Re-Review: Darkside Blues (1994)

 

Studio: J.C. Staff

Director: Nobuyasu Furukawa

Screenplay: Mayori Sekijima

Based on the manga by Hideyuki Kikuchi and Yuho Ashibe

Voice Cast: Akio Ohtsuka as Kenzou; Hideyuki Hori as Gren; Kotono Mitsuishi as Mai; Kouichi Yamadera as Enji; Masako Katsuki as Tamaki; Maya Okamoto as Selia; Natsuki Sakan as Darkside; Nozomu Sasaki as Katari; Shinichiro Miki as Chris; Yasunori Matsumoto as Tatsuya

Viewed in English Dub

 

In the opening scene, you do get a pretty gruesome set up to Darkside Blues, evoking that this will be another anime adaptation of the work by Hideyuki Kikuchi like the infamous Wicked City (1987), in which a female freedom fighter stripped to the waist about to be tortured by another. It is still nasty what happens, but sets up less a lurid anime shocker from the past, but a really curious hybrid of horror, science fiction dystopia and magic, in which the poor victim is slowly turned into gold whilst alive through a science-meets-alchemy pincher machine that sticks in both sides around her stomach. From that point onwards, nothing is as extreme, and instead these genre combinations take over instead. It is a really idiosyncratic world that we encounter, barely in some ways in less than nineties minutes, in which the villainess is part of the Persona Century Corporation who rules the world, their lair high above the planet Earth on a satellite with its own giant laser. In a world where they have almost bought everything, where science and magic have intermingled, there are finally forces after dethroning them, such as the youthful leader of the anti Persona group Messiah, Mai, and those who stand with her. The titular Darkside, named by where he first appears from a dimension of the darkness is their trump card, initially intermingling as a mere psionic healer but possesses absolute power of darkness and magic. He wishes to renew the world for the better from its bleak situation, and he will start to help those fighting for justice and freedom when asked to.

Set within a world where futuristic sci-fi is intertwined with mysticism, robots against magic welding mutant assassin, and enough horror aspects to really apply for the genre tag even if a tertiary one, it befits novelist and manga author Hideyuki Kikuchi as he has, alongside a prolific career, a habit of bleeding together genres into one work. His most famous franchise Vampire Hunter D, with the vital contributions of legendary illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, was a post apocalyptic sci-fi horror story which has western genre aesthetics least in the animated adaptations. Darkside Blues sadly didn't get an additional animated adaptation, knowing this source material only lasted for two manga, so there is the fact that, sadly, there wouldn't have been much left to adapt, leaving one with enough tantalising what-ifs of how to continue in this world. This is a shame as, throwing the viewer in media res in the midst of the world and not having a resolution that resolves the dystopian world it begins with, I still found so much to this supernaturally tinged sci-fi hybrid I really liked. This is an example where you see the really interesting side to Japanese animation where it allows story tropes and ideas to bleed together in really idiosyncratic ways, more so as this has style to burn against its pulpy story.

What you do get with Darkside Blues thankfully repays the patient viewer with pure atmosphere. This particular one is even different by itself because it is laced in a slow, deliberate mood and emphasises characters, surprising for a film merely eighty minutes long. Immediately made clear is also the sharp contrast between its dystopian story against gothic production design, a fascinating melding which works beautifully, depicting pure urban sprawl and a tale of a corporation in total control which (unfortunately) stays relevant thirty plus years later, all with the one slum that the villains haven't bought the centre of the heroes' activity. In spite of having some actions scenes and gore, this entire story is a deliberately moody work, intercutting moments of contemplation to contrast these pulpier scenes, to a spider in a room with red lace or silent contemplation against those aforementioned action scenes. Even if the characters don't get a lot of time onscreen, we see Mia forced to confront her own memories through dream therapy with Darkside, or see a surviving member of a freedom fighting group, a young man, and a female ex-nurse whose family was wiped out by the Persona satellite laser fall in love as she rediscovers her need to help fight for the cause.

As a theatrical production from J.C. Staff, a prolific animation studio who started in 1986 and thus wasn't that old to even endeavour on this production, they produced a mere snapshot of a larger world, which is depressing as the story has to be hastily wrapped up, but there is enough here to tantalise. The first time I saw this film, the first moment this won me over is when the first showdown between heroes and villains is scored to an honest-to-God blues song in the traditional of American ones with English vocals. With original lyrics evoking the musical genre and the story's own title, whilst fitting the world's themes of repression and rebellion, that was one of the first idiosyncratic touches that came throughout this that really caught interest.

Then there's Darkside himself, who despite being your typical anime trope of the dark and handsome stranger with unnatural powers from the void he came from, is intentionally passive. He feels like he's from the same template as D, Kikuchi's most famous creation in his quiet manner and elegance, but taken to a further extreme that he deliberately inert in his involvements. He will lash back when provoked, but deliberately stays off to the sides, intervening to heal other characters and stop the villains from harming people even by the finale. He spends most of his time throughout the film, in the most intriguing aspect of the world building, within a motel ran by an old woman where characters are pulled by a magic force to the room they want to go, where among his potential abilities (including maybe even extending the life further of the old woman's pet cat) is counselling of clients' memories and dreams, healing them and (even outside the hotel) using this ability to push the protagonists to major decisions, through pulling them into their traumas and memories to stop them from running from them. Literally, he's a counsellor to the real main characters, who just happens to be a quietly spoken man capable of horrifying dark void abilities if anyone was insane to push him.

In another twist, although it's sadly lost when it comes to the English dub which casts Matthew Harrington, is that a female voice actress named Natsuki Sakan voices Darkside rather than a man, which adds a unique dynamic for viewers. It's her sole acting role in the anime industry, which is just as mysterious. She sings the end theme, Paradise Lost, which presents the idea that this production was as meant to promote her, but with her singing voice a deeper and sombre one, it is a compelling idea to see that, to promote her, she voices the main male lead. This is actually more fleshed out when you learn that the character is credited to Ou Natsuki instead on other sites¹, and that she has a history in the Takarazuka Revue. The Revue, based in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, started in 1913 and perform to this day elaborate all-female Broadway-style productions with the all-female cast playing both the male and female parts of their productions, Ou Natsuki playing many of the male roles in the shows she was involved with until her retirement^2,3. They have adapted everything from folktales to manga, and they have had a huge influence on anime and manga, be it the legendary Osamu Tezuka being inspired from growing up with their performances, to a legendary J.C. Staff animated production, the series Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997), being inspired by it too. I am not surprised that for one cast, an anime had an inspired idea to hire a former Takarazuka Revue performer to play a major male role when she would have done so in her career beforehand

It's the female characters for the most part too who are the most interesting. That's not to say there's some curious characterisations for the better, most if not all the characters even for the few minutes having unique details, such as the enforcer sent against Darkside having a heroic moment rescuing a woman from a group of men which complicates things, despite the fact he will turn an entire crowd of bystanders into stone which break to pieces (and presumably die if not already), deciding one of the henchmen for Persona, an artificially created hit man with monofilament wire, should look like a middle aged employee from an office in a polo shirt and slacks, wearing glasses and with balding hair, undercutting his menace in a really sick humoured way. But in terms of complex characters, Mai as the leader of the Messiah group, who holds a vaguely told back-story of trauma, is interesting as the strong willed but thoughtful leader, she and her motley crew finding themselves further against Persona especially when a militarised rebel escapes into their midst. Another character, the nurse named Selia I have already nodded to, is even more interesting and is the figure who gets the real ending of the adaptation; with even greater trauma in his life due to her family being victims of the giant space laser Persona own, she keeps her father's rifle as a traumatic memento, her progression from being a mere friend to Mai's cause onwards where the resolution of the film comes from.

Thankfully, this means Darkside Blues, unlike other anime, actually has an ending, unlike too many especially from the straight-to-video format of this time period which ended abruptly, but it's fascinating that this ending is a miniscule character drama set within a huge world left untouched. It is as if a fragment of what could've gone obviously for longer. Again, the slither of virtues is rewarding even if I wished this had lasted onwards to more. Production wise, it's gorgeous. This era of anime gladly lavished even the most lurid of stories with a distinct production design, and generally have a sense of flair both in background and character designs that stood out, details that could easily be ignored especially in some of the worst, less cared for OVAs from this same era. All that would've been as painstaking as everything else to include,  such as having the lead male villain wear a golden mask in public, deliberately designed to look robotic and faceless for ominous. The combination of Goth aesthetic with science fiction does stand out as do the moments where horror are felt, as whilst not really the genre this truly belongs too, it exists in the supernatural melding to the science fiction world, the moments of darkened mood or the lingering fear of one's' traumatic memories, let along the decision to depict Darkside as having a supernatural horse drawn carriage which can even fly, which is one of the coolest forms of transport ever to have whilst completely Gothic in image. It's distinctions stand out so much so that, yes, that it has no large scale resolution and never had any animated sequels or remakes which is disappointing, alongside the fact that original releases of this are now very old DVDs, and were never in the United Kingdom. This also includes the likelihood of finding the ADV Manga translation of the manga adaptation, which will probably only be found by readers through pure luck and an excavation through countless second hand dealer boxes and warehouses of stock for long dissolved companies. One has to gnash their teeth, as I have, when the material is as compelling as this and wish it had a lot more attention drawn to its virtues.

 

=====

1) MyAnimeList page for Ou, Natsuki.

2) Takawiki entry on Ou Natsuki.

3) Weblio page on Natsuki Ou. [Japanese language]

#279: Giant Robo - The Day the Earth Stood Still (1992-8)

 

Studio: Mu Animation Studio (Episode 1–6)/ Phoenix Entertainment (Episode 7)

Director: Yasuhiro Imagawa

Screenplay: Yasuhiro Imagawa and Eiichi Matsuyama

Based on the work of Mitsuteru Yokoyama

Voice Cast: Kappei Yamaguchi as Daisaku Kusama, Sumi Shimamoto as Ginrei, Akio Ōtsuka as Kaei, Iemasa Kayumi as Chief Shizuo Chūjō, Kazue Komiya as Yōshi, Kazuo Harada as Dr. Shizuma de Montalban III, Kōichi Chiba as Dr. Franken Von Vogler, Masashi Ebara as Professor Go Gakujin (Wu Yong), Norio Wakamoto as Taisō, Rokurō Naya as Kōshin Chin Sanzan, Shinji Ogawa as Genya, Shōzō Iizuka as Tetsugyū, Tadashi Nakamura as Shokatsuryō Kōmei, Takeshi Aono as Issei (Gongsun Sheng), Tarō Ishida as Hanzui the Evil Messiah, Tomokazu Seki as Kaihō, Yasuyoshi Hara as Ivan, Yousuke Akimoto as Shockwave Alberto, Yūji Mikimoto as Inspector Kenji Murasame, Akio Ōtsuka as Professor Shimure, Chikao Ohtsuka as Jūjōji the Bell of Life, Fuyumi Shiraishi as Sanny the Magican, Hiroyuki Satō as Gen Shōgo, Hōchū Ohtsuka as Gen Shōji (Ruan Xiao'er)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Giant Robo is not the best mecha anime ever made, but it is one of the best. That may seem a paradox, but I went into The Day the Earth Stood Still, an ambitious straight-to-video series with arguably too much build up as the best anime mecha work in existence. To those who know of this, it is a high bar for the genre, and thankfully by the final episode, it had earned that reputation, all in mind that with a protracted production length and a tragic inability to reach its intended original intentions, this could have easily become a flawed gem which we would have looked back on with a bittersweet "what if". It is more that to call something "the best" is a dangerous choice of wording, forcing a straightjacket which robs the power of the production, something that can be attested to when, to use another example from another medium, people may be put off from watching Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) because when people called it the best film ever made, that forced it into a form of permanent stasis rather than the fact people love that film for a naturally developed admiration. Also it is impossible to say what the best mecha anime is as, being able to dig into the sub-genre, something as simple as a story involving a giant combat robot or two has been able to have so many idiosyncratic and inspired entries even in terms of flawed gems, let alone the canonical ones, that it seems pointless to compare them to find a superior one. The Visions of Escaflowne, a 1996 television series which finished its twenty six episodes when the final seventh episode was still being waited for from Giant Robo, is a completely different type of story set in an alternative fantasy world, making it ridiculous to compare it to Giant Robo's atompunk morality tale, or other works in their own molds, because they are drastically different to each other despite their genre tag.

Giant Robo could be called a throwback to an older school of mecha stories, but even that is not quite right, and not the same as mecha anime which were openly throwbacks, such as Masami Ōbari's Gravion (2002/4), with their own distinct touches. What I can call Giant Robo is a serious minded action tale at its heart, one that fully and totally succeeds in its conclusion, with a full narrative arch, in spite of the tragic knowledge this was always meant to continue on with more entries we will never get. This was originally meant to the second to last of a giant, ambitious tribute to the work of manga artist Mitsuteru Yokoyama. It adapts as its centre Yokoyama's 1967 manga Giant Robo, but one of the immediate things to point out is some of the idiosyncratic characters here. Set in the future, we have on Earth moved away from fossil or nuclear power to Shizuma Drive, a sustainable power source, whilst there is a war between the heroic International Police Organization and antagonists the BF Group (Big Fire) which involves a machine that can destroy this power source and send the world back into darkness. Part of the work’s idiosyncrasies is that for a modern day tale with giant robots, there are quite a few figures who have seemingly wandered out of an adaption of Chinese period epic. This is because, when the project was being put together, copyright meant side characters were not allowed to be used. Giant Robo had been adapted before, as a live action series screened in 1967 to 1968, and the confounding red tape which prevent most of the cast from the source being available lead to an inspired creative improvisation. This was that, with this a tribute to Yokoyama's work, they got carte blanche to use characters from his entire career, including so from an adaptation of The Water Margin, based on a legendary Chinese novel.

The decision had a drastic effect on the story, when the female lead Ginrei is from two manga, Wolf Constellation and The Name is 101¹, which makes this an even more compelling tale if you knew of this, as this is legitimately a tribute to Mitsuteru Yokoyama‘s career. It is however not interested in pure service, but a serious story where characters do die and the stakes are legitimate in terms of dramatic tension. Even Big Fire is the same, with characters from a Romance of the Three Kingdom manga, and Yokoyama's magical girl Sally the Witch, one of the earliest examples, as the daughter of one of the villains¹. With a story where even their morality becomes more complicated when facing the threat, a character from one of Yokoyama‘s period dramas, Genya¹, is turned into the son of a scientist deemed responsible for destroying an entire country when experimenting with the Shizuma Drive, desiring to blackout the entire world in revenge for the distorted truth of that tragedy. Even characters from Tetsujin 28, Mitsuteru Yokoyama‘s other mecha creation, which is a huge influential entity in its own right, rock in for the story in probably the coolest nod to the show’s ambitious crossovers¹.

The only characters from Giant Robo directly lifted include the main lead Daisaku Kusama, a young teen boy who has inherited the power of the titular Robo, who he can command from a wrist watch communicator. Whilst he has great power in his hands, alongside the fact it is later revealed Giant Robo is nuclear powered, causing concerns on his side of the potential threat if the machine malfunctions, he is a mere boy burdened with the chaos that will transpire. The villain has a justification for his rage, made worse as he is Ginrei’s brother, and the war to initially stop a series of experimental Shizuma Drive canisters getting into BF Group’s hands becomes one of dealing with an ultra powerful floating sphere which robs all energy sources of power in radius. Even among his side, there is the fact that, whilst she can teleport, Ginrei’s power sacrifices her life little by little using it, and that despite having a member who cannot die and is immortal, the International Police Organization throughout are fighting as the underdogs. The ironic tragedy of Genya's goal, what his father actually intended him to do with the power he weaponized, and all the sacrifices that lead up to this reveal makes this more potent. This is a case where, rather than the contrived sense that tragedy happens for upping the stakes, everything here is felt as dramatically powerful and this is where the legacy of this series is felt. It earns its drama, all through telling what a simple action story with giant robots lumbering around, all because it is taking itself seriously with the deftest of touches.

It is with knowledge the production was tumultuous. It started in 1992, and it took three years alone from episode six to get the final seventh one in 1998, enough time for director/co-writer Yasuhiro Imagawa to pen scripts for other work, including the 1997 Berserk adaptation, and direct the unconventional Gundam continuation Mobile Fighter G Gundam (1994-5), a big fifty plus episode production, whilst still helming the sixth episode from 1994. The solace is that these production issues are not seen in the slightest on the work itself. It has a strong aesthetic, arguably a “throwback” to older character designs from the decades before, but without any bias to this for me. By itself, this style is one of its own, based on its influence’s work, which provides its own distinct appearance. There is no sense that the time and budget that would have gone into this production, whilst likely torturous as was visibly a lot of resources, was compromised in the quality of the production. The closest thing to throwback it moving away from the kind of robots Gundam itself has, and whilst some in the story are more over-the-top in form, our titular Giant Robo whilst exaggerated feels like a construction built from pistons where each movement causes the earth beneath it to tremor, which adds to its own personality.

Considering what is on paper, a version of Giant Robo could have been a mess. It is a sci-fi giant mecha series with figures who have legitimate supernatural powers, from the ability to project fireballs to teleport, with the likes of a blue skinned Amazonian warrior from the Water Margins adaptation with a Monkey approved extending staff weapon among the roster, and a large amount of the cast not hidden in having ancient Chinese dress or military combat maneuvers in a story which has guns and air blimps.  Yet, it all gels together in a consistent logic of its own with spectacular set pieces and deep character telling, which is a huge accomplishment. There is of course the musical score, composed by Masamichi Amano with collaboration with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. A sweeping, appropriately operatic score to a production, it fits the tone alongside bucking trends, as it neither has any traditional pop songs for the opening and ending credits either that could have been sold off the back of the series. The gravitas of the story and how the production values is used to tell it, even in terms of how the likes of this score was chosen and put together, is why Giant Robo succeeds.

Sadly it was a work that struggled in its time, and only got the recognition it deserved as time went. My initial hesitance about the show, from all its weight of expectation, meant that it was a slow burn having to watch all seven episodes until the ending, where when the landing was fully executed perfectly in the last one. By its bitter sweet post-credits, it was a success entirely. Its pulpy veneer hides a pretty simple moral quandary – the idea of whether sacrifice is actually necessary to accomplish any event – and lets the characters and story run from this. Even if there is a nod to a future story that never came to be, it does not detract from the fact this does have a fully accomplished and told narrative by itself, and that in itself is a huge triumph.

======

1) Behind the Night's Illusions - the characters of Giant Robo: the Animation, originally published by Anime Jump in 1999. Archived from the original on 13th July 2003, and retrieved on the 1st January 2001.

#277: Casshan - Robot Hunter (1993–1994)

Studio: Tatsunoko, Artmic

Director: Hiroyuki Fukushima, Masashi Abe and Takashi Watanabe

Screenplay: Emu Arii, Hideki Kakinuma, Hiroyuki Fukushima and Shō Aikawa

Based on Neo-Human Casshern

Voice Cast: Takeshi Kusao as Tetsuya Azuma / Casshan, Yumi Touma as Luna Kozuki, Hirohiko Kakegawa as Admiral Montgomery Dr. Lester, Ikuya Sawaki as the Narrator, Issei Futamata as Akbone, Isshin Chiba as the Operator, Junichi Sugawara as Barashin, Juurouta Kosugi as Commander Tork, Keaton Yamada as Dr. Kotaro Azuma, Kenichi Ogata as Elder Asari, Kenji Utsumi as Buraiking Boss

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Tatsunoko, over its decades of existence since Tatsunoko, has been retelling and rebooting its franchises repeatedly, always trying to keep them in consciousness, and to their credit, they take artistic risks to do this. It is not just the nostalgic market or all the video game tie-ins over the years, but how their retellings of their most popular characters over the years can vary from the pretty radical, or in a case like this, at least stepping up to the new decade they were made within. It does not always work - rebooting Speed Racer (1967–1968) in the nineties led to an animated series Mach GoGoGo (1997) which most may not know of, a take which told one giant race for a large portion of its length alongside changed the character dynamics. Some have been really drastic, like Gatchaman Crowds (2013/2015), readapting its tokusatsu team dynamic that some may know from its Westernised Battle of the Planets form, and turning it into something which striped the costumes, changed the tone, and was a superhero series over two seasons about mobile phone and online technology's potential to corrupt but also do good. Casshan himself has had some really idiosyncratic takes, created in 1973 as a superhero of android form defeating the robot empire of Buraiking Boss, who have enslaved humanity as this nineties re-adaptation sets up.  I think if I was to return to it, I would even defend the 2004 live action film, which was done in then-era CGI green screen with more emphasis on philosophical dialogue, for at least trying to be different. The 2008-9 Casshan Sins adaptation is the more radical for being a depressing epilogue to the original story, suggesting Earth is doomed anyway, as there is a rust-like virus even kills robots, and Casshan has to accept he is to blame for it over the series.

Robot Hunter is the least radical of the three, closer to its source premise even if with dashing of more adult content for the straight-to-video market, four half hour episodes released between 1993 and 1994, compiled into a feature length work for the Western Manga Entertainment release. In the world, robots have taken over and enslaved humanity, effectively predating The Terminator in the 1973 source material if with the caveat that, rather than kill us all, the Buraiking Boss realised we could be useful as slave labour in his robot factories. Casshan is spoken in reverence here, before his real introduction, as someone who will save humanity. He is actually Tetsuya Azuma, who in this story was a young man who willingly sacrificed himself to place his consciousness into an android to fight the Buraiking Boss, someone who, as in a lot of Japanese anime in terms of moral complexity, saw the only solution to preserve the Earth's natural resources and save the planet was to take over the planet.

The biggest issue with this adaptation is its length. It is nearly two hours long altogether, but if ever there was an anime that needed more episodes or lengthier ones over the forty minute mark even, Robot Hunter could have done with more elaboration on plot details. His father created Buraiking Boss whilst his mother's soul, literal and not metaphorically, was preserved by Buraiking inside a mechanical swan who without him realising she is passing her son information on his plans. There is enough in that in it, let alone the other plot aspects, to add greater melodrama to the proceedings. There is enough here even in this simple premise to pull form for at least a few more episodes, to elaborate on its science fiction premise, not just Casshan himself, accompanied by his android dog, man's best friend with flamethrower abilities, but also the human resistance. They still have enough forces and resources to fight back around the globe, but having to fight on the back foot. This includes the female lead Luna Kozuki, a love interest from Casshan's past that is yet emphasised as a member of the human resistance who is capable of handling herself.

She does emphasise the few moments of edginess this adaptation has too, not just the fact that, even in the apocalypse, she can dress resplendently in short skirt and immaculate ponytails. More telling alongside the few moments of blood, it is from an era where if even Chung-Li, the Street Fighter 2 video game character, had a gratuitous shower scene in the (uncensored) version of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994), and there is a blatant one here for Luna. That is crass to have to point out, but whilst she thankfully has enough moments of being a competent heroine herself, Robot Hunter's more curious aspects are these nudges of adult content which stick out more because most of this is not close to the edgier titles Manga Entertainment were realising in the United Kingdom for the "beer and curry anime" image on videotapes. Most of this could be shown to a younger audience than the one it has for a few scenes, rated as suitable for twelve year olds in Britain, and with content in live action that would be fifteen certificate if still tamer than most action films at that rating. Barring the few nude scenes, the grittiness of seeing people shot by the villains, and one revolutionary's unfortunate end, crushed under a bridge girder with lots of raspberry jam around him in one moment in episode three, it really is not a gritty adaptation whatsoever, with the robot enemies effectively allowing one to get away with cartoonish violence. Maybe it is over thinking this when the bar for edginess, even in terms of additional swearing added to the English dubs from Manga Entertainment, but it feels like a concession with some of these scenes for this release. The shower scene especially feels like fan service for the sake of it.

The actual production is solid, though this is a case where three directors and four screenwriters does evoke, even if not necessarily the issue here, of a title which lack a complete voice of one figure. There is Shō Aikawa among the screenwriters, once a notorious screenwriter of ultra-violent work who became a more acclaimed one, but there is also the consistent voice of Yasuomi Umetsu as one of the production's two character designers. Notorious for his work in hentai, and titles like Kite (1998) that could only be created originally under that genre, Umetsu is nonetheless well regarded for his craft and detail, and alongside Tomonori Kogawa as his co-character designer, you get a then-update to the franchise which is good and would have been spectacular to image with an expanded narrative which let the pair take the designs they had further. Even Luna's character design, despite my joke about her immaculate costume jarring against the world, is still memorable, alongside whoever (including other designers on the title) who decided to give the Buraiking Boss a Goth female robot henchwoman, looking like cyber harlequin in black eyeliner. (For obvious reasons as well, with its elaborate action scenes, the mecha designers and animators also deserve their credits for their hard work too). Working with Tatsunoko, the studio Artmic are a product of this era, with their last work in the late nineties. Their catalogue of films and straight-to-video work is a cornucopia of nineties and eighties anime aesthetics and tropes in a filmography, from Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991) to Genocyber (1994), always collaborating with other studios on their projects.

All my issues are with the plot structure. The plot as it is mapped out makes perfect sense - setting up the world and Casshan, with the final conflict as played here between him and Buraiking Boss as well done as you could hope - but is more the sense we could have done with more story beats. There is teased more androids with the ability to control the ecosystem, living on an isolated island, who sadly never properly appear, and the middle of the production, episodes two and three, could have been have multiplied and increased into more tangents and depth to details like these figures, from episode three, or the main characters themselves. Casshan himself, alongside the limitations of his body, including requiring solar energy to power, has the additional primary crisis of whether he will lose consciousness and become a killing machine, whilst Luna, from the original series, has the conflict of needing to both help save humanity, but naturally concerned for the man she loved and hoping for the likelihood of him becoming Tetsuya Azuma again once the fight is over. There could have, in general, been more elaboration on the scenario, more emphasis on the human rebellion and the Buraiking Boss' forces, including a general sense of the grit and stakes at hand, especially with the uncomfortable idea leant into Buraiking's desire to replace humanity comes from his belief we humans will just destroy our planet, our failure to preserve it causing his existence to be. The slightness of some straight-to-video works has been a problem I have seen in quite a titles, and sadly this is a case, where everything here is perfect and could have been spectacular even as just a fun OVA, but we are just missing enough detail to nag.

#274: The Big O (1999–2003)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Kazuyoshi Katayama

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka, Keiichi Hasegawa, Masanao Akahoshi and Shin Yoshida

Voice Cast: Mitsuru Miyamoto as Roger Smith, Akiko Yajima as R. Dorothy Wayneright, Motomu Kiyokawa as Norman Burg, Tesshō Genda as Dan Dastun, Unshō Ishizuka as Alex Rosewater, Emi Shinohara as Angel, Gorō Naya as Gordon Rosewater, Hōchū Ohtsuka as Beck Gold, Katsunosuke Hori as Michael Seebach / Schwarzwald, Issei Futamata as Alan Gabriel (Season Two)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

The Big O begins with Batman. The animation studio Sunrise was commissioned to help on the legendary Batman: The Animated Series (1992-5), and in the creation of The Big O, you have a work paying tribute to this and Western popular culture like film noir films. They were also clearly inspired by older manga and anime such as Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Giant Robo, which is important as director Kazuyoshi Katayama and others on this series worked on Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1992-8), an straight-to-video production which adapted the source manga but also a tribute to Yokoyama's other manga, including characters from even period tales being placed into this sci-fi narrative. The final show inspired from these two sides of influence in The Big O however could have ended up a different way though. It was also a series which managed the near impossible, of how it was not actually a success in its first season in Japanese broadcast, to the point it was cancelled, but was able to continue and finish the narrative for a second series because of its importation to the West and success on Cartoon Network’s Toonami slot on television, commissioning the second series when it did well and the abrupt end the first season came to be.

The Big O is set in Paradigm City, where forty years earlier a cataclysm left it seemingly the last city, part protected in domes and everyone forgetting memories of the past. Enough survived for a proper urban civilization to still function, and latent memories still allow figures to operate even giant robots. One such figure is the Bruce Wayne of this world, Roger Smith a former member of the military police who is now a “negotiator”, a cross between what you would expect for the title and a detective. Good at his job but with eccentricities, like everyone working for him having to wear black and refusing to use a gun on the job, he also has latent memories that gave him access to the titular O, a member of multiple “megadeus“, a giant robot clearly inspired by the comic character Popeye in the piston arms as much as a tribute to the likes of Giant Robo and Tetsujin 28, especially as like those robots, Smith uses a wristwatch communicator to bring him when needed to his location.

His Alfred the butler is Norman, who is also a cool butler, with a clear military history, and calm enough to be cooking dinner whenever Roger is on the job knowing his boss will return at the right time for a fight to enjoy it. The best side character though has to be Dorothy Wainwright, and that is in mind this is one of the strongest casts in general for an anime series, so that is a high bar. Her full name is R. Dorothy Wainwright, and that is explicitly referencing how Isaac Asimov, the legendary sci-fi author, had androids name themselves, as she is one of the few androids in the cast, though explicitly the one who looks entirely human and seemingly is. The show, among tropes it explores, includes how these figures are so close in seemingly having freewill, such as her deadpan rebuttals of Roger’s moments of heroics, that they bleed the lines of what consciousness. She is also just an awesome female character to have, with the amount of times she is threatened with being hacked or destroyed in the series meaning a lot more because she is a perfect foil to a great lead, introduced over the two part first episodes for the show. The English dub for this series is as well regarded as the Japanese one, but I have to confess as much the virtue for this character is Akiko Yajima's robotic yet almost human sense of bluntness, making the fact her most prolific voice acting role funny in a great way, being Shinnosuke "Shin-chan" Nohara, the lead of the hugely popular Crayon Shin-chan franchise. Whilst bowing out as the lead voice for the character eventually, the fact this is the same actress who played a sarcastic and scatological obsessed five year old boy from the first anime adaptations in 1992 to 2018 is evidence of the talent of a lot of voice actors and actresses in their diverseness.

That cast is one of the best aspects of the show, even when I will admit there are some visible pacing issues in the plot that will be addressed later in this review. Office Dastun, who knew Roger Smith in the military police force and stayed friends, is a great side character who has a lot of angst to also work with, as the military police he is part of, the closest to enforcement, is under the pocket of the shady group who run Paradigm City, and are powerless when they need to constantly bring in Smith and The Big O to deal with threats they cannot even with tanks and military weaponry.  Antagonists are the same: Alex Rosewater is perfect as the sinister head of Paradigm City, given more by the second series as he collects fallen foes of Smith’s, resurrecting the robots and unlocking their memories for nefarious means. Beck Gold, who looks like a parody of Lupin the 3^rd, is a lovable git even if his constant crimes and smugness definitely makes him a villain, and thankfully he gets a few episodes for himself, including a parody of Japanese super robots, and even stays by the end of series two when you would presume he would stay merely a tertiary figure. Then there are the more ambiguous figures. One, the femme fatale for Roger Smith named Angel, will become a much more complex character, seemingly a “foreigner” in a world without other countries, by the end an integral part to the complicated twists that key screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka set up. The other is the one character who should have had more time devoted to him, though thankfully in a form he gets to the ending of his goals: that will be a former journalist who became Schwarzwald, seemingly a villain in his mission to cause mayhem but, standing out for his bandaged visage, he is a figure who will use any means to learn the truth of Paradigm City and open the public’s eyes to the reality of the world. He emphasizes how, from the get-go for all the episodic stories, the huge concern in the series' narrative is how this amnesiac city came to be and what is the truth of its origins, which Schwarzwald is obsessed with learning.

Schwarzwald‘s smaller role does present the issues with The Big O, that whilst it leads to a proper conclusion, and that I already view this as a gem from the era it was made, it suffered in terms of pacing itself out and telling said story. When I first saw the series, it was only season one I had access to, which has episodic stories I now enjoy more but were clearly the backdrop for a larger story already being drip fed. Infamously, when cancelled and seemingly gone for good, the first series ended on an abrupt “To Be Continue” moment without any chance for anything to be explained. Sadly when I first saw this, the Bandai DVD releases in the mid-2000s in Britain, through their Beez Entertainment arm in Europe, never released the second series, leaving this with some disappointment. Thankfully we did get that second series in the first place even if it never had a UK physical release, one I have now seen and was able to finally complete the story as supposed to be told, all because of this being one of those cases, in its form getting good ratings on Cartoon Network, where a Western company invested in the franchise seeing potential for more.

Set up in the final episode of season one, where Roger locates Rosewater's father, the founder of the city now going senile on a tomato farm in the countryside, and finds repressed memories are starting to cause him to question his position, it sets up Season Two where Chiaki J. Konaka wrote all the stories, rather than season one where three others contributed stories too. It however also leads to a conclusion itself which did not allow itself to breath, and all of this is entirely due to the final episode feeling rushed. The irony is not lost that, for a series I will praise to the high heavens for so much, the one caveat I have to make is that the final reveal, just the last ten or so minutes of the final episode, is likely to peeve or confuse a few people, and I say this as a person who likes and would normally defend the more unconventional and vague story reveals found in Konaka's other work, where they feel deliberate and not abrupt as here. Some may find the second series too esoteric when a more pulpy narrative twist would make sense, but for me, it is the case that everything works in logic, but that this literally rushed the final moments for what is a very existential story. [Huge Spoiler] That being that this literally all a stage, all an artificial construct but having gained existence and wanting to still exist [Spoilers End]. Thankfully so much works up to the middle of the last episode that means the ending does not ruin the show. So much before is set up well that it thankfully does not become a crushing disappointment for a show with a lot on its mind, merely one you are going to need to stop after finishing the series and digest carefully. Even by those last episodes a lot is already set up to the show's create to expose the real story, this being not a world of amnesia, people being killed for returning memories at one point, but that there is also by the end people who find their memories are being recreated on stages, and that Angel herself becomes far more important as mentioned to how the world works without realizing it. It is really a case that, for someone who even enjoyed Konaka's more vague endings for work like Malice @Doll (2001) that an exposition dump or a more visually explained conclusion for the last episode was really needed.

Thankfully so much did work, and that includes the plot build ups and the one-off stories. Stories of Dorothy adopting a cat in Season One, with its bittersweet end, or the abrupt Christmas episode involving a demon tree now stand out more for when they are connected to a story which, barring that final lack of clarity, get so much right. Even when Konaka took over the scripts for season two fully, he has his moments. to the season, Smith so unconfident his existential crisis literally throws him into an alternative reality of Paradigm City as a homeless man, is inspired as the Japanese robot parody is, the later more so for becoming as a work from a Japanese animation studio a parody of Japanese archetypes. Even plot growth works, between the growing involving of a splinter group of foreigners Angel is connected to, or the ways this can combine the episodic stories with this, such as a threat against all androids with memories like Dorothy which allows a story involving one android detective being brought in as an awkward buddy cop partner with Dastun.

It is a world too with so much rich detail that you do get some proper denouement over the second series, as Rosewater becomes more megalomaniacal and wanting to become God, and the sides clashing over it becoming more prominent, also introducing a season two only character, Alan Gabriel, as a suitably nasty sociopath on his side. It is also helped by the style being incredible through the two series. Inspired by Western works, and very clearly inspired by Batman in the Art Deco style let alone the character designs, it is a sumptuous looking series both visually and audibly, mixing its metropolis location and combining it by a jazz heavy score by Toshihiko Sahashi. Also of note for his own musical compositions is Rui Nagai, though his work sadly had to be re-dubbed over due to how heavily it paid tribute to other music. For the first broadcasts, season two used a piece indebted to British 1970 sci-fi series UFO's own theme, which was replaced quickly. Sadly that even included season one's awesome opening theme, which was on the DVD release I had, a Queen tribute specifically indebted to their song Flash for the 1980s Flash Gordon film, also eventually axed. Thankfully, Rui Nagai composed Big-O! Show Must Go On, as a replacement to both, which is awesome in its own way as a surf riff guitar song with a bad ass solo.

As a giant robot show as well, all this provides a distinct attitude for a title in the genre, especially as the aesthetic style is distinct. Batman and film noir are very distinct touches for a mecha show to have, feeling close to what Tim Burton brought to the Batman franchise with the 1989 film, which influenced the Batman animated series. Even its tribute to its own country's mecha stories is distinct though, as this also a world where these robots feel like giant tanks slowly lunging about, and where alongside its distinct “typewriter-punk” mechanics has details like how the robot punches are literally piston powered. Thankfully The Big O, despite not being a success for the first Japanese broadcasts, had its day in the sun eventually, with tie-ins like an audio drama, inclusion in the Super Robot Wars video game franchise with other cult mecha anime, and a lot of models/figures both for the Big O himself and its cast. It is a franchise I wish was better known in the United Kingdom, as nothing in this barring its final ten minutes rushing too fast would ever be challenged as being divisive. After my initial disappointment with the first series a long time ago, seen in its full form it is with positivity that they could have continued the story a little longer and avoided ever making a bad episode, still getting to the eventual final with everything as good as it was. If anything, this is the kind of show you introduce to someone curious about giant robot anime, and they could be made fans of the genre just from what this does differently whilst paying tribute to the genre's tropes, which is as high praise as I could write for this.

#273: Cyber City Oedo 808 (1990–1991)

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Screenplay: Akinori Endo

Voice Cast: Hiroya Ishimaru as Shunsuke Sengoku, Kaneto Shiozawa as Merrill "Benten" Yanagawa, Tesshō Genda as Rikiya "Goggles" Gabimaru, Emi Shinohara as Remi Masuda, Kyousei Tsukui as Versus, Mitsuko Horie as Kyōko "Okyō" Jōnouchi, Norio Wakamoto as Juzo Hasegawa

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Madhouse would have success with Wicked City in 1987, one of their more infamous titles which helped when its director Yoshiaki Kawajiri pushed for a theatrical release and it paid dividends for the studio¹. That was however an adaptation, based on the work of author Hideyuki Kikuchi, and with Cyber City Oedo, Madhouse and Kawajiri decided to create their own original intellectual property, one which was meant to be a multimedia one. This came to be true as there was a video game, the 1991 game for the PC-Engine CD-ROM², and a novel¹. Cyber City itself, made for the straight to video format, was only to last for three forty plus minute episodes, never leading to anything further, but still became a cult anime in the decades after, even if by way of alternative dubs and music tracks being created for the images as we will get into.

Oedo is a cyberpunk tale where, with criminal sentences possible to reach longer than the average human lifespan, prisoners are forced to live in the orbit of space, presumably in a way to extend their lives to suffer for their cybercrimes. Three prisoners housed in an orbital prison are offered an alternative by Juzo Hasegawa, a police chief, that they can reduce their life sentences for each criminal they bring in, with each having to ability to return with life on Earth but with explosive neck collars permanently on that, able to be timed, prevents any prisoner to take this offer to flee once they are back in public. This explicitly nods to period chambara tropes places in the future as "Oedo" is likely a reference to "Edo", the original name for Tokyo, whilst in Japanese history, the weapon they are all assigned, jitte, if a science fiction version of a weapon, with sai-like blunt ends, that was used by police in Edo-period Japan. Beyond this, the straight to video series is a hyper-exaggerated world, where in episode one, the main location is a space-scraper, a skyscraper so comically impractical in height, now in orbit at the top, that if the central threat managed to disable the gyroscope fully and cause it to fall, it would have led to a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions. This has a variety of tropes and clichés of this type of “cyberpunk” of androids, cyborgs with psychic powers, and one of our leads having monomolecular wire, a concept the likes of author William Gibson, a huge figure in cyberpunk fiction, among other writers were obsessed with where you have weaponised wire so sharp on a molecular level that it could cut through anything, even through the neck of a cyber enhanced saber-toothed tiger. The leads, interconnecting as regular characters, however do get the starring role each for the three episodes, Shunsuke Sengoku the lead for episode one in the space-scraper. Sengoku is your typical hothead, who is heroic as an anti-hero figure but also anti-authoritarian, with a love-hate relationship with Juzo and especially against the sentient computer that occupancies them. This computer is arguably the fourth lead and deserving it, as the deadpan retorts in the Japanese dub are very funny, all from the perspective as an AI which cannot understand some of the insults thrown at it, such as when it has to explain how, with an internal geo-map system, it cannot possibly “get lost” on command. For episode one, with Sengoku and his constant argument with this robot, you get a great first episode to begin this work, where the serious tone in spite of how absurd this is in truth works fully.

Rikiya "Goggles" Gabimaru stands out as a character that would rarely get to be a lead in an anime, an older man if with a Mohawk, the more conventional of the noble anti-heroes despite his visual look.  His is the type of macho melodrama, which is secretly sentimental and melancholic if filtered through acion tropes, encountering an old partner of crime who was also his old flame, involved in a conspiracy involving the corrupt military project of psychic robots. The owner of the monomolecular wire, and lead of the third episode, is Merrill "Benten" Yanagawa. Benten inherently stands out of the cast as, among very distinct characters in the history of anime, even minor ones, you have here an ultra androgynous final lead, a really distinct figure who is probably the most iconic for the whole production, bringing up a combination of glam rock feminization, with red lipstick and hyper feminine features, with kabuki aesthetic and a shock white mullet, aged in designed but entirely timeless. His episode also is the most idiosyncratic even in a very stylish and creative production, in that this brings horror tropes into science fiction with artificially created vampires. The result of this brings a gothic and moody sensibility to the proceedings with the first ounces even of tragedy to the production, as it involves a woman cryogenically preserved doomed in this life forced onto her by another, as it ups the gore in imagining an undead individual being driven out an airlock in space. It is this episode particularly where the show's ability to be serious despite also being ridiculous shows the virtue of this tightrope act, intentionally and unintentionally.

It is a ridiculous anime in a good way, where we are dealing with a premise where there is never a moment stopping to question its own logic or feeling contrived in a way that undercuts faith in the material. Cybernetic saber tooth tigers is a high watermark in the absurd, as mentioned earlier in the review, but found in episode three, this takes it further with them kept in a cryogenic hub in tubs among three hundred year old patients, a place in outer space connected to a hospital by a space elevator, and armed with lasers, with the anime managing to add more flourishes to these sort of moments. This is throughout each episode with all these "questionable" moments becoming highlights alongside the tone and style of the work winning you over. The seriousness of the production helps, feeling like the delirium usually found in a video game from this time, and helping this is how this is Madhouse at their highest of quality. Yoshiaki Kawajiri is an insanely talented figure in anime, even when he is in the animation department after his directorial career seemingly ended into the 2010s, but as much of the virtues is the entire staff too, where your mechanical animation director for an example is Takeshi Koike, the future director of Redline (2009), one of the most underrated theatrical anime in need of greater attention and showing where his work here before came from.

The audio is its own curious history for the OVA. I watched this in the original Japanese version, but the history needs to be marked how, whilst Manga Entertainment bought the license with great interest, they took their own decisions which added more to the story beyond a good pulp anime. They were known infamously for "fifteening" their dubs already, where to increase the age rating with the British film classification for all physical home releases, they added swearing into the dialogue alongside adding their own flourishes. This is an idiosyncratic production however in that they went further in changing the music track. I like the moody synth provided by composer Kazz Toyama, but if you are talking of Cyber City Oedo, specifically to its British release as the Central Park Media/U.S. Manga Corps release decided to not go forwards with this choice in the United States, you have to talk about this version as it is part of the legacy in the West. Rory McFarlane's contribution, combining hard rock, thrash metal and synth, even influenced by Mountain's Nantucket Sleighride (to Owen Coffin)¹, is a distinct score to hear, and thus it is worth talking about too as a highlight even heard in snippets. For Kawajiri himself, this is getting into the golden period of his career between the late eighties to the 2000s, one where you see here that, for all his notoriety with certain titles for their transgression, what his trademark was, whether the screenwriter of the story or not as in this case, his trademark where these kinetic stories of larger than life figures, in larger than life scenarios, which never for all their moments of absurdities feel entirely a high quality in grandeur for this era of pulp anime storytelling. Even Ninja Scroll (1993), which shared in the more notorious content of his career, showed this and, in spite of the knowledge Cyber City Oedo was not the biggest hit as Manga Entertainment hoped for¹, that would benefit from the virtues found here, in a period chambara tale, and gain even bigger status in Western anime pop culture among the other titles Kawajiri would helm.

=======

1) Taken from the documentary Inside Cyber City Oedo (2020), directed by Andy Hanley.

#272: Bio Hunter (1995)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Yūzō Satō

Screenplay: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Based on a manga by Fujihiko Hosono

Voice Cast: Kazuhiko Inoue as Koshigaya, Toshihiko Seki as Komada, Chikao Ohtsuka as Bokudo Murakami, Tarô Ishida as Seijuro Tabe, Yuko Minaguchi as Sayaka Murakami

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Recreating Wicked City (1987) in the opening, this feels like a throwback to eighties ultraviolent anime with breast dentata and someone actually getting their hand bitten off. We still got violent anime in the nineties, especially in the straight to video market, but notably, this has a connection to the past that, whilst in a screenwriting role, Wicked City's director Yoshiaki Kawajiri is involved in this production. This does mean this feels like a return to the films he and studio Madhouse made in the eighties, only with another director taking on the reigns in Yūzō Satō, and also the unfortunate sense of this feeling like a weaker Kawajiri work, still worth a rediscovery, but having to be compared to someone who became more interesting when the more controversial aspects of Wicked City were being removed from his own work. There is also the difference here that this is, in context, a very late era OVA. Whilst many would still be made into the 2000s, they changed in mood entirely as different technology was being brought into animation production, changing them even in how they look right down to the use of colour even next to works just from the early nineties.

Molecular scientists and professors Koshigaya and Komada work in an illegal but virtuous side job for the sake of humanity, in which this world has a "Demon Virus" which mutates people into flesh eating monsters. Like the young woman in the opening who becomes host to a few on her form like parasites, faces and mouths appearing on her body, whilst another later on eventually has gone so far he is effectively undead and controlled by the parasite in the centre of his chest, this has the potential to be a huge problem for humanity as a whole, as well as allow some of the most creative aspects of the production, meaning our leads have had to research ways to stop cases and also kill them if need be. One of our leads is infected himself, able to control his condition as far as be able to shape shift back and forth in forms, thankfully at first just needing to eat a ridiculous amount of food to sate an evolutionary take on yokai and monsters. It is certainly a shift for its original author Fujihiko Hosono, who contributed the source to another curious one-off OVA Judge (1991), explicitly a supernatural story about the supernatural judge of sinners, especially in his case those who are practice corrupt business tactics. Touches like this make Hosono's work quite a curious one in how he shifted tones per manga.

The condition our lead Komada has will still become a problem over this one-off story, alongside the angst of his position, especially as control is slipping and a young woman comes into his life named Sayaka, connected to a grandfather and famous fortune teller who has gone missing. Her existence, more of a damsel sadly for most of this, raises the question of whether he could ever in his position fall for someone or end up eating said girlfriend if the control vanishes entirely. A serial killer who chews on intestines and eats the livers of young women is connected to this, unfortunately connected to a powerful politician and his armed goons who are a credible threat to both leads. As an hour OVA, you only have enough time for a short tale, though this is an adaptation for what was actually a very short manga from Fujihiko Hosono himself, and possibly told the entire tale there in animation here.

Revisiting Bio Hunter, it feels like an object from a different time period, one which should be approached with in some caution due to this streak of transgressive sexuality, namely having female victims to these monsters being undressed, which will be understandably uncomfortable for some. Most of this film though is just gore, from the blood to a severed hand moving independently on its own free will on a rescue mission, and a set up to a literal punch line with a heart being ripped out. Truthfully, alongside its weird mishmash of scientific rationalism with occult leanings it still wants to get into, including trying to rationalise fortune telling as a superpower, the leads are the least interesting thing as in many of these, next to the mood and tone. It loses a bit of this due to Kawajiri sticking in the screenwriting position. Whilst Yūzō Satō became a veteran by the modern day, this does miss some of the tonal choices which did make Kawajiri's work his own, such as his trademark for a "Kawajiri Blue" in depicting night-time scenes.

There is enough here which evokes the atmosphere a lot of these anime had. Even without the monster designs - the final villain a host with the creature in his chest, and a discomforting nod to tentacle symbolism of Urotsukidôji and its ilk - it has something of its own that, even as a slight story, does stand out with interest. By this point however, whilst Ninja Scroll (1993) does have some discomforting scenes, it showed that this type of action anime, with tangents into horror, fantasy and/or science fiction, from Yoshiaki Kawajiri was far more than this, whilst Bio Hunter is more of a curiosity in his filmography. It is entertaining for what it is, but just missing out something to make it stand out more than this or its style.

#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.