwriter Takao Yoshioka, which is arguably more shocking both in gore and its sexual content. What this does stray into, whilst episodic, is its stories having a reason behind their violence, where the first episode deals with the suffocating (and uncomfortable incestuous) protective bond of a father over his daughter, especially with the mother passed, whilst episode 2 introduces a killer doll in connection to a young woman, a bar hostess, who is treated as dirt by many. Starting to enter a downward spiral when she barges in on her boyfriend cheating on her, the doll targeting those who did her wrong, even if it gets into her possessing the other women in the hostess club with the doll, it becomes about her sense of meaningless and lashing out in the middle of this. Aesthetically this has a different mood from its eighties to nineties forbearers too, emphasising real modern metropolis with the more overt phantasmagorical content the cast and the monstrocities they are after themselves, rather than a trope I love in those older works of characters entering dreamt realities and stylised uses of colours. An obvious exception to this, which is greatly appreciated in the final episode despite my issues with the final plot line, does lead Enma himself into a nightmare reality, where you also see that even as far back as Psycho Diver: Soul Siren (1995), one of his first directorial efforts in the straight-to-video format, Mamoru Kanbe has a very good eye for horrific and surreal imagery through his career in the genre. There is obvious computer CGI here, but it itself is used with careful choice, such as the killer doll of episode two, which is obvious but working as an eerie killer item in this look and not feeling as obsolete in terms of animation.

Where this production lost me was that part three to four, tiding the production up, abruptly closes the story, with key characters killed off despite the fact, for a work longer than most theatrical films, it still feels abrupt for something which is set up to be a longer story and should have stayed episodic for its four episodes even if no more were created. Part three involves strange entities possessing people and Yukihime eventually being one such victim of this, alongside the twisted image of a mother turned to try to kill her daughter (and having killed the husband), but it feels strange to completely sideline the leads of the story. Even if they should not be the central figures of each episode, they really become sidelined in favour for a haunted house slasher film set up where a group of characters, some we have seen and others not, are picked off by traumas from their lives, who have not really had any context for their lives when the story begins. It is interesting as an idea for a two parter, dealing with ideas such as one guilty over their ex-boyfriend in school actually throwing himself out of a window when she dismisses him, but  it does however feel like these characters have barely existed for this grand conclusion. Even if one, prominent in the four episodes before, does have the epilogue for a bleak conclusion, stuck as a ghost in the aftermath, they have not had enough time before a surprising amount of back story does get thrown in about her. Even more so than episodes before, this does end up with a slasher chase scene with a further lurid edge as it involves a female character in a contrived state of undress, which does feel abrupt, being pursued.

It feels weird, and in general, even OVAs which have a lot of time in just a few forty minute episodes do not feel like they can escalate as this does in such short time, to one key character dying, and the slate being entirely cleared, without it feeling too short to reach that point. Even twelve episode anime for me can feel like it is abrupt in ending, so this does feel out of place. Even here, when there is still some distinct horror aesthetic, including the really gross sight of someone birthing a baby creature through their mouth, Demon Prince Enma does end on a disappointment. Enma was released in a time when the original video anime finding itself becoming less prominent than television anime, which could be allowed to be more adult (even if censored) with the likes of cable channels, and Enma as a release was part of Bandai Visual, an ill-advised attempt to bring the pricing style for limited edition DVD releases from their home country, presenting titles like this and Yukikaze (2002-5) to little fanfare.  They lasted from 2005 to 2008, and in terms of obscurer titles from Mamoru Kanbe at the time, Denpa teki na Kanojo (2009) (a.k.a. Electromagnetic Girlfriend), which did not even get a Western release, feel like more successful attempts at dealing with idiosyncratic horror tales within very little time. Demon Prince Enma is still fascinating to watch, definitely with an entertainment value, but to be approached in knowledge it is slighter among Go Nagai adaptations.

#263: Pet Shop of Horrors (1999)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Toshio Hirata

Screenplay: Yasuhiro Imagawa

Based on the manga by Matsuri Akino

Voice Cast: Masaya Onosaka as Leon Orcot; Toshihiko Seki as Count D; Hiroshi Yanaka as Mr. Hayward; Kouji Tsujitani as Robin Hendrix; Miho Yamada as Q-Chan; Miki Itō as Louise; Mitsuaki Madono as Roger Stanford; Mitsuru Miyamoto as Kelly Vincent; Narumi Hidaka as Nancy; Ryūzaburō Ōtomo as the Kirin; Satsuki Yukino as Jill; Sayuri Yoshida as Alice; Sho Hayami as Jason Grey

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

In Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984), the younger buyer of a Mogwai is given a set of rules of how to take care of it, including the rule to not feed it after midnight, and if it is not followed then the seller is not accountable of the misery the results lead to. It is a perfect Western comparison to Pet Shop of Horrors, a four part anime mini-series adapted from a manga by Matsuri Akino, which follows the same idea but as morality tales.

Mortality tales are a vast part of human storytelling, and it finds itself fitting within the horror/supernatural genre very well regardless of nationality and medium. The old phrase “be careful for what you wish for” applies to many horror tales, especially with ones like Pet Shop of Horrors and its characters who may be far from innocent in the first place. Housed in Chinatown in Los Angeles is a pet store owned by the mysterious Count D, a soft spoken man with a sweet tooth and an elegant demeanour, who sells “dreams” to his customers as well as regular pets. The ‘dreams’ however bizarre creatures that require a strict contract of three rules to be signed to be allowed to own them, that cannot be broken by the client at any point. If the rules are broken, the pet store is blameless for what happens and something exceptionally gristly is bound to happen. Officer Orcot, a homicide detective, believes D is clearly behind the deaths after buying these pets, but the true nature of the customers is far more morally grey than one would immediately presume. Bear in mind that this mini-series is only four episodes long only, single stories that do not get deeper in terms of connecting plot as the manga may do.

Case in point is episode one, which sets up D as an unnatural figure who sells a grieving couple a rabbit which looks exactly as their recently passed daughter. Like many of these types of stories, inevitably, the rules will be broken, here to not feed her anything but vegetables and water, least you would get the least expected horror story with a happy conclusion. They are, however, morality tales about when people slip and make mistakes, or when their worst tendencies slip through and the unfortunate realities are revealed, such as the real Alice dying of a drug overdose and the complicity of the parents. Like some of the horror tales I have seen in anime and in manga, it is full of elaborate explanations after the events to explain them and the morals of the tales, which could be seen as off-putting for being over explanatory, but in mind to its tone as a morality tale, this makes sense. It became quite obvious with this work that this over-elaborate explaining, all from Count D himself and his philosophising, is the main meat of many of these tales alongside the gruesome conclusions involving the mystical creatures in this mini-series something in mind to how the first episode ends with a disturbing use of rabbits and how these ones reproduce.

Count D effectively becomes a one-man Greek Chorus and Crypt Keeper as well as the one who gives them the object (i.e. the pet) that causes the events to happen. The four episodes play off the conflicts of human emotions and their follies, the old chestnuts that are still great themes to tackle, but adds the additional fact that, like in many Japanese stories, the person involved may have willingly let themselves be damned. Why Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998) became such a legendary horror film as it has was probably both its premise of the cursed videotape, but also its theme of the complicity of people, in how the tape came to existent and that a victim, anyone of us viewers in reality too, could let this happen to us even if we knew going in that viewing the tape could kill us after seven day. Pet Shop of Horrors plays with this concept nicely in such short a space of time. Episode two is about a mermaid which looks like the recently deceased fiancée of a man which he becomes obsessed with, whilst episode three is more bittersweet, its lead of an actor trapped by the shadow of his first success, as a beautiful lead in a sci-fi movie, less a tale of a man with sin but tragically a man giving up which involves the tale of Medusa of Greek legend.

There is levity here. Orcot is out of his depth with a man as eloquent and mysterious as Count D, and despite all the strange goings-on never questions why the mysterious pet seller has a strange magical creature, a cute mouse-bat critter, flying around him that would immediately break reality. Count D, even if it means providing the mayor with a cute penguin as a pet, also has powerful connections despite the fact, for all his demonic side, his moral code is more letting people suffer their own failings and merely providing the tools for them. It is also really apparent that there is a streak of platonic romance between the men hinted at, least a flirtation toyed with in the premise of two very different types of masculine beauty, the almost androgynous D against a rough and hard-headed cop. Even if not an ounce of romance was ever hinted at in Matsuri Akino's source manga, it feels subtextually here in their combative chemistry. It is still rich in atmosphere, with its occult leanings and also the score by Kazuhisa Yamaguchi, which is of its era but is a sumptuous mix of drum and bass with jazz. Tragically, he did not continue at all in the anime industry where his style of music would have been great for many works in this genre we would be getting in the Millennium.

If there is an issue with the mini-series in production, it is that, despite being hand drawn animation before the use of computers after the Millennium that became standard in anime production, it is not the best it could have been even for television. Despite the fact this is a Madhouse production, who are kings of great productions like Millennium Actress (2001), this feels like it could have had more flair in appearance than the snippets we do get; even for television, their full series Boogiepop Phantom (2000), whilst working with a budget, was brimming in far more style. The first episode, which I read in some form in a sample catalogue of manga, is naturally going to be superior in most exceptions on page, but the tale could have done with a bit more visual punch to add to the strength of the stories.

Episode four, the last, is the most idiosyncratic, in how it deals with the kirin, a mythological animal in East Asia of great reverence, almost-deities taken from Chinese mythology only owned by figures of great benevolent people and leaders. Here, there is the touch that, in this world, it suggests in a flashback in World War II Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, had a kirin, and here the tale is about a young congress man whose male assistant is the one really pulling the strings. This assistant wants to push him to become the great young President in the White House, despite the fact his wife Nancy wants a simpler life and he himself is falling in love with her, and even for a short tale, it stands out with its conclusion for these one tale characters, from how this issue is resolved in its own bittersweet way, a great example of how these moral tales can use horror to their advantage. The obvious disappointment is that this is only four episodes long. The manga, starting in 1995, lasted until 1998, followed by Shin Petshop of Horrors which started in 2005, during the boom of TokyoPop, the American manga distributor who licensed the series, and ended in 2012, which by that time was when the bubble for TokyoPop had long burst from their 2008 restructuring onwards, leaving a huge amount of stories (and the growing back-story of who D is and how Leon Orcot becomes closer to him) on the table. That does not even factor in that the original author returned to the world further times with Pet Shop of Horrors: Passage-Hen (2013-2017) and in 2018 with Pet Shop of Horrors: Ark Adrift. It is a shame, but by itself as a one-shot, Pet Shop of Horrors is a solid ninety minute DVD not allowed to fully form into something special. Considering this was a television broadcast rather than a straight-to-video production as I had presumed it to be makes this lack of a full thirteen episode series, let alone longer, stranger with hindsight and bittersweet as you see here four good episodes for a one-shot which would have made a great beginning to a longer production.

#262: Doomed Megalopolis (1991-2)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Rintaro

Screenplay: Akinori Endō, Masayuki and Rintaro

Based on the novel Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Aramata

Voice Cast: Masaaki Okabe as the Narrator, Kouichi Yamadera as Jun'ichi Narutaki, Kyuusaku Shimada as Yasunori Kato, Gorou Naya as Yasumasa Hirai, Kan Tokumaru as Dr. Makoto Nishimura, Kaneto Shiozawa as Youichirou Tatsumiya, Keiko Han as Yukari Tatsumiya, Ken Yamaguchi as Kamo, Kenichi Ogata as Shigemaru Kuroda, Kouichi Kitamura as Junkichi Amano, Naoki Tatsuta as Torahiko Terada, Osamu Saka as Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa, Takaya Hashi as Noritsugu Hayakawa, Youko Asagami as Keiko Tatsumiya, Yuusaku Yara as Shigeyuki "Rohan Kouda" Kouda

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Before this adaptation, there were two live action films adapting Hiroshi Aramata's book series, Teito Monogatari, a single narrative across Japan in the 20^th century broken up into volumes in its various publication forms. The first was the 1988 Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, which with Doomed Megalopolis adapts the earlier parts of Hiroshi Aramata's story, whilst Tokyo: The Last War (1989) adapts the volumes dealing with the final days of the Pacific War. With Doomed Megalopolis, animation director Rintaro, who started in the beginning of the modern anime industry in the early sixties, came to this adaptation with great interest in the source material¹, and took interest in depicting the more fantastical nature of its premise¹, in which an alternative Japanese history of the 20th century involves immortal magician Yasunori Katō, a figure who wishes to destroy the city of Tokyo with his craft. Contextually it is important to realise its source author Hiroshi Aramata, a polymath and natural history researcher, whose career varied between translating classic Western fantasy literature to bringing Western natural historical texts to Japan, used this multi-volume work that cemented a legacy to focus on both Japanese history and real Asian occultism, the central theme of three of these episodes being Kato's desire to reawaken Taira no Masakado, until March 25, 940 when he was betrayed and decapitated. His head, with stories of it still being alert after assassination, was buried in Edo, the future Tokyo, where in real life, stories have suggested a curse that has lasted over decades to the point that, even in the modern day, his shrine in Tokyo is still held with great respect.

In Doomed Megalopolis, Kato wishes to awaken him even when Masakado himself wishes to be allowed to rest in his grave. He will even call forth a shrine maiden, Keiko, to represent him in episode three to get Kato to leave him alone, instead becoming almost a duality of Kato representing the real figure's rage of authority, wishing to level Tokyo fully, something which the film Tokyo: The Last War emphasised as him being thousands of years of slain and dead peoples' angers coming together to bring him back in 1945. Doomed Megalopolis' narrative begins in 1908, and in both the first live action film and this anime, all three adaptations include Kyuusaku Shimada, whose first film role was Kato, playing this figure at the end of the Meiji era going into the Taisho era of emperors beginning this quest to destroy Tokyo, connected to the real 1923 Kanto earthquake in both adaptations.

When I had heard of Doomed Megalopolis, it had a notoriety for being lurid, and in comparison to Akio Jissoji's adaptation of the 1988 live action film as a director, Rintaro's take here with studio Madhouse is a lot more explicit in both the horror content as much as gore and transgressive sexual content, though Tokyo: The Last War, bringing in legendary practical effects artist Screaming Mad George (Joji Tani for his birth name), had already brought in more overtly gory content itself to the adaptations. I also have to admit that, whilst I admire the 1988 feature film, and both adaptations have their virtues, Doomed Megalopolis has a huge advantage with its fantastical content as animation, a freedom to be vivid and vibrant with its phantasmagorical content fully. From the get-go, you have a work oozing in style, be it the idiosyncratic use of colour and framing scenes, to actually depicting the supernatural elements, such as the fact, when introduced, one of the initial leads by the name of Yukari, a maiden, is able to see the future, a target of Kato's goals whose visions and nightmares over the first two episodes would not be possible to depict in the live action film as vividly as this.

The Last Megalopolis to its credit used practical effects, including stop motion, but here you can have the horror grow and be fluidly animated, be it shadow demons formed of eyes and mouths in wrong places, like ink well creatures, to one of the more infamous moments I had heard about with this mini-series, the openly phallic stomach worm being vomited out of a victim's mouth which has an appropriately horrifying execution due to the animation quality. The work is more tonally appropriate for its medium - more action based - and not as entirely focused on the smaller details other adaptations did. The Last Megalopolis really made a deal of a key plot point, that this is a time when there is an attempt in the government to make Tokyo a capital city influential even outside the country, whilst here there is a lot more emphasis on the horror as well as more psycho dramatic plot turns for characters you never got in the live action film. There is significantly more rock guitar solos from Kazuhiko Toyama here in the score, but I will not complain about one of the anime's best aspects, that score, for this.

Moments are more explicit, but never feel tasteless for the sake of it. Probably the most extreme aspect is a subplot entirely jettisoned from their live action counterparts in Yukari and her brother, which becomes explicitly incestuous on his side in a bleak narrative stroke, one despite the luridness of the content becoming more the tragedy of how her character, bright and charismatic when introduced, is psychologically broken between Kato and her own brother, her daughter inheriting a greater weight of power and struggle as a result in this perverse psychodrama between brother and sister. Even this violent overtone never feels tasteless as, by episode two when we skip to 1923, this is allowed to breathe as a narrative in a way The Last Megalopolis was not able to, able to have greater emphasis on characterisation in ways that The Last Megalopolis could not even if that adaptation has touches of its own more fleshed out.

There are differences between both adaptations, which mean both have their virtues. By episode three, the character of Keiko here is a much more significant character than in the film, but in contrasted by how her introduction in the episode is a much abbreviated take on what becomes the finale of the film, including far less emphasis sadly on Gakutensoku, a real life robot, the first built in the East of the globe,  who is far more elaborated on in this fictional context in connection to the building of the first subway in Tokyo, shown here even with actual photos and designs from it but less focused on as a narrative concern in the anime adaptation.

This still however feels like its source, taking real spiritual and occultist beliefs, and melding them with history, even if details like a giant flying manta ray was not expected at all in context. You can argue that in terms of telling the history of Japan itself, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis was doing more, especially as episode three here feels significantly more expanded in the live action film where it made the perfect conclusion for that story. There is however the fact this adaptation has additional content that continues after this for episode four, where never was mathematical sums and equations made more menacing as we enter alien territory, narrative beyond the film in which Lagrange’s equation of motion is brought in and you would have struggled with depicting its plot even with practical stop motion effects with where it goes. Here, Kato figures out that his solution is to move the Moon closer to the Earth and literally cause it to awaken a spiritual dragon, something even a big budget film from the Japanese movie industry would have had a hard time depicting but animation can. It definitely ends the animation at its most phantasmagoric and certainly with a left turn to conclude the mini-series, as unexpectedly love defeats the monster, something which with credit to a production adds a weight to it. For what is the most extreme in content from the three Teito Monogatari adaptations that came first, there is emphasis throughout on how, if you viewed these stories from afar, Yasunori Kato is a figure who will never succeed, in any other context a weak villain but in context to this adaptation by himself someone more symbolically complex in how he is inevitable, more a force that comes and will always fight with Tokyo itself as a symbol of the unrest that built the capital of Japan over a turbulent century.

Doomed Megalopolis was a surprise, a gravitas even among brethren in the more lurid horror anime coming out straight-to-video at this time, and won me over. Certainly next to the other live action films, this feels an entirely different take in terms of tone despite all that is clearly carried over from the original films, Kyuusaku Shimada notwithstanding, the pulpier take which however inherited the weight of the others’ taking on Japanese history and esotericism with an admirable attitude in depicting them. It is out of the three a striking work as pure horror anime too, with sights like a woman splitting open into a giant insect creature to a nightmare sequence involving a cat monster, something which when these titles have questionable content still retain incredible artistic flourishes and mood to the productions to admire in this genre.

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1) For the 2021 Blu-Ray release from Media Blasters, a small anime and live action distributor in the USA who have managed to continue over decades of changes in the US anime distribution industry, it includes fascinating short documentaries made for the Japanese audience, three of them about locations around Tokyo with spiritual and esoteric lore around them, whilst the forth contains promo interviews with actor Kyuusaku Shimada and briefly with Rintaro, though it is clear how the director came to this with admiration for the source novel and wishing to bring what was possible in animation against the two live action films already released by that point.