#221: Mawaru Penguindrum (2011)

 

Studio: Brain's Base

Director: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Shōko Nakamura

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

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Contains some plot spoilers]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#220: The Skullman (2007)

 

Studio: Bones

Director: Takeshi Mori

Screenplay: Yutaka Izubuchi (with writing by Hiroshi Ohnogi, Seishi Minakami and Shingo Takeba)

Based on the manga by Shotaro Ishinomori

Voice Cast: Hiroshi Tsuchida as Skull Man; Makoto Yasumura as Hayato Mikogami; Ayako Kawasumi as Kiriko Mamiya; Fumiko Orikasa as Maya Kuroshio; Hiroyuki Yoshino as Akira Usami; Katsunosuke Hori as Kyouichirou Tachigi; Masayuki Katou as Yoshio Kanzaki; Toshiyuki Morikawa as Masaki Kumashiro; Tomokazu Seki as Tsuyoshi Shinjou

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Skullman was created in 1970 as a one shot by the legendary manga author Shotaro Ishinomori, and in that text, including an expanded 1998-2001 manga by Kazuhiko Shimamoto with Ishinomori's contributions, the character was always an anti-hero, making this 2007 anime series not a bleak interpretation of a bright tokusatsu like character, but apt for the figure even if its own story. Skullman the series works as an interpretation in how the series is entirely around the titular figure, but for most of it, he is not the central character, instead a mystery in its centre of who he is and what his motives are, a mystery which will expand further on from this even when these two questions are answered in this interesting genre hybrid.

Set in an alternative world, where Japan is caught in a civil war, our protagonist is actually reporter Hayato Mikogami, who wishes to go to Ōtomo City, his place of birth and one caught in a tense political situation in terms of the ongoing war, with the intention of discovering who the urban myth of the Skullman is, the figure said to be behind the series of seemingly random murders of men and women in the city. Even in the opening credits, Skullman is first depicted as a monster, seemingly killing innocents, his first victim being a woman whose death is shot like a thriller not without purpose for hinting at this. Soon it becomes apparent, however, his mission, whilst at times edging to unjustifiable, is part of a more problematic conspiracy, much more dangerous to the world, and all circling all the victims seemingly being connected to the White Bell Association, a small religion entirely within Ōtomo City only that has a grip on the town and is very cultish. With Kiriko, a young woman who manages to wriggle her way into Hayato's life against his will, the pair finds themselves in a show where that, with only thirteen episodes to work with, does a stupendous job in using all thirteen economically to tell this tale.

There would be no time to have tangents or filler, but the production and writing team's credit, this manages to tell this story concisely, with a plot with juggles many genres which could not work, and manages to still have a unique personality, even humour of a cartoonish form at times. One of the twists, which it early on and really not a spoiler, is very reminiscent of Yoshiki Takaya's The Guyver, in which people are being turned into monsters, and the show is also a noir-tinged work of mystery, of drama, yet with a titular character who stands out, despite his anti-hero origins, influenced by tokusatsu action characters. It's tone is really idiosyncratic just from the opening, heavily leaning on the horror mood until one of the most curious opening tracks can be heard begins, jazz with funky layers, but the trumpet playing at a very odd time to the rest of the rhythm, or the backup vocals, whilst yet managing to work. One key character, an older man named Kyouichirou Tachigi who to Hayato seemingly knows everything, is a cool character but as much because of delightfully odd touches, like finding him fishing near the White Bell's church location, or that he is not only a man capable of handling himself, but within one scene revealed as a coffee aficionado who knows his obscurer blends in a coffee shop greatly.

The series composition was by Yutaka Izubuchi, with screenplay help from collaborators, and what is fascinating is that he is far more prolific as a mecha and character designer, with only a few screenplay credits in his prolific. This fact makes it to his credit and the other collaborators - Hiroshi Ohnogi, Seishi Minakami and Shingo Takeba - how good and interesting The Skullman's story is. The Skullman is a show whose episode titles are long, poetic and bleak, and Frederick Nietzsche is referenced and becomes a dialogue point between Hayato and Father Yoshio Kanzaki, a Christian priest who Hayato knows fondly from their youths. Until it gets completely serious, there is even exaggerated humour which fits the tone, such as a scene with food leading to characters having giant bellies, or the character of policeman Tsuyoshi Shinjou, who dogs Hayato believing him to be a suspect. That does not factor in, even very early in the show, the violence whether with the monsters or more conventional means which is still bloody and nasty. It manages as a curious tight walking act to all work, and it is a pulpy feat.

The Guyver comparison is apt, as in mind to spoilers, this involves alien artefacts, people being turned into monsters, against their will or willingly, and a conspiracy that involves a group very obviously connected to it, but there is more in just thirteen episodes which elaborates beyond this. Of government conspiracies, of an illegitimate son fostering contempt, of politicians being murdered by the Skullman which are more sobering to consider decades after, and that this is set in a war, one where a foreign group, even with the cartoonish super villain name of Brain Gear, are here to exploit the climate. With weapons that can literally disintegrate people, they are their own entity off to the side, in a show which pays a huge tribute to Shotaro Ishinomori by having characters and references based on his entire career, where there is a religious cult involved, and a far right imperialist Japanese group who wish to militarise and get hold of nukes, planning to stage a coup de trait even against the corrupt police force. The Skullman, as a result, also taps into some real politics even as a genre piece, which makes its ability to tell this all well even against monsters and a sci-fi plot more a further credit.

The Skullman's ending was open to a second season, even if a bleak turn, with characters becoming figures from Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009, yet still works as a conclusion in striking a balance between the tragedy that ends it, when a figure has their spirit crushed and becomes a weapon of the true villains, and the hope with the characters who have survived. There are a few side characters, and they are all interesting, be it Kyouichirou, a mysterious brother and sister revealed to be test subjects who can control their monster forms, Tsuyoshi, or even the daughter of a major political figure who acts as the voice of the White Bell Association, a frail and sympathetic figure clearly in love with Yoshio Kanzaki, transgressing her mother's views of talking to religious heretics by helping at his orphanage for children.

Even one off figures are interesting, such as episode ten introducing a troop of soldiers, from a war Yoshio was a front-line minister of rites on, who have been turned by cyborg killing machines by Brain gear, a sense of tragedy at hand just with one of them, unstable even for his peers, traumatised by not being called by his real name and a shell now giving dangerous access to a missile launching rig. The Skullman staying on path through its plot means there is not a lot of filler, its curious tangents all leading to a finale, all done with reward, with all characters getting a conclusion even if a bleak one. Even the fact there will be more than one Skullman is not worth marking as a spoiler as, without explaining detail, it comes instead as part of the really good dramatic turns of the show, actual drama even in the midst of a show as proudly a violent tokusatsu monster show with gore, with the downfall for one in sacrificing his soul for saving other, the other broken as a person whilst Ōtomo City turns into chaos in the final episodes, full on the streets of fanatics turning into monsters, a doomsday scenario being prepared for, and a coup de trait or two also transpiring.

It is an exceptional show, one that does stand out as being idiosyncratic as a sombre action take finds the balance between the genre touches fully, feeling adult without being contrived and manages to be serious even with explicitly fantastical touches. It was a title suddenly released in the United Kingdom in 2022 from MVM, a DVD only title for another curious touch, having been a Sentai Filmworks release in the United States before. Suddenly coming here decades after its first release adds something special as, clearly, this was worth release for all its virtues. It feels like a title very different from the type of anime show usually released, back then and still now, something very idiosyncratic and fantastic.

Bonus #14: Fist of the North Star (1995)

 

Director: Tony Randel

Screenplay: Peter Atkins and Tony Randel

Based on the manga by Buronson and Tetsuo Hara

Cast: Gary Daniels as Kenshirô; Malcolm McDowell as Ryuken; Costas Mandylor as Lord Shin; Downtown Julie Brown as Charlie; Dante Basco as Bat; Nalona Herron as Lynn; Melvin Van Peebles as Asher; Clint Howard as Stalin; Andre Rosey Brown as Sandman; Paulo Tocha as Stone; Chris Penn as Jackal; Tracey Walter as Paul McCarthy; Rowena Guinness as Jill McCarthy; Isako Washio as Julia

 

Is it peaches? Sounds like peaches.

My knowledge of Fist of the North Star was limited to the point that this, in honesty, was one of the first versions of Buronson and Tetsuo Hara's legendary manga I had seen. The first was anime, New Fist of the North Star (2003-4), but worth mentioning is that, if the history of bringing Fist of the North Star into the United States only took to the late 2010s into 2020s to succeed, we in Britain got less of this legendary series. The United States finally got the full and uncut 1984-8 television series only in 2010s with Discotek, whilst in Britain, we only had 36 episodes of Manga Entertainment's attempt to sell the show, coming in the mid-2000s in a long gone box set. Fist of the North Star, this curious attempt to sell this franchise in the West, had the advantage in the DVD era that Hong Kong Legends picked this up as a title. A British DVD company, now long gone, who strove to preserve and release Hong Kong martial arts cinema with a care for extras and full versions pre-dating the Blu-Ray era, where even Criterion is preserving titles they once released, unexpectedly included Fist of the North Star itself among their catalogue.

This is not the first live action version, bootleg or otherwise, but with Clint Howard having his name over pro wrestler Leon "Vader" White on the opening credits, it is clear this is a curious adaptation. To those with no knowledge of the franchise, as this film tells, the world has descended into the post-apocalypse, with those who wish to acquire power having taken over as marauding hoodlums. One figure named Lord Shin (Costas Mandylor), having dominated with an iron fist, as the practitioner of the Southern Cross martial arts style, has created a city, his desire to improve the world contrasted by his ego and letting his men commit atrocity by invading smaller communities for supplies and slaves. His rival, who he has taken his love Julia (Isako Washio) from, now a caged songbird to him, and marked his body in permanent scars, is Kenshirô (Gary Daniels), practitioner of the North Star style. North Star, as interpreted in the manga, in the anime, but also here, is that contacting certain pressure points on the human body causes that person to explode, as gory as that sounds, and Kenshirô approaches Shin's world in attempt to defeat him.

Gary Daniels as Kenshirô looks like the muscular brother of Benedict Cumberbatch, who can still make your head explode, which is a compliment to both men. Daniels, a martial arts action star of films like Bloodmoon (1996), born in London, was also the person who came to this as a fan of Fist of the North Star, enough to call his son Kenshiro Daniels, who would go on to become a football (soccer) player when he grew up. Things obviously however made it clear the Fist of the North Star, this live action film, is not quite what it should be. It is conventional, which is the biggest sin it commits, that Tony Randel, most famous for Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), came to this film and made it very conventional, more concerned with trying to give the character of Kenshirô angst-ridden rather than a narrative exploiting its premise. Even for a lower budgeted film, it has a lot to get the tone right, the production design team and model builders deserving all their praises for a film which, when exterior location shots, feels post-apocalyptic, but those involved beyond this clearly missed the point.

Despite being part of the wave of pop culture films from the 1990s that I am obsessed over, this is just has one pace, to tell a very simplistic tale of this Kenshirô beating Lord Shin, and not a lot else to work with. A film presenting Clint Howard, Ron's memorable acting brother, getting to be a murdering bastard in the first half, shooting people indiscriminately should sound like a lurid pulpy movie, especially as this does have fight scenes, and one of the most curious casts you could imagine for such a film. One thing you cannot deny, and should have excited people coming to this film, because Randel comes to this as a horror director behind films like Ticks (1993), is that they did not ignore how these characters can make people explode with a punch, or Lord Shin's special glowing hands attack causes veins in the biceps to burst in jets of gore. Even then, however, this does pull back, and never was there a film whose personality is against itself with moments this adult and violent, against content you would expect in tone from a child-friendly comic book adaptation.

Explain, for example, that this is a film with moments of gore, where the troops of Lord Shin, the South Crossmen, are explicitly raping, pillaging and murdering nearby locations, but contrasts this with a blond haired teen male character (Dante Basco) who is a goof and a wannabe kung fu expert, whose friend is a cute blind moppet who Kenshirô cures of her blindness. The film’s narrative is incredibly generic, and for a film that needs good fight scenes to work, the compromise to their presentation undermines the whole project, alongside the fact that, for the few moments of gore here, there are also points where the gore from the original manga are removed for the most part too. What it becomes is a strange concoction of who managed to end up in the film. Even in style there are weird moments that show this, like inexplicably, for a sombre toned film with an orchestral score by Christopher L. Stone, for it to suddenly splice in a Machine Head song A Thousand Lives into the soundtrack.

Malcolm McDowell, entirely separated off from everyone in his scenes, is a North Star martial arts master named Ryuken existing in the afterlife, continuing the obvious concern of Western actors having Japanese characters to play, levitating in a room or inexplicably appearing as a zombie to Kenshirô, voicing another actor, to tell him to not flee his role as a hero. Vader, the legendary pro wrestler, especially in Japan as much as in the West, is perfect as a Fist of the North Star baddie, and is just being Vader, pulling a promo on a small girl, as awesome as that sounds whilst performing moves on Gary Daniels. But with that fight ending in an anti-climax belittling both of them, even Vader is misused. Melvin Van Peebles is a really curious choice, a legend in African American cinema for directing Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) alone, here as an actor, as with Downtown Julie Brown, a British video jockey (VJ) and personality, neither ultimately given much to do as members of a village Lord Shin is terrorising. Unfortunately as a result, neither were really worth having hired in the first place despite both, Van Peebles especially, are inspired figures to have hired.

Costas Mandylor himself is also a curious choice as that unfortunately means, as a former soccer/football player with no martial arts training, they had to work around this with stunt doubles, in a film which has Gary Daniels but not many who can do the martial arts fights. Japanese actress Isako Washio likewise, an actress from films like Bloom in the Moonlight (1993) is also stuck here trying to perform in a language not her own and feeling lost too. The one curious choice who managed to grab something from this is Chris Penn as Jackal. Penn steals the film, the actor from films like Reservoir Dogs (1992), with the advantage, playing a sleaze ball goon who managed to tape his head together before Kenshirô's blows caused his head to explode, that he could find a character he could relish the lines of.

It is a project which ended up with people who really had no idea what to do with this - co-screenwriter Peter Atkins mostly worked on Hellraiser and Wishmaster films, making this frankly a case of someone dropped with a title they had no investment it, Tony Randel likewise feeling entirely out of place here. Even in mind that huge chunks are clearly missing, such as the aforementioned Clint Howard disappearing entirely eventually, the live action Fist of the North Star film feels entirely at odds with what it is was adapting, a franchise which would have to take decades to finally get a lot more recognition in the West. This is a fascinating film to see, and has aspects which are worthwhile, just in how it looks, but never was there a film which really did not have a lot going on despite having such a curious production on and off screen.

#219: Wicked City (1987)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Screenplay: Norio Osada

Based on the book series by Hideyuki Kikuchi  

Voice Cast: Toshiko Fujita as Makie; Yūsaku Yara as Renzaburo Taki; Ichirō Nagai as Guiseppe Maiyart; Mari Yokoo as Spider Woman; Takeshi Aono as Mr. Shadow

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

This is a significant film for me to reach - one of the key films of Yoshiaki Kawajiri, a director who became a name in Western anime fandom in the nineties, but one painted for me getting into the medium as a notorious one. Kawajiri in truth, getting into anime in the 2000s, was once for me the director known for sex and violence, but when it comes to actually viewing his work, which is not a lot of his career. Action anime and a high quality to the work with his collaborators, as a studio Madhouse director, is more his trademark. The infamy I heard second hand of him came from Wicked City and Ninja Scroll (1993), and even then, Wicked City was a title available in the United Kingdom, as in the United States, but Ninja Scroll was more freely available and a stock title for Manga Entertainment to have into the early DVD days. Ninja Scroll has held up well, and whilst it is transgressive in a lot of its content, it feels like a pulp narrative whose content was trying to be more thoughtful even if it dealt with gore and sexual violence. This is something to consider as, whilst of its era, anime in the decades afterwards even if not more explicit in these subjects, or having to work around television censorship, have tackled just as extreme content to this day, whilst Ninja Scroll's shock nowadays in how it tackles it explicitly as a high budgeted production. Wicked City was the title I hesitated to get to from the director, and for all its virtues, you cannot ignore that just ten percent of the film's content, some of its more controversial aspects, are going to be off-putting and unacceptable for anime fans. The irony is that, yes, it is only a part of the film altogether and that Wicked City itself has more to consider even beyond what I considered it would have been.

A factor to consider with Kawajiri's career is how significant author Hideyuki Kikuchi is to parts of it for source material, especially with some of the more adult work in content. His most well known work is the novel series Vampire Hunter D, which has now become a multi-medium franchise and has not stopped since the first novel in 1983, but he has worked on other titles, Wicked City based on the novel series of the same name from 1985 to 2016. Barring Ninja Scroll, more of the overtly horror and violent titles in Kawajiri's career come from Kikuchi source material, and Wicked City would have been released after the third novel came out, set in a world where demons and humans co-exist in a treaty skating on thin ice. A new treaty after centuries is to be signed, with a demon terrorist group wishing to snuff out the demon representative, Guiseppe Maiyart, sent to our side to sign it. He is to be protected by a human member of the Black Guard, secret agents guarding the "Black World" of the demons against ours, called Renzaburo Taki, with Makie, a female demon member of the Black Guard as his mirror to also protect Guiseppe. In terms of the Wicked City itself, it has a basic plot, which is traditional for a few Kawajiri titles, although in terms of his career, this one does feel the weakest. Compared to Ninja Scroll's, which is surprisingly more complex in back story, this does have a huge contrivance that, to get Renzaburo and Makie to fall in love, which is the real goal for peace, this film does have to work around some abrupt emotional whiplash and contrivances which other Kawajiri productions avoid.

You also have to accept that Guiseppe Maiyart's main characteristic, despite being someone revealed to be wiser and being a diminutive man with thunder abilities, is also having a horniness bordering on a suicidal streak in the risks he takes to please this. Among a curious duo with Ninja Scroll's Dakuan of Kawajiri having a fixation on short old men who are cocky tricksters, It has humour as well. You also have to accept that Guiseppe Maiyart's main characteristic, despite being someone revealed to be wiser and being a diminutive man with thunder abilities, who is also with a horniness bordering on a suicidal streak in the risks he takes to please this. This will put viewers off too, among a curious duo with Ninja Scroll's Dakuan of Kawajiri having a fixation on short old men who are cocky tricksters, but thankfully this does succeed with some light humour as much as it feels like another aspect Wicked City as an early work from Kawajiri does feel like a template for his later work, including the fact the villains in later stories would stand out more than the one here.

Wicked City also has a huge caveat already hinted at which cannot be ignored, even in mind to this being a film which I will talk about having incredible aspects to it, and has left a lasting legacy alongside other Kawajiri productions which influenced Todd MacFarlane for the creation of Spawn¹, to being admired by Hideo Kojima². That being, that in representing its transgressive sexual body horror content, where sex is used as a weapon including rape, this has the exact same problem you deal with in Urotsukidôji; that being, whether you think those subjects in transgressive depictions would still be defendable or not, how this is depicted is with having this subject always involving a female victim, and is clearly lurid for the sake of it with no reason to be there. The problem is worse when the sole figure of this content is Makie herself, the sole female character of note, which makes the content more problematic. This is worse here as, alongside undercutting a character who is a demon who has inhuman abilities that should make her powerful, she is the figure who exists to mirror Renzaburo Taki as well as emotionally connect to him, someone too who like Jubei in Ninja Scroll, is deliberately the male lead who scrapes by and gets maimed in scenarios as much as he succeeds.

Some may actually be offended by the suggestion you can tackle sexual violence in a way in art or even pulp storytelling which can be transgressive on purpose, but the problem is that, before you can either get to the subject of whether it can be defended or not, Wicked City alongside other anime fall into the issue that these subjects this same way. Always involving the victimisation of female characters, and always feels like it is done for shock value than with note. That this is just a fragment of Wicked City makes this worse, making this a difficult film to defend, even with aspects involving the sexual body horror, whilst grotesque, which are startling in a way without these issues and can be defended. It was not as explicit as I had feared, but with one scene in particularly reaching a fine line, this ten percent or so of the film's content of how Makie is victimised is uncomfortable. We did get Wicked City for VHS and for even cinema releases back in the nineties from Manga Entertainment, but is was censored for these scenes, only coming to us uncensored in 2022³. These scenes once censored neither have any real weight to the content or narrative of Wicked City either, making them pointless to even have had.

Beyond this, Wicked City is still a very violent and very grotesque film from Kawajiri, and it is infamous as much for its body horror, yet I feel I can defended this even if, on purpose, they are startling too with the advantage of the production being as highly crafted as it is. This film has the most infamous moment of his career, within the first scenes, where Renzaburo Taki is introduced courting a lady for a one night stand, only for her to have been knocked unconscious and had a demon spider woman masquerade as her in the hotel room. Explicit vagina dentata is involved, starting this film's melding of sensuality with the perverse, where he just avoids death as she casually scuttles out the window on her spider legs out the hotel room. This is where Wicked City, like Urotsukidôji, is still extreme, but has transgression be the ero-guro (erotic grotesque) which has artist merit, flourishes in its imagination to striking effect as much to horrify. An argument can be made most of these have the theme of the female body being dangerous, with a couple of womb-like metaphors and one blatant one, but these scenes will make the men just as likely victims as the women to these horrifying threats. One literally involves a giant stomach vagina and Renzaburo Taki literally return to the womb before he snaps out of it. Some anime fans, understandably, will find this scene disgusting, but rather than alien the viewer with transgression of the sexual kind which is exploitative, this is the kind of perversity that at least has more meaning to it, significantly in this example as it transpires within the same scene as some of the problematic sexual violence, which does not have these virtues.

Some will not be able to get through Wicked City because of some of its content, which is tragic as well as, one of Kawajiri's earliest productions by himself in the director's chair, this also has incredible artistry, the horror contrasted by a lot of the film even in its quietest moments which are startling to see in the modern day for how more subtle it can even be. A lot of Kawajiri's work is very simplistic in their characterisations, even in how they are structured around figures the protagonist has to fight to reach the main boss, like a video game template, but his productions, especially with the original character designs by himself, are incredibly ornate and aesthetically beautiful even in spite of how some are very gory and nasty. One of the biggest surprises for me as I became more a fan of Yoshiaki Kawajiri has been how  mood plays a role in his films, even when the action stops and the characters are allowed to breathe in his narratives. Wicked City embraces the horror genre even in terms of eeriness within sequences, and it is also a film, unlike the reputation it has been painted for me, with a willingness to stop and contemplate. It is a film only eighty minutes long but stops for Renzaburo Taki, when they initially have Guiseppe Maiyart secured in a hotel with a security barrier, playing chess with the hotel owner and contemplate his place as a bachelor.

As mentioned earlier on in this review, it feels Yoshiaki Kawajiri is still early in his career here, and Wicked City feels as much a prototype of Ninja Scroll. This is not to downplay the virtues of this film, which is a gorgeous production, possessing an atmosphere which, whilst not redeeming its major problems, which is compelling. It looks gorgeous, the music is gorgeous with Osamu Shoji's moody score, leaving Wicked City a fascinating production unlike other lurid and controversial anime from the eighties in that its artistic value is higher than the likes of Violence Jack from the decade. Kawajiri, even for his OVA work, had a high bar of quality of work, which makes the sad fact he stopped having directorial work in the late 2000s onwards more tragic, if thankfully contrasted by the fact, even if in the storyboarding credits later on, he still had his mark on big television series in the 2020s. Finally seeing Wicked City, my concerns which caused me to hesitate watching this were proven, and it is entirely per individual viewers if they feel comfortable sitting through the scenes whether to watch the film or not, rather than say whether it is recommended. In terms of the film's virtues beyond these scenes, this for horror anime shows the director's talents and those of Madhouse altogether exceptionally.

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1) Examining the Work of Anime Director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, written by Padraig Cotter, published for Den of Geek on May 26th 2015.

2) My Favorite Films by Hideo Kojima, translated by Marc Laidlaw from METAL GEAR SOLID naked (2004), published by Kadokawa Shoten and with the translation from Junkerhq.net. For a side tangent, for fans of Kojima's, and speaking of a huge cineaste myself, this is a fascinating selection of films, including some obscurer gems like Burst City (1982), even I would dig through for the titles I have missed over the years.

3) "Wicked City... 1987 Japan anime horror previously cut but now released uncut on DVD and Blu-ray", published on December 21st 2021 for Melon Farmers, a site dedicated to documenting film classification, censorship and censorship of culture in general. Their name, before anyone asks with curious bafflement, is based on the infamous "TV Edit" of Alex Cox's punk genre film Repo Man (1984), for another tangent about a film (and that infamous edit) worth looking into.

The Guyver (1991)

 

Director(s): Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George

Screenplay: Jon Purdy

Based on the manga by Yoshiki Takaya

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

Bonus Review

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continued...

 

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

#218: Kimera (1996)

 

a.k.a. Ki*Me*Ra

Studio: Animate Films

Director: Kazu Yokota

Screenplay: Kenichi Kanemaki

Based on a manga by Kazuma Kodaka

Voice Cast: Yasunori Matsumoto / Brett Weaver as Osamu; Nobuo Tobita / Kim Sevier as Kimera; Ryotaro Okiayu / Tristan MacAvery as Jay Gibson; Juurouta Kosugi / Bryan Bounds as Kianu; Mugihito / Guil Lunde as Ginzu; Kinryuu Arimoto / Robert Peeples as Dr. Gibson

 

He's even worse than my haemorrhoids!

Sultry electro on the soundtrack introduces the viewer to an entity in a space pod landing on Earth. A tentacle monstrosity, to the horror of the hunter watching on in the woods, tragically kills and drains the life-force from his dog to emphasis in dangerous nature, before he is targeted off-screen. This prologue intertwines with two cornflake cereal salesmen, (yes, that is what they are), one a married American man named Jay, the other a Japanese bachelor named Osama, who together cross into the aftermath site only to get involved with an obvious cover-up.

This is where I should nod to the author of the source manga, Kazuma Kodaka, and that Kimera, despite what the ADV Films English dub tries to cover up, is explicitly an LGBTQ horror story. Kodaka, born in 1969, is known mainly for her work in the "yaoh" genre of "boy's love" manga. Different from "bara", work written about gay men by gay men in manga, yaoh is a huge genre in itself, in genre and popularity, crossing into anime with Kimera interesting as a violent horror story which is yet connected to this genre. It is a tale of Osama meeting the titular Kimera, a sensual androgynous space vampire, nude in a containment pod, one he falls head over heels with the moment he finds them. Osama, in his banter with his friend and colleague, even gets into denial about not having a girlfriend when teased about, befitting a tale which is not going to beat around the bush about its central romance. With incredible progressiveness too, it is not going to think about the two central figures' having any conflict with their desires or sexuality either, even if one is a sexually fluid space vampire, next to an apocalyptic scenario with a former lover and a group of evil space vampires are involved too, and are a significantly bigger issue.

The ADV Film English dub tried to hide this, with "Kimera" dubbed with the pronoun "she" but being an unnatural otherworldly beauty, an intersex  entity who can reproduce with women if men are not available, a figure who is unfortunately destined to destroy (feed off) the Earth which their children when birthed. In the original Japanese dub, as the manga, Kimera is explicitly male, if physically intersex, with only one minor female character in the anime at all, and the drama entirely about this physical beautiful figure. This is complicated by ADV in that the English dub has Kim Sevier play them, a voice actress who voiced Yui Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), protagonist Shinji's deceased mother, whilst in the original Japanese dub, they are played by Nobuo Tobita, a prolific male voice actor. In hindsight, it comes off as dubious on ADV Film's part, particularly as Sevier does use a voice that is gender neutral in tone. Beyond the idea that yaoi stories were not commonly available at the time in the West, it is a strange creative decision which barely hides what is actually happening in the anime.

And Kimera beyond this fact is fascinating. In tone, this sits nicely among the ultra-violent horror anime works from the eighties and nineties fully, with only the sense of it looking of the late nineties present for myself, with a very distinct look in simple colour tones used. It has no qualms with being grotesque even when gore is not onscreen, as one of the humans Dr. Fender, a contrast to the handsomeness in the leads, as a dated trope, of being an figure depicted ugly physically as well as his behaviour, has sided with the evil space vampires, but through one of the sloppiest methods possible of ordering fresh cadavers and organs (of the freshest quality) which can be easily tracked by his fellow scientists. When it is physically violent onscreen, it has in less than fifty minutes mutilation, death, tentacles pushing peoples' eyes out and gore, but with gender subverted, coming off as a sibling among all the violent anime that parents warned us about that came to the West on video, but with this distinct aspect to subvert things. The trope of space vampires is one I have inexplicably come across in anime a lot, as baring the Hellsing franchise there is usually a habit of them being tangibly placed near outer space if not from it, but this packs a lot that, if remade, is pretty striking and would be fascinating to see expanded out, both in subverting that trope but also what the narrative is too.

It has its quirks already, in which the vampire planet is a beautiful fantasy land of lizard birds, but even that slides next to what is an insane melodrama with potential, even those idyllic scenes, with Kimera depicted closer to the kind of elegant female leads of other work, particularly Belldandy from the famous Oh My Goddess franchise, being contrasted by the horror and tragedy of their narrative. That Kimera, having witnessed their own mother become a figure, in a tube, only to breed on their planet, biologically existed in their home world to just breed for their species, even their former lover now having come to Earth too to kill Kimera and spare them this fate. Yaoi in anime and manga, even as someone with barely any knowledge when I came to this anime, was something I still knew in mind of not being a genre, but a theme which crosses into a variety of genres (even American buddy cop tropes with Fake (1994-2000) for an example), which the authors of could take in any direction they could. With yaoi's prime audience a female one, not excluding the potential interest for a gay or bisexual male fan of this work or the manga, the idea that this is proudly a gory horror anime which is yet based on a source, also a horror story, for women with this central romance is really spectacular and something to appreciate decades on.

This manga was also published in Super Jump, which is a "seinen" work targeting young adult men  and adds an additional layer to viewing this title. In the same biweekly manga anthology with Bartender (2004-2011), adapted into an anime series and a drama about a bartender soothing customers' sorrows with the power of alcohol, and the magazine where Buichi Terasawa's legendary Space Adventure Cobra manga was partially published through, Kimera being this explicit as an anime in its gender relationship is even more fascinating, especially as playing to the trope of sex intermingling with death, there is a very explicit threesome with Kimera and two men which is long, and eroticised only until those two mortals get eaten. Considering as well those involved in the production, the legendary Toho among those involved, this is just among the many anime of a variety of types they worked with. For the central studio behind the anime Animate Films, who cut their teeth in this time on horror OVAs like Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (1987), but could also do the erotic OVA Kama Sutra (1991), making their day job putting Kimera together as it becomes progressive in the sense that, for them, it was as worthy for a potential audience as any of the others.

It is still a cheesy sci-fi horror narrative at its heart, even with some classier choices like In the Hall of the Mountain King on violin on the score in terms of style. It is still very conventional in terms of this type of ridiculous horror anime, in terms of the gore, the character archetypes, the aforementioned obsession with space vampires, and a lot of exposition to cover the lore in little narrative length it possesses. In the latter case, emphasising a troupe of human beings as unreliable and destructive figures which appears in a lot of anime in general, you even get the choice dialogue, alongside side this narrative being based around the real myths of vampires stemming from this alien planet, that dissecting a vampire who came for peace talks with us, and keeping their brain alive in a jar, was a bad move of ours. Even in mind to Japan's relationship to vampires, i.e. a concept alien to their mythology that, when embraced, their pulp stories have had to explain and interpret in their own ways, Kazuma Kodaka as an author herself still kept the idea of their morbid sexuality as a prime part, which shows how they have a universal quality regardless of country. Even here, the final fight takes place in a Christian church, western iconography, with someone impaled on a giant cross, so I credit even Kimera the anime nodding to the lore it is reinterpreting for its original audience.

This even has a happy ending...if John Carpenter, with one of his famous doomsday endings from his horror films, made a horror romance story with either hope or the end of the world potentially happening. Kimera is still not the greatest horror anime. It is sadly one that might be difficult to re-release too, simply because so much straight-to-video anime exists, and ones which are less than an hour long with no further episodes like this are a struggle to re-release even today. It is however fascinating, it is entertaining, and even decades later, it still stands out as being one of the gory OVA anime from this older era which was also an early LGBTQ title that we did get in the West if just in North America.