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]

The Guyver (1991)

 

Director(s): Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George

Screenplay: Jon Purdy

Based on the manga by Yoshiki Takaya

Cast: Jack Armstrong as Sean Barker/The Guyver; Vivian Wu as Mizky Segawa; Mark Hamill as Max Reed; David Gale as Fulton Balcus; Michael Berryman as Lisker; Jimmie Walker as Striker

Bonus Review

 

Note: The version of The Guyver (1991) watched is the director's cut, which involved a flashy editing technique added to cut between scenes, but also visibly removing shots of violence which is brought up in the review.

This review will also be re-posted at my other blog Cinema of the Abstract for a little cross-promotion between them. Please take a look at a wide selection of reviews I do there as well.

 

Yoshiki Takaya's manga The Guyver was at one point one of the first Japanese manga and anime franchises to transition over to the West, and one of my earliest memories as a child to the idea of "manga" or "anime" involved the 1991 film itself, a small news article about The Guyver with the exceptionally deceiving poster of co-star Mark Hamill's face against one-half of the iconic Guyver helmet. In Japan itself, Yoshiki Takaya's manga started in 1985 and is still going thirty plus years on through multiple magazines, with two anime adaptations for straight-to-video, 1986 and 1989, and one I grew up with getting into anime, a television series between 2005 to 2006 which was an attempt rejuvenate the franchise. The OVAs, specifically the 1989 multi-episode one, gained an infamy when released in the West for its violence, whilst the TV series was undermined by not having ultra-violence that made the anime notorious, despite the late anime distributor ADV Films selling the series off this infamy, and that it does not have an actual ending. In the West, two live action films were made, one produced by Brian Yuzna with Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George making their directorial debuts, the sequel three years later with Steve Wang on his own in the director's chair and taking a drastically different direction in tone. Together they are curiosities.

Made as a Japanese co-production, Yuzna himself is a man I admire. Connected to Stuart Gordon, the director famous for Re-Animator (1985), Yuzna himself as a filmmaker has a fascinating series of strange and imaginative horror films, some involving Screaming Mad George, birth name Joji Tani, a practical effects designer from Japan whose reputation when he moved to the United States and worked in cinema have had a lasting legacy. Steve Wang, a Taiwanese makeup artist and creature designer who emigrated to the USA as a child, would comes into the directorial chair in his small filmography here as a co-director, and especially with a film called Drive (1997), gained himself cult recognition.

The Guyver, as the 1991 film, is however a strange mess. The plot is from the source - an evil corporation called Chronos are after an alien bio-armour, the titular Guyver. Set in the United States, a young man named Sean Barker (Jack Armstrong) finds the Guyver and is infected by it, creating living armour which grows from his body when he needs it. The Guyver is a tokusatsu influenced production, like an ultra-violent Power Rangers in the image most have of it, as Chronos has its members and test victims used in experiments where they turn into horrifying monsters. This is contrasted by the weapons the Guyver has, with its arm blades to a chest laser beam, designed to slice them the pieces.

Yuzna's Japan-US co-production decided not to follow his wheelhouse of gore and elaborate special effects in films like Society (1989) or Bride of Re-Animator (1990), but only have the special effects...at least at times. The director's cut, the more readily available version, has scenes of gore cut, but even the film without these missing fragments is incredibly goofy at times, creating a contradiction of a film you could not give to a child without causing potential nightmares, at least its most lasting moments, but other times has incredibly silly humour. The first Guyver film, the more easy to find, is a peculiar thing with its tendrils connected to Stuart Gordon and Yuzna, with the evil Chronos Corporation headed by leader Fulton Balcus, played by David Gale who is famous for Re-Animator. Balcus wants the Guyver bio-armour and sends "Zoanoids", humans who can turn into humanoid monsters, after Sean Barker.

The one success, the only success, in terms of consistency is the practical effects. Screaming Mad George is legendary and notorious for his work, from the human cockroach sequence from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) to the "Shunting" scene from Society, visceral body horror which even if you can see the seams is so nightmarish and gooey that it borders surrealism. Moments show this in The Guyver, seeing him and everyone in the practical effect department having a field day with the premise. Whether it is horror film veteran Michael Berryman and various actors turning into various humanoid beasts or the spectacular Guyver armour itself, a warrior with cyberpunk and insect-like traits, they are all applaudable. It is, however, a film struggling with a premise, possible in anime and manga, which has an apocalyptic tone on a large scale, and also requires martial arts to pull off even fights between men in rubber suits. Guyver: Dark Hero will try to overcome this, to greater success, but this prequel struggles.

It is a really strange film, not in surrealism, but how it ended up as it did. Mark Hamill, the legendary Star Wars actor a year before he took on the voice of The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, creating for him a career flourish as iconic as Luke Skywalker, does stand out, playing a cop on the edge trying to get the scope on the Chronos Corporation, with a sense of grandeur to his appearance. The late David Gale steals scenes with his bizarre intonations and wall chewing, even enraged by burning toast as he is by the incompetence of his minion. Vivian Wu, as the female love interest, is visibly struggling with her dialogue and not helped in the slightest by a wet, one dimensional female character she has. Alongside the fact she is cast as a Japanese character, which is dubious for her as it is as casting, she is a really strange inclusion as between Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), a huge film in his later career which was her onscreen debut, and Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book (1996), Wu, a Chinese actress whose career is mostly in dramas in the West and China, found herself in this film sandwiched between a Bernardo Bertolucci film and Greenaway which is a curious tangent. Even her appearance in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) at least makes sense as a second sequel to a franchise which was huge at the time and whose first feature film was a box office success.

Jack Armstrong as the hero sadly struggles out of the whole cast, in a role that, to be brutally honest, was made an a absolute charisma vacuum even by the standards of a pulp story that emphasises practical effects first, which does not help him out at all. These stories, and this is something I think of in terms of the Guyver television anime, is structured around protagonists, male leads, who are usually bland, especially in many ultra-violent anime too where the worlds and context around them are more meaningful. More so as he is put against Hamill, the advertising cynically suggesting a key Star Wars figure as the lead in some posters, as well as against Michael Berryman as the main henchmen, one of the most visually striking figure in cult cinema. Even Spice Williams, a prominent stunt actress who stands out physically here with Berryman as a physically imposing female henchwoman, gets to play out a more memorable and playful romance with Berryman in one of the few jokes of the film which do work.

Despite Steve Wang's later work such as with the Guyver sequel and Drive (1997), with fight choreography from the tokusatsu school, and of an incredibly high quality in terms of fighting and stunt work, the fights here look stilted and suffocated by the presentation, lacking what the sequel did. In sacrificing some of the practical effects in terms of beast designs in favour of men in rubber monster suits, likely injuring themselves in painful stunts but bringing an exhilarating air of chaos to the proceedings, that sequel as we get to found a kineticism which works. The result beforehand in the prequel is as stiff. More surprising is the lack of scale even by the standards of a small budget genre film, feeling like only a couple of rooms and some exterior shots were used, the script as swift in getting to its end without any sense of dramatic conflict being found.

The final issue, ultimately the creative decision which maims the film fatally at many times throughout itself, is deciding to play most of the film as a comedy, coming clearer to me now as a result of having to work around the limitations. Even if it worked on other Brian Yuzna productions like Re-Animator, the humour in those cases was incredibly grim even if there was slapstick. This has more broad, goofier with characters being buffoons, and one of the more contentious running gags being the character of Striker. Jimmie Walker, playing him, is a prolific comedian and actor especially in television, all the way back into the seventies with shows like Good Times (1974–1979), a spin-off of a series called Maude which is significant in terms of an American sitcom from that time period about an African-American family. I can see Walker's completely natural charisma here, though when he suddenly indulgences in some early nineties cheesy rap, you realise with The Guyver how tonally this is not an adaptation of Yoshiki Takaya's manga. His fish-monster character is a memorable costume, and he has one good gag of accidentally wandering on a cheap horror film scene with a Linnea Quigley cameo, but his character in general has mostly cringe inducing humour from Striker as a gag character, more an issue as his character in general and especially how his monster version looks has uncomfortable stereotyping that cannot be ignored.

This version of the concept does not really work with its material at all, and it is telling that, with a Director's Cut cutting out violence, there is a misinterpretation of the source material that undercuts it. There are moments you could not show children, and yet they are actually some of the most striking moments. Taken from the source, and recreated in the TV- series, is that the giant orb in the centre of the Guyver's head is its weakness, leading to the death of the lead and an absolutely memorable sequence of body-horror resurrection. Even if it is played for goofiness, with a knock-off Jaws theme riff, that sequence has a morbid grace, and has some humour which actually works beforehand, mainly the fact that Yuzna alumni Jeffrey Combs, of Re-Animator, makes a cameo chewing the scenery and is involved as a weird goat creature by that point. Famously [Spoiler Warning] this is the film where Luke Skywalker gets painfully turned, with Hamill submerged in practical effects latex, into a cockroach-locust hybrid, a moment that if it had been in another production would haveve been up there in Yuzna and Screaming Mad George's filmographies as being iconic. Here, the film around it does not live up to what, in between both films, is the best sequence of these American adaptations, a scene which is actually horrifying, actually tragic and adult, and is one of Screaming Mad George and the prosthetic team's best moments on this film. It is a scene which has clearly stayed with George as, alongside the woman turning into a cockroach in an Elm Street sequel, he is referring to this idea with Paranoiascape (1998), an experimental pinball game he worked on exclusively for the Japanese Playstation One market that explicitly references this as much as Society in some of the grotesque sights within it. [Spoilers End]

The Guyver is a film so painfully bad in its humour at times that it both makes little sense tonally but loses its power in context. It feels like a cheesy American action film from this era, not in terms of when they are fun, but just the clichés, whether it is the moment with a multi-ethnic gang of clumsy hoodlums, or the humour being at the expense of Michael Berryman, rather than embracing his comic timing and imposing nature more, or that no one is taken seriously even as comic characters. Jimmie Walker is even paired up with an actor named Peter Spellos as bumbling henchmen, with Spellos having a vague Eastern European accent, in scenes that undercut the actors themselves. Peter Spellos, who can go from Jim Wynorski films like Sorority House Massacre II (1990), sometimes playing the same character of Orville Ketchum, to a career in anime voice acting for work like Naruto to Cowboy Bebop (1998), is someone with clearly a lot of charisma to try to make this material work, but The Guyver is a case of a cast of fascinating individuals, from a variety of idiosyncratic areas of pop culture, not being helped by the script and tone. From anime voice acting to Star Wars to Peter Greenaway art films to prolific American sitcoms, everyone in and behind the film camera is a fascinating figure who could bring a lot to the table, but the work onscreen from the production really does not connect together.

Ultimately, it is the emphasis on the humour especially, against the paltry production, which makes The Guyver insufferable at times even when it can be charming at other times. A Jeffrey Combs goat demon, or Vivian Wu and Mark Hamill running away from what apparently is a flea monster, like characters in a one-reel silent film comedy, are charming to see, but in mind that this is The Guyver, a tokusatsu work at heart, whether you kept the gore or not, this feels like a project which grabbed at the wrong point. This is stranger considering Brian Yuzna, even if he might have not had a taste for martial arts, had a taste for horror films which got the tone for humour and the monstrous perfectly, or his fellow producer Aki Komine, who produced a series of films with Yuzna or by himself which did attempt manga adaptations with heavier leanings on action, by it Christoph Gans' Crying Freeman adaptation from 1995, or the Fist of the North Star film from 1995 which, whether good as an adaptation or not, was an attempt to get the original violent post-apocalyptic narrative to the screen¹. Komine, with Steve Wang, would also work on Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight (2008-9), Wang's attempt to bring the legendary Kamen Rider series from Japan to American children's television, so there was a sense of Komine being interesting in the type of storytelling The Guyver did not turn into inexplicably. With these curious names involved within its production, it feels instead a sense that, together, The Guyver whilst fascinating just did not gel at all in terms of creativity.

In contrast, Guyver: Dark Hero even with its own flaws managed to be more successful, but that is a review for another day....

To Be Continued...

 

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1) That and this Fist of the North Star adaptation has the curious mix of action star Gary Daniels, Malcolm McDowell, professional wrestler Leon "Vader" White,  Costas Mandylor, Downtown Julie Brown, Chris Penn, and African-American cinema pioneer Melvin Van Peebles involved, which is a strange cast to ever get in an adaptation of a Japanese manga.

[Re-Review] Another (2012)

 

Director: Tsutomu Mizushima

Screenplay: Ryou Higaki

Based on the serial novel by Yukito Ayatsuji

Voice Actors: Atsushi Abe (as Kōichi Sakakibara); Natsumi Takamori (as Mei Misaki); Ai Nonaka (as Yukari Sakuragi); Hiroaki Hirata (as Tatsuji); Kazutomi Yamamoto (as Mochizuki); Madoka Yonezawa (as Izumi Akazawa)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

What made me wish to re-evaluate this horror anime from the early 2010s? Curiosity to be honest and an undying obsession with horror anime that means even the worst are compelling. Another is not a terrible horror work; in fact, seeing the opening credits animation was in itself a nice piece of macabre bubblegum for the eyes. Set to Kyōmu Densen ("Nightmare Contagion") by ALI PROJECT, a montage of dolls, usually being broken and disembodied, set to lyrics of a very horror themed sort of romance, and setting up for a show with a complete lack of subtlety but with style to burn. In hindsight, as we will get into, having  Tsutomu Mizushima directing the twelve episode series, including one bonus prologue episode that was straight-to-video, in itself explains some of the more infamous moments of this ghostly tale.

In 1998, high school student Kōichi Sakakibara starts late at his new school due to a deflated lung. To his surprise, there is a girl in his new class, already standing out for her mysterious nature and an eye patch, called Mei Misaki who is completely ignored by everyone else in the class even by the teacher. Like many Japanese horror tales, it revolves around a curse, specifically that Class 3-3 itself is cursed; back in 1972, a student died only for the class to pretend they were still alive, their ghostly image appearing in the graduation photo. Sadly in this case for anyone in this world this is, in the proceeding decades onwards an extra person always appears in the class list, a dead figure who can be random, whose entire existence means that if the curse is set off, leaves the students and their loved ones to likely die in violent fashions. The show holds this premise off from the viewer for a couple of the first episodes, barring that by accident, Kōichi by meeting Mei and becoming interested in her, central to a way to ward off the curse, has seemingly started the ball working for it all to get ugly.

Based on a novel published in 2009, in 2012 too there was also a live action feature adaptation of Another co-existing with the animated series. As already mentioned, it takes its time to actually explain what the rules of this story are, a slow burn to the point the first two episodes are very sedate. Not long afterwards, things get gristly with an unfortunate incident with an umbrella. Returning to Another, you have a show which is a conventional character drama, a mystery as eventually it boils down to who the dead figure in Class 3-3 is, and the horror content itself. The show is far more interesting when it is the characters trying to cope within context of the curse, even as archetypes. Kōichi is your typical quiet male protagonist, although the emphasis that usually the female characters are far more interesting is dispelled in this case by the likes of Naoya, a jockish figure who is a little dumb and cocky but kind at heart among others, and that eventually even Kōichi himself gains personality as the series goes on, a significant virtue compared to other animated series. Even in mind that a lot of this cast will be there just as meat for the grinder, there are figures to be interested in despite being cliché. In Izumi for example, the countermeasure group leader with giant red haired pigtails, even the vague colour of the tsundere in her personality, there is a female character who hides a slowly growing affection for someone through a cold and even aggressive personality, only modified here by the fact her coldness is from concern of protecting her classmates.

Then there is Mei herself who, if there ever was a character in anime who really could have been in a Tim Burton film, is this particular figure. Baring an odd detail straight out of a fantasy story or The Garden of Sinners franchise, of a doll's eye in place of her real one that can see death, this seemingly closed hearted character with pale skin and a mind firmly in an entirely different reality is both playing out to tropes to appeal to a (male) viewer yet, as someone who hates mobile phones and speaks with an incredibly distant intonation to her voice, actually manages to be the most interesting character you care for. It helps the production, with a complete lack of subtlety as mentioned, went as far as have her living with a mother at home that is also an exhibit space for macabre and realistic dolls, even down to having the episode titles named after the processes to create one. As much meant to evoke "the uncanny", a term originally coined by Ernst Jentsch but taken further by Sigmund Freud that anything which looks close to us but is not will cause discomfort, it also upon returning to the series adds a moody yet perversely twee nature to the content to go overboard with this aesthetic. Whilst a lot of the show is very conventional to the anime around this time, from the character designs to the look of the world, sprinkles of the macabre like this help considerably.

In terms of miscreants in anime, Mei is a lot more interesting than many male protagonists, and it was actually will-they-or-won't-they romance between she and Kōichi in the early episodes which became the most rewarding episodes in Another for me. The best episodes are when it is decided to also make Kōichi non-existent in Class 3-3 and ignore him, in itself which could have been a strange anime narrative by itself. This light moment, in-between the ridiculous deaths, where they bond, from a fantasy of them suddenly running around in the class and dancing, to the reality of them just being closer as a result, is something which is great especially as it means even Kōichi gains personality as a result.

Not surprisingly, the OVA Episode 0 is entirely about Mei. Never released on the British DVD release from MVM for an unknown reason, it is just a back-story episode in regards to Mei and her cousin Misaki, tragically having already died before the first episode [Spoiler Warning] especially as a later plot point reveals they are actually twin sisters, Mei having been taken in by her aunt as a surrogate daughter. [Spoiler Ends] It does not add a lot at all, and it has the absurd scene of someone dangling off a Ferris Wheel alongside sudden leukaemia as a plot point, but it is appropriate to say she become the figurehead of the series and the franchise, the figure adorning the posters even of the live action adaptation. For a character who was quite cryptic and near moroseness, seeing her actually laugh was interesting for levity in this episode, especially as the one extra we got in the British release, a music video with a chibi version, feels deeply inappropriate for a character you could imagine getting on with Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice (1988) swimmingly.

But this is a horror show, not an unconventional romance of people ignored or a drama about an introspective teen girl who lives in a house full of creepy dolls. The rules for the curse does get complicated, eventually turning into both the Final Destination films, where Rube Goldberg machination transpires, and aspects which are stranger, like the fact that even if you leave the town of Yomiyama to escape it, either you perish trying or something happens in the town beforehand (like a concussion) to make sure you die outside the town. Here is where I have to bring up Tsutomu Mizushima, who started his career with very dark comedies like Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan (2005/7) and has made a name for himself for the likes of Girls und Panzer (2012-13). His stints in horror are divisive though - Blood-C (2011) is infamously, as a spin-off of Blood: The Last Vampire (2000), a misanthropic and hyper-gory production and then there is The Lost Village (2016), a bizarre mishap of a television show where in compensation for the lack of violence in that show, a lot of bizarre characterisation (hello Lovepon) and a lack of subtlety at all in the horror was shown. Another can be very gruesome in its violence, like the first involving a person tripping down stairs with a umbrella with a sharp point, eventually to the stage these scenes feel a bit cruel to these drawn characters. Others are just unintentionally comedic, even late into the final two episodes a random unknown student being crushed by a pillar which comes off as a gag.

Their hyper-bloody nature, even in mind to TV standards, and their silliness clash against the series' serious tone, especially as many could have been prevented if the students stepped in to help their classmates rather than stand there dazed. Let alone imaging the trauma many seemingly overcome with ease, even when someone in their classroom decided to just slash themselves to get the curse to continue. This is why the quiet moments are more rewarding as a result. Even the stereotypical beach episode, really an excuse for female characters to wear bikinis in anime, is a soma to appreciate here as, up to another absurd death at the end, its playfulness is rewarding as a nice episode with interesting character. As for the mystery, the final two episodes happen, where even if this has clues filtered through beforehand about whom the dead person is, it arguably cheats by including flashbacks and plot points never seen before. It is also set in a backdrop of, learning that to end the curse they have to kill the dead person, everyone suddenly goes insane in a resort building, where not only random background  students on mass are slaughtered, but even side characters we have seen in the foreground are all abruptly killed or turned insane abruptly.

This ending does have its pleasure but it does get long past the horror tropes we were introduced to, especially when it is comes to a show building slowly to its own premise in the characters having to uncover old archive materials or getting assistance from the original teacher of Class 3-3, now there as a librarian to help. The show's contrast between this slow burn and traditional horror, and the drastic escalation in the finale episodes, are strange bedfellows. [Another Major Spoiler Warning] Also the reveal of who is dead, Kōichi's aunt who is also the teacher's assistant, whilst with clues throughout that are seen from the beginning, does have to rely on flashbacks as mentioned you never had hints to, so the show even if these were actually buried in the first episodes does relay on details it was not fully hinted at. [Spoilers End] Mysteries are also less interesting to me as a whodunit as turning a premise into a guessing game only works for the first viewing, when a story should last for many retellings. A far more compelling narrative is rushed to, when a cassette tape is found that informs the students that they have to kill the dead extra person, which could have been fascinating for all the paranoia involved, and people accidentally killing classmates with the guilt that involves. That the show ends with the curse likely to happen again, as it is never the same ghosts twice, does add a neat irony even if never spoken of, but it never fully takes advantage of this.

I have softened to Another considerably since I first saw the show. It is definitely flawed, and in my fascination with Tsutomu Mizushima as a director, even if the likes of screenwriter Ryou Higaki are as responsible for the quirks, this just emphasises what peculiar and twisted things he has a tendency to reach for, even if horror to him is clearly a genre where his touch is like a square peg being violently forced into a round hole. Another is not exactly scary either, instead a curiosity with a lot to like but with many guilty pleasures to be found instead.

Re-Review: Sparrow's Hotel (2013)

Director: Tetsuji Nakamura

Based on a manga by Yuka Santō

Voice Cast: Daisuke Kishio as Misono-kun; Haruka Nagashima as Tamaki Shiokawa; Minori Chihara as Sayuri Satō; Asuka Yūki as Yū Kojō; Shūta Morishima as Sakai

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

A Cinema of the Abstract/1000 Anime Crossover

[Over a year ago I first covered this anime, to which this is deliberately an attempt to see if any of my opinions changed in the passing time. I will provide the link to the original blog review HERE for comparison. This will also be a tie-in for my other blog, Cinema of the Abstract, where a duplicate will be made available and is why it'll have a certainly different tone than usual. A link to the blog in general is to be found HERE]

First thoughts? 480p resolution, as this particularly obscure anime oddity, three minutes per episode over twelve of them, is notorious for those who know of it for its aesthetic appearance and/or the highest quality you could screen it on an anime streaming site Crunchyroll. This gets weirder as that's only the first six episodes where that aesthetic is there, one of the many peculiarities of the kind of title you'd never have gotten a release of in the West were it not for streaming, a feature of modern entertainment which has allowed, in the ability now to have anime stream soon after its premieres on Japanese television, a similar premiere online for the West. (That, hey, it probably costs less to just license than to produce DVDs for, that also meant titles of a greater variety like Sparrow's Hotel can be made available) Considering how esoteric the subject matter is, the day-to-day management of a hotel, it certainly feels odd though that is tempered by aspects of the production. The first is that it's actually an adaptation of a "4-koma" manga, which are normally gag comic strips which have pages divided up by four panels. It's not that different from a Western comic strip in structure, just to give you an idea. The other is that it happens to be a hotel that hired a beauty buxom female employee, one named Sayuri Satō who happens to also have commando combat skills and assassination abilities. But still, pretty strange especially to someone used to the better known anime titles that crossed into the mainstream.

Some have speculated this is a parody of nineties straight-to-video animation, which had a history of high quality work, when it became an industry by the mid-eighties onwards to its down spell in the 2000s, but could also scrape the bottom of the barrel. I question this, having seen many bizarre anime premises especially in these "micro-series", and with knowledge that a lot of them use a lot of low-fi and frankly crude animation, sometimes for deliberate effect but some others clearly what was available. I wouldn't be surprised that this was a sincere production that, as I'll get into, was always meant to be a sex comedy/hotel hijinks show, where one of the jokes is a smaller female character smashing her face into Satō's giant bust as if that's a new concept, but had a major change of guard or how the episodes were being made halfway through.

Start with the first episode and the show's at least an experience, as whilst the second calms down and sets the pace, the first is (at merely three minutes including beginning credits) quick, hectic as it gallops along without pausing for breath as it introduces Satō, the carefree and sweet lass who is also the ultimate killing machine in the body of a voluptuous ditzy Venus, Tamaki Shiokawa the diminutive female manager, Shiokawa her older brother who is her superior and has a creepy incestuous fixation she is disturbed by, and bellboy Misono who is at first the meek, glasses wearing male employee but has a dark despondent side. It's a chaotic mess of a pilot, but the show in general is a series of vignettes which plays off those character traits. Whether they are actually any good is to question as the show never transitions further from just its surface. Yes, it is a curious subplot about Tamaki being freaked out by her older brother's advances (cough), and whilst even played out of humour that's a transgressive plot line to have, it never thankfully crosses into poor taste. Really, the only character who gets a lot of coverage is Satō, the figure on the manga covers who is significantly voiced by Minori Chihara, a singer who just happens to also play a side character, but still one of the main voice cast, of the huge franchise The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya before Sparrow's Hotel.

It doesn't try to hide Satō as a figure of cheesecake fan service. She openly declares, creating the second episode title, that her best assists are her breasts and assassination skills to Tamaki, which leads to a dichotomy that is reoccurring in anime of voluptuous female characters who are nonetheless insanely powerful and/or violent. Is it demeaning or empowering to have these kinds of female characters who are very sexual but strong? It frankly comes off as a kink at times and there are definitely times where it is just a failure and proves sexist when the material's dreadful. Yet there is also the double standard danger of the stereotypical picture of femininity being negative being itself an insult, really the bigger concern with these kinds of characters is whether they are just for sex appeal or if they're going to have some emotion or characterisation to them. Even the case of Satō being very simple and at times naive isn't necessarily something that could be used as a negative characterisation if done properly. If anything, in a better and more fleshed out work, we could've had a lot to work on as already in this there is plenty of subversive material already there to mind - of a sedate, kind hearted soul who can yet can power lift a whole bed by herself, buys gym equipment the same way Tamaki does for handbags, and always carries kunai (Japanese throwing knives) under the skirt, with the ability to use them in an improvised game of William Tell at the company trip to a cherry blossom festival in the park.

The subject of the series is also to be asked about as, honestly, for what is a unique twist; sadly, the show never had enough time to run with its premise of hotel management further. Manga particularly has a heritage of the least expected subjects being covered in stories, and in what little we get here, Sparrow's Hotel had so much to mine here too. A tale in which rowdy people outside are an issue, booking crowds for a nearby anime/manga convention is stressful, or where one has to send off Satō to subdue a drunk and irate customer by knocking him out with a single chop. If it'd been a full length series, it could've easily become worse, but it could've also been actually more interesting and funny to see an anime set in hotel management, as seen in a later episode where a violent storm outside provides a huge swath of customers to the benefit of the empty hotel. As it stands, the show's too short for this, even if it is still to be found in slithers.

Beyond that the episodes' are so short, it's both difficult to analyze them but that in itself is a critique - that for humour, it's not the best but with some amusement, but as mentioned it never fully invests in its premise. There is an additional character of Yū Kojō, a hotel inspector whose attempts to keep that are secret are useless, but a lot of the show never drastically changes for the first half. Really, the moment where things get really interesting is with the art style. The first half follows the source manga in style but is infamous, for those who know of it, for its brash colours and crude character designs, a garishness matched by the manic pace that is compelling in a way but arguably limits the show's potential by being a one note mood. The transition, befittingly set against the episode where renovations lead to a new bathing area being created in the hotel, and the episodes having end credits instead of opening ones, is a shock.

Muted colours, softer character designs, and frankly a leap in budget or craft as the animation becomes more fluid and more ambitious even in the show's comedic double takes and gags; I forgot how impactful it was, the change absolutely distinct and looking like an entirely different adaptation of the same material. There is even a deliberately attempt as well to push the fan service, such as the end credits being a nude Satō sleeping surrounding by underwear and kunai on the bedspread. (Make of that what you will). It however even includes the cast, including Misono, being dressed in cute animal costumes in the mid-episode eye-catches that were added for the later episodes. It doesn't necessarily add more - alongside Kojō returning, there's a possibly American older male fighter named Billy who locks eyes on Satō as his rival, the show teasing the pair fighting continually. A lot of the show is still based on the initial premise mind - your main female staff member a killing machine, the manager is still creeped out by her older brother's thoughts of her, Misono is despondent. It doesn't particularly change a lot and that's honestly the real issue for Sparrow's Hotel even if the show was entertainment. It thankfully did change the aesthetic complelely thought, which is arguably why I feel those episodes pass the halfway mark are of a higher quality.

Personally, the fact I've rewatched Sparrow's Hotel shows it has had a lasting mark even an odd curiosity. The micro series as a concept is fascinating - allowing for new talent, odd premises like this can allow for a lot of creativity and opportunity just for strange content. The issue is really how slight the micro-series is, at literally under thirty minutes or so here with Sparrow's Hotel never pushing to a further level than it probably should've. I admit as much of the incentive to re-watch the show was how short it is altogether, but I have as I realise a fascination with these micro-series in general that isn't exactly a guilty pleasure, but a love directly from the gut. That doesn't mean I won't be honest mind.

Is it abstract or strange though? Strange definitely, but not as strange as it potentially could've been, one of the greater ironies beyond Japanese animation that if you play something off as comedy, unless you fully distort the structure or push yourself, it makes an odd premise more normal as a result. And as much as the three minute episode length a surprise, just in terms of how much storytelling you can try to tell with minimal time, Sparrow's Hotel isn't exactly unconventional. In fact it could've done with a lot more preciseness, more weirdness and probably less fan service, unless it was going to be more positive for the main character's depiction, and I might've had a little gem on my hands. Cause I don't know about you the reader, but a thirteen or twenty four episode normal length comedy show about the banalities about running a hotel, if pushed further even with these same characters, would be an utterly peculiar and interesting experience to sit through.

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