#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.

#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.

#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.

#246: Beast Fighter - The Apocalypse (2003)

 

Studio: Magic Bus

Director: Kenichi Maejima

Screenplay: Junki Takegami

Cast: Kentaro Ito as Shinichi Kuruma; Nana Mizuki as Ayaka Sanders; Shoko Kikuchi as Maria Tengai; Taiki Matsuno as Tomisaburō Tengai; Atsuko Yuya as Shizue Kuruma; Katsuhisa Houki as Genzo Kuruma

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

How does one describe this adaptation of a Ken Ishikawa manga? The Bible as retold by pulp Japanese anime set in the post-apocalypse and made in the early digipaint 2000s era of anime. Ken Ishikawa, the source author, was a friend and collaborator of Go Nagai, together as a pair creating the Getter Robo franchise, whilst Ishikawa's own career as a manga author was prolific in its own right before his 2006 passing. Nagai's legacy in the West has grown as more of his work is available, especially after the success of Devilman Crybaby (2018), whilst Ichikawa is someone who many might not know of but has had adaptations of his material come to the West. Yakuza Weapon (2011), a live action film by Tak Sakaguchi and Yūdai Yamaguchi, is an adaptation of the manga author's work, whilst infamously there is the anime production Ninja Resurrection (1997-8). An adaptation of Ishikawa's manga, which is an adaptation of Futaro Yamada's 1967 novel Makai Tensho, I would argue it is infamous because a) it never had an ending and leaves on a cliff-hanger after two episodes, one which is more blatant in how the anime never really got going in its plot let alone concludes the manga, b) is pretty lurid for those who have seen it as a period samurai work with horror and supernatural content, and c) was likely released in the West with the desire to sell it off the success of Ninja Scroll (1993),  despite their only connections being a lead named Jubei.

Beast Fighter, if close to the source at all, and with knowledge that a 1990 straight to video version of this tale exists, shows a feverish insanity can seep through its author's work. This is a delirious production, once you get past it being a lower budgeted animated series, where its logical jumps are contrasted by the abrupt and sudden turn into emotional sincerity in its final act. Beast Fighter, as mentioned, is set in the post-apocalypse but one here where barring one ruined wasteland, is mostly well off. There is cities, government, train services, the news and even online porn sites as one joke point out, but there is at least an epicentre where children fend for themselves and murdering punks exist. There is also a credible threat, and this is where spoilers have to be brought up immediately, as in this world, God is an entity that is soon to awake, and there are two sides with their eye on this development. Genzo Kuruma is one of them, an evil scientist who sacrificed his wife, his son and his son's love to attain his power, who wishes to control God with his army of mutated humans, based on dinosaur DNA, and recreate Noah's Ark. The other is his son Shinichi Kuruma, melded with three animals (a lion, a bear and an eagle) into a powerful chimera, who wants pure revenge on his father as a result of all this.

The story begins properly with the introduction of Ayaka, a young woman saved by her father from a fatal heart disease but was an experiment with the intention of Genzo Kuruma to use his plans about God, thus kicking off this thirteen episode series. Alongside Tomisaburō Tengai, his comedy sidekick friend who is yet the head of the ninja clan and the brother of Maria, the woman Shinichi loved, Shinichi with his obvious father issues but with Maria's soul within him alongside the animals can either become a true hero or accidentally be turned into an entity far worse than Genzo that could annihilate humanity for good. Shinichi is going to immediately stick out as a lead. He is stereotypical for this medium, the stoic and angry lead with the positive contrast that he is capable of growing, and even feeling sadness like the best type of characters, but his powers are certainly memorable. Most heroes do not punch with an actual lion's head materialising from their arm in his full form, and it is surreal and certainly fun to witness, making close quarters combat with him dangerous alongside the bear's head in his chest and the eagle that he can send out from his back. Considering, however, this is a series where "pluripotent cells" is a key plot point, as is cloning God and needing "emotionless" blood to get the job done, alongside the evil dinosaur mutants, and you are dealing with an anime where this memorable lead is still one of the saner aspects to the production. It is a pulpy narrative which is an acquired taste but for those in harmony is compelling, and whilst there is gore and some luridness, a lot of the experience of Beast Fighter is a rollercoaster of abrupt plot events and all of its reinterpretation of Judo-Christian spirituality in curious ways.

Considering the screenwriter Junki Takegami also worked on Crystal Triangle (1987), a work about conspiracies which leads one to ask why would God need a spaceship, the tone is probably explained by him as much as the source author. There is also the studio behind this Magic Bus; founded in 1972, whilst they have assisted with other studios and made porn anime, they have their own productions and with the likes of Mad Bull 34 (1990–2) among their titles, Magic Bus has its own specific mood when they decide to make something very weird. Here with Beast Fighter, they proudly tell this tale without batting an eye or winking in irony at the material, and without the problematic threat of sexual violence found in Mad Bull 34 either. For this series specifically, the religious content is going to dumbfound a few, and it itself one of the more distinct pieces of this series. With episode titles based on different books of the Old and New Testament, such as Episode 3 being the Book of Job, this is Christianity from a standpoint of a country where Christianity is a minority religion.

There is a small minority of believers, and a history within the country which is prominent, this is entirely from someone reinterpreting the meanings of the Bible from an entirely different culture, in ways which are fascinating if eyebrow rising. Literalising communion as cannibalism is also going to offend some too, so be warned, as this has the famous story of Mary Magdalene being saved from stoning, "May he who casts the first stone without sin", conclude with everyone being chased off or having their head exploded off. All those willing to go along with this will find some curious interpretations of note, such as the emotionless blood concept being important as, contrary to what one would presume, cloning God's DNA does not lead to one's ideal figure but someone capable of true nobility much to your chagrin.

How this is a lower budget show also needs to be considered. The time period it was made in, the early 2000s, is reflected in how this is a production from the time larger budgeted animated shows in Japan would have been figuring out how to make the new tools look good in digital ink and paint.  Many still dated themselves, let alone this one, and now that this aesthetic style is nostalgic is both proof I am old, but is going to be its own factor. Either you can appreciate this, including the fact you will never get a proper 1080p resolution for this title, or it will be off-putting in itself. Your composer here too, Hiroshi Motokura, only has a few credits under their name including Ikki Tousen (2003), the original series of the franchise, and they are going to be a factor as their music is either going to be too cheesy or fits the tone perfectly. That includes how Motokura skates on thin ice with a heroic melody sounding suspiciously like Queen's We Will Rock You with just some of the notes changed, something which has to be heard to be believed.

It is an absurd series, least until after the halfway mark where it managed to get serious in the midst of all its absurdities, and contrasting this is how this is a very simplistic plot at its core. Genzo Kuruma wants his son's blood, especially as it now has absorbed Maria's, the Virgin Mary figure of this Biblical tale, until he eventually targets Ayaka, and most of the thirteen episode series is one of two henchmen, the scientists Genzo has serving for him, their mutant henchmen or an openly corrupt member of the Japanese government. Though his transformation into a rat man unfortunately leans into racist stereotypes used against Jewish people, that is not the anime's fault in being insensitive either, merely to something to warn of as an accident trigger; the character himself really says a lot, if accurate to the source material, of Ken Ishikawa's own views of his own country's government if the Defence Minister here is willing to blow up an entire hot springs resort with the army, kill everyone in the town, and blame an accident from a nearby chemical plant just to kill Shinichi and claim the powers of God for himself.

The logic of the show can be summed up in how Shinichi can happily sever his own arm off, and be able to reattach it again, just to shake out parasitic insects one enemy infected him with, or how this is the kind of show where the lead fights sharks to the death and then processes to break Leviathan in half with an Argentine Backbreaker without the show batting an eye. It is amazing to think that, by the final episodes, the show manages to get serious in a way than is emotionally sincere, even if the content is still absurd, because it takes a huge risk of killing a main character off and having the entire last episode effectively tackling the lead's grief and inability to mourn those he has lost turns him into a Satanic force. It is a truly strange sensation, for how this show cannot be taken serious at all initially, I found myself doing so by its ending. Because of how the conclusion is actually bleak and tragic, with the subject of mourning its key conclusion, this managed to surpass expectations, gleefully here for its interpretation of Bible stories and its pulpy style, by caring about its cast, the true conclusion not that evil is all defeated but one accepting lost. It was actually quite emotionally stirring, and again, earlier on in this series, even when dealing with children being killed in the cross fire of this religious war, it can have them being bounced off walls onscreen in a tonally absurd moment, or have one of Shinichi's foes being an actual island. So the show is still as mad as a box of frogs too, you will have to be willing to accept its own logic to get to this as I did myself, but this managed to not only live up to the hope of being entertaining, but it managed to actually try being dramatic too even if this is a show fully of moments which are baffling too.

#241: Baoh - The Visitor (1989)

Studio: Pierrot

Director: Hiroyuki Yokoyama

Screenplay: Kenji Terada

Based on the manga by Hirohiko Araki

Voice Cast: Hideyuki Hori as Ikurō Hashizawa / Baoh; Ichirō Nagai as Dr. Kasuminome; Ikuya Sawaki as #22; Noriko Hidaka as Sumire; Shūichi Ikeda as Dordo; You Inoue as Sophine; Yūsaku Yara as Walken

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Before JoJo's Bizarre Adventure started in 1987, manga author Hirohiko Araki had an attempt beforehand at an action manga in 1984 for Weekly Shōnen Jump, one which was cancelled into 1985. This forty plus minute straight-to-video production retells this, made when JoJo's Bizarre Adventure had already had a good start to its legacy defining existence that lasts to the modern day. This story begins with a nine year old girl with psychic abilities named Sumire fleeing members of Doress, an evil scientific organisation, on their own personal train when she uncovers Baoh. Baoh, and his host Ikurō Hashizawa, is a biologically created parasite that, for the host, makes them supernaturally strong. Too strong, too powerful, too dangerous, and one that is said to eventually kill the host and find a new body to survive in, which like so many evil scientist plans involving super soldiers or weapons was exceptionally stupid with hindsight. Only its allergy to fire and shooting the host in the head offer any sense to the creation of this worm-like blue parasite.

Baoh: The Visitor is a lurid little shocker, one I am surprised we never got in the United Kingdom in the VHS days, one which was never even a Manga Entertainment release but AnimEigo, whose modus operandi was more for sci-fi titles like Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991), still to the modern day preserving and re-releasing titles in the United States, a real homemade company founded by Robert Woodhead and Roe R. Adams III, but one whose titles rarely were the gory productions Baoh belongs too. Credit where it is due, Baoh at least comes without any slouch and enough style to make itself over-the-top, in which Doress want to stop Baoh getting away, some style to be found such as in ominous premonitions Sumire has which allow some dream-like artistic flourishes to stand out, one with a sketchpad she has suddenly conjuring a violent horror a stand out for animated invention. This is not a surprise considering this is a studio Pierrot production, a long standing and ongoing animation studio who have worked in multiple forms and would be adapt even to bring some style to this production.  

But you see why the manga likely did not catch on too. Baoh and Ikurō as the lead are broken in how unstoppable they are, with Baoh able to come up with new ways to escape events, but that is less of an issue next to how the personality is not there. Something significant with even the first JoJo's Bizarre Adventure manga, christened Phantom Blood, and the second Battle Tendency is how he had figures out its most enticing aspect. Before Hirohiko Araki came up with the Stands, a concept for the whole franchise of spiritual entities hosted in characters who assist them in combat and in peculiar powers, he had already found the personality and eccentricities which would make the series legendary, not just his idiosyncratic habit (with Western copyright issues) of naming characters after bands and musicians. There is a lot of manga where the hero will always be powerful and able to overcome hazard, but Araki got everything right with JoJo's even down to how, to win a fight, the leads had to figure out their opponents like a chess game of how to overcome an unnatural ability. He ditched the tone Baoh suggests of having to be straight faced all the time, openly embraced being goofy as it was being serious, something you do not see in the stoicism of Ikurō here as his later acclaim came with protagonists who could be utter doofuses as they could be noble and heroic.

Baoh the anime, as a hyper-violent eighties anime for the video market, is more interesting than because of how ridiculous it is. It sets this up with the least competent assassin who guts a man yet lets him slowly wander off across the road and acquire a motorbike to escape, just standing there and letting him get away. In mind to this being at the time the Stardust Crusaders arc of JoJo's was being penned in manga, the high watermark for getting the series its legacy, creating the Stands, and some of the franchises' most iconic characters and aspects, Baoh: The Visitor was likely to be produced off the back of this, but I would not be surprised that this was made for the video market like many titles for its lurid pulpy content. It feels as much an excuse for the many heads here alone being melted or exploded in full animated detail, where one of Ikurō's opponents is a cyborg with a gun for a hand who yet can weld a gun in both before hand in his human skin. Its problems are entirely in mind that the world is not that interesting, beginning with Ikurō Hashizawa not being a distinct lead. His Baoh form is certainly memorable, a prototype one of the "Stands" introduced in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and certainly in terms of body horror, the concept of Baoh as a manga is sound in imagining, not matter how dumb an idea for evil scientists to have done. A biological weapon that transmogrifies a person or animal beyond their original form, and could multiply, is fascinating as a concept. It is however telling that the most interesting character for me is Walken, a Native American working for Doress' side, a giant who can re-boil a cup of coffee or melt faces off with his tremendous psychic powers.

Barring a female lead that has her alien squirrel-cat creature as a friend, there is not a lot among this cast unless Baoh was worked on greatly for more manga volumes in terms of idiosyncratic figures, most of them cliches with not enough time to stand out. JoJo's, which can be serious, found in having French bulldogs named Iggy as supporting heroes or naming a villain Vanilla Ice both added a deliciously strange personality to the work but also added so much more to engage with the material with. Even in the first arches of that manga, you see Hirohiko Araki had brought in likable protagonists, distinct and memorable figures even in the one-off enemies, and a sense that as his influences showed themselves, including his fascination with aesthetic be it ancient Greek art to fashion, clothing and the poses models make wearing such clothes, the sense of style was going to add to the personality as much. Araki's world that in which the goofier you are and ridiculous your clothing and/or personality is, the more you are allowed to get away with it because you could punch an actual hole through someone with your powers, the charisma onscreen and in person. Ikurō here has his knitwear sweater, even in Baoh form, but among generic soldiers, occasionally one robot and a psychic whose powers are regulated by a bandana, this is quite a generic roster from a creator who got how to make everyone stand out, literally and figuratively, after this perfectly. What this becomes is the prototype for that manga, where Baoh ended in 1985 and JoJo's began in 1987. Touches suggest where Araki was going, and they are funny in an absurd way here, such as overcoming a hazard by severing one's arm then reattaching it afterwards. There is the added humour in this anime, which befits the many of this time period full of gore and over-the-top action, where the villains, whilst generic scientists, are also professor exposition in literal form, which will mean more as the English dub AnimEigo produced for their release may help with appreciating the title more, far more over-the-top than the professional if subdued Japanese one.

It is credit to the fandom and legacy of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that Baoh was not forgotten, even if this OVA is a curiosity, for Ikurō Hashizawa found his way as a cameo playable character in a beat em up videogame for the JoJo's franchise, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, both for the 2013 version and the 2022 remaster, where the developers CyberConnect2 added a respectful nod to Araki's past creation, who certainly sat nicely among the later heroes of the manga author visually. It is also with hindsight that, whilst having created other stories before and after, Araki's career has been JoJo's Bizarre Adventure since 1987, but with the huge advantage that each arch is its own period, with new characters, even having reset the timeline for the world with Steel Ball Run (2004–2011). Araki literally made his name on one title, but one which will never get stale because its world, originally set up around the continuing family tree of the Joestar family of the JoJo name, can go throughout history and place, from the 1920s to futuristic Florida in a women's prison. That in itself softens Baoh's flaws as an anime in itself as, alongside being too short and too entertaining to dismiss, this is the collection of all of one manga where Araki first made a try, and then afterwards got it right and became a cultural institution.

#227: Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma (1989)

 

Studio: J.C. Staff

Director: Takashi Anno

Screenplay: Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga by Kei Kusunoki

Voice Cast: Kenyuu Horiuchi as Hikage; Hiromi Tsuru as Aya #1; Kaneto Shiozawa as Marou; Miina Tominaga as Aya #2; Banjou Ginga as Brawny Koga; Eiji Maruyama as Old Bonze; Hideyuki Tanaka as Kazami; Jūrōta Kosugi as Majuumi no Miko / Shiranui; Kazumi Tanaka as Chain-Wielding Koga; Kōzō Shioya as Shiratsuyu

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Among many straight-to-video productions made in the eighties, Blood Reign is set in the 16th century, marked by the fact, as in real life, Oda Nobunaga, a legendary figure in Japanese history who would eventually be mythologized and demonised in pulp stories, is alive and trying to unify the country through bloody conflict. Set within this period, Blood Reign stands out with interest for me that its source material, a one shot manga, is penned and illustrated by a female author Kei Kusunoki, someone I am immediately interested in after this adaptation, if sadly with very little of her work translated into English. "Kei Kusunoki" her pen name, born Mayumi Ōhashi, her work varies between drama, comedy and horror, to which, prolific decades on, from Blood Reign's 1985-6 manga, this would not be the last time the later titles were adapted to anime, as Ogre Slayer (1994-5) now stands out with great interest. If this has any of the semblance of her touches in the adaption, than she is an interesting figure I wish was more readily available. As much of this is knowing Shou Aikawa is penning the scripts; unlike his more notorious work from this era, like Urotsukidôji, this whilst a very violence and ghoulish horror tale feels much more melancholic and moody in tone, given flaws in the plotting that will have to be brought up.

In context of its real historical setting, a ninja clan member Hikage has to kill his childhood friend and fellow ninja Marou on behest of the clan. Their master, in the midst of the bloody conflict, is killed and, wishing to hid this knowledge from the outside world for least three years, Marou has to be killed by their seniors, as he has fled and will be able to spread this knowledge if he so wishes. There are far bigger concerns though, as demons were involved with their master's death, and if the rival Iga clan ninja were already a problem for Hikage, worse is to be dealt with in that Marou is connected to monsters and demons lurking. Marou, it turns out, was "born of the ground", not specified if this meant he was born of a mother already buried in the grave, or literally from the underworld and the soil, but his form is of demonic origins, and he is being protected by monsters wishing to help his rebirth into a demon leader to lead an invasion of the human world.

Blood Reign's source manga was for Ribon Original, a shoujo manga magazine, which means it was targeted for adolescent girls and young woman. It very much undercuts any gender stereotyping as, if this anime production faithfully reproduced the source material, that manga was as sombre as this two part OVA was, alongside the fact for this J.C. Staff production, they embraced its phantasmagorical period horror aesthetic. It is insanely violent and morbid when it desires to be, if slanted in a moodiness contrasting other violent anime of any genre from the time period. The first episode sets this up, set around Hikage tracking Marou down to a strange inn, in the middle of nowhere, where lost souls gather to get drunk, a place where Aya will cross Hikage's life, one of two women with the same name he will encounter like fate. A woman with a facial disfigurement he comes close to, this chapter unfortunately comes to a doomed narrative as the place is a location  a spider demon was drawing the suicidal towards the area, those in that state for them suitable candidates, giving a little happiness, to feed on and feed to others.

Episode two escalates the danger as Marou, fully demonic and acquiring demon henchmen, intends to conquer the land. There is also Aya, a female ninja now without clan who starts to fall for Hikage as he now has to stop Marou for greater concerns. Blood Reign, almost feature long, does suffer from the fact the narrative feels slight even if by ten to twenty minutes, a work which could have had an additional episode, if was possible with the source material, and felt fully fleshed out. There is not enough here to stretch into a series, but this feels slighter here than needed to get the most from the content. What helps against it is being a good horror piece, one which contrasts its real nasty violence and body horror, such as a spider monster turning from human form or being able to dismember people with one leg, contrasted with its evocative supernatural aesthetic. This shows the virtue of anime in depicting a variety of genres in its inherently heightened form, horror's unnatural side found fully played even here. There are monstrous butterfly women, giant snake demons, talking tree faces, and processions of the dead wandering abandoned villages in the middle of the night.

There is also a demon thunder horse named Majuni, who rules the sea, talks and laps human blood of those who he tramples on, so Blood Reign also interests, without exoticising the content, as an inherently Japanese work in its setting context and the subjects of its narrative, adding something different. The drama feels the slightest of the work, which is why this could have done with a longer length, such as how the two Aya are slight, the second coming off mostly as a woman in peril, or that Marou and Hikage's relationship, clearly the tragedy it plays up to, should have been allowed to have been fleshed out. (A random female ghost, connected to Marou sacrificing his humanity earlier before the narrative, is so slight as a major plot thread to that is shows Blood Reign needed a little bit longer in terms of narrative to have told itself.) Everything else about the production however, barring that the rock guitar and synth are definitely not period appropriate in action scenes, is eerie even when a ninja action work at times, with a very distinct aesthetic style even in use of colour. It is one of the many fascinating obscurities of this era, released by ADV Films in the VHS and DVD era, but forgotten and lost since then. For its storytelling issues, this is shame considering the many virtues within the time it has.

Bonus #15: Boogiepop and Others (2000)

 

Director: Ryu Kaneda

Screenplay: Sadayuki Murai

Based on the light novel series by Kouhei Kadono

Cast: Sayaka Yoshino as Tôka Miyashita / Boogiepop; Maya Kurosu as Nagi Kirima; Daijirô Kawaoka as Keiji Takeda; Ayana Sakai as Minako Yurihara / Manticore; Asumi Miwa as Naoko Kamikishiro; Mami Shimizu as Kazuko Suema; Kai Hirohashi as Kei Shinkoku; Tetsu Sawaki as Akio Kimura; Hassei Takano as Saotome Masami; Hideyuki Kasahara as Shirô Tanaka

Live Action Adaptation

 

This is not the 2019 animated series by studio Madhouse being covered, but a live action adaptation of the first Boogiepop light novel released the same year as the first ever animated adaptation, Boogiepop Phantom (2000). It offers an interesting layer in explaining Boogiepop as a franchise, in that it is a deeply unconventional story in terms of lore but also in its storytelling in just the adaptations themselves, all of them unconventional even if the 2019 anime series is the most cognizant and does heavy lifting in explaining the lore to its basics.

The live action tale is aptly a puzzle box as much as Boogiepop Phantom, immediately disarming in how it has jazz cocktail piano music set to images such as a high school girl seductively licking the eyeball of another girl who is clearly dead. It is one of a few abrupt fragments we see in the prologue, in this Toei Video co-production, introducing all the students we will follow, as this film is told out of order, told in fragments over a timeline in different chronology to how they actually played out. It is, thankfully, fleshed out fully in the end with only certain passages not seen until the end of the film itself, with interlude segments in-between which add additional context. Screenwriter Sadayuki Murai, whilst working in live action here, is predominantly a screenwriter for animation, including for Boogiepop Phantom. He also penned Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue (1997) and Millennium Actress (2001), so he is someone I have immense respect for, his craft on hand here in making sure this all makes sense in the end whilst taking a huge risk in depicting this tale in this idiosyncratic method of non-chronological storytelling.

This is also where the logic of Boogiepop is curious, just attempting it like any anime/light novel into live action as the Boogiepop costume alone, the titular figure a mysterious form who shares a body with a highschool girl named Tôka Miyashita (Sayaka Yoshino), looks really strange in the middle of a school or ordinary urban Japan at the time, looking like a Dune planet traveller is striking purple. Boogiepop, an urban legend presumed to kill people, is actually there to protect people from unearthly forms actually responsible for this, co-existing as separate entities in one body, and in terms of the tale being told, it tells the chapter in the 2019 anime which made up episodes one to three, Boogiepop Does Not Laugh. In this tale, there is a "manticore" disguised as a school girl, devouring the brains of fellow female classmates and whose tears, with an assitant, are being peddled as a mind sapping drug to bring more victims to her. There is the boy who loves Tôka who has to contend with how she is unaware of Boogiepop, and there is a girl who has found "Echoes", an alien entity in a human body connected to the manticore but is a form of good against them. And then there is Nagi Krima (Maya Kurosu), whose depiction here I loved. She is the other character of importance just in the Boogiepop adaptations alone - the daughter of a murdered novelist who, learning of the unnatural entities around her and Boogiepop, brings technology and her own martial arts skill to compensate for being a mortal young woman. This version as played by Maya Kurosu, as a short haired tomboy breaking students' arms, is a really cool one that sadly never was followed with and only has a short part to this narrative, one of the issues inherently with adapting merely a piece of this franchise when the series can expand on the character.

Telling a short piece of the source material, it is curious to see this version, which does have the limitations of a lower budget and the limitations of live action, stripping away some of the context and lore to its most practical version to adapt. Boogiepop is odd as a premise anyway, a sci-fi laced work with its horror touches and its esoteric world of artificial people, alien forms and monstrous entities picking on mortals. Boogiepop and Others, the 2019 version is the most conventional version as it is a series of four different stories like an anthology, whilst this live action version, because it shares a same screenwriter, is as esoteric as Boogiepop Phantom in how it plays out, which is a really unconventional experience even in context of this era's Japanese genre and horror films from the time. I have had ambivalence on all the lore, even as someone who admires all three adaptations as their own franchise without the source material, coming entirely from finding the 2000 Boogiepop Phantom an opaque and difficult anime in my youth, fully appreciating it now knowing it was a sequel novel adaptation which barely explains its world, becoming something abstract as a result and compelling as a result. It was also one where the real meat came from how the stories, no matter how unnatural, came from human behaviour, such as a plot line of someone who causes people to escape as their inner children, abandoning their adult selves as living husks in the normal world. Boogiepop Phantom out of all three also has the most distinct and incredible aesthetic and mood, but this live action interpretation glances at many of the franchise's virtues, including in how all these stories still connect to human folly and behaviour, slightly glanced over here with the subplot about the drug being taken for escape by students.

This does thankfully create its own atmosphere even in its own way. The urban Japan of this era of horror movies, especially the lower budget ones, has always compelling for me, more so in the case of this premise which, baring CGI which was aged back then, is having to work around its very unconventional content in the confines of what could be done practically and with the budget. It feels more compelling as horror and genre cinema that, hidden among the Japanese classrooms and in darkened alleyways, these strange visitors and incidents are transpiring, which you do not really see from lower budgeted North American films from the era unless with the lowest of budgets, always feeling restricted in their own confined sets as a result. Also the music, by composer Yuki Kajiura, is just as idiosyncratic as the two animated productions - not only does this have Boogiepop Phantom's opening theme at the end, sultry male vocal lounge music, but the smooth jazz score is delightfully unconventional, proto vaporwave, like the purple hue some scenes have.

Arguably this is the weakest of the three versions, even if the simplest of reasons that the others have longer to expand and shift with their narratives, whilst this has the time to tell just one of these tales. It is however a fascinatingly curious twist to low budget Japanese horror cinema from this era, even without the context of being an adaptation of a light novel, for how esoteric and unconventional the tropes of science fiction and horror are used within it. Able to see this, it is also the one adaptation of a source that became famous with its animated adaptations that managed to not come off as a compromised version. It struggles and it has to minimalize the more out-there aspects of the source work, but it manages to succeed in its own way to adapt the material, which is an achievement in itself.

#208: Battle Royal High School (1987)

 

Director: Ichirō Itano

Screenplay: Ichirō Itano

Based on the manga by Shinichi Kuruma

Voice Cast: Kazuki Yao/Michael Granberry as Riki Hyoudo/Byoudo; Kazuhiko Inoue/Michael Granberry as Toshihiro Yuuki; Paul Sincoff as Zankan/Hideyuki Tanaka; Sakiko Tamagawa/Susan Grillo  as Youko Takayanagi; Chieko Hondo/Kristen Graf as Megumi Koyama; Mari Yokoo/Hadley Eure as Fairy Master Kain; Shin Aomori/Pierre Brulatour as Baba

Viewed in English Language Dub

 

Coming from Ichirō Itano, any work directed by the celebrated animator, in contrast to his work on others' projects, has however the potential to be infamous. He is rightly acclaimed as an animator and a secondary director, a man so talented that, from his work on the Macross franchise, he gained the named flourish "the Itano Circus" for just how he animated missiles. As a director however, he is notorious for the likes of Violence Jack, specifically the OVA episode he directed called Evil Town (1988), or Angel Cop (1989-94). Even his flirtations with television series led to something like Gantz (2004), which had to be censored for Japanese television and, as a violent and nihilistic work of resurrected people forced into real shooting game scenarios, hit me at the wrong time in life in its tone to the point I never finished it. Even for a work with the leads, which die easily, fighting aliens in the shapes of bird people or Buddha statues, Itano can find a way to make something feel on the edge. Considering, coming to this review, I have learnt that the Itano Circus was inspired, as a motorcycle enthusiast, by him strapping fifty fireworks onto one he was riding at a young age¹, there is a sense, for good and for bad, including some of the undefendable content (Evil Town's content, Angel Cop notoriously in its uncut Japanese dub having an anti-Semitic plot twist), Itano as a young animator onwards may brought with him a nihilistic punk ethos to his work that finds its way out in the directorial work especially.

Battle Royal High School is obscure from his small directorial CV, nearly sixty minutes and cramming an entire lengthier narrative and a few genres inexplicably together for a mad roller coaster ride of tone. It is set up with a fighting genre premise, as Riki Hyoudo, a male high school student, is strengthening himself by wearing a leopard mask he found one day and getting into brawls, even managing to get an enraged female tag-along Ryouko, from the judo dojo on-campus in danger now of closing because he beat their sensei completely. He is so good, a demonic lord Byoudo enters his dimension, revealed to be his parallel self who, realising this, decides to not fight Riki as initially but occupy him in a co-operative form. Byoudo is probably with evil intent for our dimension, but one of his side, a Faerie Queen called Fairy Master Kain, has decided to commit a coup d'etat with the added threat to our side that the fairies will take over people and infect our side.

Yes, fairies are a threat here, and in one of the best ideas of this strange title, along one of the most gruesome and inspired plot points, they are explicitly compared to wasps as, like the real life and grotesque idea of the "parasitoid"², larva which live inside a host, fairies take over a human host in this narrative. Sometimes even disguising themselves as the cute wish givers of fairytales, as happens in one case, they possess an entity to the point that, taking that person over, they take over their mind and can even transmogrify them into horrifying shapes and forms. There is content in this anime, if it had been a longer work, which could have been a compellingly dark horror anime, but here this goes further in that. Alongside this premise, and Itano's obsession with not only gore but fully detailed human biology, you also have a demon hunter but also a trans-dimensional policeman, spotting Byoudo's transition from a satellite base secretly, who is armed with sentai superhero power armour. More action than horror, it is still a strange cocktail from the eighties and the OVA boom to experience, especially as manages in less than an hour to have a full narrative of some sort with everyone involved.

Here you can have a girl, eventually possessed by the fairy which tricks her, accidentally wishing her love rival to Riki, Ryouko, to be mauled by her teddy bear, turned into a giant monstrously sized one. Or that this probably has the most lovingly (and grossly) detailed resurrection of a person by way of complete rebuilding of the human body, taking a monstrous flesh mound and sculpting it, from bone to muscle and flesh, back into a high school girl. This is all lurid and ridiculous, but the later is a huge note as this is no way near as nihilistic as the material from Ichirō Itano I have seen. This possesses so much of the dark content which made him infamous, but alongside how curious it to mix the cast it has, a sci-fi sentai hero the third wheel, it is gleefully ridiculous even if unintentional. Sometimes it feels so if awkwardly, where grotesque transformations violently juxtaposed with high school comedy as Ryouko becomes a proto- tsundere to Riki in her love-hate relationship to him.

Considering Violence Jack: Evil Town, even censored for the Western releases originally, was still gruelling, and Gantz I have mentioned felt too much at a bad time for myself to binge it, Battle Royal High School feels positively more brighter for what is still, even in context for this era of lurid eighties horror-like work for the video market, an incredibly violent and nasty work at times. Not helped (or helped depending on your opinion) by the English dub, including the crassest response after a graphic bodily resurrection just remind you this is of the time, this is of an entirely different era just in terms of anime released to the West, in the nineties, which was sold as being more adult. It is hilarious admittedly, only released in the USA, this is not an obscure title from Manga Entertainment, who released the whole of Violence Jack, or Central Park Media, but AnimEigo of all companies, who behind their utter devotion to the likes of sci-fi like Bubblegum Crisis (1987-91) are not the kind of people of this era to release titles that created the stereotype of anime being adult and violent Japanese cartoons. It is admittedly an outlier as, ironically, this is probably one of the better Itano directed things I have sat through, more so as he was the director and screenwriter and main storyboarder on the production; contrast Evil Town to the elaborate animation in just the grotesque body horror sequences here, and it is night and day in production aesthetic, yet this is an obscure title. Itano, morbidly fascinated by his directorial career as a one-off, really has not made a lot as a director since the 2000s, baring the television series Blassreiter (2006), and has been more a veteran of great talent on other productions. It says a lot for me that, in the little I have seen between them, and in mind he wrote the script for Evil Town, that Noboru "Shō" Aikawa, despite that and penning Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend (1987-89) among other notorious titles from this era of straight-to-video anime, comes off less nihilistic than Itano, a man he wrote stuff for. That is perversely hilarious to even consider.

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1) Recollected HERE in interview form.

2) Oh, and whilst body transmogrification does not happen with this breed, the wasps of the genus Glyptapanteles, injecting their eggs into living caterpillars, are a good enough real life horror show as the larva take over the host. You do not need lovingly animated as anything with the fairies here to have something to grimace at in nature itself.