#253: Karas - The Prophecy and The Revelation (2005-2007)

 

Studio: Tatsunoko VCR

Director: Keiichi Sato

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Voice Cast: Asuka Shibuya as Hinaru; Kasumi Suzuki as Yurine; Keiji Fujiwara as Nue; Toshihiro Wada as Otoha; Hiroto Torihata as Kure Narumi; Hitomi Nabatame as Homura; Kiyoyuki Yanada as Suiko ; Mai Nakahara as Chizuru / Mery ; Rokurō Naya as the Chief; Saeko Chiba as Sagizaka Yoshiko; Takahiro Sakurai as Houshun'in Ekou; Tetsuo Goto as Minoru Sagisaka

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Created to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Tatsunoko studios, the best way to describe Karas is an ambitious and very interesting premise but one, including the notable delay in between releases of all six episodes, which needed time to breath, rushing with all the ambition of a debut of a man, Keiichi Sato, who started out as a character and mecha designer who finally got to direct a production. It is a simple premise at its heart combining Tatsunoko's history of superhero characters in their animation like Gatchaman or Yatterman, with horror and Japanese folklore, and then-modern CGI animation which is meant for style for the sake of style even if the premise is elaborate in lore. Considering this has sword welding armoured figures fighting in the sky of Shinjuku at Christmas at the beginning of the first episode, the style is there, as is the director Keiichi Sato spelling his own name out in episode one with ants.

Karas is absolutely of its era, very much of the 2000s in style with the CGI and looking as expensive as possible, alongside the emphasis on a more muted art style. Voice casting for the English dub, which brought in Matthew Lillard and Jay Hernandez for key roles, definitely evokes how by the mid 2000s there was a push for making anime more mainstream, and as a straight-to-video project licensed by Manga Entertainment, this is also of the time. Whilst there were a few prominent ones at the time like this, that format was losing traction for these types of projects and TV series were easier to access on DVD finally at that point, Manga Entertainment eventually becoming less prominent as a British and US distributor, and more British one who releases mostly television series and some key films in the decade onwards. Karas however to its credit has a fascinating premise - in Shinjuku a mysterious figure known as Karas, a denoted figure meant to protect the city on behalf of the demons and the yōkai of the city from evil doers, stops demons from killing the humans and consuming their blood. The current one is Otoha, a man in a coma for the first three episodes who spends his time as a doctor for the yōkai in their world. A demon hunter about to stop time, he is under the watch of Yurine, the woman behind our lead who a) is an unexpected catgirl, and b) exists as a concept, more than one Yurine in existence as part of this lore using both Japanese mythology and various Asian disciplines of spirituality as its influence, Yurine existing for all the Karas and all looking the same, including for Eko, the former Karas of Tokyo who, having become disillusioned to its corruption, seeks to annihilate all humans there with what is effectively a plan to turn everyone into his own personal tap of human blood to be able to power his ultimate form.

The style, even under all the CGI, which is used for Karas and his opponents, mechanically altered supernatural demons, is inspired, running both with this idiosyncratic style but also melding it with ancient Japanese folklore.  The first monster emphasises this, whilst pulling no punches even if the later episodes are much gorier, with a water demon draining human blood from victims in a specific public bathroom near the subway, introducing us too to Narumi, a new police officer assigned to the one man behind their paranormal department, with his own concerns with his daughter in a mental asylum for seeing her whole classroom massacre by a demon. You however also see that Karas' first episode is arguably stylish to the point you cannot understand half of it, and also rushing through a premise which had legs for longer episodes than the thirty each gets. Effectively taking horror monsters, and having them as life draining robot ones, tackled by a doctor for good yōkai, a huma, who returns to his world to slay evil ones from a former Karas, we have a premise that is rewarding, but this show really needed to have been longer even if it was forty minute episodes. The first three episodes known as The Prophecy for Western release from Manga Entertainment feels like it is bolting through so much without explaining enough, including a demon in human disguise named Nue, after Eko and his monsters too. There are aspects you have to expect are there for the creativity of the production, like all Karas being able to turn into fighter planes for combat, but it is telling, alongside there being too many characters, that The Revelation as the last three episodes are called, all released two years after in 2007, has to start episode four with a huge amount of exposition to explain itself. Characters who barely get detail on them, like a female female Karas and her Yurine watching on as a preppy girl, get more to do, and it explains key lore points alongside Otaha's back story as a mob enforcer.

As quickly as his tortured history is disposed of, even if it means quickly getting past his crime father and an unexpected bromance that dies a quick death, The Revelation however has to quickly deal with ending the show, so even this is rushed despite explaining the premise. The rush undercuts Karas so much as by those three episodes, we are already into an apocalypse scenario where, with the notable shift in more gore and limb severing, we are in a far more violent doomsday tendril situation. As a result of the rush, even this, which is a scary and gruesome scenario, actually gets into something I have I have always hated in anime - just killing random bystanders off in vast amounts in elaborately gory scenarios as we see here. It is odd but, even with the trashiest of horror anime I have seen that are bad, they seem more justifiable even with an archetype once you known them a little, even one dimensional stereotypes, to be able to exist as a singular figure with their own existences for how long the tale is. Focusing on having their death as one person than merely part of a mass, no matter how gruesome especially with the eighties straight to video era, takes it into an exclamation mark to the scene that works. Here because you do not have enough time to digest the stakes, sadly Karas despite its moody nature even ups with randomly drawn bystanders getting horrifying ends which feels like shock value. This even makes the ending of the notorious Urotsukidôji: The Legend of the Overfiend (1989), its own world ending scenario, powerful ina horrifying way because we had more build up and warning of the threat at stake in that film in spite of its own problematic nature.

A lot of Karas'  fault is that, with this premise, Karas is an imaginative and vivid production which had so much work and production preparation clearly placed into it, but was really rushed to a scenario that, even in another slightly longer OVA work, would have needed slightly longer to reach what is this extreme an end. It is also a conventional superhero plot at its heart, despite the gore, that made a bad decision to not get the exposition out of the way or having time to slow down and let its lore sink in even if the production wanted to avoiding too much talking. What stands out in its tone, its horror-occult premise, is pushed to the backburner, which becomes its biggest sin. Particularly with how the designs are so elaborate and idiosyncratic even with clichés - there is requisite spider woman on the evil side, but her monster form and how she drains the blood for humans by hundreds of tiny spiders is entirely idiosyncratic here - it feels gauche to rush through a premise which has at its heart the additional subtext of modernisation conflicting with Japan's past. Details I can expect most will miss, such as how to activate the Karas form, Yurine chants a Shinto mantra, but there is an elaborate metaphor here that anime has tackled a lot and is worth doing so over and over, modernisation and Japan's past in conflict, the old traditions and the modernisation clashing as the demons of yore are forgotten and humanity in the city sinks into crime and corruption. Details like the mayor of Tokyo betraying humanity due to his hatred for all the crime, in another adaptation, would have become more loaded if allowed to breathe.

You can see the production value onscreen, not just in the computer effects, but costume design touches, like the Yurine all having goggles with idiosyncratic and cute markings for eyes on them, or that people cared for this work's lore, that in this world cities are still alive with the unnatural, the crows to the stray cats part of the spirits living in them that denote a human to become a Karas and keep all under control. As a result, this does have the disappointment of what could have been. For me this was always a title from this era getting into anime I wished to get around to, but never did. I am glad to see there was so much passion to the production as an original premise, which I have to admire now I have seen Karas and realised more was on its mind than presumed, but it is with the cost that, unfortunately, it missed the mark. This premise with the cost of its style clearly put on the production in time and effort did not get to the stage it needed to in being fully fleshed out, and it also needed to have been worked on more carefully before it came out. Thankfully, the epilogue of this production is that someone like Keiichi Sato, with this debut as a director, would go on to make helm more productions into the modern day, such as the first series of Tiger & Bunny (2011), so this ambition would lead onwards into other productions.

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

 

a.k.a Dream Dimension Gentleman

Studio: Gallop / JVCKenwood Victor Entertainment

Director: Hatsuki Tsuji

Screenplay: Izô Hashimoto

Based on the manga by Yosuke Takahashi

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

 

Studio: Animate Film

Director: Hiroyuki Ebata

Screenplay: Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga by Tetsuya Saruwatari

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

What am I? Spider bait?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4) Example from the manga of this transpiring.

#250: Bartender (2006)

 

Studio: Palm Studio

Director: Masaki Watanabe

Screenplay: Yasuhiro Imagawa

Based on the manga by Araki Joh

Voice Cast: Takahiro Mizushima as Ryuu Sasakura; Ayumi Fujimura as Miwa Kurushima; Leo Morimoto as Narration

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Manga, and anime adaptations of them, about food and cooking were once a niche in the West, but this has begun to change when certain titles gained traction. Food Wars, a Weekly Shōnen Jump title whose manga run was from 2012 to 2019, and its anime series adaptation, helped as an accessible example of this genre, depicting cooking by being a story of rivalry and competition by way of over-the-top Iron Chef scenarios. Other stories, like Yakitate!! Japan the manga and the anime, took this more over-the-top tone too, a story about competitive bread making which is just as ridiculous and offers one bread recipe so good it briefly sends one to the afterlife dead, so there is enough playfulness with the idea of food as a story premise. Work that is more serious does exist, and this is not forgotting that alcohol, an important part of human culture too, has been the subject of manga and anime too. One manga about wine, The Drops of God (2004-2014 for the first manga series) as written by Tadashi Agi, a pseudonym employed by creative team of sister and brother Yuko and Shin Kibayashi, even became influential in the wine industry itself. During the journey of its lead to solve the mysteries of thirteen wines his late father has assigned him to find, wines which were namedropped in the manga gained interest for those wishing to try them, turning the likes of the French wine market upside down as a result, increasing stocks and prices alike¹.

Among anime, Bartender is distinct even within this genre, what it says on the tin, about a bartender, and in that presenting something completely different even next to others mentioned in this paragraph. A title that was once a fan subbed only release, this has in the 2020s had official Western releases, in the United States by Shout! Factory, and Anime Limited in the United Kingdom. Finally getting its due in the 2020s in itself feels apt, as this also belongs to another trend over the 2010s of anime designed to be soothing and comforting, saying a lot about the state of the world in general that anime not about plots or drastic drama needed to be created, but in itself presenting different ways for them to still tell stories in themselves, Bartender as a 2000s production befitting their ilk as a prototype.

Bartender is both very idiosyncratic in premise, but is so simple structurally that, if a longer work, this could have lasted seasons as a "cocktail of the week" show. Ryuu Sasakura, who we do snippets of the past of during this series, is considered the "Glass of the Gods", a bartender who goes beyond the basic requirements of the job to being even a life preserver for the down-and-out, able to serve the right drink for the right time. He follows leads of other manga and anime, regardless of profession and genre, exaggerated in how good he is at picking the right cocktail. He can make a Black Velvet, champagne mixed with Guinness beer, without causing it to spill out of the glass, but he can literally scare off a con artist trying to marry a woman for her money by guessing the taste of alcohol diluted into a single drop in water.

To the show's credit, it is actually effecting emotionally. Expect knowledge and exposition thrown at you men - it explains not only the history of certain alcohols, but other types of culture, such as one episode structured around Ernest Hemingway and his last work The Old Man and the Sea (1952) - but it has a human core. Regrets, loss and disillusionment are tackled as much as there is humour, the wacky professor part of the Christmas episode where the Black Velvet is prepared. It can be viewed as pat, finding happiness when the right metaphor for your life is served by Ryuu in an expensive drink, but it works. This is especially as this does the admirable thing of having even how a cocktail came to be and alcohol consumption given weight to them sociologically, even in terms of real history when one episode talks about the hostile rule of the English over Scotland in centuries past, especially the taxes, influenced their legendary types of whiskey production. It is also easy to forget, as this has an emotional heart to it, that alcohol and bars despite being linked to addiction and destructive decadence even in pop culture and art still have an importance in human history. Alcohol has existed since the first cave dweller (or pre-historical civilisation) accidentally discovered intoxication, and even alcohol has been said to have been given to us by Gods, such as the Ancient Greek god Dionysus being the god of wine among his other contributions to existence.

This show, frankly, is meant to sell booze, and to a lesser extend Ginza, where the show it set, where these cocktails would be expensive and the locale potentially elitist, but the show never feels like this is the priority. One episode even explicitly is about a man who is poor but saved from all his work to half drink an expensive choice, which shows that Bartender was after something universal, even in having the recipe each week per episode for the viewer to record. The show is less selling glamorous than a hardcore rumination on alcohol in fuzzy blanket of quaintness. This is also in mind to how, working around the budget and the limitations of the story, the creators of Bartender, studio Palm Studio, deserve a lot of praise for the visual creativity they put into the production. You can notice that the bottles of alcohol, even the liquid inside them when poured, are CGI and that there are many static scenes of dialogue, but it does not stop the production from being visually creative. The show is willing to bend reality, intersplicing the variety of figures within the tale, such as the two older male bartenders who taught Ryuu, and Ayumi Fujimura, a female character introduced in the first episode that becomes the only other reoccurring character, to interject the history of the subjects being discussed.

The show is also happy to be metaphorical and distort reality, such as a beautiful moment following an advertiser, near the end of his career and regretting his career path, being nodded to by his creations across Ginza and the rest of the city as he travels to his desired goal. Touches like this make Bartender ultimately a show that, taking its distinct premise, won me over early into the episodes, and thankfully, as it is finally more readily available in the West, more people can appreciate it as well for its virtues. Sadly, if there is a tragedy to this work, it is that Palm Studio in 2007 stopped producing animation. With only a few titles in their CV, it is sad that they clearly were not able to continue developing more titles and films in their short run. It befits the melancholic tone of Bartender though to metaphorically drink a toast to them and appreciate this fully.

 

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1) The Drops of God: The Manga That Disrupted the International Wine Market, written by Bea Caicoya and published for CBR.com on May 29th 2021.

#249: Uchida Shungicu no Noroi no One-Piece (The Cursed One Piece) (1992)

 

Studio: Kyoto Animation and Shin-Ei Animation

Director: Yoshiji Kigami

Screenplay: Miho Maruo

Based on the work of Shungicu Uchida

Voice Cast: Chisa Yokoyama as Michiyo, Hiroko Moriguchi as Kaori, Mariko Kouda as Yuuko

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

A short horror special based on the work of Shungicu Uchida, this production by Kyoto Animation is sadly too short to easily distribute outside of digital streaming or purchase, which is a shame as making this widely available to non-Japanese anime fans would lead to a lot of people embracing this production, in its thirty minute form, to their hearts with what it has, a sumptuous little horror anthology based on gender peer pressure. About three girls in three tales, the stories are based around the titular one piece dress, a thing of horror in elegance whose existence also comes with themes of gender stereotypes.

Shungicu Uchida herself is distinct, someone I had known in the least expected way but emphasising her as a provocative creator, as she plays the mother in Takashi Miike's Visitor Q (2001), an infamous film even in the career of an infamous cult director like Miike's. A controversial film, it is like a retelling of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Theorem (1968), in which a man (Terrence Stamp in the Italian film) seduced the men and the women of a family, even the maid, taking a seemingly steady middle class/upper class family and breaking their facade. Visitor Q was about an already broken family, a male stranger named Q coming into their lives, and bringing them together as a happy family even if it involved murder and necrophilia among the many taboos broken onscreen. A satire, Uchida's role as the mother was a brave one, as alongside baring her body in nude scenes, one of the taboos broken, even though it is a natural part of the human body, was lactation, taken to its extreme with the kitchen floor covered in breast milk in the film's exaggerated and extreme humour. Hers was a good performance, and it is delightful to realise this, one of my few encounters with her creativity, was to someone whose career as an author/manga artist/singer/essayist/actor was openly confrontational even when it came to her semi-autobiography Father Fucker, or how one of her works was adapted into a genre film, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009).

This adaptation, for its luscious style, is a series of simple horror tales with twists, trademark for the genre, which however are all connected by peer pressure and expectations of teen girls to look feminine, the dress (brought by ghosts of malicious intent to their door steps barring one) an elegant gown of prettiness. Yuuko's tale is entirely that, wishing to be pretty to attract a boy, a monkey's paw scenario as to attract him, her clothes her mother buy looking inferior especially next to the popular girl they are going to the birthday party of, who is able to look ultra stylish and has an eye on him too. Immediately as well, you see, as this TV special has been preserved and made available in higher definition, how beautiful it is to look at. Sumptuous to look at, Kyoto (with Shin-Ei Animation) is well regarded for shows like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006), but this is a surprise in their early career for experimentation. It offers an interesting contrast in the catalogue of anime horror too as because, whilst the stories have horror beats, the horror twists here are mostly in pure day light in homes and quaint locations, between teen bedrooms to outside in the day, presenting a significant contrast. Depicted in mostly bright colours and with distinct character designs, what was originally a shoujo story for young women shows horror contrasted by how gorgeous the visuals are, even if, with little time here to elaborate, the visuals will get to the goods when it comes to the horror itself, such as the dress being cursed and turning one briefly into a possessed demon.

Kaori, the next victim, is brought the dress by the young brother of family, finding herself waking up wearing the dress constantly as a living nightmare, literally becoming a skin as a costume of elegance can for people. All of this is in mind the show can have scenes drawn like pastels, or with distinct use of space, for simplifying the image to only what needs to be drawn to the viewer's attention even if outlines, to get the point across perfectly, a visual style which is distinct and also precise for very simple tales, making them work far more in the little time they are afforded. When it wishes to be more detailed, the production does, and even ends this second one on a face of madness manga author Junji Ito would be proud of. Michiyo's tale, sad to know a boy she knew has transferred schools, emphasises gender stereotyping as she internalises guilt of never being able to comment fully to him, with emphasis as a teenager who is a tall tomboy, not good at sports and even teased by her own mother for not fitting the ideas of being ladylike at all. Hers is a radio drama twist waiting to happen, involving ghosts, but together with the other two shorts, Noroi No One Piece is a compelling production which took me by surprise. Tragically, it comes with the knowledge that Kyoto Animation's history includes the July 2019 arson attack that took place to their studio, one which took the life of this production's director Yoshiji Kigami among others, an attack which thankfully has not undercut their legacy in producing titles but was a tragedy no one would want and took the likes of Kigami who were visibly creative as here. One Piece itself was one title I had no knowledge of even in terms of horror anime's more obscure productions, as it was not an OVA either, and it did floor me without any expectations. If you can find it, it is recommended, and more voices becoming aware of this could like make the title properly appreciated.

#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.

#247: Makura no Danshi (2015)

 

Studio: feel., Assez Finaud Fabric

Director: Sayo Aoi

Screenplay: Ayumi Sekine and Yuniko Ayana

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Your butt gets tense...

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

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

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

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

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