#276: Venus Wars (1989)

 

Studio: Kugatsusha

Director: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Screenplay: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yūichi Sasamoto

Based on a manga by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Voice Cast: Katsuhide Uekusa as Hiroki Senō, Eriko Hara as Susan Sommers, Gorō Naya as Gary, Hōchū Ohtsuka as Will Harris, Kaneto Shiozawa as Gen. Gerhard Donner, Shūichi Ikeda as Lt. Geoffrey Kurtz, Yūko Mizutani as Maggie (Margot Nakamoto), Yūko Sasaki as Miranda Cocker

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

You’re more dangerous than the tank.

Until 2015, director/animator/manga author/character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko retired from animation after Venus Wars. For a long time, this was his last directorial work, an acclaimed figure who is important for numerous positions in the seventies and eighties era of anime, including his involvement for the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series in 1979. Admittedly, weirdly, despite his directorial career being straight-to-video and theatrical films that would have been seen as easier to sell at a time when TV series were not, we in Britain never get his work with great ease beyond Venus Wars itself. I can proudly say, as evidence of this, my first viewing of Venus Wars, despite being truly of the DVD generation of anime fans of the 2000s, was a Manga Entertainment videotape found in a charity shop, viewed on my grandmother old VHS player, with the stickers and catalogue of their titles all intact inside the plastic case.

This is a case of a small narrative within larger science fiction world building, how in the past established in opening narrative, an ice asteroid hit the planet Venus, changing its atmosphere into one which could make the planet habitable by Earthlings. Unfortunately, whilst civilization has developed, and in a funny touch in a background detail, is a far flung future where the musical The Wiz is still popular and performed, the habit of humanity for war is still here, as the story itself is set between a civil war between those for Ishtar and those of Aphrodita. In a world tense enough that Earth reporter Susan Sommers is given a gun alongside her camera by her contact when she reaches the planet, she and a team of battlebike racers, a motley group of punks with our headstrong lead Hiro, will find themselves dragged into total war when the Aprodita city capital of Io is taken over by Ishtarian forces entirely.

The eighties’ last year, including the weight of eighties anime production, is seen in all its splendor here alongside the synth driven J-pop, a film whose view of war really, sadly, is still relevant as the leads are forced into the front line as bystanders, the beauties of the metropolis like the shopping mall not safe from the ravages of war, and gunfights break out in the streets as Ishtar take over Io but loyal civilians are fighting to regain control. There is some humour, even Andrew the cat, the pet of Hiro’s love interest Maggie who is always hungry, especially when she forgets to get him cat food, and tries to give him a raw fish and a slice of bread in his dish, but even that joke is set in the context of her having to get shopping in a place now with curfews by the invading leaders. This is very serious action sci-fi as the battle bike team, when they decide to blow up an Ishtarian tank for revenge for parking on their battle bike stadium, kick off their involvement in the rebellion against the occupying forces as a result of this decision. Barring their one female badass named Miranda, they are guys out of their depth in a real war even if the older mechanic they are helped by is smuggling real firearms in the midst of this, Hiro himself among them a brash hothead who is stuck in the midst of this with no sense of duty until he sees the full issue of his home city being taken over.

Alongside one homophobic bit, which is out of nowhere and leaves a sour taste to a solid film, the real issue many might have is Hiro may be unlikable. He is quite angry and hostile for the sake of it most of the film, an arrogant figure even when he is entirely out of his depth, and when Susan the reporter and the battle bike team step back in the narrative, he is the figure meant to be followed as he will end up in the rebel forces hiding in the desert, forced to serve against his will initially until he realizes the severity of the situation, including Maggie’s life under threat in Io which changes his mind. This is, whilst a film with a potent theme in itself, also a work emphasizing its action scenes, which means that the plot is very simple barring the small details. It does not really even have a true antagonist – one is set up, leading the Ishtar forces, but he is just a grunt in the wider war machine for their side, out of his luck as attempting to keep Io starts to be a struggle. He is close to even being caught entirely were it not for someone not knowing how to fire a handgun, so he is as human as everyone else in the proceedings.

There is one interesting, and very curious experimental touch, a scene of real recorded footage of a vehicle of a desert location, to represent a camera strapped to one of the sci-fi monobikes, which involves animated figures drawn on the images. It is an odd but stand out attempt at experimentation, but for the rest of this theatrical feature, Venus Wars is very solid, very accomplished animation. Considering this was original a manga by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko himself, there is a sense of him really caring for bringing out its story into the other medium fully, especially as this alongside the film Arion (1986) came from writing manga first which worked as pitches for the filmic productions themselves¹. The composer, to really emphasis the production’s scale, is also Joe Hisaishi, who is already at this point working on the likes of My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Beat Takashi Kitano’s first film when he contributes to this film. Most of the potential issues with Venus Wars is general is Hiro himself, and that feels befitting if you can expect this story idea of even a punk, one who is immature and not always someone you want to hang around with, having to grow up as he will when life is under threat. It is admittedly telling the studio behind the production, Kugatsusha, only made one other production with nothing else – also directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, it was The Poem of Wind and Trees (1987), a yoai straight-to-video drama, adapting a culturally significant Keiko Takemiya manga from the seventies, about a romance between two students at an all-boys boarding school in late 19th-century France. With Venus Wars produced after, there is the telling sense that, whilst an admirable production, it took so much to make the studio stopped existing afterwards.

Yasuhiko is known for being quite self defeating on his work, despite his eighties directorial work being acclaimed in the modern day, with his belief that on Arion, a fantasy epic based on Greek mythology, was made by himself “in a half-dead state”. For a time in Japan, he even kept Venus Wars off from being physically released on the likes of DVD with a very down attitude to the production¹. His retirement, instead focusing on a career as a manga author in the nineties, including works based on both the life of Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ, clearly came from a sense of burn out which looked to end a short directorial career were it not for returning in 2015 with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015-2016) as chief director. Likely to be his last film will be Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island (2022), but that is idiosyncratic as it is an adaptation of an infamous episode of the original Gundam animated series, one which needed to be outsourced with notorious animation issues, that Yoshikazu Yasuhiko felt had themes and a story worthy of a re-adaptation. That in itself tells a lot of his attitude to his work, and whilst Venus Wars is not perfect, I already see a strong figure in Yasuhiko who has to be admired for his craft.

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1) Interview with Yoshikazu Yasuhiko on Gundam: The Origin (Animage, June 2015/Vol. 444). Originally printed in The June 2015 issue of Animage. Translated into English translated by Hyun Park and published on Wave Motion Cannon on January 31st 2017.

#275: Dominion Tank Police (1988-1989)

Studio: Agent 21 and Toshiba Eizo Soft

Director: Kōichi Mashimo

Screenplay: Kōichi Mashimo

Based on the manga by Masamune Shirow

Voice Cast: Hiromi Tsuru/Toni Barry as Leona Ozaki, Masaaki Ohkura/Steve Graf as Al, Ichirō Nagai as The Chief/Jesse Vogel, Jouji Yanami/Marc Smith as Buaku, Kōji Totani/John Bull as Mohican, Michie Tomizawa/Alison Dowling as Unipuma, Yūko Mita/Alison Dowling as Annapuma, Takkō Ishimori/Peter Whitman as Father (Chaplain), Yūsaku Yara/Sean Barrett as Brenten

Viewed in English Dub

 

Most will know Masamune Shirow for Ghost in the Shell, his 1989 manga which gained even further traction when the animation adaptations, in a variety of tones, started from Mamoru Oshii's 1995 theatrical film. Appleseed, his 1984 manga, had a few adaptations over the years as well. Dominion, alongside the fact that the original manga surprisingly only has one single volume in the end, completed over a year from 1985 to 86, and a few additional stories written after that time, may have been sadly become marginalised in his career. This is a shame as for this adaptation, this takes the route of a more overtly humorous but still dystopian science fiction work in his career. It may have not aged well for making jokes about police brutality, as this opens with the tank police comically having a suspect on a chair with a live grenade in his mouth for information and slapstick, but that feels like a deliberately absurd sense of humour which has unfortunately seen the decades after make it less comfortable. What has still stayed timeless, unfortunately but with weightier relevance, is the setting of Newport, Japan, where the environment for the entire world has collapsed, causing the atmosphere to become toxic until civilisation adaptive a natural resistance, and the police have been forced to have an entire division with military tanks to deal with the crime rates.

Despite the tone, including an extended gag (literally) of inflatable phallus being used as a police deterrent, the context for Dominion's setting, the severity against the humour, is one of the most interesting things here out of the gate, which is apt for how Ghost in the Shell, in its own variety of tones, had a lot to work with through its own interpretation of heavy science fiction themes. The atmosphere is decimated, leaving the air outside is toxic, as public service announcements warn of even if everyone has a resistance when the clouds roll in. Even if the first two episodes have a clear sense of humour, that its McGuffin is that a group are trying to steal urine samples from "healthy" people, the context is still salient and meaningful even in a more cartoonish presentation like a good sci-fi story should be able to, especially as the samples were taken from are those without the resistance of the toxic atmosphere but the physical health from a time before.

That your sympathetic heroes are the tank police, who stick said live grenades into suspects' mouths during interrogations, or set up spin the wheel game shows with them with throwing knives, is a sense of dark humour and a sense this is a Japanese production taking a gleeful humour to the trope of on-the-edge police. From director-screenwriter Kōichi Mashimo, it is in a context of depicting a form of police that is deliberately absurd, rather than realising how history would go after 1988 in the West particularly, and that makes this a lot bleaker humoured even if these particular officers are actually likable. Into this is our female protagonist Leona, a former motorbike officer who is transferred over to the group, initially viewed with hostility by their headstrong head Brenten. Another younger male member Al develops a crush on her, and despite the incident that sends their captain's beloved tank to the scrap yard in the sky during training, from its scrap metal comes Bonaparte, a mini-tank who is clearly a predecessor to the Tachikoma tanks from Ghost in the Shell, as cute military weaponry, that Leona can use with greater ease with the advantages of being a squat and faster vehicle in the team that suits her driving skills.

Whilst this straight-to-video production will get more serious with heftier themes, Dominion is a comedy at heart. It feels like the prologue to what should have been a longer franchise that could stretch this inherently fascinating premise further - New Dominion Tank Police comes in 1993-4, but sadly Tank Police Team TANK S.W.A.T. 01 (2006) by Romanov Higa, a one-off with 3D character designs, faded into obscurity and was clearly not well received, with no other adaptations beyond this let alone actual manga pages written. A shame, as the juggling of heavier themes with humour makes a good change, where despite all the property damage, including legendary pieces of art and historical artefacts in the second half, it is played with a madcap tone exemplified by the sympathetic antagonists, Buaku who is revealed as an artificially created android, and the two women who became the poster cat girls for this entire franchise, literally as they are superhuman anthropomorphic cat girls, Unipuma and Annapuma, who help cause mischief and mayhem. Buaku himself does get a weightier back story involving a portrait which used him as a subject which had more to it than others may know, but they still are part of the humorous tone. Even the English dub, which glibly steers the dialogue into more broad humour, and obsessed with the human urine subplot as an excuse to use the word "piss", is really fun even when it clearly breaks from the script. Whether it is letting the actress Alison Dowling behind the cat girls play with Jane Austin era English accents for a joke parodying Austin era stereotypes, or Peter Whitman as the Christian chaplain officer who talks of Christian forgiveness but is gleeful for mayhem, the British made Manga Entertainment dub, unlike some others which are funny for the wrong reasons, still shines.

The first act really works setting up the tone, dealing with Leona's first days and first encounters with who is being sent to get urine samples, something whose plot is ever fully explained, either as a joke or that there was an ongoing plot with the mafia group wishing them which never came to be. It does not take itself seriously, such as those aforementioned phallic police deterrents, or the complete disregard for property damage even if, in another context, the jokes about severe police tactics and arguing with the female major, clearly inspired from the American action films from the eighties being exaggerated here, would have aged badly now without that context. The last two episodes get more serious, with Buaku's back story and him teaming up with Leona when a suspicious private mercenary force get involved, which allows the world to get new layers. The juxtaposition is helped greater by the aesthetic of the era; we are nearing the end of the eighties and a golden era for hand drawn anime just from the mechanical designs in this production, but also in terms of this being a comedy sci-fi still set within a grungy metropolis which fully embraced the type of sci-fi which lead to cyberpunk. This is a comedy which is still set in a place you would not normally have for a location for this type of story, the rundown nature of the futurescape noticeable in that, for all its luxurious streets, it is barely functioning with its crime rates and poisoned landscape.

Strangely the first Dominion adaptation is split between two production companies, neither with large filmographies at all. Toshiba Eizo Soft was mostly a distributor, only doing production on this or two pieces of a horror anime long forgotten despite the manga being well regarded, called Karura Mau, an enticing one of young female shaman dealing with supernatural forces, beginning with feature length story, and then followed by a six part straight-to-video series. Agent 21, who worked on these titles too, were producing more mostly straight to video work, including hentai, some action, and Dirty Pair: Flight 005 Conspiracy (1990) for that legendary franchise, as well as infamously Dark Cat (1991), a horror anime that is not well regarded. Judging from the time periods of their collecting, tiny filmographies, all their titles come from that golden age of eighties anime and the straight-to-video boom for the medium, with the sense that as time went on they could not last. This is not to mention the end of the eighties Japanese bubble economy expansion that allowed straight-to-video culture to flourish, including live action genre films, collapsed into the early nineties, and whilst studios could survive into the new decades, and straight-to-video work was still alive and healthy up to the Millennium, I suspect these two studios were casualties to the market. Director-writer Kōichi Mashimo however was able to keep going, even founding the studio Bee Train, with his career including a series of television action series with female protagonists capable in gun shootouts like Noir (2001), the first of these. Whilst he had not really directed much into the 2010s, effectively retiring with Bee Train not creating any more productions when he stopped, he had a prolonged career from the seventies over a good few decades that outlasted the studios behind this production.

The set up for a wider world thankfully comes in New Dominion Tank Police, but already I get the sense this franchise could have been expanded further from the premise, which I think is a positive compliment to Dominion. Arguably one of the bigger reasons Dominion is obscurer now, alongside how significant Ghost in the Shell became in the West over other Masamune Shirow titles expect Appleseed, both in its animated adaptations but the original manga being a staple of the manga section of bookstores, is that this animated adaptation has not really being readily available. Lost to the online rips, and the Maiden Japan DVD release of the sequel long out of print in the USA, it is disappointing with the virtues it has that Dominion itself is not as readily available when it is very digestible and memorable.