#278: Cybervenus FeiFei (2001)

Studio: Blue Moon Studio

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

In my obsession with digging up obscurities, I finally close off the trilogy of three Virtual Idol releases which got DVD releases in the United Kingdom. They exist in an unconventional place in terms of anime, as CGI productions connected to Pony Canyon, a publisher huge in the Japanese music industry with involvement other pop culture industries like anime, but as DVD directed collections of segments which were released in the boom period of British DVD distribution when the format was new. This film in its trailers promised a fourth, which feels like it was falling back into the idea of the sexy virtual female idols of the other titles I have covered, but the three we got were Yuki Terai - Secrets (2000), Virtual Stars (2002), and Cybervenus FeiFei, which focuses on a Chinese woman who was created through motion capturing the movements of real actress. It feels like, from the three we got, this was the most ambitious in terms of ideas and artistic presentation, making the fact this was not the final one somewhat strange. Virtual Stars was really falling back into the idea of sex appeal of their virtual starlets, whilst this feels more like it should be the conclusion, where Blue Moon Studio wanted to figure out where they could go with this production concept they had, as FeiFei becomes significantly more existential in tone than appealing to a cute idol who can appear in music videos.

Like the others, this is a collection of shorts, beginning with Doll, where FeiFei initially is wandering through giant cogs. Ahead of time, I find the computer effects here compelling, beautifully obsolete, especially in mind that there is a clear care to make FeiFei as realistic as possible, as will be seen in the later shorts, even if prioritized over overtly detailed locations. As a result, she is a proto-virtual idol in the truest sense of pushing the realism to a quality you can admire, but aside from actual live action footage being used later on, the journey through mazes in this first short is very abstract in comparison to the person wandering them. Add the ambient techno the scores the segment as she finds feminine robots and a transparent monolith, and it is brain candy for Millennials. RGB takes this further by looking like the cool Dreamcast game we never got, FeiFei cybersurfing a spiral environment in pure white void which wandered out of the videogame Rez (2001). Even the spoken word fuzz rock that scores this segment feels like something Sega would commission whilst she is riding a metallic shark in a green sea of fish. Arguably the best thing about this entire project, as here, is how work like this can have a pretense of a plot but also be purely dreamlogic as FeiFei’s birth, as this short is meant to represent, includes all the following but also requires her gaining colour pigmentation for his body beyond grey.

These shorts all have poetic introductions to them, suggesting Blue Moon Studio were more earnest in their work with this one in terms of meaning. Voice, as FeiFei travels through a room in its own existence and learns to speak, also brings in the touch distinct to this collection of animations, blending live action with FeiFei interacting with the real world. The soundtracks are a smorgasbord of the era – whale sounds, nu jazz, ambient lounge and dub music, sometimes in the same short as with Real, focusing on more live action as FeiFei sees the world through the pieces of recorded footage, and is interacting with a real actress who can talk to her through a laptop. These shorts build a narrative over these segments, unlike the others in the series, where she is slowly growing into a real person fully immersed in our world, which also makes understanding the dialogue more a concern. “Dream and reality are the same” is spoken at one point, and whilst we are seeing the limits of the animation at times, we see something very ambitious in spite of this. By Messenger, we are definitely seeing a more New Age tone to the project too, Messenger emphasizing this as an experiment in a character as a radio host, or waiting in-between her recordings of messages from listeners.  We have moved from random zombies being fought off by a sexy dancer in Virtual Stars or music videos to more perfected movements for speaking dialogue or communicating her messages of love in turntablism.

Labyrinth is the most ambitious of them all for being seventeen minutes long. Splicing our lead into real footage of Rome, they do have to fudge around her presence around real people in the streets, like a ghost no one sees, but even in painstakingly animating her operating a phone booth, the short is trying for a more ambitious short film with emphasis on mood. It begins attempting a plot of FeiFei trying to find a man she cares for living in Italy, only for reality to start to bleed and distort in digital code, all with knowledge eventually he has disappeared. As she travels around Rome, witnessing masks with her face on them in store windows or with the walls closing in on her, it is cool to see Blue Moon Studio suddenly take the project series to this point, feeling like the last thematically in their ambition in spite of the true chronology of the releases. After FeiFei goes to a church the short becomes more abstract, a mood piece where she is transported to a tropical island, eventually to her painting herself on the moon on grassy field. It might be seen as a cop-out, but in mind that this entire product feels like the right mix of old CGI, dream logic and these moments of expanding the production with ambition, I would let Labyrinth have a pass if it was entirely just obsolete CGI being used in imaginative ways by this studio, only to also admire that they were wanting to push their interest in terms of artistry too. Sadly, this entire series of works are as obscure as you could get, and in mind that we even got DVD releases of these in the United Kingdom, I ponder whether any of this, from the films themselves to the making of documentary material also included, are even properly preserved. Finally closing the trilogy off they are a compelling dead end in the history of Japanese animation, though it is clear to see that we would have not gotten a Cybervenus FeiFei even if the project continued into the 2010s. When Virtual Stars was released, the production realized the sex appeal sold more, so even if they were able to prosper, this more esoteric tone would have likely been ditched soon after anyway.

#250: Bartender (2006)

 

Studio: Palm Studio

Director: Masaki Watanabe

Screenplay: Yasuhiro Imagawa

Based on the manga by Araki Joh

Voice Cast: Takahiro Mizushima as Ryuu Sasakura; Ayumi Fujimura as Miwa Kurushima; Leo Morimoto as Narration

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Manga, and anime adaptations of them, about food and cooking were once a niche in the West, but this has begun to change when certain titles gained traction. Food Wars, a Weekly Shōnen Jump title whose manga run was from 2012 to 2019, and its anime series adaptation, helped as an accessible example of this genre, depicting cooking by being a story of rivalry and competition by way of over-the-top Iron Chef scenarios. Other stories, like Yakitate!! Japan the manga and the anime, took this more over-the-top tone too, a story about competitive bread making which is just as ridiculous and offers one bread recipe so good it briefly sends one to the afterlife dead, so there is enough playfulness with the idea of food as a story premise. Work that is more serious does exist, and this is not forgotting that alcohol, an important part of human culture too, has been the subject of manga and anime too. One manga about wine, The Drops of God (2004-2014 for the first manga series) as written by Tadashi Agi, a pseudonym employed by creative team of sister and brother Yuko and Shin Kibayashi, even became influential in the wine industry itself. During the journey of its lead to solve the mysteries of thirteen wines his late father has assigned him to find, wines which were namedropped in the manga gained interest for those wishing to try them, turning the likes of the French wine market upside down as a result, increasing stocks and prices alike¹.

Among anime, Bartender is distinct even within this genre, what it says on the tin, about a bartender, and in that presenting something completely different even next to others mentioned in this paragraph. A title that was once a fan subbed only release, this has in the 2020s had official Western releases, in the United States by Shout! Factory, and Anime Limited in the United Kingdom. Finally getting its due in the 2020s in itself feels apt, as this also belongs to another trend over the 2010s of anime designed to be soothing and comforting, saying a lot about the state of the world in general that anime not about plots or drastic drama needed to be created, but in itself presenting different ways for them to still tell stories in themselves, Bartender as a 2000s production befitting their ilk as a prototype.

Bartender is both very idiosyncratic in premise, but is so simple structurally that, if a longer work, this could have lasted seasons as a "cocktail of the week" show. Ryuu Sasakura, who we do snippets of the past of during this series, is considered the "Glass of the Gods", a bartender who goes beyond the basic requirements of the job to being even a life preserver for the down-and-out, able to serve the right drink for the right time. He follows leads of other manga and anime, regardless of profession and genre, exaggerated in how good he is at picking the right cocktail. He can make a Black Velvet, champagne mixed with Guinness beer, without causing it to spill out of the glass, but he can literally scare off a con artist trying to marry a woman for her money by guessing the taste of alcohol diluted into a single drop in water.

To the show's credit, it is actually effecting emotionally. Expect knowledge and exposition thrown at you men - it explains not only the history of certain alcohols, but other types of culture, such as one episode structured around Ernest Hemingway and his last work The Old Man and the Sea (1952) - but it has a human core. Regrets, loss and disillusionment are tackled as much as there is humour, the wacky professor part of the Christmas episode where the Black Velvet is prepared. It can be viewed as pat, finding happiness when the right metaphor for your life is served by Ryuu in an expensive drink, but it works. This is especially as this does the admirable thing of having even how a cocktail came to be and alcohol consumption given weight to them sociologically, even in terms of real history when one episode talks about the hostile rule of the English over Scotland in centuries past, especially the taxes, influenced their legendary types of whiskey production. It is also easy to forget, as this has an emotional heart to it, that alcohol and bars despite being linked to addiction and destructive decadence even in pop culture and art still have an importance in human history. Alcohol has existed since the first cave dweller (or pre-historical civilisation) accidentally discovered intoxication, and even alcohol has been said to have been given to us by Gods, such as the Ancient Greek god Dionysus being the god of wine among his other contributions to existence.

This show, frankly, is meant to sell booze, and to a lesser extend Ginza, where the show it set, where these cocktails would be expensive and the locale potentially elitist, but the show never feels like this is the priority. One episode even explicitly is about a man who is poor but saved from all his work to half drink an expensive choice, which shows that Bartender was after something universal, even in having the recipe each week per episode for the viewer to record. The show is less selling glamorous than a hardcore rumination on alcohol in fuzzy blanket of quaintness. This is also in mind to how, working around the budget and the limitations of the story, the creators of Bartender, studio Palm Studio, deserve a lot of praise for the visual creativity they put into the production. You can notice that the bottles of alcohol, even the liquid inside them when poured, are CGI and that there are many static scenes of dialogue, but it does not stop the production from being visually creative. The show is willing to bend reality, intersplicing the variety of figures within the tale, such as the two older male bartenders who taught Ryuu, and Ayumi Fujimura, a female character introduced in the first episode that becomes the only other reoccurring character, to interject the history of the subjects being discussed.

The show is also happy to be metaphorical and distort reality, such as a beautiful moment following an advertiser, near the end of his career and regretting his career path, being nodded to by his creations across Ginza and the rest of the city as he travels to his desired goal. Touches like this make Bartender ultimately a show that, taking its distinct premise, won me over early into the episodes, and thankfully, as it is finally more readily available in the West, more people can appreciate it as well for its virtues. Sadly, if there is a tragedy to this work, it is that Palm Studio in 2007 stopped producing animation. With only a few titles in their CV, it is sad that they clearly were not able to continue developing more titles and films in their short run. It befits the melancholic tone of Bartender though to metaphorically drink a toast to them and appreciate this fully.

 

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1) The Drops of God: The Manga That Disrupted the International Wine Market, written by Bea Caicoya and published for CBR.com on May 29th 2021.

#245: Yukikaze (2002-5)

 

Includes a review of Fighting Fairy Girl Rescue Me Mave-chan (2005)

Studio: Gonzo

Director: Masahiko Ōkura

Screenplay: Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Ikuto Yamashita, Masahiko Ōkura, Masashi Sogo, Seiji Kio and Yumi Tada

Based on the novel series by Chōhei Kambayashi

Voice Cast: Jōji Nakata as James "Jack" Bukhar; Masato Sakai as Rei Fukai; Masako Ikeda as Lynn Jackson; Miho Yamada as Edith Foss; Youko Asagami as Rydia Cooley

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

You want me to psychoanalyze a fighter plane?

Thirty three years before this straight-to-video anime begins, the “JAM”, an alien race, invaded Earth through a wormhole from their planet to ours via the Antarctica. Now, based on the series of novels by Chōhei Kambayashi, the human race pushed them back through the passage, back to their planet “Fairy”, and keeps guard on that side. Yukikaze’s author, Chōhei Kambayashi, is a prolific author in science fiction, with this series one of his most known. It is neither the only one to have had an anime adaptation, as an obscure OVA series The Enemy's The Pirates! (1989) is based on another of his works, imagining a space cop duo where one of them in an alien talking cat.

Yukikaze is a considerably more somber premise, but to factor in as well, this was a ten year anniversary for the animation studio GONZO, which could seem odd as they were founded in 2000 as the studio most known them for. This ten year anniversary is because, whilst the animation studio most will known was founded in the year 2000, the original company Gonzo K.K. began in 1992, working with other companies and on video game cut scenes. Whilst they still exist, financial problems between 2008 and 2009 eventually led to the company being merged with Gonzo K.K., taking them out as a prominent animation company even if they still work to this day. GONZO before them, between 2000 to 2005 at least, were a prominent company for me as I got into anime at that time, as the late ADV Films released so many of their productions over in Britain, nostalgic to think of but with a sensibility to know their flaws. They had shows like Chrono Crusade (2003) I loved, but hesitate to return to, and others like Hellsing (2001-2) were works with were divisive to viewers. One of their biggest issues which was obvious even back in my barely developed years of taste, and is found with Yukikaze, is that they were a company cursed by the journey it took to keep a long form production consistent in narrative and quality, even in terms of pure sod’s law as both of the titles mentioned, for example, were cases where the source manga were unfinished and they had to create new endings within only a handful of episodes. They were once a high profile name, even to the point that arguably one of their most successful and highest profile productions was not a series but a Linkin Park music video, Breaking the Habit, which with the nu metal band was something non-anime fans would have seen at a time when anime and other pop culture crossed over multiple times.

Yukikaze however is an example of the problems with organizing and pacing their projects. For years my only knowledge of the show came from one of the longest lasting and running anime podcasts since 2005, Anime World Order, where the five part straight-to-video production was buried as a sci-fi story which absolutely failed. The build up over a decade plus means that I actually found material in Yukikaze of virtue, and what was once jokes on that podcast¹ have by accident been more salient as this presents one of the most  (accidental and at times intentional) and compelling psychodramas one could have wished was in a better managed project. Truthfully the bar was set so low I found so much to enjoy here, something compelling but an undeniable mess that, could have actually succeeded. Even in terms of the unexpected content, the fact that the central relationship between its male leads, James "Jack" Bukhar and Rei Fukai, has moments beyond platonic friendship but potential romantic readings is something you are likely to find in a lot of anime. Sometimes it is deliberately placed in shows even if with its own moral questions, as this can be done in anime as a way to appeal to certain female audiences attracted to “yaoi” and subtext of possible relationships between male characters, something with its own questions as that means it is not necessarily for a gay viewer’s benefit first in characterization. What is unexpected, and was merely presumed a joke in that podcast I listened to many times, is how even if unintentional, this platonic relationship ends up being a triangle between these two men, struggling through this battle against an alien menace.. and a sentient fighter plane.

It feels less like a joke either to say that, as there are two sides to the Yukikaze project in terms of the production, and one of them (the most compelling) falls further into this even if an exaggeration of the actual content seen. One side, despite its sci-fi setting, is realistic aerial dog fight scenes which made this an expensive project, using what was cutting edge CGI animation for the sequences, and the other is a drama. The latter’s character dynamics became, even if by mistake, in certain dramatic choices more psychologically idiosyncratic and deeper than intended. Rei Fukai, our lead, is clearly written in script and in depiction as psychologically disconnect from the world, close to the point of becoming a savant who would not be able to function in the ordinary society back on Earth, but found harmony helming the Yukikaze, a fighter plane which has such advanced A.I. It and Rei have developed a bond, strong enough that he follows its advice to even shot what it consider an enemy without question.

Considering dreams Rei has include depicting him in a jail cell and Yukikaze itself, which means “snow wind”, depicted as a female fairy creature on the other side of the bar he yearns for, the production may have accidentally loaded so much more meaning to his bond to the plane, especially as the tension with his senior officer James Bukar reads too closely to a crush between them even if it was just meant to be a close friendship in dialogue. Even if pure accident, this is the material which is the strongest of all of Yukikaze because it is at least memorable, and aspects that are clear in dialogue suggest even Chōhei Kambayashi’s source writings had an unconventional characterization for Rei himself. One of the odder details is how the two met, James meeting Rei in a canteen mashing peaches and peas together in a meal, a bizarre touch showing Rei’s unsociable form, and there is a lot to Yukikaze which I would not be surprised is from the books and in a fully fleshed out form would have more eccentric but compelling to witness. Even if meant to be platonic friendship between the two, their drama is still interesting even if the result in this anime makes Yukikaze extremely weird. That would clearly be the idea of James being the one person who cared to help Rei, finding friendship with him, and the constant fear for his safety as Rei is attached to the Yukikaze more to ordinary life. It is obviously a metaphor for the dehumanization of war, where Rei only feels alive in the peril of danger and aerial combat, but when a female superior, Rydia Cooley, tells James he is losing Fukai to Yukikaze, you get one of the multiple moments where the show may have unintentionally made Yukikaze more compelling as a story by making that plane a rival for Rei’s heart and mind. The plane, thought it downloads its consciousness into another machine, even has a sad send off in Episode 1 to emphasis their place as the third main character of this material even over human characters.

The project without this idiosyncratic melodrama has a compelling premise which could have breathed into something truly engaging. It is a well worn one, an invading forced known as the JAM which are totally unlike human beings, but only seen as horrifying sentient goo, the plot also brings in an enticing twist in terms of a Body Snatchers concern, that the JAM are replacing members with copies to infiltrate their higher ranks. Even without the central relationship with James and Rei, the psychodrama of a plane’s A.I. being able to understand Rei more, this could have been an anime that could have knocked it out of the park as an intense sci-fi drama, set with some realism, where the war in the alien world has a greater paranoia as more members are said to be “taken”.  The anime can also be batshit with some ideas. I can just mention the character who has a plutonium powered atomic heart which prevents him from entering certain countries, never mentioned again after his episode, but the kind of idea out-of-nowhere that wins me over as well in terms of how imaginative this could have been.

The issue with Yukikaze is that it is neither fish nor fowl. The post digital animation look of the time, a muted realistic one of grays, is a contentious aesthetic touch to consider in itself, but the show also lacks energy, crossing over from a mood piece with an unintentional level of what you can read into it, with James’ fears for Rei in safety and psychologically the one thing keeping this for me from becoming sluggish. The aerial battles themselves are also the weakest segments of the entire production. Aging is less than issue with them but that, expensive to produce, they are not interesting and there are times where you will struggle with whom is who in the alien skies without combing through the scenes, not telling the plot visually well. Flaws creep in more and more into the script, and it is clear the show, with episodes two to four being thirty minutes long each, that the span of time was a bad sign to how it was moving along, only being fully released between 2002 to 2005 rather than taking a lot quicker to complete.

Basic explanation of the premise is not done, such that whilst it is explained at the beginning this is set on an alien planet, you forget in the seemingly normal desert this is set in an alien world, and a lot of characters are left with not enough given time to stand out. Rydia the female chief or Edith the psychologist (who is also her niece) are two examples, but more jarring is a figure who gets a lot of time for herself back on Earth, Lynn Jackson the journalist and acclaimed novelist who we get the back-story of. She is the face of the normal person who witnessed the JAM invasion as a child, by the news on Christmas with her parents, and devoted herself to researching the events when an adult. She has become the figure now standing out as someone who devoted her life to documenting the JAM invasion which many are wary in believing in nowadays, an enticing concept in how human beings do not learn from the past and become complacent. Her story is closed abruptly on Episode 4, when the story returns to Earth fully, and how her tale is a candle randomly snuffed out shows the problems this project had, considering how much time was devoted to her with one or two prominent scenes by herself. It shows one of GONZO’s biggest flaws as mentioned, not being able to finish a work without struggles in the plotting and pace.

Episode 5 is weird as suddenly the production trying to become The End of Evengelion (1997), where everything goes to hell, whilst everyone is having tea and cakes on the veranda as everything explodes. It is not this truthfully in a twist, which abruptly brings in fictional reality when never evoked before and makes this episode even messier in execution. It is by this point, whilst Yukikzae became entertaining for many reasons beforehand, why this production was forgotten, where even by this final episode there are key details it has to suddenly explain, the heavy burden also with the disappointment that this also includes tantalizing ideas it will now not be able to flesh out, such as that the portal would have been closed long before to the JAM if it was not for human greed, and the JAM’s ability to both tempt humanity with possible resources and to complete manipulate reality. It is a work which fascinates throughout its length but also left so much on the table. Even the unexpected sense of platonic love between your two male leads, arguably one of the few things that reaches a proper conclusion, could have been fleshed out even further then what we got.

Yukikaze got released through Bandai Visual, an ill-advised off-shot to Bandai Entertainment started in 2005 for the USA, and merged back into Bandai in 2008, which tried to bring Japanese pricing schemes to the West, which only Aniplex in the United States have managed to get away with, i.e. much more expensive cost for physical media like for Japanese anime fans. In Britain, Beez Entertainment, Bandai’s late European division, released the series. Sold by itself, despite being less than thirty minutes long, is a tie-in production called Fighting Fairy Girl Rescue Me Mave-chan which should be brought up too. This follows in a genre of anthropomorphizing non-sentient objects, like vehicles to even soda cans, into characters with a trend for cute girls if occasionally cute guys too. This is an early one, and it is a slight production, an ode to otaku promoting both Yukikaze and Stratos 4 (2003) to an audience who would have likely bought the DVDs in Japan beforehand.

A nervous teenage boy, braving himself to go to an anime convention, steps into a bathroom to calm a panic attack only to end up on Planet Fairy from Yukikaze, where the sentient planes are now young women who can fly and fight aliens. It is slight, though promises sequels and like Yukikaze, this has an abrupt aspect to it which is explicitly part of itself in script and meaning. This is not likely accidental thought, and is explicit in this case, as it has a very cynical idea that these characters know they are merely characters from an anime, brought to life by fans but knowing that when they are constantly under threat of obscurity. Once the fans are more interesting in a new show, they like other characters (like a blurred out parody of Lum from Urusei Yatsura) are to be forgotten and to disappear from existence into a literal void. It feels like Toy Story if you envision the toys discarded in the attic, and it is a bleak idea to centralize in a one-off episode, even if having a happy ending. Though it is clearly made to sell Yukikaze, even by cynically having a busty blue haired female character the most prominent even over the one (Mavi-chan) named after the show, you also cannot help but read into the creators through this premise. Made by GONZO too, it feels like a response to how for all the work into Yukikaze that took three years, a work to celebrate GONZO itself, it was going to disappear and be discarded by the new shiny animated production afterwards. It feels abruptly frank from the production team even if meant to be a cute tie-in.

It is even more ironic now as poor Mavi-chan is forgotten, whether the homicidal one who attack strangers with knives or the plane in a deep bond with its male pilot, a deeply flawed and messy production that was meant to celebrate an entire studio not one of the titles you bring up talking about GONZO. GONZO themselves, as mentioned, are still producing titles but are no longer upfront in their name being promoted alongside their anime productions, and it is perversely a review like this which talks of the deep flaws with Yukikaze which will also however nod to it out of respect too. There were ideas here which worked and some which probably hinted at a level of unconventionality it never likely intended. It managed to have the least expected psychodrama one would presume from this title, between two people in a bond and the combat plane which divides them, and I only wish that I could have said it managed to be this successfully. What could have been legitimately great in terms of its production and storytelling, if it had taken some radical steps to focus, is instead just a curiosity.

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1) Anime World Order Show # 81a – Rei Fukai, You Are Worse Than Michael Jordan, published on July 2^nd 2009. I will warn that aspects of the podcast from this time, in humour and tone, have dated badly or may offend, which the hosts, who have started from 2005 into the 2020s, have admitted to. They have become a significantly better podcast into the 2020s just in terms of the quality of the reviews, but if you can step beyond some of the humour, older episodes like this one are still rewarding and in this case are apt to refer to. Listening to this episode over years perfectly sums up the lowered expectations until I finally saw Yukikaze myself.

#238: Patlabor 2 – The Movie (1993)

 

Studio: Production I.G.

Director: Mamoru Oshii

Screenplay: Kazunori Itō

Voice Cast: Jinpachi Nezu as Yukihito Tsuge; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Kiichi Gotoh; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Shinobu Nagumo; Daisuke Gouri as Hiromi Yamazaki; Issei Futamata as Mikiyasu Shinshi; Michihiro Ikemizu as Isao Ohta; Miina Tominaga as Noa Izumi; Naoto Takenaka as Shigeki Arakawa; Osamu Saka as Seitaro Sakaki; Shigeru Chiba as Shigeo Shiba; Tomomichi Nishimura as Detective Matsui; Toshio Furukawa as Asuma Shinohara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Moving on from the first 1989 Patlabor film, a great deal changed even in terms of character designs, the original character designs of Akemi Takada from the first film (with Masami Yūki contributing here) moving to a notably more realistic tone alongside the mood of this sequel. That is not to say all has changed – humour is still here, as this franchise follows Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2, consisting of a large lovable nitwits kept together by Kiichi Gotoh.

This film’s story however feels like a proper start to director Mamoru Oshii’s serious era as a director, in mind to the likes of Angel’s Egg (1985) in-between his comedies beforehand, with a huge emphasis needed to for how screenwriter Kazunori Itō is an integral part to the film’s virtues and deserves his credit greatly. The tonal shift is noticeable though, in mind that over the three films for this franchise, let alone the OVA series and the other entries, the Patlabor project created by Headgear - a group consisting of manga artist Masami Yūki, director Mamoru Oshii, screenwriter Kazunori Itō, mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi, and character designer Akemi Takada - the franchise has juggled multiple tones over the multi-media formats it has been adapted into. There has been an emphasis on different characters in Division 2 over these different tiles. Noa Izumi, the plucky female member who loves her Patlabor manga, was central to other entries, whilst over the three films you have Asuma Shinohara central to the first 1989 film's action mystery, and WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3 (2001) focusing on police detectives Kusumi and Hata in what becomes a monster film. Patlabor 2 follows Kiichi Gotoh himself with Shinobu Nagumo, the female captain of Division 1, as the central leads in a political thriller.

A cerebral political thriller, which just exists in a future 2002, this begins in a prologue set in South America for a military skirmish, where a man named Yukihito Tsuge as the last survivor of his squad who intends his revenge a long time later on his homeland of Japan. This revenge is a terror campaign on Tokyo which, in its many stages, exploits all the flaws in the bureaucracy. How this is show is startling and where the themes come in, dealing with a post World War II Japan which has lived in peace, Goto representing this and Tsuge becoming a figure who wishes to bring the terror of war to the Japanese public. Tsuge's plan uses something as seemingly simplistic as exploding a car on a bridge, without casualties, to start the domino effect where everything starts to collapse to his advantage. There is a heightened piece of melodrama as, disgracing her early in her career and undercutting her ability to progress, Nagumo had a romantic affair Tsuge when he was married and teaching her in the early stages of her career, causing a drama in how she will have to be the one to catch Tsuge when possible, the emotions hanging over her head.

The Japanese Self-Defense Force is a target of the film, the film created in the aftermath, in 1992, when the National Diet, the legislative branch of Japan’s government, passed the U.N. Peacekeeping Cooperation Law that permits the JSDF to participate in U.N. operations under strictly limited conditions, which led to the JSDF participating in U.N. peacekeeping and monitoring operations in Cambodia and Mozambique¹. Oshii and Kazunori Itō's film clearly viewed this in a very negative light, as the prologue is set in such a peacekeeping operation where, not allowed to directly attack the enemy, former JSDF member Yukihito Tsuge as a captain found his entire squad wiped out, and his revenge involves using the resulting power struggle he creates between the Tokyo Metropolitan PD and the JSDF to his advantage. This story, and how it becomes part of the discussions on war as a concept against peace in Patlabor 2, is more meaningful when one is aware of this history footnote.

How the plan Tsuge has goes is fascinating, including the film still tapping into salient details of how organizations can make huge mistakes, all timeless in spite of this film being set into the 2000s. Hubris and a terrorist group able to exploit this come into mind here, such as deliberately bringing suspicions to the military for the car explosion, or having the police and military at each other’s throats in a misguided power flex from the police’s leaders. Other tactics, like blowing up bridges or finding a way to take out military vehicles with ease, i.e. causing martial law to have to be brought into place so they are on the streets like sitting ducks, are uncomfortable realistic as tactics if there were enough resources for someone to use. Even more overtly tropes from action films, like blimps which fake out mock chemical gas attacks when shot down, come with the theme in this of Tsuge to cause terror on a public who have never seen conflict. This is obvious but prescient in mind to how, when in a war back in the 30s and 40s, Japan was utterly destroyed and required to be rebuilt from the ground up decades, leaving lasting scars anime like this have tackled as a theme decades later.

It is an Oshii film as an auteur, his focus on contemplative scenes and dialogue exchanges fully here. Even the one playful touch of including a Bassett hound in a cameo throughout his career at this point onwards, a breed of dog he is obsessed with, appears here near the end. This is however a team effort and screenwriter Kazunori Itō just with this film would have won currency from fans of the medium for how well done this is. Production I.G. is on top form here, and whilst there is a noticeable change in the character designs, it is not as drastic as presumed. The characters are far more realistic in appearance, but it is credit to the film, alongside some of the intricate mechanical animation here, that it feels not as abrupt a change between two films. Again as well, there were three films, and the third film, not involving Mamoru Oshii nor Itō, looks just as different as a film into the 2000s where the switch to digitally animation techniques is noticeable on productions, so the franchise has always had an edge of letting each of the stories, least for these films, be different. The music by Kenji Kawai, as with the first film, shows as well why he was as integral to the image of Mamoru Oshii films, or more aptly also how they sound, adding an additional depth to what has gained significance as one of the best anime films from the nineties with considerable reason.

This is more so as, in another team’s hands, it would be still a good film if done well, an action anime which could still tell this story but in a more overtly comedic and over-the-top fashion. This could work as a more pulpy narrative, and still could have been a great anime, and it says a lot that when the humour is here, such as the sudden mission to buy everything edible in a store from Division 2 members, it still matches Patlabor 1 because the characters were established as a team of miscreants who just happened to be a police force. The decision, even with these characters, to take this cerebral tone which Oshii himself would run with from Ghost in the Shell (1995), the lengthy contemplative visual scenes, the extended philosophical discussions between characters, and match it with action scenes, when they happen, which was distinct and effective at its best. Together both films are admirable in their virtues, and it is not a surprise as well how greatly regarded the sequel is just by itself.  

 

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1) Patlabor: The Movie 2 (1993) Movie Review, written by Erick Kown for Beyond Hollywood, published on October 11th 2004.

#221: Mawaru Penguindrum (2011)

 

Studio: Brain's Base

Director: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Shōko Nakamura

Screenplay: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Takayo Ikami (with collaborations from Shingo Kaneko and Tomohiro Furukawa)

Voice Cast: Miho Arakawa as Himari Takakura; Ryohei Kimura as Shōma Takakura; Subaru Kimura as Kanba Takakura; Marie Miyake as Ringo Oginome; Akira Ishida as Keiju Tabuki; Mamiko Noto as Yuri Tokikago; Yui Horie as Masako Natsume; Yutaka Koizumi as Sanetoshi Watase

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Contains some plot spoilers]

This is a special work to cover, and in the time period it was released, Mawaru Penguindrum, mostly known for many as just Penguindrum, was the first title Kunihiko Ikuhara worked on in the driver's seat for twelve years. This was my first production from Kunihiko Ikuhara, going off a reputation of a work out of availability in the United Kingdom, in the legendary 1997 TV series Revolutionary Girl Utena, at the time, yet was the perfect period to discover his work. Made by Brain's Base, with co-direction of the series with Shōko Nakamura, those involved with Penguindrum are just as worthy of praise, but this was significance that Ikuhara had effectively been in exile since The Adolescence of Utena (1999), returning with this complex production. Penguindrum was a considerable return, and it is a heady production in content, aesthetics and themes, with the grace that, as if making up for not working throughout the 2000s, Ikahara in the 2010s effectively made a triptych of titles with Penguindrum, Yurikuma Arashi (2015) and Sarazanmai (2019), which share the aesthetic touches and his attitude to telling serious points.

Penguindrum out of all of them is the more ambitious to return to, juggling a precarious challenge between humour and empathy against some of the most sombering subject matter a show can have even from the get-go, with the set up that brothers Shōma and Kanba Takakura have a terminally ill younger sister Himari. Collapsing whilst visiting the aquarium, it sadly seems she has passed, until the flamboyant penguin hat they found at the gift store resurrects her, and has a personality within it which is brazen and requests that, to save her life, they need the acquire the titular Penguindrum. The Penguindrum itself is something which is vague throughout the series, but becomes a huge connector in themes and mood, all initially stemming with a young teen girl named Ringo Oginome and her diary, someone Shōma goes with but realises is stalking his male homeroom teacher Keiju.

The show is already challenging even if, at first, its first act is initially humorous, the tone comedic as Ringo's goal to win over Keiju to love her is playfully absurd, but all in mind, including literally sleeping under his house, her goals are problematic. The comedy of this initial set-up, including the more problematic nature of Ringo's goal, and the sympathy you yet have for her when you learn quickly why she is doing this, part of a trauma of her parents simply divorcing, is an initial gamble for the story to have take. Penguindrum is entirely a gamble, with one outright villain notwithstanding, all about damaged and traumatised people trying to find themselves even if they will consider deeply objectionable choices, even that villain the result of a world within itself, while love is the answer, marked as equal by cruelty. This is more a challenge in how this is depicted in the style that would be Ikuhara's 2010s aesthetic style with his production teams. Originally he was openly inspired by the Japanese avant-garde to the point that, for Utena, J. A. Seazer, known for his collaborations with film maker and experimental theatre creator Shuji Terayama, to compose music for that series and partially for the theatrical film. The difference here is that this feels of the 2010s as the later shows in tone.

When I had reached Ikuhara, he made his first toe dips with digital animation with The Adolescence of Utena, embracing the modernism of the changes in the animation industry without losing his initial style, a pop surrealism but a style with distinct layers. It is a style which takes real drama but with metaphors to it that over-the-top at times, but also capable of incredibly subtlety in evocative imagery. The Penguin hat's real world, setting this up, with the pace and tone of a magical girl transformation sequence, if combined with a music video, has enough to unpack in just the first time it appears. The bear mecha, elegant costumes, bright colours, music for the show which is symbolically interlinked, symbolism which only is unpacked by the ending and can be missed, and even the incestuous tone of the first "Survival Tactic" sequence, which begins the quests with the sensual gripping of the heart and has loaded meaning when more is learnt of these characters back stories.

That is not even mentioned the penguins. The three shows from their creator are all symbolised by animals or mythological creatures - later bears for Yurikuma Arashi, kappa for Sarazanmai - with penguins the mascots here, sent to the Takakura family as representatives for each of them, which cannot be seen by anyone else but are very real. There is so much within Penguindrum - referencing Kenji Miyazawa's Night on the Galactic Railroad explicitly throughout, dealing with parental trauma, both of a terrorist act and also parental sexual abuse, abandonment for children, cults and even explicitly the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult - and yet Ikuhara and the production team still have the anthropomorphic penguins even in serious moments present, symbolically connected to the themes but openly comedic. This for me, back when I first saw the show, and still now, show the bar of quality Penguindrum has above many animated series, in how this takes some huge dives into plot twists about the skeletons in characters' past, and yet can within the same scene combine moments of pure sincerity even with comedic penguins. The penguins present the ids of those involved, less Himari's ,but for Shōma a neat freak with an obsession with eating anything and everything, Kanba 's following his womanising a perverted penguin with nudie mags and stealing women's underwear, and this touch manages to even make jokes which would be cringe worthy work, such as a joke about women' underwear managing to actually be funny when it involved a sentient penguin.

There is a fourth penguin, and whilst later shows from Ikuhara were around twelve episodes or so, Penguindrum has twenty four, and a lot of characters to flesh out, all with their own traumas and self discovery to find including Masako, owner of the fourth penguin who is removing the memories of Kanba from his ex-girlfriend and wishes him to be by her side. Ikuhara and the screenwriters, with the creative team involved, manage with all these characters to tackle some incredibly adult and even transgressive material in a show which on the surface is incredibly bright and will be playful in tone. Characters will commit to awful acts, and yet everyone will be revealed to be sympathetic, be it Keiju with his fiancée, a Takarazuka actress Yuri, Ringo with her own need for closure when she is trying to bring her parents back together, and her late sister Momoka, a girl with the unnatural ability to change fates who is central to the Penguindrum itself and the narrative. In its centre is a terrorist attack in 1995 the Takakura children' parents were involved with and is a lasting scar for the boys, a ghost to return when a character named Sanetoshi, a literal ghost, wishes to try for their destructive act again even if it means playing with the hearts of many and even try to corrupt one of the Takakura siblings to his side.

It is a show where from the first episode to the last, the world has drastically altered over the time, the perceptions of the characters so radically changed as secrets are revealed, to the point the tone has drastically changed too, all linked to the diary that Ringo inherited from her late sister Momoka, Ikuhara's style using fantastical metaphors for people's emotions and fantasies, even for incredibly bleak material such as the theme of child abandonment, dubbed " The Child Broiler" in this series where children who in real life would be ignored and left in the cycle of foster homes, or on the streets, even ordinary children who never get a chance to stand out even if they had ordinary lives, are shredded here and become "invisible", not allowed to stand out as individuals. The light touch to its content is set up within the first episodes with a character who is at first an unapologetic stalker in Ringo, wishing for Keiju as an older man to fall for her as a teenager, a perfect set-up for how severe some of the content is, yet can have risks taken to them such as these episodes being incredibly funny despite being about a female stalker.

One of the best earlier episodes about her goal in this, only to realise its folly and find herself falling for Shōma instead, is set around a fantasy, one of many in her delusions designed like a pop up fairy tale book based on 18th century French/European aesthetics, a farce for the whole episode in trying to win over Keiju at the park involving his fiancée, a pet skunk that has gotten loose, and a disastrous attempt to use a hairy caterpillar. Yet even within this first act, which spirals out and even undercuts the relationship between the Takakura siblings, it is a still a grim tale for Ringo which she learns to escape from before she makes a legitimate mistake, one with psychological damage likely to happen for herself and for Keiju if she had committed to it. Even when done for humour this is a constant, Masako's back story one of the later episodes which is exceptional too, episode sixteen with credit to co-writers Shingo Kaneko and Tomohiro Furukawa, for a one-off between them, landing fully. It reveals she was raised with her sibling Marion by their grandfather, a giant in industry she inherited the wealth and power from, but a horrifying figure of toxic masculinity where, even as a child, she has dreams of assassinating him just to protect Mario from being turned "into a man". It is done with humour, so much so that, even in mind with the limitations of English acting in Japanese dubs, knowledge of Ikuhara having spent time in the United States makes even the casting of the grandfather's Western male assistant, with his wooden exclamations, likely to have been on purpose. Based around a series of macabre farces, imagining herself killing her grandfather, before his idiotic attempt to prepare poisonous blowfish by himself becomes his ultimate demise, it is a great episode within any other series, fleshing out a major side character, but here is one of many raking risks.

In these fantasies and light flourishes are however still the grim content, including material which some will find deeply uncomfortable in watching. One plot thread which is reoccurant, and is the one which was a risk to include but manages to find a dramatic weight in, is that characters nearly commit the act of drugging individuals with the intention of sexual relations with, which is an even bigger taboo with good reason a decade after the show was made. One is a joke involving the aphrodisiac from a rare toad, but the other two have Ringo herself, and then Yuri, nearly make the mistake of something harmful for them and the person involved. Yuri's is more transgressive, and why despite its light touch this was a rare anime to get an eighteen certificate in the United Kingdom, a rating for physical media which only very sexually explicit or violent work get.

That episode in another's hands would have turned Yuri into a predatory lesbian with severe psychological damage from her childhood, as crass and offensive as that would be. In mind to Utena and Yurikuma Arashi being explicitly LGBTQ narratives about women, escaping patriarchal views and true love between women, and Sarazanmai touching upon a male lead admitting a crush on one of the others, Ikuhara is someone admired for these works for these characters and themes, someone whose contributions to depicting gay characters in his work and how beautiful the depictions of them were will be one of his lasting legacies. Here Yuri's story is a huge risk he could have failed at, still could have been disastrous even with all the well wishes from other work, but as well, this is far more nuanced. Her back story is as bleak as it gets in the show, of a father's abuse of both a sexual and harmful kind, metaphor through the chiselling of stone so he makes her "beautiful", and that her life like others is embraced around the loss of Momoka, a figure who brought happiness to characters who were in despair and was lost when they were all still children, reflected later when another tries to get revenge for her death on Takakura family for the sins of their parents. In mind that these two bleak moments, one a male victim of drugging, the other Ringo herself, they do need to be warned about as they are extremely adult subjects to have tackled, but these are the moments where the show has nuances some anime never reach in managing, somehow, to make these characters, on both sides of the scenes, sympathetic and the content with meaning.

There is of course the subject at this anime's centre, which manages to have been an even greater risk to tackle. In 1995, the religious cult of Aum Shinrikyo set sarin gas off in the Tokyo Metro subway, killing fourteen bystanders and injuring over a thousand, a subject whose resonance as a tragedy over the years has been broached in art including Haruki Murakami's Underground, a 1997-8 non-fiction book interviewing victims of the attacks and members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, a book which is included in a scene in the background with a Murakami short story, Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, explicitly referenced in an episode whilst the character cannot remember its exact title. Penguindrum is explicitly referencing this tragedy in its opening credits of the first episode, with the terrorist attack here set in 1995 too, with subway trains and fate being interwoven on them the common metaphor. Fate is a huge subject of this, including that baring one villain, everyone here is a person of complexity, even the terrorist group's undefendable attack stemming from what they thought was a cruel world, one which abandoned children they adopted in the Child Broiler, and they felt such an extreme act was necessary. The show manages, with such a real subject and uncomfortable subject, to succeed, and with its vast amount of plot strands, its various repeating metaphors (the apples for example) and its many risks including all the comedy and whimsy still here, it is an ambitious success for televised anime. It is, out of the three from Ikuhara's 2010s, the most complicated and arguably the most challenging. It is however also something beautiful, literally in its craft and in its heart, and absolutely a gem from the decade it was made in.

It was the first of Kunihiko Ikuhara's work I had seen, as mentioned early in this review, and it is in hindsight such a vast production to have discovered him through, but one whose lasting impact left me a fan of his work, and returning to was stronger now than it was before, right up to the final episodes, with the explicit Night of the Galactic Railroad references, a bittersweet happy ending and full abstract metaphors beautifully depicted. The project's lasting influence can be seen in the curious choice, in 2022, Ikuhara with studio Lapin Track created the two part compilation films, for theatres, called the Re:cycle of Penguindrum (2022). Compilation films are a curious concept in anime, especially in trying to tell the nuisances of Penguindrum's original twenty four episodes in two films, but alongside new material, and Momoka's prominence as a character taken further, clearly there was a reason for Ikuhara to return to this show's themes. There was material worthy for him to bring back to the public as much as, even if I view this 2011 series as perfect, he felt he could retell differently in a new way. The source material for this decision enough is still special even in the modern day, and further attention on it was worthwhile.

#213: Divergence Eve (2003)

 

Director: Hiroshi Negishi [Chief Director], Atsushi Takada [Director]

Screenplay: Hiroaki Kitajima, Toru Nozaki and Yasunori Yamada

Voice Cast: Yumi Kakazu as Misaki Kureha; Reiko Takagi as Luxandra Frail; Sanae Kobayashi as Suzanna Bluestein; Fumie Mizusawa as Kiri Marialate; Reiko Kiuchi as Lyar Von Ertiana; Ikuya Sawaki as Wolfgang Woerns; Takehito Koyasu as Jean Luc LeBlanc; Rina Satou as Prim Snowlight ; Miyu Matsuki as Kotoko-01; Ryûzaburô Ôtomo as Luke Walker

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Major Plot Spoilers (When Indicated)]

Like everyone, I saw advertising for Divergence Eve once ago when it was a new title being sold in the West, and saw the female character designs which are clearly meant to sell this thirteen episode animated series for sex appeal. Even the later collector's edition the defunct distributor ADV Films released this on in Britain, the three disc set, has the aesthetic of something fun like a Burn Up spin-off in outer space. For context, this is a reference to a show which was about selling titillation in a sci-fi female cop show, and chief director Hiroshi Negishi of Divergence Eve worked on in the sequel Burn Up W (1996). I always considered this over the years as being a softcore take on Alien (1979) or at least a fan service heavy version of Aliens (1986), with buxon female characters with guns taking on an alien life form. In mind to the one hentai take on the original Ridley Scott film, Alien from the Darkness (1996), that got a censored British DVD release in the day, I would have not been surprised, after all the anime heavily influenced by those films beforehand, if someone went for a fan service heavy take for television. Even with the more creepy touch of the cute robot girl who is clearly between ten and twelve, and you would immediately have presumed this for meant tobe sexy anime sci-fi in the stereotype of this.

We should get this out of the way immediately that, tonally out of place to what Divergence Eve actually is, the character designs and some content suggest the softcore show I have evoked, where most of the female cast, who take up most of the prominent roles, are voluptuous in their character designs from Toshinari Yamashita, whose career varies wildly in styles barring working on Burn Up W as a character designer. Our main protagonist Misaki Kureha especially, a blue haired and clumsy probationary pilot for a space colony's defence, is the perfect stereotype of the anime female lead; with a huge burst that is exemplified even in costumes that are more clothes, she is designed to be curvy and cute. With ADV Film's advertising depicting the series' world in bright colours, and mostly images (including in swimwear) of the mostly busty female leads, you would be forgiven as I was that this is a light hearted sexy sci-fi narrative. Even the end credits of the show is always a bright one, with a bright J-pop ditty, which is meant to be fun as very cute moments, like going to a cake store or trying on dresses, is contrasted by not showing nudity of Misaki but selling her as a sexy figure.

That proves to be one of the most tonally out of place aesthetics to have placed upon an animated narrative, as Divergence Eve for starters is very serious science-fiction. It is also, post Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), a work from its first episode very alien to its marketing, where its first episode begins in media res. Set within the second to last narrative piece of all thirteen episodes, with an oblique tone and a depressive narrative at its heart, it immediately pulls the breaks on the viewer in what the show was meant to be. Humanity has found inter-dimensional travel, the show set on a space colony built around one such opening created by this technology, built around a presumed dead planet on the other side of a wormhole. A population away from Earth lives in this colony, "Watcher's Nest", lives with the knowledge kept hidden to them that they are constantly under threat by what was allowed through into our world, figures dubbed "Ghouls", horrifying and gigantic monsters we can barely defeat and can appear at any time, in any place, as they exist between dimensions. Having the huge colony built around a satellite where troops from the past sent there, and killed, existing there as undead figures under the ghouls' influence, there is only a huge laser ring built as a defence to help stop them, and those in flying mech suits in the military to help fight them off.

The tone is jarring to the point that the cute end credits animation, even if it really wants to sell Misaki's big bust, is actually needed a tonic for how bleak the show can get, its happiness and digipaint colours a sweetness to contrast each plot progression. Without spoiling everything, this is a show where a primary character's demise is by being devoured by one of the Ghouls, where nothing is explicitly seen, but enough is heard and inferred, with gore, that it is actually one of the biggest gut punches I have encountered in a while for an anime series¹. Divergence Eve itself ultimately becomes fascinating as a very serious and sombre science fiction narrative where you and the leads will be dragged through misery. It is to the point that this is not a "fun" show but a compelling one narratively, barring the potential distraction of the female character designs, and some fan service, suggesting the fun softcore show it ultimately is not. Even the complimentary mini-manga, included in the DVD sets in barely viewable form from ADV Films, present a light hearted backstory to the protagonist, having gotten into this work only because she cannot find work on Earth, and keeps being chased by the locals for stealing food by accident, which violently jars with the severity of the main narrative.

Made by a studio called Radix Ace Entertainment Co., Ltd, this was near the end of their existence, founded in 1995 but becoming defunct in 2006. Not a lot of their career actually stands out, barring some entries in the multi-media franchise Sakura Wars, originally video games, and the one exception is a big surprise, being Haibane Renmei (2003). Haibane Renmei is a cult series which is incredibly good but also very idiosyncratic; viewed by many, myself included, to be set in the afterlife, where figures "born" with angels wings live in their own camp next to a town in a timeless world, with their own rules, its idiosyncratic narrative, and its character designs and premise from Yoshitoshi ABe, of Serial Experiments Lain (1998) fame and based on his doujinshi, Renmei is an admired work but now stands out like a sore thumb as, sadly, not a lot of studio Radix's other work is talked of. Divergence Eve from the get-go has a serious vibe, much more serious science fiction with a lot of technical babble thrown at the viewer in the first episode, but fleshing out its world with many concerns at hand. Four women are brought in to train as the next member to fight the ghouls in the mech armour - lead Misaki who is a klutz figure whose apparent lack of capability raises questions of why she was brought in; Luxandra Frail, from the "United" lands of Mexico, a figure has prominent scars on her face and body, and who wishes to join to be like Lyar Von Ertiana, a female commander from Germany who is watching over their training; Suzanna Bluestein, from Britain, following her family's legacy of military service; and Kiri Marialate, who is from New Zealand, and is good in her training and general combat skills.

They are not allowed to even know they are fighting the ghouls, and despite damage the ghouls' appearances can cause in the colony, among the living areas of the population, the military cover their damage up and keep it a secret. Even if they could leave the Watcher's Nest, the population going back to Earth, which in dialogue is evoked as having its own problems in this world, is stuck within the issue of millions of refugees they will have to find a place for, and the chaos that could cause. From the first episode too it is obvious why Misaki Kureha is there too, as she is half-Ghoul; flashbacks that start most episodes, until we catch up, tell how humanity found inter-dimensional travel but also the ghouls, and Misaki is the prodigal hybrid of human and ghoul form, who can transform into one of great power under extreme emotional stress. The true villain of the show, hailing from France and the stereotypical bad guy, is Jean Luc LeBlanc, with his egotistic pout and an opening credit fact in Engrish telling the viewer he likes organ music, who plans to turn her into a killing machine with powers for his own intentions. To the point the super intelligent female assistant he has begins questioning his actions, the Swedish born Prim Snowlight, Jean will even sabotage the laser defence system later in the series to push Misaki's further, or isolate her from her friends by forcing her into the scouting missions. Post Evangelion, he follows the antagonist Gendo Ikari from the famous series as, from a mysterious group called Alchemy, Jean believes the ghouls with Misaki's help can provide the powers of a God.

Divergence Eve's aesthetic does not help at times either. Its digipaint aesthetic is of its time and I except it, alongside the electronic opening theme from Yousuke Houga being very of the time, things that you either will appreciate or will stand out from the anime made decades later. The show's depiction of the mech scenes and the ghouls is entirely in CGI however which is a huge time stamp, dating the series considerably in appearance even if I still find it compelling. It is not as basic as some earlier attempts I have seen, like the first ever anime film animated entirely in computer effects, A.LI.CE (1999), but it is not that high a bar above still. (More so as, in one scene, you see a Ghoul animated in two dimensions only once and it works significantly better for the designs). Divergence Eve is a show with a curious marketing point, what with a few aforementioned nude scenes for Misaki Kureha, usually when in ghoul form she bursts out of her uniform, and some sensual aspects, many of the costumes (even full button shirts) drawn to exaggerate the cast's figures, and even Misaki's ghoul form being sensual in appearance still. But this is an entirely adult show not about this at all. The sexy and busty female lead is psychologically isolated, encounters friends dying and is connected to a secret project that questions her own humanity. [Major Spoiler] She is even effectively killed later in the series, and even if resurrected, with clones of her existing to pilot the mech suit for a later conflict when she is being regenerated. [Spoilers Ends]. She even has a microchip planted into her brain at one point to control her when the fear and horror break her entirely. This, with the female cast but with different character designs, would be taken as a serious show without the jarring aesthetic choices that was clearly done, at this point in history, to try to sell the show with the options for merchandising of its female cast.

Chief Director Hiroshi Negishi, with Atsushi Takada as director and with far fewer credits, has a wildly varying career resume. Even if he worked on fan service work like Burn Up W as a director, his career varies between non-director roles to directing curiosities like the 1991 Judge OVA that make it difficult to judge what the creative choices here stemmed for, as with the screenwriters credited to the show. There is not a lot to really point to for studio Radix choosing this path either unless this was the only way they could have gotten the series off the ground as a compromise, later in their career before their demise. Even if they have done more fan service heavy material like the OVA Amazing Nurse Nanako (1999–2000), they have done a variety of shows in various genres and tones before their end, which makes Divergence Eve's production choices stranger. It did in many ways help the shock for how bleak the narrative becomes, clearly cribbing on the ending of the original Neon Genesis Evangelion too in its vagueness. It is not a spoiler to say that the meaning of the world is searched for, Misaki develops God-like power, and the idea that existence cannot be comprehended by a human mind is appropriate as someone's head explodes. It also presents an ending that could be perfect if sad, [Major Spoiler Warnings] that Misaki develops the omnipresent ability to alter and enter the past, returning back to everyone being alive and her training back on Earth [Major Spoilers End], but Divergence Eve has a sequel series, which sets up a further and fully resolved conclusion too.

I had never heard of the sequel, Misaki Chronicles (2004), until reading into the prequel series, and that this show ends, rather than the usual oblique end preview for the next episode, with the announcement of the next series, you set up for someone like me to see a fascinating conclusion from a show I had no expectation of, but succeeded as much from shock of not expecting a thing from its material. Unfortunately, in another aspect beyond the show's fault, ADV Films never released the second series in the United Kingdom. Thankfully, it was made available over the years in the United States - from ADV Films, from Sentai Filmworks and from the streaming service HiDive, Sentai viewed as being the distributor created from the ashes of ADV Film's bow from the industry. But like Gravion (2002), a mech show which fleshed out (literally) its fan service to make sense in the tone, where ADV Films never released the second series Gravion Zwei (2004) in the UK, they seemingly had a habit for series, maybe ones which were not worth selling due to perceived sales, to never get their conclusions released. Considering they once released a couple of episodes of The Wallflower (2006-2007), a Shinichi Watanabe comedy, only to never release anything else in Britain beyond one disc of early episodes, really emphasises this possibility alongside the eventual financial issues that ended the company.

That does prove a pain to have to negotiate around, as Divergence Eve was fascinating. Maybe I would have still liked the version I pictured, the inappropriately lewd fan service sci-fi show with horror elements, if just for morbid pleasures in how wrong headed it was or if it managed to still be good. I was not expecting something this serious which did not pull its punches at all however, and we probably got the better series as a result. The material is stock tropes of science fiction and better version of them exist but in what you get, this is interesting as a narrative, even such as the nod to the problems of trying to get an entire space colony back to Earth an attempt at good drama. Contrasting an early episode with the four main leads happy and relaxing, only the bittersweet contrast violently returned to, and a scene transpiring back in the public area when destroyed, does show an attempt in only thirteen episodes an admirable attempt at high, serious genre storytelling. Even when it could be argued to enter a concept of having cute characters traumatised for the sake of that being the vicarious viewing point, one you can argue for certain narratives with what Misaki goes through in this one, Divergence Eve still feels more serious as a sci-fi anime than this. That, yes, if you look at the DVD and screen grab images, see that most of the female cast have large cup sizes (and is sold on this than natural parts of the character designs) offers a jarring issue of the surface of this show against what it actually is. That unfortunately will make this difficult to sell, which is a shame as it was a good if bleak surprise; most will view it, as I once did, through this viewpoint of being sold on fan service when that feels pointlessly bolted on, of female characters that do not need this and are interesting characters in a hostile scenario.

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1) Considering too Divergence Eve's episodes in the United Kingdom, that the DVD disc with that episode is rated Parental Guidance by the British Board of Film Classification, that in itself adds an additional nature to what is shocking too in context. Already the nastiest moment has an additional emphasis in how, even in the 2000s, the BBFC had a surprisingly looser attitude to animation. Considering the "PG" rating is suitable to be watched with kids, whilst the other episodes are rated for twelve year olds and are likely just for the few bits of actual nudity you see, just raises questions in itself.