#194: Urotsukidôji II: Legend of the Demon Womb (1990-1)

 

Director: Hideki Takayama

Screenplay: Noboru Aikawa

Based on the manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Bick Balse as Dr Münchhausen; Jake Lacan as Takeaki; Lucy Morales as Megumi; Christopher Courage as Amano; Danny Bush as Nagumo; Pat McGroyn as Kohoki; Rebel Joy as Akemi/Mimi; Rose Palmer as Kuroko

Viewed in the English Dub, British release of the Feature Length Cut

 

With Legend of the Overfiend, the previous film and the most notorious of the pair Manga Entertainment released, I did feel the need to be cautious with the production in terms of how I reviewed the anime. All the exact concerns and problematic aspects are to be found in its sequel, effectively a side story set between the first and second of the original OVA episodes, or least before the third, which has canonical importance to the later narratives. It is still a work which, desiring to be transgressive, does falter with the problematic nature of a work, entirely about combining sex and death, does use sexual violence and rape in a way that is not defendable in terms of presentation, and will be a taboo for others even in mind to transgressive, an attitude which some viewers will not find defendable to even use. This review is going to soften however, as in spite of this misguided aspect, Urotsukidôji as a premise and production is a fascinating and actually compelling work to sit through, which really was emphasised with the sequel. How ironic it is Legend of the Demon Womb which wins me over: initially two OVA episodes that were composed together as a theatrical release cut, with additional touches, this once one of the worst films I had ever seen just based on the cut we got in the United Kingdom. A lot has changed to alter this opinion, even with that same cut.

Releasing this title, let alone the first Urotsukidôji in the United Kingdom is fascinating to consider with hindsight. This in itself exists from a different time in anime production itself where, even in a small part of the industry, a lot of these violent and adult works, usually straight-to-video, were created and many were picked up for Western audiences. There is such oddness, looking at a Manga Entertainment promo I had never seen before included on the disc, at time capsules of when it is meant to be edgy and cool as a hobby to watch anime, even with Project A-Ko (1986) among the releases, all set the instrumental opening to The Heart Beneath by Celtic Frost. They are a favourite band of mine, on an underrated album, hilariously even repeating lead singer/guitarist Tom G. Warrior's trademark grunt as part of the promo, but it is strange where anime distribution into the United Kingdom went from an underground and male targeted format to where it came to decades later, the time capsules found in this promo, scoring the DVD menu to the first two Urotsukidôji to dark techno music, or that this is was a viable franchise to sell.

This is worth bringing up as a prologue as, right into the sequel's own prologue, this narrative is definitely of its era. The prologue is set in 1944 in Germany, the Third Reich conducting a freakish sex magic experiment to raise a demonic lord of darkness only for it to backfire. The son of the scientist operating the machine, presided by Hitler himself, dies and his son Münchhausen II is able to come to the then-present day Japan with a second attempt, wishing to summon the dark lord and kill the Overfiend to rule. The thing that is notorious about this entry, and is worked around in the editing for the release, is that the machine itself, and this review will have warnings for the content being discussed of, involved taking women and strapping them to it, a giant mechanised machine that sexually penetrates them until their essence is literally sucked from the victims to raise the demonic target of choice. This, in a franchise which has always had the huge flaw of its gender discrimination in terms of how to depict transgression, is the thing even among the other graphic content which makes this entry particularly infamous. 

However, whilst this franchise was never equal opportunity in transgression should be, something in the sequel in tone makes even some of its questionable transgressive content feel more tonally appropriate. For starter, whilst with the potential bad taste of involving Nazis in the lore, depending on how this is thought of it is at least attempting something more meaningful. Openly admitting this take comes from Japanese pop culture commentator and author Patrick Macias¹, Legend of the Demon Womb feels less tasteless if you take a theory he had¹ based on Japan's very dicey history in how it talks of World War II and the Pacific War, in their military operations in Asian countries before, and their allegiance to Nazi Germany eventually. You have to take this with a pinch of salt, as it cannot be denied, sadly, part of Legend of the Demon Womb is meant to be scintillating to its audience in its transgressive content, which is undefendable, but trying to subconsciously depict this problematic history and dealing with the atrocities committed by both sides, even subconsciously, feels apt, even in a lurid horror-action work like this, the Nazis are depicted as inhumane figures now working with sex magic and horrifying violation piston machines. The Nazis themselves in real life were occultists in key areas, their use of the swastika a bastardisation of a symbol which was used in a variety of ways including divinity and spirituality in Hinduism and Buddhism. It is not something profound, before we dive off into pretension, but alongside this, it feels like the story even for pulp storytelling is trying a lot more in terms of what its story is about, even if just to shock and repulse.

The original Urotsukidôji, which was initially set up as three short narratives, does feel more erratic for me nowadays, especially when censored and edited together, whilst the sequel feels far more precise at times, far more idiosyncratic in plot in place, and far more emotionally investable in that, for Münchhausen II's plans to work and in command of demonic forces, his eye turns to the male cousin of Tatsuo, called Takeaki, grounding the narrative to a tragedy. When Takeaki's plane is attacked by one of Münchhausen's demons, with his parents horrifically absorbed by the attackers, the cousin is the only survivor as a result, given Tatsuo's blood in a transfusion and on his way to transforming into a monster Münchhausen wants to sculpt to his uses. It is not complex, and there are still moments which are lurid and problematic with no justification, but even in mind to lowered expectations, Legend of the Demon Womb had much more to invest in. One such plot choice, which is not as well done as it could have been, is that a large part of the protagonist role goes Megumi, a beast woman who barely was in the first story, becoming romantically attacked to Takeaki and as a result embroiled in the tragedy of his downfall as his cousin is.

She is not completely depicted as one would hope, as a strong non-human figure, but a huge advantage of this sequel is that, based on a two part narrative focused on one story, almost all the content is progressing to something emotionally rich. Even the transgressions, the sexual violence even, feels narratively necessary barring at least one scene that is tasteless for the sake of it. Here you are dealing with figures driven by madness, and seeing his father die in a failed experiment, willing to destroy people to control all worlds, assisted by demons whose lusts are inhuman, and human beings (even those with demonic evil sides) trying to find humanity.

It is still hyper violent, and still with content that understandably would be viewed as sexist or even more depending on the viewer, especially with the surprise that this feels more explicitly in content even in its censored version for the British release. The one scene, however, that does feel indulgent for the sake of it, least in the censored cut, involves Kohoki, a demon under Münchhausen II's bidding who is fixated on Megumi, which in how it is depicted does return to the unfortunate nature that this was originally sold as animated pornography, which is very distasteful. That even Kohoki though has a moment later on, despite being a literal monster, refuses to work with Münchhausen on his final project, as Megumi is the planned central sacrifice, until he is brainwashed, shows however even this notorious title is going for more of worth in storytelling.

It is here, alongside Legend of the Overfiend, you have to bring up the screenwriter being Noboru "Shō" Aikawa. His eighties and nineties screenwriting includes so very notorious anime titles - Angel Cop (1989-94), Violence Jack (1986-90) - notorious in their own right, but he gained a reputation later on in Martian Successor Nadesico (1996) and Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). The later is of note as, in mind to the works where he was an episode writer or the main writer, Fullmetal Alchemist was when he was the main writer, a hit at the time but one readapted in another series more accurate to the original manga, as he took the already successful first television adaptation into a different direction with other writers, including an explicit metaphor in a fantasy world setting of the second Gulf War, with stand-ins for the United States and the Middle East which were not from memories as potentially offensive or dumb as metaphors as that could be. Knowing this, it is never simple for me to look at the younger Shō Aikawa, working behind such notorious anime narratives, and not wonder what was meant to be more to them. Seeing Legend of the Demon Womb nowadays, I can see more going on at least in terms of the drama.

And when the transgressive works, even if it still offends it reviles and captivates at the same time. It cannot be said to be progressive nor feminist, but I think of a scene where a female demon, briefly disguised as Megumi, literally screws Takeaki into becoming the Dark One, turning into a monstrosity in the work's binding of body horror and eroticism where it does work. If the franchise had found a way to deal with both the erotica and its horrifying content better would have helped considerably, as even the dark eroticism would have worked if more care had been taken. Even the more light hearted moments, when the comedy felt tonally out of place before, work a lot better, such as Tatsuo trying to help his cousin out by being a pervert and taking him to an erotic stage show. Even the moments which are shock for the sake of it, such as attack proving why you should never ask for head whilst driven, teeth clenching, feel more provocative than just discomforting to know existed.

The fact however, in spite of the prequel being more ambitious in scope, that I find myself drawn more to the sequel is a surprise. There is, however, the obvious advantage that this does not feel like multiple episodes, but one story told. Not a lot was edited out from the two original episodes, and whilst content has to be censored for the release, this feels a lot franker in content than before. The English dub is still bad; there are a couple of moments where, in context of this era of dubs to lurid anime, which are good, but one of the biggest hindrances that would be overcome would be to have these titles recut in their original Japanese dubs. Here as well I fully appreciated too the production, where after some inappropriately chintzy musical cues in the prequel, a few here by composer Masamichi Amano are incredibly evocative, whilst the animation and production design, for this urban-set dark fantasy narrative, does grow and add a lot to this narrative's uncomfortable but idiosyncratic content.

Looking at the first two Urotsukidôji films in the contemporary times, when the anime has moved on and Manga Entertainment was bought out by Funimation in 2019, does stand out more as a result looking back at the pair decades after their heyday of notoriety. Anime has not moved on as people would think, as the violence is gone but the eroticism stayed, but these are the kind of title not likely to get re-released in the modern day due to the paradox that, preferring uncensored boutique titles, this would still be censored. This franchise is more likely to thrive in the United States, even if trying to preserve high definition versions of the OVA episodic versions may be impossible to. This title, returning to it and specifically Legend of the Demon Womb over its prequel, feels of the era, with all the baggage of these notorious adult anime of yore. It however also won me over, never expecting the final scene in this film, with the perfect musical cue, to overcome a questionable English dub and some undefendable adult content, to actually be as evocative and emotionally hitting as it turned out to be when, for all the violence and sexual violence, the tragedy of Tatsuo and Megumi likely having to kill Takeaki before he slays Tatsuo is likely.

Even with reservations, to Urotsukidôji as a franchise of dark, bleak fantasy, here you see that, alongside the script, the productions were trying their best. The aspect that made this series as much as its notoriety, the lore and style, is thankfully one of its greatest virtues, and if this feels such a lighter review for a work still nasty, still violent, and still with issues of questionable content, such as its use of rape, that is because in context a lot more of this feels more precise. It feels intentional when it does something provocative, then at times with the first story being undercut by problematic long scenes which were excised in the British cut. It makes the entire saga after this more compelling as, whilst this exists in the middle of Legend of the Overfiend narratively, it makes sense as a true sequel.

Since the apocalypse stopped us from having stories after a certain part of the timeline, here what is a side story eventually builds to what would actually become important in the lore, including knowledge of the sequels that came afterwards. Manga Entertainment did not release parts three (Return of the Overfiend (1992–1993)) and four (Inferno Road (1993–1995)), but Kiseki Films (under Revelation Films) did. Infamously, to anyone aware of this, two of the three episodes of part four when not allowed on the DVD by the British censors, and there is a lot to mention, as they are set in the post-apocalypse, of alternative endings and one unfinished project ‎Urotsukidoji V: The Final Chapter (1996), which got one episode finished and is said to not even be fully finished in animation from what was made available. It fascinates me, rather than scares me, to wonder what happens next now, especially as Legend of the Demon Womb still paints the inevitable Armageddon which turns the world into the post-apocalypse the future sequels would deal with, all whilst has this narrative which finally won me over.

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1) Very early in the podcast Anime World Order, who started in 2005/6 and are still going into the 2020s, Patrick Macias was interviewed between Episodes 5 to 8, which I will link to HERE for the first episode of these interviews. One of them has a tasteless title, but is an exact dialogue quotation from an obscure erotic anime's English dub called Gonad the Barbarian & Search for Uranus (1986). In that itself, you get however a reminder of how bad this genre can be.

#193: Akikan! (2009)

 

Director: Yuji Himaki

Screenplay: Hideaki Koyasu

Based on a light novel by Riku Ranjō and Hiro Suzuhira

Voice Cast: Jun Fukuyama as Kakeru Daichi; Sayaka Narita as Melon; Aiko Ōkubo as Yurika Kochikaze; Aki Toyosaki as Najimi Tenkūji; Aoi Yūki as Budoko; Mamiko Noto as Yell; Megumi Nakajima as Miku; Megumi Toyoguchi as Airin Kizaki; Nobuhiko Okamoto as Gorō Amaji; Ryotaro Okiayu as Hidehiko Otoyo; Ryou Hirohashi as Misaki Miyashita

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

If you want to drink me, tell me beforehand, idiot.

When I initially came to Akikan, it was under the auspices of it being one of the weirdest anime premises in existence, that of anthropomorphic cans turning into women. This is not the only time then or before of objects being humanised, and whilst in an occasional while it can be gender reversed, like Miracle Train - Ōedo-sen e Yōkoso (2009) that can even include train stations as depicted as cute guys, usually this is done with cute girls and women. Be they firearms, planes, even Sega games consoles. Akikan is definitely weird, though the initial concerns were both sexualising women as literal objects, here owned by those who first bring them to life (of any gender) by finding the right can and drinking from it, and the idea of anyone wanting to have sex with a Pepsi can in the first place.

The bigger issue, and not what I was expecting, was how bad Akikan turned out to be. Still a show, in spite of content that did actually offend me, and content which was just dumb, that I could get some pleasures from, but certainly a deeply misguided production which also felt rushed and had no idea what it wanted to do. That pleasure is honed from years, including within the time I even started writing amateur reviews, of willingly suffering through the strangest of titles as I can appreciate the truly great, which is a significantly different mindset to come to the actual show with than for most readers. The part never brought up in all the weirdest anime lists Akikan gets onto is just how bad some of the ideas turned out.

Here, the protagonist is Kakeru Daichi, who finds an Akikan he will dub Melon, a melon soda that inexplicably turns into a young woman his age when he drinks from it. In this world, what the set-up is presumed to be is a secret group, part of the Department of Economy, who are staging battles between Akikan across the city, those originally aluminium and those of steel, for a very violent form of product research as these magical women have powers. None of the Akikan in the anime are any other gender than women, though the owners can vary, as Kakeru's childhood best friend Najimi accidentally gains one, during a night where her ability to get drunk just on carbonated drinks leads to a sports drink becoming the severe and tough Yell, whilst a junior high school girl named Misaki acquired Budoko, a bratty grape juice based Akikan whose inability to beat Melon is not going to stop her sling shooting exploding grapes at her. None of this, premise wise, is actually bad. It is deeply silly, with the added factor of a lot of cultural idiosyncrasies which would make this a more curious take, that Japanese vending machines and their contents can be very different from other countries, meaning that, if this went any direction, Akikan based on canned coffee could exist and the original light novels has one based on a can of sweet red bean soup. No idea is stupid if the execution is done well.  Akikan tragically does not try.

I am trying to avoid everything, from episode one, that immediately made me realise this show was going to get painful at times, though in truth after the initial few episodes it does settle down or a tolerance came to be that helped me adapt to this production. Dramatically, this review will work better if all the awful content is left to hit the viewer as a warning by the ending, whilst instead I will start here with how, in spite of itself, Akikan is definitely weird. At first, you did not expect this to suddenly have very bleakly existential angst, from the first episode, from a young woman formally a melon soda can. Having to sustain her life-force from drinking other melon soda, which is a potential nightmare if the brand was discontinued, and even having to take cold baths than hot ones, the first days with Kakeru, when he is not one of the worst and scummiest male protagonists to put with as a true sex pest, are filled with the angst of a life of a metal drinks can usually thrown out into recycling or left to rust in waste, uncared for beyond a product. This is really twisted existentialism the premise probably did not realise, all when a lot of it is really the magical girl genre if everyone owned a magical girl, able to be turned back into a can if a tab eye ring is pulled, and with a lot of fetish in its apparently wholesome veneer blatantly there, such as the transformation back into human shape drinking from the can, effectively kissing.

Like an exploding can shaken up, it is not possible to hide from Akikan's many issues, which I probably had a higher tolerance to, but Akikan itself also meanders so much. It has very conventional characters and also a lot of additional weirdness. Something truly weird is felt when you realise the back-story between Kakeru and Najimi, who has her own crush on him, involves Kakeru having protected her in their youth from a kidnapping where he got the gun and killed the criminals dead in the classroom this transpired within, something brushed over in the show's bright tone without realising how tonally out of place that is. Some of the weird in contrast is admittedly funny, the male friend who literally becomes invisible to everyone when no one talks to him, or Yurika, who until the OVA bonus did her a disservice was arguably the best character here. Openly with a huge crush on Najimi, willingly to protect her from the sex pest protagonist by throwing razor sharp tarot cards from him and, born on Halloween, literally a witch who, gets something good in the show which her riding on an actual broom on her birthday.

Even she though, in her introduction, has a weird joke for one scene of trying to sustain herself on vitamin supplements out of curiosity rather than food, or literally distracting someone with her large bust during a baseball game. Then there are moments like how Goro the invisible friend, in the witch sequence previously mentioned, is inexplicably woken up from the bed shared with his sisters in dog hat bed clothes that even baffled me. Akikan, if it was not for all the many sins it commits, would be deliciously erratic and bizarre to experience at times. Eventually even the concept of aluminium and steel Akikan fighting each other is jettisoned, as everyone merely accepts each other existing, and no other Akikan barring one in the two final episodes are introduced.

You have a lot of melodrama and sex comedy, with the added and additionally jarring tonal shift for a major plot that, when Kakeru skips out on a date with Najimi, Yell takes it onto herself to nearly disembowel him, which is the kind of sequence I would have expected from the notorious School Days (2007) or a bad ending of a Japanese visual novel instead. This entire incident is skipped over - which is not surprising, what between Najimi herself having a fixation on a "waste monster" that will get her for not hording, and hair that is literally an antenna, even Yell behaving like a cat if a shiny thing is dangled in front of her, these characters do not act conventionally in the slightest even as caricatures. It is actually a surprise, barring a joke or two, the swimsuit episode, set in an indoor swimming pool, is actually tamer than what comes before. Well, barring the moment a certain character, whose joke is to be a perverted male character in a small sparkly thong, tries to get intimate with Goro, but that character is to still be introduced later here, instead here evidence that if this had been a more sedate and weird show, I would have been a lot kinder to it.

There is even a good episode, or at least for me a breath of fresh air. Episode 10 is actually a good episode, entirely about nothing. Melon with the perils of getting the laundry done with the weather being erratic, between bathing in an ice bath with melon soda drinks; Budoko with cats attacking her hair in her sleep; and finally Yell being distracted by a dragonfly during house cleaning. Many people would not like this episode, but it was such a surprise to have an episode, contrary to others, where there were no dumb jokes, no tasteless sex humour, none of the problematic side characters eventually to introduce in the review, and at the third to last episode not making much of an issue about how little has actually transpired throughout the show. So much so the introduction of an actual antagonist is absolutely rushed. The final two are about a figure created for the anime, a mixed juice Akikan who is absorbing others as a super villainess, replicating her victims as shadow clones in two episodes that are just average. Living with the show as much as I did meant, even Akikan for all it does wrong left some emotional investment, so these two episodes did have something even if the show goes to the obvious conclusion, the power of wishing invoked and inexplicably tying in the cats you find throughout the show into a back-story.

That goes without saying Akikan was also a brutal viewing experience, in that for a late 2000s show, it was amazing how much inappropriate content and bad ideas it had to. After three-quarters of the review biting my tongue, this is where I also confess the countless times, an incredibly amount, I was also cringing throughout. Kakeru, our lead, is immediately a problem as, whilst he tones down at times, he is both one of the worst of the generic male leads of an anime I could have encountered, entirely because he is just an id who says the most inappropriate things. When your lead, meeting Budoko, a young girl Akikan, for the first time asks whether she wants to date him, saying that he will wait until she is grown up to take her virginity, it is, yes, legitimately gross even as a gag and not expected. That is not even taking into consideration a figure more inappropriate, the head of the shady Department of Economy with his female assistant called Hidehiko. Hidehiko is, to be blunt, a walking gag of a predatory gay man who lusts after young men, first introduced with a young man fleeing his office with his clothes in his arms, which would have not aged even in 2009, and upon immediately meeting was an alarm bell of how bad Akikan could get. Much of the worst of Akikan comes in knowing, with no nudity within it, it is a sex comedy when the writers thought jokes about a man trying to molest teenage boys was good, offensive in multiple ways at once. And this is neither just being politically correct or social justice warrioring, but that this is also done with complete tone deafness, nor even getting to the point of the entire premise, which is barely used. Most of this would have been average harem fantasy comedy, with a very weird premise, for the moments which are truly strange is a lot of the premise never being used because the writer was focused on jokes really off-colour and wasting time.

Particularly as, released as a separate bonus, the straight-to-video hot springs episode is a cursed item. Nothing happens - it is a hot springs episode post-series which is an excuse for a sex comedy - but how it is done, in mind there is no nudity or sex, it is a twenty plus minute barrage to suffer through. Immediately you have the two youngest girls among the group, sexualised, which is gross and would edge the border to New Zealand banning this OVA, as they have done so for other anime in this area¹. Nothing within this, even in terms of the sex humour, is inherently problematic either barring that example, but again you witness how execution can be misjudged. That a strategically placed Tengu mask, with a long nose, is phallic; that there is body sushi for no reason, or that Kakeru is a perv. What happens is a barrage of bad and tasteless jokes, a lot of material which is just thrown out without though, like a joke on murder mysteries at hot spars, which, condensed into this bonus where there are not restrictions, is arguably even worse than the whole series. There is more problematic humour with Hidehiko, as a predatory gay male character, at the end, making up the foul cherry on the top, and even predatory lesbianism as a joke, for the unfortunate covering of all bases and ruining Yurika, throwing a fun over-the-top character under the bus. By the point the body sushi scene involves cats happens, that was the point, whilst you do not see anything, the OVA did slip into a rare tier for me, that of something we could have lived without the existence of from a viewer known for being able to find virtue even in the main series. When only one scene, of seeing Najimi herding cats on mass in a one scene joke, the only thing within this of interest, the OVA might be one of the worst things I have actually sat through.

Akikan was a mess to experience. Completely undefendable, and frankly not recommended unless you are willing to sit through something which is not going to be good a lot of the time. The inability to exploit the premise, the concept of soda cans as human beings and all the unintentionally dark existentialism involved, is the scathing thing above all else for me in this show never working, all its un-PC humour worse, not just out of a moral trigger, but that it wastes ideas that could have worked for jokes. You could easily remove all the jokes without ruining anything which says a lot about the work, such as another character (barely seen) that is drag queen, that runs a cafe but is also sadly painted as a broad caricature even if treated more kindly. Even little details - such as Goro not understanding that women can be gay and thinking it's wrong in his oblivious idiocy - comes off as more overtly dumb and really out of place, especially when one of the aspects of anime, in truth, was always its gleeful sense of sexiness even for the sake of titillation, be it embracing the lewdness, the playful fun, or proudly waving homoeroticism around, be it male characters or appreciating the busty gay female friend who is a hell of a lot more appreciated, especially as a witch, as a character in this strange premise than an obnoxious bland male sex pest lead.

Accidentally opening a Pandora's Box, the show is just dumb, and unfocused. To have salvaged this show, regardless of whether faithful to the source material, you would have to drastically rewrite it entirely, especially when knowing the end credits song, a silly attempt to have soda drinking as erotic analogy set to multiple vocalists and musical genres per episode, was one of the only inventive aspects² to a show which also looks visually bland. This is worse in knowledge this is on Weirdest Anime lists online, because for all its weirdest moments the show does not live up to that reputation like it should do.

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1) See Puni Puni Poemy (2004), which was banned in the country for sexual exploitation of children, one of a couple of anime that have been caught in the crosshairs in that country for this. And that was an OVA being tasteless to shock on purpose in the broadest and over-the-top forms, and released uncut in the United Kingdom in the day, so that attitude to the government's censorship is unwavering.

2) Every episode has a different spin on the end theme, including a guest star from artificial vocalist Hatsune Miku, which is surprising considering how generic the show is in look, and obviously how haphazard the work is in narrative and presentation.

#192: Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989)

 

The Theatrical Recut

Director: Hideki Takayama

Screenplay: Noboru Aikawa

Based on the manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Christopher Courage as Amano Jyaku; Danny Bush as Tatsuo Nagumo; Lucy Morales as Megumi Amano; Rebel Joy as Akemi Ito; Rose Palmer as Kuroko; Bill Timoney as Overfiend/Suikakujyu; Greg Puertolas as Elder; Jurgen Offen as Suikakujyu; Randy Woodcock as Niki

Viewed in English Dub

I would not be surprised if anime fans younger than me do not know this exits, unless infamy has made Urotsukidôji something of a bogeyman that can last for an entire couple of generations of anime fandom. I myself caught the tail end of this title's initial infamy, which was in the United Kingdom in the nineties before I really knew what these animated works from Japan were beyond Pokemon. This was in the early Manga Entertainment DVD days, where of all places the first time I saw the first two film cuts of the OVAs, Legend of the Overfiend and Legend of the Demon Womb (1993), was a cheap copy bought in Blockbuster Video, a very different store than in its homeland of the United States. At the same time I would rummage for second hand copies of  titles and discover the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) for the first time, or Playstation 2 videogames, was when after seeing the DVD advertising for this notorious title I finally witnessed it for the first time. I hated the two features on that first viewing, before the readers ask, a particularly filthy experience especially as the second film itself became one of the worst films I had seen at that time. Marathoning the pair, even in their censored British versions, as a double bill was not a particularly bright idea in one night's sitting as was the case back then.

Urotsukidôji is a pretty big title to cover, more so as whilst this had an infamy in the United States, when John O'Donnell of Central Park Media acquired the theatrical cut of the original erotic (hentai) OVAs, even released that version in theatrical screenings, in the United Kingdom this title through Manga Entertainment gained just as distinct an infamous legacy among the British anime community.  Urotsukidôji seen in the harsh light of day, for this review, is a messy work. One which is difficult, in all honesty, to defend and yet, whilst it has frankly weakened in terms of my opinion on it, has aspects which are compelling and feel the creations of a compromised work that could have been something still horrifying, transgressive and offensive, yet actually incredible.

The problem is not helped by how the title was released in Britain, as was the version reviewed for this piece, but we will get to this. Legend of the Overfiend, sticking to the original narrative than its sequels, is a curiosity in hindsight. Creator Toshio Maeda decided to create an ambitious dark fantasy whose scope expands centuries and is Lovecraftian in scope just in the version adaptive for what became Legend of the Overfiend, three original video episodes released between 1987 and 1989 whose producers includes Penthouse. Also among the production was Yoshinobu Nishizaki, a curious figure to find here, as he is important as one of the co-creators of Space Battleship Yamato (1974-5), arguably one of the hugest influences on modern Japanese and Western anime fandon, that television series created with Leiji Matsumoto a huge mythical creation (even in its Westernised Star Blazers version) in spite of it becoming rare to see here in the West for decades after. Nishizaki, among trying to replicate that formula with other space opera science-fictions stories, and getting arrested in 1999 for having various drug paraphernalia and fire arms (including live howitzer shells)¹, helped produce one of the most recognised and notorious of the hentai erotic genre.

Some will already know all this, but I feel establishing all this is significant as this all leads into a title which became, especially in the United Kingdom, an albatross as much as a notorious one-off, a franchise which was probably what most people only saw, even censored, in terms of the pornographic anime genre. Whilst a lot read of being made in the eighties, when the VHS medium created them, sound as frankly unpleasant too, it is strange to know that, rather than sexy porn animation, the initial introduction would be, of all things, this attempt at a transgressive body horror magnum opus many would be introduced to, something that would have to change when more titles (from the likes of Central Park Media) released other titles or when the internet made it possible to view other titles. 

All in mind that the premise is very nineteen eighties, with large plot tropes very commonplace in the modern day and has frankly cheesy in the current day even if under such (even censored) unsettling and at points completely undefendable content. The most remarkable thing about the title was the ambition. That, in a world of three dimensions - our own, the beast people realm, and the equivalent of demons with the Majin - there is to be a messianic God known as the Chōjin to meld all the dimensions into one. I am going to spoil that, to the horror of Amano, a beast man with his sister Megumi trying to find the Chōjin on the human realm, that this will led to the worlds burning. Whilst I will keep aspects a secret through the review beyond this, I will say that at least in terms of content, narratively in its own way there is a lot of idiosyncrasy to appreciate, that in terms of sidestepping expectations it should have warmed said protagonist that, believing the star player in the school basketball team is the Chōjin, the perfect young man adored by all, he should have been paying more attention at Tatsuo, who we are introduced spying on the cheerleaders changing and explicitly masturbating in a crawlspace, unfortunately for everyone the likely messiah.

The transgressive nature of Legend of the Overfiend is not the problem in terms of intent, the horror of combining sex and violent an uncomfortable one for understandable reasons, one that many would not find palatable and avoid for good reason, especially as society has sadly disappointed us still with how grotesque people can be in their abuse of other. In the era of trigger warnings, sexual violence and rape is even more a taboo, and that is completely defendable, as it is still a real horrifying concept many of us do not realise is as prevalent in reality as it is.  As a species with conscious thought, we need transgressions of morality though, drawn to purposely repulse, for the sake of shock and thought, but in mind to what I have just written just before that sentence, the issue is within how to do so. With subjects like sexual violent, this is a subject that you cannot expect to not be uncomfortable and difficult to tackle.

You need to be offended to think, but how something is done is an issue to tackle, alongside the fact many understandably would prefer not to go through the offense. This is why I have always argued to myself, barring extreme exceptions, no concept is inappropriate to try to tell in a piece of art, but that execution is always the issue, and that certain taboos are so difficult to tackle without missing the target entirely. To dismiss Legend of the Overfiend as disgusting animated porn is dodging the point of its existence as well as dark, lurid story writing. The problem here has always been the execution, which I have always felt was the gender discrepancy, not the material. There would be no qualms with depicting the erotic grotesque if it was encompassing all gender and sexual transgressions; still repulsive, and especially now even more difficult for some to experience for complete real (and at times, tragic) reasons, but not hampered by dubious gender stereotypes. This should have been, even as a dark fantasy with characters with super powers and demons, the anime equivalent of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) in attitude. It would still offend many, but the equality in how to transgress would make more sense.

Unfortunately, this is a work where all the sexual violence is committed to female characters only, and continues the stereotype that rape is inherently a crime against women when it is one to men and women equally. Growing up with feminists (rightly) attacking misogyny in culture prominently, I cannot view Legend of the Overfiend without issues, the transgressions of the anime to consider without being dismissed as tasteless, but also impossible to ignore. This is not a film, unlike others, where I can defend the transgressions fully because they purposely blur the morals involved in a pronounced and purposeful way. Here, it does leave the anime with crass content which has made it infamous in a bad way and undermines its ero-guro content. Something like Midori (1992) is an anime which avoids these problems and is more striking as a result, just for the simple reason, without reducing the reason to a crass point, that in that underground production no character in that work was safe from the worse that could happen, making the transgressions centre stage, not the mistakes of victimizing only women.

Overfiend however falls into women being victimised, the male characters allowed to turn into horrifying monsters, and no balance to compensate, where the characters, male and female equally, would be shown to suffer from trauma, not just drawn dolls for lurid kicks, in a story which mixes this despairing nihilism with optimism. One too where men and women can be monsters and heroes, can all be victims of horrifying acts. Knowing what has been removed from the OVAs, which were pornographic, in text research sadly does not helped the production, which does suggest a work which was lurid in a completely undefendable way in sequences heavily censored for the theatrical cut and the version we got in the United Kingdom. It neither helps, to lighten the review's tone, that the version most known in the West, rather than the original Japanese language OVA episodes, has a terrible English dub. Full of swearing you would expect from Manga Entertainment, who used to pad out titles in cursing to get higher age ratings in Britain, it would be more comical if the unpleasant content was not there, and even then some of it returning to the anime was unintentionally funny.

Also, honestly, the original work beneath itself does not understand its own tone anyway. How do you explain the comic side kick of Amano's, Kuroko, a little elven creature there at the most inappropriate times in transgressive sequences ripped out for the British censored cut. One, for example, has him getting turned on at a scene removed, only to be slapped, which was included as newly animated content for the original theatrical release, a Japanese theatrical cut of the OVAs which removed all the pornography and included a couple of new sequences. Even the original, using that example, cannot help but have violently jarring tonal shifts into comedy for a very dark work.

The edited version takes the three OVAs - the first the initial discovery of the Chōjin, the third the apocalyptic finale, and the second the Majin attempting to bring in their own powerful figure from a human being to destroy the Chōjin. The second episode really coming off the most inbued with this work's very pulpy nature, explicitly reminding me that this and the manga were made in the eighties, especially as this is soaked in the fad of psychic powers and ESPers, a concept that was prevalent in a lot of this animation at the time, with a lot of characters flying through the air in coloured force fields and a lot of psychic powers.  

It violently contrasts the content which, even incredibly censored, is dark and unsettling, what with the female lead and object of Tatsuo's eye, Akemi, the unfortunate victim of a lot of assault, and the one scene where the Chōjin awakens which, reading into what is removed from the OVA, is frankly a really undefendable scene of rape on a female nurse, including death and humiliation, even in terms of transgressive art. In contrast to this, some of the more perverse content itself is what has always lingered with me and I will actually defend. That human figure brought in to defeat the Chōjin, a fellow classmate called Niki who likes Akemi and is a broken figure, is an already damaged figure abused by his parents and classmates, and is made a demon by way of the act of castrating himself and literally grafting on a demonic phallus to himself. It is still distasteful, but for the sake of the erotic-grotesque, content like this is not nasty and misogynistic, but actually transgressive, power fantasy literalised with phallic content, whose providers add an additional weirdness in being a demon in a trench coat and a bizarre gangly figure in a Metropolis baseball cap who huffs solvent aerosol. With the added perverseness that Niki can gain more power consuming both the blood and semen of Tatsuo, which he gets from one of the few consensual sex scenes with a premature ending, this shows what is really what ero-guro is for myself, forcing one to look at the human body and sexuality in really twisted and odd ways, and what in the perfect world would have been the greater subject chosen to make the viewer uncomfortable.

The final OVA, for the most part, even jettisons the more problematic content in favour of the one thing especially that has lasted for me and as a virtue, how incredibly dark and ambitious Urotsukidôji is in spite of making so many mistakes. It is not a spoiler to say the world is never going to be the same again, opening up the sequels in parts 3 and 4, the second a side story, into a post-apocalypse narrative centuries further on, and the end of said world is as much disturbing but without any criticisms of it being offensive. It feels surprising how it does not hold its punches and ends in a dark way, even if still with the open ending for good to happen.  It is in the final scenes that you can see more ambition here, where the animators are working at something significantly more profound than pornography, and that you can legitimately wonder whether this is subconsciously dealing with traumas, like Akira (1988) from this era using mushroom cloud imagery. That one tangent suggests the real 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, a devastating natural disaster in Japan's history, was caused by the summoning of a Leviathan-like sea creature attests to this; far from tasteless, this is not the first piece of Japanese media to suggest the real earthquake disaster was caused by supernatural means, as the live action adaptation of the novel Teito Monogatari, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988), had.

Again, it is a nightmare how bad the English dub can be, as honestly whilst the British Board of Film Classification would never make it possible to release something like "The Perfect Collection" available, the long out-of-print US release of the original OVA versions, even seeing the uncut versions would not necessary help the work's favour for me unless willing to have the full nightmarish transgression has its own artistic worth, even if the content on a moral level is objectionable in having to sit through. One of the only things I can gather of note is how, feeling a really pointless character who does nothing, the beast-woman Megumi literally sexes someone to death, which whether that is depicted with any success or not would have least been a significant juxtaposition of a woman's sexuality being powerful and destructive. Instead, upon this viewing, the dub uncuts a work that, in context of its production, does have an incredible atmosphere. Its mood with its vivid and horrifying images is distinct, even if the music at times can be tonally inappropriate and dinky in sound. The dub undercuts the mood, and this is in mind that, under pseudonyms, the original Japanese dub has prolific voice actors from this era in the roles.

The work together is in the light of day an anime compromised by its production, where you have an ending becoming a true Lovecraftian apocalypse that is truly horrifying, something that is far loftier than most anime and is completely unforgettable. This however is tragically set against the mistakes in the lurid content and the stereotypes - that, for the most part, the men are stoic, the women victims - that really cannot be defended.  The work's infamy will last in the West but, as the title is long out of print in the United Kingdom, it is a legacy in mind to a deeply compromised work, and for every image which will stick with me, it will also come off for me as the title that, if it had been rewritten drastically, could have had a greater legacy than the one it actually has.

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1) Nishizaki was arrested in 1997 and in January 1999, before the February 1999 charge I have mentioned, for similar charges too in case you the reader wondered if this was a one-off or not.

#191: Blue Remains (2001)

 

Directors: Hisaya Takabayashi and Toshifumi Takizawa

Screenplay: Hisaya Takebayashi, Masatoshi Kimura and Toshifumi Takizawa

Voice Cast: Kazue Fukiishi as Amamiku; Kazuya Ichijou as Reyju; Masane Tsukayama as Glptofane Sex; Hiroko Suzuki as Adenine Unum; Houchu Ohtsuka as Cytosine Tria; Junko Sakuma as Yuri; Kappei Yamaguchi as Mireo; Masashi Sugawara as Ryu; Norio Wakatsuki as Irigaru; Rica Matsumoto as Sari; Takehito Koyasu as Malloz; Tesshō Genda as Thymine Duo; Tomoko Kaneda as Amamiku (child); Yoshiko Sakakibara as Mayzamik

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Early into the DVD era in Britain, a now defunct label, Art Magic's sub label Eastern Cult Cinema, released three very early attempts at three dimensional animation, that wordiness aware that computers were assisting anime production from the late 90s onwards anyway. They were A.LI.C.E. (1999), the first theatrical film in this form, crude but fascinating as a forgotten historical footnote; Malice@Doll (2001), an OVA worthy for rediscovery as a dark work whose only real issue is its art style, even if the production worked around the restrictions; and Blue Remains, a post-apocalyptic nautical film with an environmental message.

Here, humanity has blown itself up with nuclear bombs, which has always been the way, all watched on from a spaceship helmed by a married pair of ecological scientists with their infant daughter Amamiku. Heading back down to Earth, tragically the couples' bodies are too irradiated to go through with their goal, to plant special seeds which can reawakening the ecosystem, so they place Amamiku in cryogenic sleep with them, and the ship's computer for comfort and guidance, to carry out the goal when they are gone. At the age of fourteen, but ninety plus years later, she has to carry on with the goal to help the Earth.

The film has, from then on, to struggle with the form of its then-new animation style. The film, when Amamiku wakes up, is effectively a sci-fi submarine tale, having to work around its limitations by being almost entirely set underwater or in small environments like submarine cockpits. Amamiku finds herself between those, human and otherwise, wishing to help her in restoring the Earth's vibrancy with the seeds, and an entity known as Glptofane Sex, who believes the absolute law of life should means killing off the rest of humanity to save the planet, against all the philosophical arguments and pleas of his lookalike brethren otherwise.

The film, openly, is a lot of action scenes, of Glptofane's forces of ball-like drones (with buzz saw tummies) and a giant biomechanical squid he is housed in, trying to get Amamiku and the few humans left asked to assist her goal. The film's look is equivalent of a Playstation One era cut scene for a lower budgeted game, but I will not be mean at the film for this, more that much of Blue Remains without the style of another animated format to bring a greater energy feels stiff as a result. That it is a lot of action and dynamic scenes instead of world building neither helps, especially because of the limits of the computer animation which prevent the action from being that dynamic, of 3D animated futuristic submarines floating in a void of dark blue with little background detail baring some ruined underwater buildings and an occasional aquatic life form.

The production does feel it is straining at a budget, where even the lead voice actress Kazue Fukiishi as Amamiku, in her only ever role, plays the character with a curious reflection in lines readings you normally do not get. If we go back to those three films mentioned in the first paragraph together, Malice@Doll out of the three was the most interesting of the trio; it is still strange, struggles against its form, especially as by that point Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) despite being a box office disaster effectively killed off these early productions at the same time, but it was able to get to something profound with being a surreal and disturbing work with a style and interesting Chiaki J. Konaka screenplay. Blue Remains in contrast is pretty conventional, not elaborate in terms of depth or ideas. Environmental concerns, and villains wanting to commit genocide for environmental preservation, is common in the medium, even if it is fascinating to see the villain's own argue against him and this tale being the lone figure that is misguided. Even that, whilst barely fleshed out, no one is safe barring a couple of figures from death is interesting too.

In fact, the one aspect of Blue Remains which is rewarding is the touches of eccentricity and invention it does have. The villain, and those trying to convince him against his idea, are literally brains with eyes and nervous systems attached, a grotesque aesthetic choice which stands out more because the film looks as crude as it does, fitting a more horror based narrative and the one aspect of this production likely to catch people's attention if you ever come across it (even an old DVD copy). More touches like this, like the submarines having fins to "swim" through layers of the water, or a dolphin which is actually meant to be a robot, are more interesting aspects that could have been ran with. When the film gets more New Age in tone, it is more worthwhile as it comes more to the foreground with the supernatural involved with those seeds Amamiku protects. It is not a spoiler to say a giant life giving tree, with human foetuses growing from it for new life, is part of the conclusion, because that in itself is an abrupt tangent for the film to get to considering its average tone. The end credits, set over real footage of the barrier reefs, is a cheesy and heavy handed environmental song about the life force of the sea and needing to protect it, whose earnestness is misguided but in itself cannot help but be charming. More like this, and Blue Remains would have won me over. Even if it fought against its archaic format, a more overtly surreal or inventive aesthetic, like an old weird video game from this era, would have gained it a cult audience if anything.

#190: Cat Shit One (2010)

 

Director: Kazuya Sasahara

Screenplay: Kazuya Sasahara and Hiroshi Sekisakai

Based on the manga by Motofumi Kobayashi

Voice Cast: Hiroshi Tsuchida as Packy; Satoshi Hino as Botasky; Masashi Nitta as Bowen; Sawaki Akimoto as CP; Kenta Sakai as Militia; Yuki Hirako as Militia

Viewed on Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Subtitled "The Animated Series", this original net animation was meant to go on to have a full season of storytelling based on the Motofumi Kobayashi manga of the same name¹, more politely titled in the West Apocalypse Meow by ADV Vision's manga arm, ADV Manga, for release for the United States and United Kingdom. That was not a pointless change either, as the original manga was set during the Vietnam War and progressed on into the eighties for a later follow-up. Here, you have a story set within the Middle East during a conflict you could easily pluck from real life politics, be it the first or the second Gulf War. The weird thing is that, entirely grounded as a war narrative, these tales are told through anthropomorphic animals, the lead Packy both a sergeant in the manga but also a bunny rabbit.

Only a regular anime episode length, Cat Shit One is deceptively a strange title to witness, as in another context, it acts and feels like it could have been a live action American actor film, say Lone Soldier (2013) by Peter Berg with Mark Wahlberg for one I saw in the cinema in the past, only you have cast the leads with rabbits. Very un-politically correct, this has Arab Taliban cast with anthropomorphic camels, and they are explicitly Taliban in their costumes, and that with their dialogue not in Japanese or subtitles I swear to have least heard Allah a couple of times. The episode follows two members of Cat Shit One, set within this more modern day scenario in a ruined town in the middle of the desert, after two hostages ("canaries") captured by the Taliban. There is Packy, the cooler and more collected veteran and Botasky, the more nervous sniper who is criticised for having too many gizmos on his rifle, which make it heavier to carry, until it proves useful against blocking blades. They have no backup until they can get the hostages to safety and have to go into the enemy territory by themselves.

One thing clear with the episode as well is that this is a "military otaku" show in form, in that Cat Shit One was made to be a realistic war narrative and that, in the variety of nerd culture in Japan, otaku for military aesthetic and hardware exist to, in knowledge and obsession, so that I would not be surprised if the firearms and military vehicles you witness in this short action piece were accurate. This is all in mind you are watching, in three dimensional animation, cute rabbits in military fatigues with guns shooting at camels stood on hind legs with their costumes cut out in the back for their humps and with hands, with is surreal to witness.

Using the unnatural as metaphor is interesting as a concept. Retelling a narrative with anthropomorphic animals adds surreality but also a lot of great potential, including the metaphors between human and animal which it could offer. Art Spiegelman took a huge risk with Maus (1980-1991), his graphic novel telling his father's experience as a Jew during the Holocaust, by having the Jews depicted as mice and the Nazis as cats among choices, something we could forget when Maus proved a masterpiece of the medium, and that we do not consider the artistic choice a risk anymore that could have been tasteless and gauche. In a less serious contact, the choice of rabbits for American G.I.s is actually a pun, as the Japanese for rabbit is "usagi", a.k.a. USA G.I. being literalised. Cat Shit One might have skirted risks by having the Vietnamese as cats, but reading up on it they went as far as depict every country with the source material by various animals, including the Japanese themselves as monkeys and other choices which deliberately evoke stereotypes whether a wise decision or not. In Cat Shit One '80, the follow up which dealt with U.S. operations in Afghanistan against the Soviet Unions, the Middle Eastern characters are depicted not just with camels but cows and sheep, which could be considered offensive still but is in the same boat as the French in the manga being depicted as pigs, the British as rats or Russia as bears. The ONA is strange in that, looking closer to the first or second Gulf War in form, it does deviate from the sources considerably as the original cast, in the source, would be significantly older veterans by the early nineties or old rabbits by the 2000s.

Due to the little here, it is difficult anyway to speculate where this show would go as a pilot for a programme that never became. It feels like an action reel, even if a narrative is here, an eye catching attempt to win over potential investors as this was originally released on YouTube. It is fascinating as an oddity, especially as in terms of an ONA which uses 3D computer animation, I have seen considerably worse and this case being much more ambitious in look. It even involved motion capture actors, which adds a considerably weirder edge knowing an actor performing the motions of a military soldier would eventually be animated as a big fluffy bunny with big eyes, still moving with the worth of a soldier, and getting head shots on Taliban members. Thinking about this, an actor in a form that for many in another context is cuddly which is waddling along the Middle Eastern desert being shot at, is perversely funny the longer I think about it.

The source material fascinates reading more of it for this review's context, because whilst the use of stereotypes in casting nationalities per species may have been questionable, it does feel like Motofumi Kobayashi's source text is much more serious at least in that it has the cast interact with real figures of the wars being dealt with, in animalised form, and that it does not sanitise the conflicts at all even if it had action scenes like a Western military action comic book. The author Kobayashi is absolutely someone who deals with the subject of war, whether biographical or alternative history, with a complete fascination likely matched by extensive amounts of research, between this alongside the likes of tackling Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia in 1941) in a 2001 manga or another title called Vietnam War (1999), a non- anthropomorphic telling of the story of that war.

Cat Shit One the animated product is curious. Director and co-writer Kazuya Sasahara helmed one other work after this, and honestly, I could not see Cat Shit One the show going on well even if it had gotten the series the project had intended to have. For starters, it may have eventually proved problematic tackling the Gulf War as it did, or in how, that would eventually make the show difficult to sell. Even fans of the source material may have had issues, as this adapts neither the source material nor the sequel, which took on earlier military history that eventually led to the likes of the Taliban in the Middle East. Whilst the source may have had action for the sake of action, the references to the likes of how the Gulf Wars have been depicted in Hollywood films I have seen is as much something this pilot was aiming to replicate, including short implements of slow motion for visceral effect, which honestly including the tone, mostly deathly serious, might have not sold well. I also see, whether a viewer's individual opinion of the animation, that unless you had a film or a huge budgeted show, you could not keep up the quality and use of motion capture acting to a steady form unless you were lucky or with skill in management, as television schedules would cause a show like this to possibly look dreadful or cheap as it chugged along.

As a one-off, it is in many ways the type of spectacle being pulled off that would appeal to others but I find dull, and honestly not the kind of thing normally found in anime. With the prolific voice actor Hiroshi Tsuchida in the lead, very much playing his character Packy as a tough veteran who can with one other person take on an entire group of Taliban by himself least for a while, it is well executed but paradoxically the kind of title that, were it not depicted with rabbits, feels university in appeal as a war action story, but does not stick out. Time has made this an obscurity for a television series that never came to be, too short and probably obscure despite that ADV Manga's release. Again, it is a subtly bizarre production just for one creative choice that makes it weird. And knowing this was not the first for this - Penguin’s Memory: A Tale of Happiness (1985), a very serious Vietnam War tale only with anthropomorphic penguins, as a feature length anime based on mascots for Suntory, a major alcoholic beer producer in Japan known for being involved with a lot of art to promote their work - just makes this an even weirder thing to consider.

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1) Twelve to be precise as is detailed HERE.

#189: Revue Starlight (2018)

 

Director: Tomohiro Furukawa

Screenplay: Tatsuto Higuchi

Voice Cast: Momoyo Koyama as Karen Aijō; Suzuko Mimori as Hikari Kagura; Aina Aiba as Claudine Saijō; Ayasa Itō as Kaoruko Hanayagi; Haruki Iwata as Mahiru Tsuyuzaki; Hinata Satō as Junna Hoshimi; Kenjiro Tsuda as the Giraffe; Maho Tomita as Maya Tendō; Moeka Koizumi as Nana Daiba; Teru Ikuta as Futaba Isurugi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Some Overt Spoilers Throughout]

Probably the most surprising thing coming into reviewing Revue Starlight the animated series, twelve episodes long, is that this all originates from a significantly larger media project including a stage play, one which has spiralled out into an elaborate franchise which includes additional animated films, video games and a manga. This is surprising as, delightfully, this is a case of a franchise which feels very idiosyncratic and uniquely personal into itself, at least allowing this television series to grow out with its own creativity. Certainly as I will get into this series, knowing it has follow-on work, including an extended world of other schools beyond the one we have here as the main setting, it really comes to a testament of how this series, whilst very indebted to one figure I will refer to a lot throughout, works completely as its own one-off. A distinct, potent one in terms of its artistic style and using it for emotional drama that feels not like it is part of a media product to sell to an audience at all but with themes it wants to tell to said audience.

To sell the show, this exists in the world of Seisho Music Academy, a school for theatrical performers who are all trained in dance and acting amongst many skills. The 99th class here the central characters working towards another performance of the titular Revue Starlight, a play about two goddesses who are separated in a metaphorical tragedy trying to touch a star. The lead among them is Karen Aijō, a girl who coasts on by only to be given a new passion in her class when her childhood friend Hikari Kagura transfers from an academy in London in England, their childhood promise having been to perform together as great stars in such shows Revue Starlight. The show borders magical realism and surrealism as a metaphor for their emotional states, following seven other main characters involved, because of a lift in their school that transfers students to an underground environment. This is where a secret audition transpires to find the true actress among them dubbed the "Top Star". These are done in duels, musical duels with singing, where the target with your weapon of choice is to remove a badge hanging a cape off the opponent's shoulder with whichever choice of weapon you want.  

Notably, everyone one of the lead characters is female, as Seisho Music Academy is an all-girls school. The only male voice in the entirety of this show is the mysterious figure presiding over the auditions. Said figure is a cosmic talking giraffe, which may give you further emphasis that the show embraces the surreal. It is not a surprise, and is a delight, to know that lead director of the series Tomohiro Furukawa worked extensively with Kunihiko Ikuhara, the figure legendary for helming the likes of Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) and projects Furukawa worked on like Mawaru Penguindrum (2011). I will say ahead of time, I had immediately seen that Ikuhara's influence was throughout this show aesthetically, including having an idiosyncratic animal mascot in the giraffe, so learning of the direct connection means a greater deal. It says a great deal that Furukawa actually worked with the legend and used the influence to their advantage. This is not a detraction as, for a media franchise which involves mobile phone game tie-ins, letting the director take this show into its pop surreal emotionally charged form was among the best things in Revue Starlight's favour, especially as from the get-go, this program looks and sounds exceptional, in style and music, and the aesthetic influence is for its plot's favour as well as distinct.

Particularly as this is a show about the drama, the audition duels themselves extensions of the cast's various anxieties and concerns not only in their desire to become great actresses, or even when they lose their passions, but also emotionally beyond the stage. This show does not flinch in either depicting the stress of thinking you are not good enough in your work, trying to overcome feelings of weakness. It deals with the closeness of these characters in friendship and when stress frays it. It also has no qualms in subtext and overt nods to romantic chemistry amongst the all-female cast either, even dealing with an episode entirely about Karen's roommate and fellow student Mahiru, who is explicitly with romantic longings for her only to now play second fiddle behind a childhood friend, or how sleepy headed Kaoruko and tomboy Futaba's relationship is insanely close even if merely perceived subtext from a viewer to have, riding on the latter's motorbike with Kaoruko falling asleep in motion, clearly have a chemistry beyond a friendship.

As the characters' dramas are the main core of the show, naturally with everyone getting an episode in the centre of their goals in the duels, thankfully everyone is fleshed out. Everyone is three dimensional. The best in their class, Maya and Claudine, who have a rivalry with Claudine feeling always second, are not just villains. Even curveballs are thrown in as, with spoilers warned ahead in this review, the character I immediately attached too Nana Daiba, dubbed Bannana-Chan for her fruit obsession and banana bunch hairdo, even got something out-of-the-blue and abruptly dark. That being briefly turned into a tragic villain for her episode when you realise a groundhog effect can transpire with the auditions, able to wish for anything including repeating the same year if you become Top Star, more tragic as Nana never after that is just a villain. Some anime, whilst still compelling, would have had the lovable comedic character stay the abrupt villian only, winning the auditions to keep time still, but it is a testament to Revue Starlight's craft that by the end of the series, she is just someone in fear of the future and, as another character later puts it, is a big (taller than the others) person who is yet secretly vulnerable. For a show that was clearly, with research, put of a media franchise to promote, it says something about anime in general that one series adaptation, where allowed to, can take risks and feel more personal, even the lovable comedic character based on banana puns suddenly turning into complex figures. It became a show where everyone is as sympathetic as everyone else, where abruptly it will quote Hermann Hesse, the author of Steppenwolf, within the same show that has the aforementioned talking giraffe.

Even the giraffe eventually, after coming off as a master manipulator, as the auditions have losers robbed of their "spark" of performance, gets a happy conclusion where he sees a performance that raptures him. This, to use polite language, is a show which does not kid around with pushing its emotional edge as far as it can do with the aesthetic, but all for something ultimately heart warming. Even when entirely grounded for an episode, such as Karen and Hikari reconnecting after a series of jaunts across the aquariums across the city, the drama is that to care for. When an abrupt betrayal in the final episodes feels abrupt but with meaning, with greater shock as the show to the viewer as much for a character suddenly feel a knife in the heart, but it all builds within very little time for something meaningful for the final episode. That, especially as it leads to the last episode fully in the supernatural, it leads to a strange personal purgatory of building stars out of sand to reach stars on wrecking ball chains that knock you over again, a Myth of Sisyphus scenario based on one figure not wishing to take the shine off others, or metaphorically as not wishing to take away from another and hurting them by outperforming them.

The show is not as idiosyncratic as Ikuhara's work, feeling in truth a more accessible form of his storytelling, but that again is not a bad thing, and a lot of its content for others would still be out there to be blunt about it. Key aesthetic traits from Ikuhara's work to tell stories, including repetition of symbols and literalisation of meanings, are used to a huge advantage to flesh out the cast and, ultimately, making it a success alongside the production quality. It looks exceptional, and as a show which is as much about its style, it looks distinct right down to individual end credits per episode and the character being its centre. For a show as well where the audition fights have musical numbers, based likely as much from Takarazuka Revue, an all-female Japanese musical theatrical troupe that started in the 1910s, the musical numbers sung by the cast within them are as well diverse and as good, all obviously with lyrics fitting the material of the emotional drama. That the show itself as a much a critique of ideas of such groups, the pressures of such a prestige training and wanting to be the best, intertwines with the spark of energy from such groups' influences too.  

To tell more would spoil the show when it is more intriguing to know that the series has more narrative in its whole, beyond these twelve episodes. Mentioned already, Revue Starlight the series is a fully fleshed out show in itself. It completely captivated me throughout its length, and with knowing little beforehand, it was a pleasure to have encountered.