#270: Machine Robo - Revenge of Cronos (1986-97)

 

Studio: Ashi Productions

Director: Hiroshi Yoshida (Revenge of Cronos)

Takao Kato, Nobuyoshi Habara and Kiyoshi Murayama (Leina: Wolf Sword Legend)

Kiyoshi Murayama (Lightning Trap - Leina & Laika)

Screenplay: Hideki Sonoda

Cast: Kazuhiko Inoue as Rom Stol, Yuko Mizutani as Leina Stol, Hiroko Takahashi as Diondra, Junichi Kagaya as Kirai Stol, Kōichi Hashimoto as Rod Drill, Minoru Inaba as Grujios, Shigezou Sasaoka as Gades, Shinya Ohtaki as Blue Jet, Sho Hayami as Narration, Toshiharu Sakurai as Triple Jim, Yousuke Akimoto as Gardi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

According Neil Nadelman, a translator who worked for the defunct anime distributor Central Park Media, Machine Robo may have been licensed by mistake¹. It is hearsay, but an amusing anecdote to sell a series when I heard of this through a podcast Anime World Order. This alongside the premise of this eighties anime was enough, when he talked of this in 2007, to win me over to wanting to see this series, a goal which took a good decade to even get to. Back in the day, when Central Park Media were still a distributor in the United States, they had only gotten up to three DVD volumes with five episodes on each, in a weird time when we thought separating anime series on multiple separate releases was a good idea, before it was clearly given up on. With the company going bankrupt in 2009 and the releases in the early 2000s, this was not a case of the series being caught up in the collapse of its distributor either.

People may have encountered this series in some form back in the eighties through GoBots, a toy line which was imported over to the West during the boom of the original eighties Transformer franchise, which got an animated series and a film, and used designs from Machine Robo. Machine Robo itself was originally a toy line which crossed over into animation, with Revenge of Chronos the first Japanese series for the original country of these toys' origin. This series proved something of an idiosyncratic creation with hindsight, as Ashi Productions' series may also be known if you had never seen it for the characters appearing in Super Robot Wars. Tactical strategy games which act like officially sanctioned crossover fan fiction, these games even if only starting to be licensed officially in the West have been translated and made available to mecha fans, the genre in its centre, allowing one to see the menagerie in this series cross paths with characters even from mainstream crossover franchises. Case in point, Super Robot Wars MX (2004), for the Playstation 2, allowed these characters to run amok in one of the bleakest stories in anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997), which just raises questions of how they cross. One can imagine, if you have seen that film, the last stand by the character Asuka by herself against a group of manufactured biomechs, one of its more traumatising scenes of the franchise, is suddenly interrupted by Rom Stol, the male lead of Machine Robot, this goofy eighties show, making an elaborate speech about good conquering evil and telling the villains they do not deserve to hear his name.

Over forty seven episodes long, this is set on the titular planet of robots, Cronos, invaded by an evil force called Gyandlar. Led by Gades, they are marauding in search for the Hyribead, an ancient tool allowing one to live forever, even if it means killing the father of Rom Stol. After this, set up in the first couple of episodes, Rom takes the family heirloom of the Wolf Sword, and goes with his sister Leina and comrades out to find the Hyribead. It is a show, just to get this out of the way, where Vikung-fu exists, combining Vikings with kung fu to make the most powerful martial arts possible for Rom and his friends to take on the forces of Gyandla. Gyandlar, when not having a ranking system for minions who fail and get knocked down three ranks, have their scumbags but a surprising amount of members who disagree with the lack of honour they show, one such figure a male samurai-like figure Garudi, who will gain greater importance as more of his secret past comes out. This is, openly, a very absurd show. Production wise, there is some great designs for this robotic cast, but you also have a production which is clearly having to produce episodes each week for over a year. The repetition of villainous grunt designs that eventually happens has to be addressed in the final episodes after a while, and the size discrepancies between the cast in particular stick out. Rom, when he uses Vikung-fu's ultimate abilities, gains two levels of robotic armour, the last turning him into a giant with a lack of a practical size guide for characters in general between hulking behemoths and normal humanoid sized ones. There are also things no one cared about the logic for, such as one of Rom's comrades Triple Jim, a Transformers-like robot humanoid who, able to transform into a car, is the friend of Leina's who is only slightly bigger than her, but when he turns into a car is able to be used by her as an actual vehicle with comfortable leg room. The logic of Cronos as a world does raise questions anyway, but that needs a large part of the review to elaborate and the set up of actually watching the show needs to be addressed first.

For starters, Machine Robo itself is very episodic, which is not necessarily something you may have not experienced if, like me, you tended to avoid the huge franchised through your youth getting into anime, the ones which lasted forever, or even the fifty plus episode series. This not that far past when Fist of the North Star's animated television adaptation was started in 1984, important in mind to how much the original manga for that franchise really codified tropes, and how this originates from a toy line which would have benefitted from adding new toys for the audience, as more characters are added over time in the show. Depicting the whole story in forty four episodes, the last three were compilations of the series before the next series was started on air, one just letting the narrator describe the characters in detail, and the last two retelling the whole series in digested form. It is telling that you can boil down the pre-Emerald City narrative of this series, a good twenty plus episodes, down to the initial episode setting up the premise, Rom Stol and his allies going through episodic stories which you would have likely seen in anime before and decades after throughout this length of programming. It is incredibly silly, gleefully so as I wished when wanting to see this series. It does completely repeat the same beats over the episodes without fail, in which Rom will suddenly catch villains off guard, making an elaborate speech and then saying they do not deserve to know his name, a trademark the show eventually starts to make jokes about, and then beat the enemies eventually for that episode. Blue Dragon, his first armour upgrade, is useless and needs to give way to the Vikung-fu set, which gets the job done. His allies include the jet plane humanoid samurai named Blue Jet, who is mostly red, Triple Jim, who has a crush on Leina but is the noble putz in their relationship, and Rod Drill, the goofball. Leina sadly suffers through a casual streak of sexism here as, since she is a girl, there are numerous jokes about her being a girl wanting to enter the battles and being constantly kidnapped/under peril, with her jealously about the many women who are attracted to her brother raising questions about their relationship. Thankfully, she does get good moments to counter this, and these characters do become the real reason to enjoy Machine Robo, alongside its goofiness. Attempting to binge this in large amounts is detrimental to really enjoying it, whilst having taking a few months to even finish this, I was able to soak the world and story in that I became fond of over the time committed.

Machine Robo is helped, unintentionally and intentionally, by being an odd duck in its world, which feels like was being fleshed out mid-production. A place of "Romtro" apples and the "Master Laster", cat people predating the Beast Wars: Transformers franchise in the West, who are never seen again, and a character named "Trim Sponsor", even an episode about a multicolour desert where the blue sand has giant sand mantra rays, it goes through a lot of changes as the production goes. Despite Gyandlar coming from outer space, Cronos is initially suggested to be closer to period Japan, even with tropes of Japanese chambara tales of noble samurai even in the villains' side, with rural communities and that begin agriculture despite it being once said these robots use battery sources for sustenance. There are also the robots closer to their toy line and Transformers, and those who are very humanoid like Rom and Leina Strol, Leina effectively just a female character in a blue helmet and appropriate costume, her design in appearance and long brown hair not even hiding that she is supposedly robotic. This is before you get into how there are no humans in this world, with these the main species in this world, and these robots going on with discussion of the afterlife, due to how many characters will be killed in episodes, and do return as spirits. As this story goes on, more overt science fiction tropes and fire arms are introduced, such as an episode about a city which became decadent and lazy due to the power it produces from a volcano, and it tries to make sense of the two very different types of character designs only to become more compelling for the strange juxtapositions of its plot and lore details it throws in like multiple kitchen sinks.

It really comes obvious that, because these are meant to be robots, you could have gotten away with some gruesome content the television adaptation of Fist of the North Star had to work over, that you can have robots cut in half, crushed or Rom briefly, never doing this again, pull off a Fist of the North Star technique of causing a steel arm explode with one touch. This may seem tasteless, but it becomes almost a sick joke that, more in the pre-Emerald City episodes, you have characters introduced in that episode only for them to die and the leads to morn them over their improvised graves way too many times to not seem perverse. That one of these characters is a woman who is revealed to be a decoy bomb made into a woman just raises more questions, in a world where these are sentient robotic figures who just exist and non-metallic alikes as well. The female cast in general also however show that, wanting to have their cake and eat it, the production design the character to be as human and feminine in design as possible, hyper-feminized in some cases as well. You do get a cool female villainess in Diondra - imposing in her distinct character design as a sadistic giantess in golden armour, with Hiroko Takahashi's booming voice helping greatly - but there are many others who, still stylish in their designs, still emphasis this. A character in Episode thirteen, a martial artist named Ruri, despite her ball joint design is drawn as a shapely figure in lycra, peculiar with hindsight as her tribe in her flashbacks seemingly are born in lycra shaped to their bodies throughout life as a layer of skin, which is one of the more idiosyncratic examples of this. It is less of a complaint but one of the many contradictions and quirks to this show in general, and if there are any criticisms of it, it is entirely the issue of casual sexism you do need to put up with throughout the series if thankfully not straying into anything actually offensive. It becomes more a curiosity as, eventually, I did find myself trying to imagine an alternative world version of this where they did have a Transformer-like member of the cast who was not male and how that would change the perception of this.

The pre-Emerald City stories arguably have the more absurd moments, or I became fond of these lovable oafs on their journey that I started actually engaging with the story as it was fleshing out. I cannot deny that, when I first learnt of this series, it was through an episode of Anime World Order with the aforementioned Neil Nadelman about "lame anime". A long running anime podcast, that episode was recorded in 2007¹ back at a time when the few DVDs released for the series barely scratched the surface of the whole series, with the podcast lasting for so long that they existed when Discotek Media in the USA released this whole series in 2022 on standard definition on Blu-Ray; back then, the enticing nature of their review was as much the ridiculousness of the premise. It was sold on things that could be seen if you owned those original DVDs, which got over fifteen episodes, such as Vikung-fu, where nothing is remotely about Viking long ships or involving runes, or the rock men, part of an interesting idea this show never leans on that these are not robots truthfully, but humanoids that, unless you are the very humanoid ones like Rom and Leina who cannot transform, have bodies made between a variety of materials. That latter detail shows how this series could have expanded into something really idiosyncratic than it already is as, by the time of the final battle between forces of good and evil, you have characters made of metal, rock like the rock people who can turn into boulders to crush enemies, the fossil tribes who can even combine into a giant dinosaur, and the abruptly introduced "Gem People", three figures who, in an attempt to try to wrap up the plot later on, are the  guardians are sacred items which make up  and actually explain what the Hyribead may be.

The clear sense the logic was improvised on this show helps it in the end, and I admire this is in the context where I had a bias to wanting to see Machine Robo, and went out of my way to get the series when Discotek Media releases are a nightmare to acquire outside the USA. Despite this bias, I was able to accept the absurdities and got on the wavelength. It is not a show to attempt to binge all nineteen hours plus of in a marathon, an ill advised choice simply because, repeating the same plot structures over many episodes, this shows was meant to be seen in snippets like its original broadcast run. Instead it becomes, with its male narrator Sho Hayami being appropriately bombastic, a bolt of energy just to go through a couple of episodes at a time and witness what transpires this time, such as the episode presenting a Transformers' Death Race, which is neat.

The world grows as this goes, even if some details are ignored and never talked of, making this a surreal and fascinating world, from the horrifying Iron Eaters, a giant plant-like entity that digests robots, to electromagnetic jelly fish floating in the air. You do have to accept that the first opening theme tune, the awesome Machine Robo Hono'o by Martin, is replaced by one which is cool, but both not as great and also frankly egotistical in the translated lyrics for heroes to sing. There is also screen flashes, something which the Discotek release warns of, this issue of strobe effects which would stop being acceptable in Japanese animation after the "Polygon" incident of December 1997; whilst the incident has been exaggerated in the West, there was an episode of the first 1997 Pokémon series we never got in the West, Dennō Senshi Porygon, which caused photosensitive epileptic seizures in people and children, and led to TV Tokyo and other broadcasters establishing a series of guidelines for animated programs² which would have prevented the likes of Machine Robo having such strobe effects as readers should be warned of.

Emerald City changes the pace when introduced as, whilst staying episodic, this last half sets the cast in one central location, at first defending it from Gyandlar trying to storm the heavily fortified location, to the final act where their big bad eventually have to step in and the final conflict begins. There does become too many characters, likely reflecting this having links to a toy line where you needed to sell the product through the show, but you start to be introduced to characters named Pro Truck Racer, who remind one for all the deaths in the show these are still characters from a series of toys for children, including a group called the Land Commanders who combining into one giant robot. By this point, where the production is even having jokes suddenly start to appear in a show that was mostly straight faced, there becomes a sense of the show just being an excuse to do whatever the staff wanted as they had to resolve what the conclusion is. This means the Gem People are abruptly introduced, but also the sense that, when Pro Truck Racer decides levelling a whole skyscraper to make a bridge is acceptable logic, that the staff where just creating content they thought would be fun. By this point, it is with the sense that they hoped the viewers who were watching really did not care and enjoyed such a sight for its absurdity, which I can attest to as one viewer. That the show manages to have a proper conclusion, tied up and feeling like a real ending, is a credit, even if it leads to a very esoteric one to continue the franchise.

Machine Robo would continue with Machine Robo: Battle Hackers (1987), which would come soon after the last episodes for this show ended. Lasting thirty one episodes, prominently the leads of Rom and Leina Strol would not join their friends in that tale, and notably, whilst tragically only passing in her early fifties, Leina is a very early role for an actress named Yuko Mizutani who, until her death in 2016, was prolific over numerous eras of anime as a result. It comes obvious that, for the four straight to video OVAs that allowed fans to follow these characters, Leina was deliberately made central to all of them even if not the dynamic lead in these episodes as a fan favourite character, at the same time as, being made between 1988-90, Mizutani was going on to a long and prolific career onwards. I will also mention another OVA that was just an extra, a music video compilation, one of two, worth seeing for new material, a comedic breaking of the forth wall with the cast out of character as actors; seeing the cast goof off, or the villain of Grujios, a slug character in a robot body who eventually ends up as a ghost able to possess the bodies, go gooey-eyed over a pet kitten is legitimately funny in context to seeing the show, and a credit that Discotek included it from the best surviving version for their release.

To explain the OVAs, I will have to spoil the ending of Machine Robo from here on, that the finale has the main characters transported to an alternative dimension after they have resolved the conflict on Cronos, the side characters returning for Battle Hackers but Leina and Rom Stol not returning to that series. The four OVAs, three connected together as Leina: Wolf Sword Legend, and a forth, really do feel like curious loose strands to loftier ideas which never came to fruition, attempts to extend the lifespan of these characters and especially for Leina Stol. Certainly they feel like projects to let staff gain experience, the first OVA explicitly name checking itself as the first directorial project for Takao Kato, future director of Keijo (2016), the one fan service heavy show that sounds so ridiculous it might turn a 180 degree and win people over.

This first episode begins with Leina literally recreating The Terminator (1984), with Arnold Schwarzenegger appearing naked in a metropolis in a new time zone, only here on top of a skyscraper with the Wolf Sword. She is now Leina Haruka, and here I wished this bizarre turn the series went into had managed to gain traction as this is the most compelling of the four we got. She becomes a new transfer student at a school, and gets into the kind of premise I find compelling, unnatural figures dealing with supernatural/ horror adjacent tales of entities targeting human beings, with Leina here immediately told when introduced to her class she will save the world by the student everyone else thinks is weird. It is a sudden switch to high school mystery, as girls are going missing, captured in an Alice in Wonderland time scape to live permanently ageless, and where I did not expect Machine Robo to get existential, in its villain talking about aging and the sense of time being lost in youth. This is one of those fascinating ephemera of the OVA world that let this tangent from an existing source happen, and barring the lack of science fiction pieces, this story of a time eater would even be something I would expect from an episode of Boogiepop Phantom (2000). It also means Leina gets compensated for being kidnapped all the time by getting to rock the Wolf Sword and fight supernatural villains, and the end credits is a cute piece showing it all as a film Leina is an actor in.

Sadly this was not the direction they went with this episodes, as episode two properly reintroduces the male cast properly who transported over, all defeated in the opening on an alien plant by the big bad. Definitely, tragically, episode one was a complete one-off as this is sci-fi fantasy now. Leina still decapitates a dragon in the first few minutes, so she got more than the series, but this properly introduces the male cast, Rom's story again here, and with the decision to turn the more mechanical leads into humans. It is strange, for an example, to see a Bishonen Jet, a character now with a human head on the robot body with shades, which is a bit funny and matches the rest of the cast in Rod Drill and Triple Jet. It was also an excuse to have cast from the series back in new roles, audibly heard as you got used to them over this long TV series as I did. Truthfully, however, these are not as interesting even if still watchable. It would be a spoiler in any other context, a huge one, to admit the third OVA kills off Rom himself, and even undercuts the incestuous undercurrent by revealing Leina was adopted, but honestly, as an abrupt twenty to thirty minute piece, it feels like non-canonical content for what would have been a huge surprise to witness, with all forty episodes, in Machine Robo. In the series, it could have possibly been a big enough surprise it might have caused people to talk of that series with a new layer to it. More so as, for what is an abrupt curveball which loses power just for the slightness of the piece, it lets Leina be the hero, which would have been something that could have made Revenge of Cronos a more iconic series even if one with all its goofy moments.

The forth, its own individual piece, is not at all connected to its source and has wandered off in its own direction to the point it is weird even calling it part of this franchise at all. Called Lightning Trap - Leina & Laika, it is set in the then-modern day, and is about a military weapon named Bible, with a terrorist group named Blue Mary after it. By this point Leina is just a side character, just an ordinary schoolgirl with only one connection to the source, one bizarre touch, when she talks about dreams of her being a warrior fighting monsters. It is Die Hard on a luxury plane, with Bible a biomechanical robot kept in the luggage compartment with innocent bystanders, and emphasis placed as much on a new character named Laika Strange, a special agent figure clearly there to try to put over a new page in the franchise. It never came to be, and this proves a weird end to this version of Machine Robo. The next time, and the last, for this animated franchise came in 2003 with Machine Robo Rescue, a Sunrise production following a world where, with age no longer preventing kids from piloting robots, a group of them have trained to rescue people over fifty plus episode. It is also, helmed by all people, directed by Mamoru Kanbe, the director I know more for his horror work like Elfen Lied, which when this ended in the start of 2004 was the series of his that started in 2004 too, a few months on from, and is absolutely not suitable for kids.

As mentioned, the OVAs notwithstanding as curiosities thankfully preserved, I am biased towards this series, due to the time wanting to see it. As much due to the time to just watch this entire series as someone mostly used to anime where, even when episodic, sticks to twenty four episodes at their longest and reach the plot trajectory quickly. As an older anime viewer nowadays, I was never binging the fifty plus episode big hitters, or anything like One Piece which kept going for a decade, with the concern for the time consumption involved. Eventually the silliness of this particular show won me over, and I can label all the strange quirks and mistakes in this review all with a positive viewpoint as I enjoyed even those, as much because I came to the series wanting to see those too and enjoy them. The legacy of this series really shows in the inclusion in the Super Robot Wars franchise, where giant robot show fans made that series and give respect even to a production like this, something I can myself say in that my love for this, as much for the unintentional, was sincere and well rewarded with the context of knowing what I was wanting to watch after all this time.

====

1) Anime World Order Show # 63a – Totally Lame Anime With Neil Nadelman, podcast episode for Anime World Order, released December 6th 2007.

2) Animated Program Image Effect Production Guidelines, published by TV Tokyo on their website.

#269: Maris the Chojo (1986)

 

Studio: Pierrot

Director: Motosuke Takahashi

Screenplay: Tomoko Konparu and Hideo Takayashiki

Based on a manga by Rumiko Takahashi

Voice Cast:

Japanese: Mami Koyama as Maris, Jouji Yanami as Murphy, Junpei Takiguchi as Colonel, Sumi Shimamoto as Zombie Sue, Toshio Furukawa as Koganemaru Matsushita

English Dub: Sharon Holm as Maris, Dominic Taylor as Rogane, Harry Ditson as General, Kerry Shale as Murphy, Stacey Jefferson as Sue

Viewed in English Dub

 

Rumiko Takahashi is one of those huge names in Japanese pop culture, a huge author in manga since her beginnings from 1975 under the guide of Kazuo Koike and 1978 professionally, and like so many like Go Nagai to Koike himself, there are the titles which became her calling cards and other obscurer ones which also managed to get animated adaptations due to the status Takahashi gained. For Takahashi, obvious bigger hitters include the Ranma ½ and Urusei Yatsura franchises, whilst Maris the Chojo, also known as Maris the Wonder Girl or Supergirl, was a one-shot manga from 1980, part of titles which would be collected under the Rumic World reprinted sets of short stories years later. A beautiful looking opening in outer space introduces the titular Maris, causing one to presume this is a serious action sci-fi story in which this figure, a space bikini wearing space cop who has to stop crimes across the galaxy in this well animated eighties production. What it also turns out to be is a comedy as Maris has the worst of luck despite her talent for terrorizing evil doers.

Maris does have a tragic back story, a riff on Superman to befit an alternative title for the Central Park Media release when they sold this on VHS, where her surviving species were forced to become intergalactic refugees when their planet imploded, but mostly this follows a trope that works exceptionally in anime when it succeeds, that of the hero/heroine who is hopeless and out of luck we sympathize with. With the strength of more than six humans, as all her species, the choice of bikini is less of note than the bindings she has to remove to be able to use her full strength, allowing her to kick alien goons to the other side of the room and causing villains to literally urinate themselves in fear, but also leading her to accidentally break her entire ship when she forgets to put the restraints back on. With a talking seven tailed fox helper named Murphy at her side, able to transform into anything if in sevens only, and amusingly given a broad Irish accent in the English dub, this is clearly more playful in tone when the story proper begins, and I find it sad this was never expanded beyond its one-shot nature originally, as these characters immediately have a lot to work with.

Including two extended music video sequences, the first on an intergalactic beach resort with a Jaws parody and a bandaged mummy enjoying their sunbathing, this is a farcical action comedy where our space cop Maris is sent after a kidnapped son of a billionaire. It is more of a character piece as this is a trope as old as time in anime, that of the hapless hero constantly in debt, her family all having restraints which they forget to keep on, leading to property damage their daughter has to pay off alongside her mother’s shopping sprees, whilst her diminutive (i.e. pixie sized) boss has debts from every spaceship they have lent her she keeps breaking or letting get destroyed. Maris is sympathetic, even if her fantasies of marrying the kidnap victim are less romantic but for all the money he has. She is someone forced to take other jobs on vacation because she is constantly broke, even tricking horny male customers with her good looks to actually pay for a human taxi service where she just carries them, and even in her imperfect form, she is the kind of lead you get so much sympathy from as a lovable goof. This is added to by both being ahead of her time as an ultra strong female character and also because, metaphorically, characters like this in anime even in fantasy settings cannot help but suggest their real life counterparts. More so this as the daughter and sole breadwinner to a family constantly being hassled by phone calls from her parents needing money, Maris is s single woman having to put up with debts, even with the equipment for her job that gets damaged by pure accident, and finding it sucks like if for anyone else in a less fantastic job who could have read the first ever one-shot manga.

She is of that time as well as, visibly, another influence on this story was female (joshi) professional wrestling, which was a previous job for Maris alongside the villainess making the reference explicit; stuck with a broad southern accent in the English dub like too many did, this figure of Sue is noentheless another sympathetic figure from the same planet as Maris, who for her scheming just wants to buy her own elaborate lair, a former in-ring rival to Maris who also like to get payback from previous loses likely involved in their history. This has aged like fine wine as a joke, as the legacy of women's wrestling in Japan has gained more recognition and burns brightly still decades later, but it also plays to the fact that, as another eighties franchise Dirty Pair was explicitly inspired by female wrestling too, when coming up with two female space mercenaries, Maris also shows when this spectacle in Japan was a huge pop cultural phenomenon too that was influencing other mediums too. There is a rematch in the squared circle in the climax between the two female figures central to this story, and what little we get here from Studio Pierrot is clearly them having fun. A studio with a long history in the medium, the creators were indulging here in the positive way like so many of these one-shot productions, getting in references like to Star Wars characters in the background you would not be allowed to get away with in later decades, due to the stricter copyright practices that would come in, to the end credits having faked outtakes, all of Maris and other characters tripping, getting injured or even blown up. As a one-off OVA, sadly, you cannot go further than this in speculating where this could go with the central character, and in this case, there is also the knowledge Rumiko Takahashi only wrote and drew one single manga story for this, not a vast volume of chapters. As with so many of these titles we could have gotten a longer OVA series if not a TV series, only with the knowledge that the material this adapts was not as long either to consider, there is enough to admire, but it leads to feeling like a taster to a work you can only imagine the vaster adventures of.

#252: Mugen Shinshi - Bōken Katsugeki Hen (1987)

 

a.k.a Dream Dimension Gentleman

Studio: Gallop / JVCKenwood Victor Entertainment

Director: Hatsuki Tsuji

Screenplay: Izô Hashimoto

Based on the manga by Yosuke Takahashi

Voice Cast: Keiko Toda as Mamiya Mugen; Hiroko Emori as Atsuko "Akko" Fukune; Banjou Ginga as Alucard; Ichirō Nagai as Dr. Jutarō Tomino; Jouji Yanami as Doctor Lao; Junpei Takiguchi as Inspector Edogawa; Kouji Totani as Koho

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Among the many ultra obscure straight-to-video titles from the eighties, Mugen Shinshi is a distinct one I wish would have been a longer franchise, even if at first you are caught off-guard by the protagonist, a young man named Mamiya Mugen, a detective who when we are introduced to him looks like a kid but is a good sharpshooter practicing in his office. Without time to breathe, a fifty or so minute production, a young woman who we will learn is an exotic dancer runs in on him and his servant Alardo/Alucard, in the midst of being pursued by Egyptian crocodile headed behemoths.

This, the only adaptation in anime, is sadly a really tantalizing image of the source material of Yosuke Takahashi. The art style is a cartoonish style close to “chibi” in how, a style usually meant to depict tiny and cute figures in anime/manga, the cast includes a lot of fresh faced and young figures despite being clearly adults, but this is a work of a prolific pulp and horror manga author. He is capable of creating grotesque sounding (and looking) work like Man Eater (1997), a horror short story collection, but here with Mugen Shinshi, he was clearly tapping into Japan’s history of mystery story telling, especially clear as the comedic side character, a bumbling detective for the police, is named Inspector Edogawa. He is named after the legendary author Edogawa Ranpo who, whilst known for creepy and twisted tales like “The Human Chair”, was also writing detective stories for adults and children. Mamiya Mugen could have easily found himself a detective character in the centre of The Black Lizard (1934), a tale in which a mysterious femme fatale kidnapping women and turning them into statues to preserve their beauty, which sets the tone for this adaptation perfectly even if at times, like a plane versus hot air blimp battle with dynamite, you can even see a touch of early Hayao Miyazaki in the tone too.

Mugen himself is in a pretty diabolical tale of his own, the tone set in how this is also set in the Showa era after 1926, where the exotic dancer Atsuko Fukune, a key character in the manga, is one of six women of notability to be kidnapped and sacrificed in a melding of Egyptian occultism and science, all to resurrect the secret underground leader of Japan. The production is a one off, but it would have been a perfect pilot to a larger work with enough characters to work from, not only with Edogawa, but Atsuko, who come off as the antagonistic love-hate love interesting to Mugen, and Alardo as I had him in the subtitles, the giant manservant who in the manga is Alucard, a vampire who we see here is a gentle man who yet, when needs to, can turn into his more monstrous form for subhuman strength. Its heightened, slapstick tone is also, with all the humour, fun to experience; even the villains behind the kidnapping of women of all fields of talent, one and his bumbling assistant, are as put upon especially when their staff have gone on strike for having to look after the kidnap victims for too long. It is a shame we only have this, as right away, this could have been an extended episode pilot for a very good series, or an OVA one which had the world of possibilities to it. There is intrigue with Mugen as a very good detective, even able to disguise himself as one of the female kidnap victims, who has quests can vary between the supernatural and world politics, as here you have the German, the French, the British and even Japanese armies staging a blow for blow gun battle in a pyramid over this arcane resurrection secret eventually. The horror is also there too in touches like the crocodile headed thugs. Sadly this never got more than this, adapting one of the many different retellings of the characters in manga form by his creator, and we never got it in the West either, one resurrected through the power of the internet and fan archiving for a secret gem.

#247: Makura no Danshi (2015)

 

Studio: feel., Assez Finaud Fabric

Director: Sayo Aoi

Screenplay: Ayumi Sekine and Yuniko Ayana

Voice Cast: Natsuki Hanae as Merry; Ayumu Murase as Hareto Enokawa; Daisuke Kishio as Yonaga Sagiri; Daisuke Namikawa as Sōsuke Tanaka; Kousuke Toriumi as Shirusu Mochizuki; Nobunaga Shimazaki as Nao Sasayama; Shinnosuke Tachibana as Yayoi Sagiri; Sora Takahata as Eiji Kijinami; Toshiyuki Morikawa as Yūichirō Iida; Yoshimasa Hosoya as Kanade Hanamine; Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Yū Maiki; Yuichiro Umehara as Ryūshi Theodore Emori

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Your butt gets tense...

Using that quote because I am incredibly juvenile, I was hoping to come into Makura no Danshi as a curiosity, not like any anime I have yet encountered, and with a significant change of pace in terms of its gaze being entirely on men as attractive figures which I deliberately wished to sort out. Even as not the target audience as a heterosexual man, this was a deliberate choice to place myself into the position of another audience, apt as when I get into this mini-series, it is entirely from first person. Sadly I have to damn this micro-series, twelve episodes and four minutes each, for one episode which is incredibly insidious and undefendable, and honestly, and as an anime series I had heard of as it appeared on lists of one of the strangest ever made, I also felt disappointed with the rest of the episodes as it completely misses the intended goal.

Broadcast summer 2015 originally before Crunchyroll brought it to the West on their streaming service, Makura no Danshi has a very idiosyncratic structure. Each episode presents a new male character who directly talks to the viewer, helping them to sleep in the end. Until one of the later episodes, the gender of you the viewer is never mentioned, only making the faceless protagonist female in that later episode, opening up an entire spectrum of perspectives for this show. The unfortunate episode undercuts this, but the point is that whether it is a male librarian to the slightly dim-witted hunk in school, you are to crush on this representations of archetypes animated and voiced by male actors. The title translates to "Pillow Boys", the idea of men who help one to sleep just by talking to them or as you never hear your own dialogue, just one half of a conversation, them talking to you. There is clearly a fetishishtic side to this, but is also something which in itself here is not a bad thing at all as a concept even with that attractive allure of these characters, especially as the opening credits are more explicit then the show itself in having some of these characters, drawn with abs of pure steel, with their shirts almost dissolved off in a dishevelled sexy look. This premise in a form already existed as well as a Japanese live action drama series Shima Shima (2011), in which a business ran by a divorced woman sent handsome men to help female customers sleep, sending them over for the night not as sex workers but a form of emotional conform for those suffering from sleeping issues.

The anime itself is very idiosyncratic as, with mentioned, the other character is you the viewer, and most of the conversations are half one communicating to the viewer from the first person. The anime, in one of its flaws structurally, does break this continuity for no particular reason, which adds to the strangeness of the premise but does undercut the illusion. In terms of the "boys" themselves, they follow archetypes, be it the intellectual one, to the miscreant outsider who broads on the roof of the school like a cat who is unaware he is now human. There is also unintentional creepiness in the flower arranging twins. Their episode is an accidental case of creepiness in which their playfulness, including the game of find the flower in their clothes, feels less erotic and more the viewer trapped about to be killed. Also, it is about here we get to the contentious episode, the one which frankly as a viewer makes me wary to return to the series. That is Episode 7, which is about Hareto Enokawa, who is a five year old boy. It is creepy, even though the dialogue is the equivalent of having to babysit the son of someone you know, obsessed with a sentai show and the pair of you feeling tired as he wears you out as your charge, but in context, when these characters are meant to be fantasies, this is an alarm bell moment. Considering the point of each is that these are meant to represent various forms of guy of interest, it raises uncomfortable questions, even if accidentally distorting something innocence, of what the target viewer for this episode takes from this kid. It is a terrible creative decision for the studio feel. and Assez Finaud Fabric to have made as, yes, whilst others are teenagers, which is just as dubious, this in itself is the kind of thing even with the cheery context which has uncomfortable implications whether a pure misguided decision or intentional, which would be even worse to consider.

The work as well is missing a lot of potential. This is a curious premise, notwithstanding that episode I feel comfortable bringing up, but one which is missing that one touch to make it something far more rewarding. None of these pillow boys barring one ever stand out, the one who does managing in less than four minutes to show you could have done a whole series about him, set in his setting, and still keep the first person perspective where you the viewer are interacting with him. That being the one old guy, Yūichirō Iida, proudly calling himself the creepy one despite being the perfect dad fantasy figure, the oden food stall man who drinks on the job, reads shoujo manga for inspiration (shoujo meaning targeted for girls), shows off his appendicitis scar like a fight wound, and admits his body is breaking down despite looking (even as a drawn character voiced and animated) like the ultimate fantasy of the bumpkin some anime fans (of both genders) would want to sweep off them off their feet. The dialogue in this episode is actually funny, and I give full credit to their voice actor for the episode too, voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa, who at even this show was a veteran of the industry. He is also a veteran for the video game industry, and among the characters gamers will see as iconic he has voiced, anyone who has a passing interest in the legacy of Final Fantasy 7 (1997), in its tie-ins in animation and other games, will have heard Morikawa as Sephiroth, one of the whole Final Fantasy franchise's most iconic characters. In terms of how a seiyuu can make one appreciate even a show that is dubious and/or not great for their commitment, Morikawa in less than four minutes provided a memorable episode in what is, frankly, a weird curiosity which does not really get the potential of this show. As mentioned in this paragraph, imagining if this entire show as about the relationship between the unseen protagonist, you with possible narcolepsy, and the booze loving oden food stall man is an acquired taste not all viewers would like, but would have been a compellingly odd and enticing title if it had been pulled off. Even if they had made a show about a variety of "pillow boys" but had extended it out to multiple episodes with a few, and Toshiyuki Morikawa and this character were kept, we could have still gotten a good show regardless of its purpose and the target audience if the production focused on both a sleep aid but one disguising a set of character dramas.

Makura no Danshi even ends on a strange note with the first pillow boy bookending the show, the one behind the quote starting this review in his awkwardness, seemingly able to change ages and seemingly a sheep plush on your bed you imagined was a cute boy. This type of anime I admit fascinates me, when it is not just a narrative work but, with plot or not, it presents itself as deeply unconventional or with a purpose you rarely find in Western animation, in this case a sleep aid which is also depicts the various fantasies of men to gaze at as they talk to you. Unfortunately, one of these episodes means that I really cannot really recommend this, as it will be as creepy for many viewers as it was for me. Ultimately, as well, this is not a great anime too, a low budgeted affair which, even for its premise, even in terms of breaking its own cardinal rule of being entirely from first person, does not fully take advantage of its form and minimal production value to be something memorably quirky or a good sleep aid. It stays as a curiosity, from what I would call the "Crunchyroll era" of strange anime which you only get nowadays, when once it would have been fan made subbed releases, that only becomes available through that streaming service and others needing content. Stuff like this, especially these micro-series, are fascinating for what they are, even if as in this case, they are not always going to be great and even miss potential.

#221: Mawaru Penguindrum (2011)

 

Studio: Brain's Base

Director: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Shōko Nakamura

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

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Contains some plot spoilers]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#202: Maryuu Senki (1987-89)

Director: Hiroaki Oogami

Screenplay: Hiroaki Oogami, Junichi Watanabe and Noboru Aikawa

Voice Cast: Tesshō Genda as Kyōichi Hiyū; Chikao Ohtsuka as Gendō; Katsuji Mori as Mukuri; Rumiko Ukai as Tamaki; Ryōsuke Kaizu as Ryōra; Sakiko Tamagawa as Shiho Murase; Shūichi Ikeda as Miki Chiyoe; Toshihiko Seki as Kinshū

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Another obscure anime OVA, in this case interesting from the get-go that the manga came afterwards rather than this title being adapted from a source text. From AIC (Anime International Company), the company was prolific even into the 2000s for the straight-to-video market alongside adapting the likes of Ah My Goddess in various formats, from the notorious Genocyber (1994) for video to Amagami SS (2010) for television, a visual novel adaptation where the various paths, depending on which girl the male lead dates, turns into an entirely different narrative in a quasi-form of interconnecting anthology. This is a very eclectic and prolific company, so naturally there would be obscure titles in their catalogue like Maryuu Senki. There is an added aspect, however, that this is also a Bandai Visual anime too, as AIC are credited to episode 1, whilst the defunct subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings, which dealt with animation and film, worked on episodes two and three. There is, ahead of time, a noticeable sense of the first episode could have ended as an abrupt (if conclusive) finale, but thankfully, the sense of a disjointed nature to the narrative is never felt between the episodes. Only the episode preview at the end of episode one for a version which never happened suggests anything happened. It does paint a much seedier and potentially questionable proposed sequel, with the female lead Shiho in a sexually threatened scene with the main villain, that thankfully never happened, stil a lurid anime in the end but one of a different taste and only that preview suggesting there was a lurch from what was planned.

With some very creepy music to start the first episode, traditional Japanese instruments used through the three episodes, it turns into something more compelling than grot. The opening sequence does set up this era of hyper-adult content in anime - two drunk women walk under an underpass only for one to be tempted to go through a secret door, led to become a sacrifice to a cult called the Spirit Isle. They intend to kill the other women with their group of ninja whilst the sacrifice encounters the first slice of ero-guro of the anime, where the shrine maiden-like figure the main villain Miki has with him turns into a sexually provocative body horror monstrosity. Thankfully, the other woman survives, introducing us to Gendō, an older Buddhist monk whose resourcefulness includes even beating an entire group of ninja through (actual) drunken martial arts. His protégée, and adoptive heir, found abandoned on his temple's doorstep in the back-story, is the main protagonist Kyōichi. He will become part of the four figures representing the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations, a real piece of Chinese mythology of the four beings who guard the cardinal directions, the compass points of North, South, East and West.

Kyōichi is the "White Tiger" of the West, with Gendō the "Black Turtle" of the North. The main villain Miki is the "Green Dragon" of the East, wishing to acquire immortal power, in a war between him and Kyōichi that is longer than Kyōichi has presumed, by marrying and taking the soul of Shiho, the love interest of Kyōichi who represents the "Vermillion Bird" of the South. That even Chinese mythology and ideas enter anime and manga a lot, in mind to the influences Chinese culture have had in Japanese culture such as religion, it has always been impressive and compelling, even in these hyper violent and provocative titles, you have these idiosyncratic concepts be used. The OVA does not really delve into mythology, [Spoiler] though it is revealed to be a battle between the leads which has happened over lifetimes, emphasising Buddhism and Eastern religions' influence even in this type of anime [Spoilers], instead a horror-action narrative where in place of suspense there is a lot of blood spilt, a lot of combat scenes with ninjas, and a lot of horror and even body horror tropes, as Miki has a twisted habit of using the dead as mutated figures, such as what horrifically happens to Shiho mother in the first episode, or employing members of his group who transmogrify into tentacles and jawed monsters. This does even do something arguably progressive in even having female monsters, when even a more known and notorious title like Urotsukidôji is problematic for always victimising its female characters and never letting them being the monsters; you can argue admittedly, whilst transgressive, moments like a female ninja who turns into the tentacled grey skin creature, though her sensual and feminine monstrosity itself can be artistically provocative, was as much likely to try to sell sex to a target audience in really brazen ways, especially with the strategically torn off top.

The only real disappointment with anime like this is that the male leads, here the stoic adult lead, are the least interesting aspect, as is with anime in later decades with teenager male protagonists, and that Shiho is merely a damsel in distress, a shame as she is of the four constellation beings and has pyrokinetic abilities, something you could have exploited in a really interest way even if her plot still involves Miki wanting to literally take her body and soul in union. Beyond this, Maryuu Senki was entertaining, a surprise in that this more than likely never got a Western release in the old days on VHS in the United States let alone Manga Entertainment in the United Kingdom, the kind of title they would have licensed when selling anime as for grownups. Certainly, among these horror based anime of the era, the tropes are there. The obsession with colours like purple, reds and blues is here, the aesthetic in general fascinating and rewarding, an art style throughout that occasionally breaks out into something beautiful. Episode three, for example, opens with a scene with Miki and his new lead ninja, the scene clearly done with mostly a black base, with the characters and parts of the darkened interior environment depicted, among the really artistically minded moments in even this pulpy genre work.

Some of this show could have been fleshed out further, even if you had left it in the ninety minute narrative film it effectively is, less in terms of how the production abruptly changed over time between switching animation studios, more taking advantage of what transpires. Such as, in the abrupt change of animation studio for the second episode, Kyōichi when presumed dead but is instead found almost more animal than man, his ability literally a supernatural super tiger who, when not punching people with ghostly tiger heads, becomes a superhuman monster man who can rip heads off, dangerous to anyone regardless of moral compass. Even the trope, which was clearly used to sell these titles, of sexual occultism is a fascinating idea in that, with anime happily tackling the erotic as much as the grotesque, it would be fascinating to see more ero-guro depicted in pop culture.

The luridness here thankfully stays closer to a distinct artistry than other titles from this era, especially with the talents of the production, and in terms of pure pulp entertainment, you have a lot to work with. The narrative in episode two arguably takes a generic first episode, even if it has interesting body horror already, and bring into it more narrative tropes for the better, which is notable because Noboru "Shō" Aikawa wrote the second episode, a veteran who is acclaimed in the modern for anime screenwriting but in this era was cutting his teeth on notorious but memorable transgressive anime of the time. Whatever the case, Maryuu Senki plays up its action orientated and playful nature much more, even introducing two, even dorky, younger monks, best friends, who are just as capable of taking on monstrosities and even outright zombies on the heroes' side and, in their little screen time, become characters to care for even if they talk too much for their own good.

In mind to the use of mythology, it is cool to see that in a pulp anime like this, between them and Gendō, Buddhist monks are able to be capable and powerful figures that are also affable. That the lead is so conventional, to the point he even starts to rock black shades and tank top, is a shame, but a sense of playfulness is to be found throughout to compensate for the tropes which are generic from this era of anime. Even to the point that, because of the supernatural logic, you can have a scene I have rarely seen, someone passing the hero his severed arm back when they are introduced into a scene, stands out because eventually this particular example of anime horror of the time, whilst still violent and lurid, had people on staff enjoying themselves with a sense of playfulness.

This turns out to be a surprise, with a sense the staff wanted to take some risks too as, without spoiling Maryuu Senki without warning, this does have a bleak and bittersweet ending. [Major Spoiler] Literally everyone dies, which is haunting in how, for a pulpy story which is more entertaining than horrifying, it ends with the endless reincarnations of these characters likely to continue when Shiho, finally showing more than being a victim, steps in when already losing her soul to self immolate the villain, a gut punch end credits scene to finish. [Major Spoilers End] Again, it is surprising how obscure this is when, even with a cheesy Manga Entertainment dub, this would have easily sold in the heyday of titles being imported to the West initially. The only reason why this likely is obscure is simply that so many OVA titles were being made at the time this was missed - whilst it is not perfect, Maryuu Senki was definitely a surprise in a positive way that could have appreciated that early era audience.