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]

#276: Venus Wars (1989)

 

Studio: Kugatsusha

Director: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Screenplay: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yūichi Sasamoto

Based on a manga by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Voice Cast: Katsuhide Uekusa as Hiroki Senō, Eriko Hara as Susan Sommers, Gorō Naya as Gary, Hōchū Ohtsuka as Will Harris, Kaneto Shiozawa as Gen. Gerhard Donner, Shūichi Ikeda as Lt. Geoffrey Kurtz, Yūko Mizutani as Maggie (Margot Nakamoto), Yūko Sasaki as Miranda Cocker

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

You’re more dangerous than the tank.

Until 2015, director/animator/manga author/character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko retired from animation after Venus Wars. For a long time, this was his last directorial work, an acclaimed figure who is important for numerous positions in the seventies and eighties era of anime, including his involvement for the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series in 1979. Admittedly, weirdly, despite his directorial career being straight-to-video and theatrical films that would have been seen as easier to sell at a time when TV series were not, we in Britain never get his work with great ease beyond Venus Wars itself. I can proudly say, as evidence of this, my first viewing of Venus Wars, despite being truly of the DVD generation of anime fans of the 2000s, was a Manga Entertainment videotape found in a charity shop, viewed on my grandmother old VHS player, with the stickers and catalogue of their titles all intact inside the plastic case.

This is a case of a small narrative within larger science fiction world building, how in the past established in opening narrative, an ice asteroid hit the planet Venus, changing its atmosphere into one which could make the planet habitable by Earthlings. Unfortunately, whilst civilization has developed, and in a funny touch in a background detail, is a far flung future where the musical The Wiz is still popular and performed, the habit of humanity for war is still here, as the story itself is set between a civil war between those for Ishtar and those of Aphrodita. In a world tense enough that Earth reporter Susan Sommers is given a gun alongside her camera by her contact when she reaches the planet, she and a team of battlebike racers, a motley group of punks with our headstrong lead Hiro, will find themselves dragged into total war when the Aprodita city capital of Io is taken over by Ishtarian forces entirely.

The eighties’ last year, including the weight of eighties anime production, is seen in all its splendor here alongside the synth driven J-pop, a film whose view of war really, sadly, is still relevant as the leads are forced into the front line as bystanders, the beauties of the metropolis like the shopping mall not safe from the ravages of war, and gunfights break out in the streets as Ishtar take over Io but loyal civilians are fighting to regain control. There is some humour, even Andrew the cat, the pet of Hiro’s love interest Maggie who is always hungry, especially when she forgets to get him cat food, and tries to give him a raw fish and a slice of bread in his dish, but even that joke is set in the context of her having to get shopping in a place now with curfews by the invading leaders. This is very serious action sci-fi as the battle bike team, when they decide to blow up an Ishtarian tank for revenge for parking on their battle bike stadium, kick off their involvement in the rebellion against the occupying forces as a result of this decision. Barring their one female badass named Miranda, they are guys out of their depth in a real war even if the older mechanic they are helped by is smuggling real firearms in the midst of this, Hiro himself among them a brash hothead who is stuck in the midst of this with no sense of duty until he sees the full issue of his home city being taken over.

Alongside one homophobic bit, which is out of nowhere and leaves a sour taste to a solid film, the real issue many might have is Hiro may be unlikable. He is quite angry and hostile for the sake of it most of the film, an arrogant figure even when he is entirely out of his depth, and when Susan the reporter and the battle bike team step back in the narrative, he is the figure meant to be followed as he will end up in the rebel forces hiding in the desert, forced to serve against his will initially until he realizes the severity of the situation, including Maggie’s life under threat in Io which changes his mind. This is, whilst a film with a potent theme in itself, also a work emphasizing its action scenes, which means that the plot is very simple barring the small details. It does not really even have a true antagonist – one is set up, leading the Ishtar forces, but he is just a grunt in the wider war machine for their side, out of his luck as attempting to keep Io starts to be a struggle. He is close to even being caught entirely were it not for someone not knowing how to fire a handgun, so he is as human as everyone else in the proceedings.

There is one interesting, and very curious experimental touch, a scene of real recorded footage of a vehicle of a desert location, to represent a camera strapped to one of the sci-fi monobikes, which involves animated figures drawn on the images. It is an odd but stand out attempt at experimentation, but for the rest of this theatrical feature, Venus Wars is very solid, very accomplished animation. Considering this was original a manga by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko himself, there is a sense of him really caring for bringing out its story into the other medium fully, especially as this alongside the film Arion (1986) came from writing manga first which worked as pitches for the filmic productions themselves¹. The composer, to really emphasis the production’s scale, is also Joe Hisaishi, who is already at this point working on the likes of My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Beat Takashi Kitano’s first film when he contributes to this film. Most of the potential issues with Venus Wars is general is Hiro himself, and that feels befitting if you can expect this story idea of even a punk, one who is immature and not always someone you want to hang around with, having to grow up as he will when life is under threat. It is admittedly telling the studio behind the production, Kugatsusha, only made one other production with nothing else – also directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, it was The Poem of Wind and Trees (1987), a yoai straight-to-video drama, adapting a culturally significant Keiko Takemiya manga from the seventies, about a romance between two students at an all-boys boarding school in late 19th-century France. With Venus Wars produced after, there is the telling sense that, whilst an admirable production, it took so much to make the studio stopped existing afterwards.

Yasuhiko is known for being quite self defeating on his work, despite his eighties directorial work being acclaimed in the modern day, with his belief that on Arion, a fantasy epic based on Greek mythology, was made by himself “in a half-dead state”. For a time in Japan, he even kept Venus Wars off from being physically released on the likes of DVD with a very down attitude to the production¹. His retirement, instead focusing on a career as a manga author in the nineties, including works based on both the life of Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ, clearly came from a sense of burn out which looked to end a short directorial career were it not for returning in 2015 with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015-2016) as chief director. Likely to be his last film will be Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island (2022), but that is idiosyncratic as it is an adaptation of an infamous episode of the original Gundam animated series, one which needed to be outsourced with notorious animation issues, that Yoshikazu Yasuhiko felt had themes and a story worthy of a re-adaptation. That in itself tells a lot of his attitude to his work, and whilst Venus Wars is not perfect, I already see a strong figure in Yasuhiko who has to be admired for his craft.

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1) Interview with Yoshikazu Yasuhiko on Gundam: The Origin (Animage, June 2015/Vol. 444). Originally printed in The June 2015 issue of Animage. Translated into English translated by Hyun Park and published on Wave Motion Cannon on January 31st 2017.

#261: Inu-Oh (2021)

 

Studio: Science SARU

Director: Masaaki Yuasa            

Screenplay: Akiko Nogi

Based on the novel by Hideo Furukawa

Voice Cast: Avu-chan as INU-OH; Mirai Moriyama as Tomona; Kenjiro Tsuda as Inu-Oh's Father; Tasuku Emoto as Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu; Yutaka Matsushige as Tomona's Father; Chikara Honda as Kakuichi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Long ago, when Noh theatre was not even named as such, and Japan was split into two factions 600 years ago, one child is born in a performance deformed, an entity that is ostracized for being monsterous but will become a talented dancer. This child, INU-OH, will cross paths with Tomona. Tomona was the son of sea divers who search for treasure, and were assigned to find the artifacts of the Heike clan, lost during history, only for the sword that they find in the se to be blind Tomona as is disembowels his father when the later draws the blade. Thus begins a Masaaki Yuasa film, a historical piece based on a novel by Hideo Furukawa that will take an unexpected route. In its tale of these two helping each other with the curses around them based on the artifacts of the Heike, a clan that were decimated during the Battle of Dan-no-ura of April 25th 1185 on the sea, this serious tale of how the past will be interpreted and forced to tow the official line will be told itself by way of rock musical.

It is a wonderful thing to know Masaaki Yuasa was once an obscure cult figure, only to finally by the end of the 2010s to become an acclaimed animation director, with his work mostly available and with his growth in success from the 2010s without compromising his style. Inu-Oh continues this, with the studio Science Saru co-established by him in 2013 allowing the art style Yuasa has had with his productions to only refine here over two decades since his earliest 2000s works, cleaner here but having the flourishes still there when perfect for scenes, like using watercolor silhouettes for certain moments. The narrative itself is very simple with hindsight even if the real life history this is based upon being incredibly elaborate and to be more well understood for a Japanese audience. Contextually, this is dealing with how this important real life battle, the Battle of Dan-no-ura, has ramifications in the period setting a long time later when it is retold in song and stories, where Tomona, needing to free his dead father from the curse of that sword, one of a few artifacts connected to the Heike with supernatural power, encounters Inu-Oh, who is also as he is due to the curse of another artifact from the past, a demonic performance mask. Tomona, in his quest, joins the ranks of blind biwa players, those who tell through song the tales of the like of the Heike, whilst Inu-Oh, despite being banished by his father, still learns the techniques that would become Noh dance, his own curse with the touch that, the more he appeases the Heike ghosts around him, his limbs will turn into more human ones as he continues to perform. When the pair become aware, in a world where the supernatural is completely around humanity, of the Heike ghosts, Tomona becomes the hype man with his proto-rock star biwa playing to promote Inu-Oh’s renegade theatrical dance and song performances, where he is able to talk directly to the slain Heike soldiers, tell their tales in song, and rest their souls in his art.

This is where the film itself takes its most inventive turn as, with Inu-Oh only eventually needing to hide his face under a mask, and Tomona becoming a biwa god for the masses himself, this is deliberately anachronistic in tone. This predates Beatlemania by a good few centuries, in pre-Edo Japan rather than Liverpool, of screaming female fans, as there are also electric guitars in the soundtrack for these rock opera songs.  This is a real virtue to the film, as with music having played a good part in his earlier work – with opening and ending themes for Yuasa‘s television productions being idiosyncratic and brilliant – this is his first musical in his career, as it is his first ancient Japanese period story, and it really works perfectly. I can proudly write that, at one moment, a break dancing glowing samurai skeleton appears at one point within this, and that is not factoring in that the music itself, by Otomo Yoshihide, is insanely good. Not surprisingly, and wisely, one of your key leads to this playing the titular Inu-Oh is a musician, the lead vocalist and songwriter of the band Queen Bee by the name of Avu-chan, who is really good in their voice acting and performance. Mirai Moriyama, as Tomora, does as much a credible job in his role, singing and acting, with Avu-chan, Masaaki Yuasa, soundtrack musician Yohei Matsui, and the film's compouser Otomo Yoshihide creating the original songs' lyrics. Otomo Yoshihide is someone I know through the experimental rock group Ground Zero, and his work here as the main composer is just as perfect for this melding of rock opera, Japanese history, classic Japanese music, and even some songs you could get away with on a Halloween soundtrack, least the one (with a stage show in the film with Inu-Oh surrounded by fake severed hands) dealing with the poor unfortunate Heike soldiers, beaten and clinging to the enemy ships for dear life, having their hands cut off and leading to a tree to grow with them in.

This is all in reflection of a serious theme of this film, The Tale of the Heike, a huge epic account compiled prior to 1330, dealing with the struggle between the Taira (Heike) clan and Minamoto clan for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century in the 1180–1185 Genpei War 1180–1185. With origins blurred to history, and numerous different interpretations from an oral tradition, through the biwa playing bards Tomono here is part of, a theme here is the tale of Heike and trying to control it in power. Tomono and Inu-Oh bring the rich and varying forms of this story in all forms, whilst in contrast, you have a nod to biwa players being murdered to silence or steal the stories, or how tragedy comes into this film in its finale when, to have an official version of the tale that unites the country, any other interpretations must be silenced even if by execution.

Whilst this naturally leads to tragedy, the performances which make up the centre of the film are bombastic and vibrant, as staying within the world of this film rather than turning into their own sequences out of the period context, we see 20th century Japanese rock band performances reinterpreted in terms of how props like safety harnesses for choreography mid-air would transpire in an ancient setting, or how to depict with giant shadows the tale of summoning an unnatural whale made from a thousand dolphins the Heike clan call for mid-sea battle. As a result, including the eventual drama that comes in, including the envy of Inu-Oh’s father as his performances are being undermined by his son, this is a vibrant film to watch, insanely imaginative to view. Science Saru, whose productions include Western co-productions too, are a really good studio of talented animators just from seeing this film, where even their use of computers for the animation shows the best, when it is used for some very cinematic camera travelling shots, in scenes, that would be painstakingly difficult to have animated hand drawn back in the day and are incredible without context when they happen.

This is still one of Masaaki Yuasa’s more grounded productions in terms of style, in that he commits to the period setting, but with break dancing even transpiring among the peasantry here in this historical setting, the willingness to take Japanese cultural history and still be faithful to it with this sense of risk makes the plot more powerful by its end, including a bitter sweet conclusion where despite all that happens, old friends will reunite as ghosts in modern Japan and rock on together in the afterlife. This does not feel like a compromise at all where his sense of vibrancy as a director, including the talent of the studio behind this, show through, whether it is trying to integrate the modern rock aesthetic, even seventies and eighties glam rock/metal, to the world in visuals or music standing out in its melding of a period setting to its idiosyncratic touches. There is even as well streaks of horror storytelling that do crop up throughout and add to this story’s huge emphasis on the afterlife and the ghosts which haunt the living, including the least expected and gory explosion of a human being even if it contextually makes sense. In terms of its creator stretching himself into a different genre or two, Masaaki Yuasa completely succeeded here.

#248: 009 Re: Cyborg (2012)

 

Director: Kenji Kamiyama

Screenplay: Kenji Kamiyama

Based on the characters by Shotaro Ishinomori

Voice Cast: Chiwa Saito as Cyborg 003 / Françoise Arnoul; Daisuke Ono as Cyborg 002 / Jet Link; Hiroyuki Yoshino as Cyborg 007 / Great Britain; Mamoru Miyano as Cyborg 009 / Joe Shimamura; Noriaki Sugiyama as Cyborg 008 / Pyunma; Sakiko Tamagawa as Cyborg 001 / Ivan Whisky; Tarou Masuoka as Cyborg 006 / Chang Changku; Teruyuki Tanzawa as Cyborg 005 / Geronimo Jr; Toru Ohkawa as Cyborg 004 / Albert Heinrich; Nobuyuki Katsube as Professor Isaac Gilmore

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitle

 

Major Spoilers Throughout

This was the least desired way to have experienced the 009 Cyborg franchise for the first time. Thankfully this was not the first time I experienced a work adapted from Shotaro Ishinomori, one of the most prolific and well regarded manga authors of his era, as I had seen 009-1 (2006) in my early years into anime, a television adaptation of his female cyborg spy character which got released from ADV Films only to disappear as a license when the company did. 009 Re: Cyborg promised an enticing work on paper, part of a push to reinterpret these legendary characters of Ishinomori, a band of people (and one Russian baby) turned into superpower cyborgs, for a grand scale computer animated film which even joined the bandwagon for three dimensional effects films in the late 2000s and early 2010s were trying for. At the time someone like Kenji Kamiyama directing and writing the script was enticing, having gotten attention for his work on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002-3), the TV series, and Eden of the East (2009). It was clearly intended as a big event feature, and it is the first time 009 Cyborg had been brought to the UK officially too, as we never got the 2001-2 television series, nor any of the other animated adaptations since Shotaro Ishinomori first started the manga in 1964, so a good adaptation could have made any of the other titles in the franchise of interest for release.

Sadly it becomes obvious what this is, a folly in terms of a crowd pleasing theatrical animation with cutting edge graphics. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) is evoked, and that is not a good sign. It is a chimera which cannot survive beyond its ill advised creation, a 3D animated spectacle which however has one foot in Mamoru Oshii’s more esoteric work, including lengthy discussions in bars and churches as much as action. I like esoteric Mamoru Oshii, even his live action work, but 009 Re: Cyborg even without taking this superhero team, from around the same time as the X-Men in the USA, into this tone is also an atrocious and vague mess. There is no clearness to what it was after, with a plot way too serious and ill defined for its subject, and with a questionable “have you cake and eat it” tone with the premise, which is religious and ends up being about God, but goes about it in a vague hard sci-fi tone it does not clear up.

It begins with the leader of the team from the source text, teenager Joe Shimamura (“009”) who has superhuman speed, brainwashed. In a world where skyscrapers are being destroyed by people who are brainwashed by “His Voice”, evoking a religious terrorist group at first, Joe is pulled from following the culprits blowing up a tower in Tokyo, pulling the team along into this plot. One immediate concern is that, for a reintroduction to these characters, this team consisting of nine figures does not get enough time between them for fans or for new people. One, Pyunma, has no real contributions beyond a subplot about angel skeletons, others only have cameos, and that for the plot only two have any real dynamic between them, Joe himself and Jet Link, cyborg 002 and the North American member who joined back with the American government when this film begins. For the one female member of the team, Françoise Arnoul, this film is really egregious for this, only really here to wake up Joe by jumping out of a helicopter, expecting him to save her, for a sex scene with him off-screen, and for sex appeal, least in terms of how painstakingly depicting her stockings are. This is not a good thing to raise, and even as someone who defends Rintaro’s 1996 adaptation of X, attempting an unfinished CLAMP manga into ninety minutes even if that is a lot of characters who appear and then get killed off, there was at least an animated spectacle to it like a visual dream. This is however a film which gets bogged down into an esoteric narrative it never really wants to take a risk with but is too esoteric for a mainstream audience, and also having little time to make proper use of this cast.

By halfway through, it is literally God or what is presumed it behind these bombings, never pictured and merely an abstract construct rationalized. Even in a lengthy philosophical discussion on evolution and religion in a church, “they” are only viewed as on the rational side of mankind’s thought patterns being God and now seemingly deciding to turn people to blow up society for reasons. “Reasons” is apt as eventually you are in the supernatural, in spite of the fact this should have focused on its cyborg heroes first even with a spiritual plot, made worse by the fact that this does not want to stray into the spiritual. A strange tale could be envisioned from this, a Noah’s Ark scenario with a nuclear submarine with a nuclear payload instead of the flood. Dubai is totaled in a cataclysm in the biggest set piece, but this film never wants to get into this subject in any real detail to bring real causality to even that disaster. When those brainwashed envision a young blonde girl with angel wings, and there is an angel skeleton, not of the Simpsons variety but eventually finding itself on the moon after the end credits, this is a story whose plot should have fully committed to this religious existentialism fully, but is confused and not pulling punches in any direction. It is literally the heroes versus God, but God is depicted as a vague function within the brain, so this cannot get spiritual even if a character is riding a nuclear missile in space and crying out to His Voice humanity is capable of good, nor that the ending involves a heavenly world that is never really given space to even be purely surrealistic. It is paradoxical, and this is without the fact key characters never get a lot to go with, or that this is still structured around action set pieces

Neither helping is that, in terms of animation, this is flawed to. Cel shaded three dimensional figures, it could have looked good but, with its realistic character designs, it feels restricted in what can be animated. You even see an unfortunate choice of action scene which completely undercuts a big theatrical production, showing it had compromised itself with its animation, in which Joe runs on missiles. Unfortunately there is an iconic scene from an older anime, 009 Re: Cyborg placing itself in comparison with Project A-Ko (1986), a beloved film length tale where its lead runs on missiles in the air for one of its best known set pieces. Considering A-Ko, a great work even in terms of animation and one shown theatrically, was originally meant to be an episode in an erotic series, only to be given the love and weight to stand out in that sequence of its own as great animation, it really makes 009 Re: Cyborg look worse as it really is not a good looking production at all. The one thing which is arguably great, and he is always reliable, is the composer Kenji Kawai, always reliable as Mamoru Oshii’s regular composure that can always produce great music. The resulting film however is an actual disaster, including the knowledge Production I.G., who developed this, are an acclaimed anime studio, looking even worse as a film which really does not achieve anything. I had come to this with prior warning over years for its huge flaws, but if there is a really scathing comment I can make to kick it whilst it was down, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was at least a fascinating misfire from its era, whilst this was not a good idea in any of its content, and is dour and obvious to be appreciated unintentionally either.

Bonus #16: Wonderful Days (2003)

 

a.k.a. Sky Blue

Director: Moon-saeng Kim

Screenplay: Moon-saeng Kim, Michael Keyes, Jay Lender, Jun-Young Park, Sunmin Park (adaptation), Yong-jun Park, Howard Rabinowitz (English Language adaptation), Jeffrey Winter and Micah Wright

Voice Cast: Andrew Ableson as Zed / the Digger Leader; Cathy Cavadini as Jay / Young Shua / Cheyenne; David Naughton as Commander Locke / Dr. Noah; Bob Papenbrook as Goliath / Governor / Typon

Viewed in English

 

A Korean production, I wish I could more enthusiastic out of respect for a country's animation industry, especially as this was clearly an ambitious attempt for wider recognition. Sky Blue, as we got it called under in Britain, is as far further than you could get from Blue Seagull (1994) and Armageddon (1996), two Korean animated films which are strange and risible productions I admit were the first two from this country I had seen, which I admit I found enjoyment in but are two titles which struggled to come into existence. The former is an erotic thriller made recognisable in the internet era, the later one of two Manga Entertainment releases of South Korean animation in the VHS era that managed to get a 3DO Multiplayer Interactive game in its homeland, they are films I feel sympathy for the staffs on, especially as Blue Seagull ends with behind the scenes production footage over the end credits. They were titles which would have been dogged on by cruel reviewers, especially as Blue Seagull had some questionable content. South Korean cinema is a rich vein in itself to be admired, whether art cinema or genre pictures, and whilst there have been some prominent and well regarded animated work, such as The King of Pigs (2011), there is an entire culture of television and theatrical Korean animation which is not as readily available still. Sky Blue, or to use its original name Wonderful Days, was a prominent title to appear even in a trimmed down form with an English dub back in the 2000s, and could have been a chance for wider recognition if it had succeeded, certainly coming with a significantly bigger scope in visual design and animation than the two films I have mentioned.

There was even a theatrical push in Britain when it was licensed by Tartan Video. Tartan Video, when they existed, were a big name, especially when it came to helping the push for cult Asian cinema, the people who brought us in Britain the likes of Takashi Miike's Audition (1999), Ring (1998) and Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003), a huge proponent for how we learnt of South Korea's rich genre and cult cinema, introducing the likes of Park Chan-wook to us in the West. Even with the DVD release of Wonderful Days, as I acquired cheaply second hand, it was sold on two DVDs, in a deluxe set with a three hours worth of extras on another disc, in the same way they had with the likes of Oldboy, pushing it as a big title in the day. It has a premise which has been readily sold before. Still evoking uncomfortable issues about climate change, Wonderful Days is set in a post apocalypse where the environment collapsed, toxic rainfall and all. The first and only living city, the Echoban, was built to protect civilisation from this, but even as it stands proudly in the midst of this as a bastion of hope, there is rife class divide, where the elite live in the Echoban, and everyone else is outside in the slums, workers to mine resources for the living metropolis and keep it alive. It is a story told many times before, and that is not a bad thing, with class war and a romantic triangle divided between sides, as Jay, a female law enforcer, is connected from childhood to the man Shua from the slums trying to activate a secret Echoban system meant to save everyone, all whilst her male superior Cade wishes to prevent this but also loves her since they all know each other from childhood before Shua was forced out of Echoban. Add in this a kill crazy superior from the elite in the midst of this, and everything here can be made into something great.  Truthfully, the biggest problem is entirely that this is just okay, something we will get into later into this review, that this just in terms of making a lavish production, and making sure it has a story which gets from A to B well, was a goal that it cleared but Wonderful Days does not get further from.

It is staying safe, so much so with its narrative it is within the slithers of this plot where you see something more dynamic occasionally appear. I find myself more concerned for the petty thieves introduced, especially when they are revealed not to be villains but merely denizens of the slum wasteland who can be sympathetic, like a tiny rat like member who I had sympathy for over the traditional leads, all because he was made less a thug but someone who can be scared, be brave, and when he went from a dubious figure to one with sympathy for when he laments for his fallen comrades. Whilst it has aged, the film's visual palette even with obvious use of computer animation is to be admired too. Attempts at blending this into interesting directions can be seen onscreen, such as a chase into the Time Capsule in the Echoban, one of the few moments where world building, which is not as fully seen as it should have been, appears; a museum presuming what has survived in human culture from before, it mixes live images with the likes of Roy Lichtenstein and Gustav Klimt's art for a set piece with idiosyncratic visual choices. The production team were clearly trying their hardest, and one sequence does suggest what could have been; in context it is still a curious choice, a nightmarish dream of biblical images and multi-eyed rams closer to a Ken Russell live action film, a British director acclaimed (and notorious) for this type of hyper intense imagery, including actual Biblical images with multi-eyed rams in Altered States (1980). That scene is disturbing and abrupt in Wonderful Days, but shows an attempt at characterisation, that for Shua it is symbolic in his fear for Jay's life, and the state of the situation for him, showing how the production team for this film, as they continued making films or animated projects in other formats, could have taken this further. In fact, prominently, the production was more than just animation of the 3D and 2D form, as additional work included filming real model sets which the animation was layered over, even using real shots of clouds and the sky, symbolically meaning for the film's story, and layering animation over them¹.

Sadly, beyond two short films after this, director-writer Moon-saeng Kim has not done anything else, and there is the unfortunate sense that Wonderful Days, even with its shortened length for global release, was a production with many issues in spite of these clear visual virtues. Even in mind to Tartan Video putting their weight behind it in Britain, even the esteemed Japanese animation studio Gainax creating a dub for the Japanese market which was less "alien" rather than merely adapting it to distribute it in Japan², Wonderful Days was always going to struggle with how conventional the plot proves to be. An expensive production¹, all the problems really come from the fact that its story is quite conventional and not even that particularly idiosyncratic either. With knowledge of numerous individuals being involved with the writing process, even unaccredited work by Micah Wright, a prolific American writer for the likes of comic books, and Jay Lender, a prolific American writer especially in the Spongebob Squarepants franchise, it was clear that whilst visually the film, even with its aged CGI, was ambitious and is still to be admired, the production's story needed that much strengthening of ambition. Especially when some of the more idiosyncratic touches, like the blind girl, are clichés which really are not that distinct when they have been seen before, this film whilst having so much still I appreciated also suffers from this lack of personality. Sky Blue as we got it in the British Isles is okay, a case of a production which just goes to show how much of a struggle it is just to get an animated theatrical film off the ground, where the challenges are not just the visuals but even making sure to have something in its story to tell to last.

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1) Take with a pinch of salt, as it comes from one perspective for a film, but this chronicle My Beautiful Korean Movie written by Micah Wright, for his personal website on April 9th 2003, does raise some poignant aspects that, if confirmed, do raise up a lot of the issues with Wonderful Days, as an unaccredited co-writer with Jay Lender, which undermined it.

2) Gainax to Adapt Wonderful Days, written by Christopher Macdonald for Anime News Network and published on November 5th 2004.

#238: Patlabor 2 – The Movie (1993)

 

Studio: Production I.G.

Director: Mamoru Oshii

Screenplay: Kazunori Itō

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

#237: Patlabor - The Movie (1989)

 

Director: Mamoru Oshii

Screenplay: Kazunori Itō

Voice Cast: Miina Tominaga as Noa Izumi; Daisuke Gouri as Hiromi Yamazaki; Issei Futamata as Mikiyasu Shinshi; Kouji Tsujitani as Kataoka; Michihiro Ikemizu as Isao Ohta; Osamu Saka as Seitaro Sakaki; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Kiichi Goto; Shigeru Chiba as Shiba Shigeo; Tomomichi Nishimura as Detective Matsui; Toshio Furukawa as Asuma Shinohara; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Shinobu Nagumo; You Inoue as Kanuka Clancy

Based on the manga by Masami Yuki

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I feel like I’m playing computer games against God.

Patlabor gets the time frame wrong – the film is set in 1999, and we have yet to get to “Patlabor” work mechs even knee deep into the Millennium – but this follow up to the 1988-9 straight to video series is still very relevant in its themes. Getting very good distribution back in the day through Manga Entertainment with its 1993 sequel, this Mamoru Oshii helmed work, with screenplay by Kazunori Itō, still comes with a lot of salient points decades on with the context and exposition raising many ideas. In futuristic Tokyo, the Babylon Project has been set up to reclaim land in Tokyo Bay, to overcome lack of land in the country and overcrowding, alongside the goal to turn the capital into a cosmopolis. In this world, as mentioned, it has giant bipedal robots but, even if there are some combat machines and a division of the police force, this is a reality where the “labor” is seen as the equivalent of farming and construction machines, the advancement of a bulldozer for a new age.

The film does presume you have seen the straight-to-video series before, but that never becomes an issue here, and as the Manga Entertainment release in the United Kingdom came for VHS and DVD, this was a rare case of a title where the lack of context was never going to be an issue. The film presents the world in a way anyone can quickly catch up on its set-up, in that, after establishing this context of a Japan which uses giant robots for practical use, there is the issue that they can malfunction, and that the police naturally also needed their own, and even divisions to deal with issues involving them, whether abused or out of control. Division 2, our lead team, are unfortunately the cartoonish group in their police force, and it shows their status when they strike fear into a construction worker they are trying to save from his labor going out of control. The recent spate of labor rampages, opening the film, is alarming for them especially Asuma Shinohara, the hot headed young police member, and his seniors, leading them to dig up the cause. It is Patlabor 2, the sequel, which is held the highest, as it became a far more serious political thriller, but this even as a lighter toned work has its pointed moments of relevance. Mamoru Oshii and his screenwriter Kazunori Itō here also have passages of introspection which would be seen in Oshii’s work before and especially grow in the time after Ghost in the Shell (1995) caught peoples’ attentions. Itō was not a stranger for the unconventional and the cerebral, future screenwriter for both Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor 2, as well as live action films such as one of the last of Seijun Suzuki's films, Pistol Opera (2001), an unsung and bizarre crime pastiche, to the late nineties Gamera reboots, and his name deserves to be nodded to for his talents with the narrative too.

This is also however a comedy too, which may surprise some, as until Vlad Love (2021), Oshii’s return to television anime, a large period of time in his directorial career in live action and animation, in mind to many titles of his never leaving his home land, focused more on cerebral and somber existential tones post Ghost in the Shell. The humour here from the previous stories in this franchise, following the misfits of Division 2, including female lead Noa Izumi and her beloved police mecha, does help this film greatly, especially as when the introspection does appear. It means a lot more when brought in when we can also appreciate these characters being ordinary police and even doofuses, especially in mind to the Division 2 leader Captain Kiichi Gotō, held in high regard as talented officer who ended up there for being too good, someone who turned this band of misfits into a family who fish in their off time outside and grow tomatoes on sight when not dealing with the labor rampages.

Central to its main plot, as more labors are going berserk, is the connection to new hardware software for them, its creator a mysterious man we never see a clear image of and is already dead in the first scene, having committed suicide, but we learn so much of regardless of this. He is the Harry Lime figure that Gotō has detectives from other police sections learn of, his tale emphasizing so much philosophy and existentialism Oshii and Kazunori Itō get into. Even spiritual ideas are there as explicit Old Testament references are rife throughout, including the Tower of Babylon, the building which God was said to struck down when humans dared to make a tower reach Him, re-contextualized in an existential debate here of Japan losing its consciousness as industrialization and capitalist grow progresses into the future. I dare not claim any true knowledge of Japanese culture, but even as far back as a film like Stray Dog (1949) by Akira Kurosawa, made just after Japan lost World War II, destroyed and forced to have to build back up over the fifties and sixties, that film touched on these ideas found here a long time after. Existential concerns beyond the film itself are found of the old Japan being lost as more metropolises and advancement leads to more of their consciousness being lost, something anime has covered greatly, and Oshii would get into the nineties further with even the consciousness of human beings. The sites the mystery man at the center of lived in, creator of a diabolical plant for countrywide labor rampages, turn out to be old buildings which are being demolished when the detectives reach them, emphasizing for the characters as much as the audience these grave concerns of old districts and communities disappearing without trace in the march for progression.

The reveal, full spoilers, also is uncomfortably realistic, that this is all due to software from a major business and tied to the government which has been coded with a deliberate hack to cause these rampages, which the government would happily like to deal with without hassle. Actually, and it says how more positive Oshii and Kazunori Itō especially were, or a drastically different attitude from Japanese business culture, that Patlabor could be seen as less realistic, all because of how quickly this is dealt with. No one pretends this has not been revealed, wishing to still have their boatload of cash from the deals, and deny malfunctioning hardware that could cause deaths ever came up, but that could be me merely being cynical.

There is a lighter touch to the first Patlabor film, especially as Patlabor 2 was a drastic change in tone even in terms of the character designs, but there is a lot to juggle which is a huge credit to the production. This is still an action film and a comedy, but one which has a mind to it, and even with the humour, you see the creativity Oshii had and could be neglected. The introspective scenes, including the symbolism of empty birdcages and abandoned old derelicts, are shown with incredible cinematic style through the animators of Studio Deen and Production I.G., and there are unexpected production choices here which caught me off-guard returning to this film. One of them, one of the best of the film, is the unexpected and inspired use of a fisheye lens for a comedy scene. A fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image, and for obvious reasons, this would be something you had to animate, and back in this hand drawn era, it makes this an incredibly ambitious visual choice, especially as it is for a moment when a character snaps and gets into an argument with his senior officer, which makes the scene funnier.

Patlabor 2, as mentioned, is the big one of the films, the third film WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3 (2002) not connected to the Oshii films with different collaborators, but the first film does deserve considerable praise.  It has to juggle the comedy and the moments of contemplative philosophy, really pertinent ideas of Japan’s technological advances, which is an ambitious task in itself within a film that is beautifully cinematic. This is before the personality is shown in how the film is made, let alone with its idiosyncratic visual touches, including a hair-raising moment evoking Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), and action scenes with elaborate mechanical animation, including the finale involving storming a heavily guarded location. The resulting film, all beautifully put together, is exceptional, and whilst this is absolutely a case of a film where multiple figures who are important to its virtues, this in context for Mamoru Oshii is also a good film to return to bring a perspective to him. As a person who I view as an auteur who brings his own voice to the work, Patlabor is fascinating to return back to in showing his flexibility.