Re-Review: Darkside Blues (1994)

 

Studio: J.C. Staff

Director: Nobuyasu Furukawa

Screenplay: Mayori Sekijima

Based on the manga by Hideyuki Kikuchi and Yuho Ashibe

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

Viewed in English Dub

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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1) MyAnimeList page for Ou, Natsuki.

2) Takawiki entry on Ou Natsuki.

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

#275: Dominion Tank Police (1988-1989)

Studio: Agent 21 and Toshiba Eizo Soft

Director: Kōichi Mashimo

Screenplay: Kōichi Mashimo

Based on the manga by Masamune Shirow

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

Viewed in English Dub

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#264: Demon Prince Enma (2006-7)

 

Studio: Brain's Base

Director: Mamoru Kanbe

Screenplay: Takao Yoshioka

Based on the manga by Go Nagai

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

#262: Doomed Megalopolis (1991-2)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Rintaro

Screenplay: Akinori Endō, Masayuki and Rintaro

Based on the novel Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Aramata

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#251: Dog Soldier - Shadows of the Past (1989)

 

Studio: Animate Film

Director: Hiroyuki Ebata

Screenplay: Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga by Tetsuya Saruwatari

Voice Cast: Akira Kamiya as John Kyosuke Hiba; Daisuke Gouri as Masami Fudou; Mika Doi as Catherine "Cathy" Magley; Norio Wakamoto as Makoto Allen Takemura; Yūsaku Yara as Sachio Takechi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

What am I? Spider bait?

Back in the day, Central Park Media licensed an anime called Minna Agechau (1987), a softcore comedy, only for the 1991 release to be cancelled. The story has developed Chinese whispers around it, but it can be summed up as thus: CPM licensed the title, promoted it with their future habit of playing to anime's mature side, as they released Urotsukidôji in the USA, and whilst there were mainstream media on this "smutty cartoon", such as L.A. Times on 29th August 1991 publishing Japan’s Latest Export: Soft- Core Cartoon¹, and a pair of (cardboard) panties promised to be included², the issue was as much its licensor Sony wanting to not present a terrible image in the United States. Back home, when this was a tie-in to a nineteen volume manga, which got a 1985 live action film by Shusuke Kaneko, future Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995) director, Sony would have probably not cared, but they hastily intervened and prevented the release³. For the cost of this, CPM did however get a title licensed to them for free: Dog Soldier.

The titular dog soldier is John Kyosuke Hiba, a Rambo stand-in who, at work at a construction, is a former soldier pulled back into combat when a fire fight transpires. It also brings back into his life Cathy, a girl he grew up with in the slums of L.A., part of a ridiculous melodrama that is tied into a very badly regarded anime. Only over forty plus minutes long, Dog Soldier is ridiculous cheese of the highest order where, with his friend and fellow ex-soldier Fudoh, John is brought into a conspiracy where the McGuffin is an AIDs vaccine, absolutely of its time and the one cringe worthy detail. It is eyed by Phantom, the up and coming death merchant whose desire to sell it for biological warfare to the highest bigger is contrasted by being Makato, the childhood friend of John and Cathy who went the extreme path as an illegal arms dealer after living in the slums of L.A. with them.

Considering the author of the manga Tetsuya Saruwatari penned Riki-Oh, where the 1991 Hong Kong live action adaptation is entirely faithful to the source but barely covers a longer work which gets weirder, you would expect Dog Soldier to be ridiculous. With "grenades strapped to bunnies" one thing I can confirm about the manga⁴, Dog Soldier the anime is however its own separate thing, part of a legacy of "lame anime" poorly regarded for its clichés and being silly. It is appreciated by someone like others like me in that, despite its dry clichéd plot, its goofball touches make it entertaining, like the abrupt Cup Noodles reference, or when meeting Cathy in a baseball stadium, John decides to pitch slide on their first meeting as adults like a dork. The one thing, as mentioned, of the era is that the McGuffin is an AIDs vaccine, which reflect the era, where stigma and unscientific fear and lack of knowledge was there, this a historical footnote worth using to point this out from the ignorance shown. It is not a great work from Shou Aikawa, who whilst known for infamous titles like Urotsukidôji was also to become a much more well regarded screenwriter, making this one of those embarrassing earlier scripts for touches like this. Not wanting to be too tasteless, and I apologise ahead if this is for some, not only would it be the least practical choice as a biological weapon in the first place, but barring the taboo the name evokes, you could replace this with something also trivialised in pop culture, like Ebola, and the McGuffin is entirely a prop which needs to exist but has no direct connection to the production. It is merely the nod to the period there which shows the ignorance from the anime production team.

Also crammed in, for a work only forty plus minutes long, is the amount of back-story of drama which is po-faced in seriousness even if very silly. It is macho melodrama, where one can monologue about their back-story even when there is a knife in the brain, and Cathy's divide in loving Makoto, who is manipulating her, and to John is pure soap opera, leading to the least scientifically logical knife battle in terms of distance and space travelled. The end song, out of place lyrically, is yet perversely apt, a tale with the possibly un-pc English translation name, from Okujou no SISSY, of "Sissy on the Rooftop", which is about a teen contemplating jumping off the school roof with lines like "My heart is strangled in my school bag". Dog Soldier is too short and over the top to hate, a quirky oddity from the past whose infamy thankfully keeps it alive despite never returning past the VHS era. Its connection to Minna Agechau is the pink panty wearing cherry on top of this curiosity, tying the pair in a curious history and as an unconventional double bill. Dog Soldier is ridiculous, without a doubt, not great artistically but the story is too goofy to hate it but within the OVA and in how the United States got it in the first place.

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1) Japan’s Latest Export: Soft- Core Cartoon : * Video: Adult-oriented animated erotica, a billion-dollar business in Japan, tries to shed its cult image in the U.S. Some predict American resistance. Written by Chuck Philips for the Los Angeles Times and published August 29th 1991.

2) All About 'I Give My All', written by Mike Toole, and published by the Anime News Network on September 17th 2017.

3) Minna Agechau's trivia page on Anime News Network.

4) Example from the manga of this transpiring.

#228: Darkness of the Sea, Shadow of the Moon (1989)

 

Studio: Visual 80

Director: Tetsu Dezaki

Screenplay: Koichi Mizuide and Sōji Yoshikawa

Voice Cast: Mayumi Shō as Lumi Kobayakawa; Rei Sakuma as Luka Kobayakawa; Toshihiko Seki as Katsuyuki Tohma; Ryusei Nakao as Mr. Kobayakawa; Seiko Nakano as Mrs. Kobayakawa; Tesshō Genda as Doctor Kaibara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I had never heard of Darkness of the Sea... until searching for horror anime, but this three part OVA is tantalising when you begin it. It is a shoujo story, a story of young women which combines romance against horror and over-the-top melodrama, all directed by Tetsu Dezaki, Osamu Dezaki's brother who can be credited for helming They Were Eleven (1986), a great sci-fi story from a legendary female manga author Moto Hagio, but also Mad Bull 34 (1990-2), the infamous and at times difficult to watch Kazuo Koike tale about New York City cops with all the ridiculous clichés and distortions you could imagine. Darkness of the Sea... starts off over the top in its own way when twin sisters Rumi and Ruki, already in a romantic triangle over Touma, the popular boy at school, go on an all-girl's trip to the coast with their school. Tragically, during a storm, they find a secret grave mass in the caves, and with everyone baring the sisters being killed by a strange air to the underground environment.

Ruki survives, but Rumi is distant, and now part of the only surviving girls of the sports team due to the horrible tragedy, the three remaining girls have to train with the boys. The third girl will die soon after, as Darkness of the Sea... does waste time with its plot, in which Rumi is now a psychic supernatural being, able in later episodes to infect people and turn them into her slaves, wishing to kill anyone who gets in the way to her and Touma. Even her own sister Ruki, the most melodramatic of sisterly rivalries possible transpiring as the core of the premise, whether it is trying to throw her off a floor on the emergency stairway, or turning their parents into brainwashed ghouls to do the job.

It is sad Ruki is an ineffectual protagonist, despite the inklings that she has supernatural powers too, even in mind that it befits that she is an ordinary person caught up in the most nightmarish of sibling rivalry, "Tutankhamen's Curse" a key reference to the plot exposition, referring to when in 1922 the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, those involved having mysterious deaths afterwards helping a legend of a curse transpire. Most of the time, Touma is the one who has to save her, which is a shame even if the point that, helpless, she is (baring the unnatural ability now to float) a bystander in trouble, arguably the best protagonist for a viewer to be in the shoes of. Largely the repetition of Rumi's attempts to kill her over the three episodes is the biggest cause of this issue.

Truthfully, there are many silly aspects to the show, and so much of it, even in mind to what I have said as criticisms, does not detract from how entertaining this became. The real problem becomes that, even at three episodes, this sadly ends abruptly when it starts to reach a new melodramatic point. By the time the story ends, where the sisterly tragedy is greater, people have died, and Ruki is starting to fight back, only to not have a follow up, feels like a gut punch of the most abrupt kind as this became a rewarding film to watch. This is a shame as this, even when logic starts to fall away, is delightfully over-the-top and macabre. It also befits as a story with a romantic edge, as it is about a female protagonist, who is stuck in a nightmare, yet in a scenario intermingling her growing confidence, as she and Touma start to come closer as people, her own sister the threat adding to the symbolic drama. There is one dubious moment, where Touma briefly comes off as non consensual in the gym closet in terms of getting more intimate with Ruki, which is the one sour point, but most of this is the right kind of melodrama, even when someone stays almost comically stoic in spite of their parents just being killed, the exaggerated tone appealing.

Even the aesthetic tone of the show befits this, the contrast between its character designs, by Setsuko Shibuichi, prolific in the industry from key animator to director on titles from The Rose of Versailles (1979) to Space Adventure Cobra (1982), befit a romantic show in the characters' elegance but contrasted by the macabre (and openly gory) incidents that transpire, to even the countless demonic faces Rumi has trying to off her sister. The sense this was even one episode off a full narrative does suck, more so as, even as pure pulp, it does stand out as a delightful surprise, as obscure as you could get for an animated title. Like a grotesque fantasy tale, even its opening credits are more fantastical, with its echoing of the sisters being nautical entities, and its title (depending on how you translate it) was absolutely one of the reasons I picked it out due to how evocative it is. There is pure cheese, like explaining overtly supernatural powers to ancient bacterial mutation, but that befits the tone as well. As something with no context, this hit with the right impact, only making its obscurity sadder. A Bandai production, at least with their involvement, one can only hope that it is preserved somehow as this, even without the ending it should have had, stands out.

#215: Debutante Detective Corps (1996)

 

Director: Akiyuki Simbo

Screenplay: Juzo Mutsuki

Voice Cast: Natsumi Yanase as Yoko Ryuuzaki; Rumi Kasahara as Nina Kirov; Sakura Tange as Reika Shuu; Shiho Niiyama as Kimiko Ayanokouji; Yuko Nagashima as Miyuki Ayanokouji; Toru Furuya as Nomura Keiji

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Some Major Spoilers Throughout]

Among the many obscure straight-to-video titles I have encountered in anime, many I stumble on feel like pilots for programmes that never came to be, here digging into the obscure VHS era of ADV Films too, who would start releasing titles in the United Kingdom on tape in the nineties as much as the USA. This has the added touch that it also had a video game, for the PC-FX, a 32-bit home video game console developed by NEC and Hudson Soft. It was released in 1994 and discontinued in February 1998, the game for this anime a maze puzzle game where, with this anime's leads those you need to avoid, you play a thief trying to steal valuable objects¹.

This OVA however has a bigger twist to it, that this marks an early title of Akiyuki Simbo in the director's seat. Long before he cemented himself, he worked on titles like this or Twilight of the Dark Master (1997). By the time he gains greater recognition for his distinct auteur touches, he hit it out of the part with Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), the bleaker subversion of the magical girl genre which many after have tried to replicate afterwards, and the long and prolific Monogatari series (2009–2018), one between one-offs to series which feels like a dimension and a fandom in itself.

By itself, Debutante would have been a fascinating slapstick work by itself, starting with the introduction of the leads, almost all crashing through the doors (and walls) of their school campus on the introduction day. Miyuki Ayanokouji, a mechanical expert, on a motorbike; Yoko Ryuuzaki, a master of disguise; Nina Kirov, a Russian born figure, dropping in by her own attack helicopter, and letting it crash when she ejects in the air; Reika Shuu, a Chinese martial arts expert; and Kimiko Ayanokouji, more gracefully but frivolous in hiring the entire police force to take her to school, the sister of Miyuki who claims to be a powerful psychic. They all come from rich and powerful families - one dubious touch, merely a minor detail which did not need to be included, is that Yoko Ryuuzaki has Adolf Hitler as an ancestor - all of which is documented in text which the ADV Film's video release subtitled.  

It is ultimately revealed, as an oblivious goofball, that Kimiko has hired men to help bond them as a detective squad in a "fake" threat on their lives, but these women can handle themselves. Debutante.... is a goofy action comedy, where logic can be thrown out of the window for a gag, one where you have a simple premise for one episode which could have been a whole series. The archetypes, following a trend of all female groups who became central to anime titles, is that everyone expresses a stereotype, and in mind that some of the best can flesh these characters out fully over a length, this even as a silly comedy had enough to work with.

Miyuki as the most grounded, dumbfounded by her sister's oblivious hubris, someone with real psychic power but, with a promo shot of her bending spoons, is a prat. Yuko is literally chameleonic, a meek bespectacled young woman able to change her voice and, with equipment, can even become a middle aged and larger male policeman. Add to this the stoic Nina and Reika, as the clumsy fighter who yet becomes super powered when she takes the arm weights she has on off, and the work is pretty standard but a worthy beginning. Almost any story can be stretched into something special, and this sets up what type of premise this could have taken, with three mercenaries sent after them. Helping this as well in tone is that there is also the loose reality at play, as one of those mercenaries is able to grow into a towering fighting monolith the size of a building. The slippery logic of physicality, deliberate, does work well.

You cannot really say this shows Akiyuki Simbo's directorial style for the future, except for the future knowledge that, known for his idiosyncratic compositions of scenes and art styles, OVAs like this would have let him hone this visual side in a variety of different genres. With character designs by Miyabi Kizaki and Shinji Ochi, this looks of a different time, with really big eyes and exaggerated colour choices which feel exaggerated as well to a virtue. Beyond this, there is not a lot else to add, as at thirty minutes, this is just longer than a traditional first episode. Nothing is particularly adult - a shower scene comes with nothing but a very weird cut, for a weird moment, of a faked murder scene with gore as a warning to the leads. Considering Kimiko is the one behind this, it makes sense, but alongside Yoko's ability to literally change gender and shape with her disguises, able to "break" her vocal cords to the right tone, and you have with Debutante Detective Corps a premise with its surreal tone you could work with. That it did not adds to the curiosity, a forgotten piece where, ironically, it is less the director who stands out but the general production altogether.

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1) This is referred to from One Controller Port, with Ojousama Sousamou – PC-FX English Guide, an introduction from September 15th 2021 to help anyone who cannot speak Japanese if they fancied playing that video game adaptation.

#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.