#25 Ergo Proxy (2006)

From http://img11.deviantart.net/b727/i/
2006/290/0/d/ergo_proxy2_by_sage666.jpg

Director: Shukō Murase

Screenplay: Dai Sato; Junichi Matsumoto; Naruki Nagakawa; Seiko Takagi; Yuuko Kawabe; Yuusuke Asayama

Based on an original premise

Voice Cast: Rie Saitou (as Re-l Mayar); Akiko Yajima (as Pino); Koji Yusa (as Vincent Law); Hikaru Hanada (as Raul Creed); Kiyomitsu Mizuuchi (as Iggy); Sachiko Kojima (as Monad); Sanae Kobayashi (as Daedalus Yumeno)

Ergo Proxy is a perfect case study of how an anime television series, especially when it has over twenty episodes rather than twelve or thirteen to work with, can be a rollercoaster in terms of how a show can drastically change from its first episode to the finale. Here, what begins as one type of story changes so much in terms of what happens to the characters that it feels like a lot of time and events have passed. Whether Ergo Proxy does succeed in doing this well is to be described throughout the review, but when it succeeds in other anime television, even if there're hiccups along the way, it's so much more rewarding in fact than some tight, thirteen episode anime or animated films in letting the world feel fleshed out and unpredictability becoming involved.

From https://canime.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/ergo6.jpg

Ergo Proxy starts as a dystopian sci-fi story set in a post-apocalypse world. In the last surviving city of Earth, Romdeau, the populous are controlled by the state, ran by a Regent assisted by intelligent artificial intelligences housed in animated Greek statues and various departments of control. Mankind is to control their emotions, following their robot assistants called "Entourages" carefully and consumer products. The granddaughter of the current Regent is Re-l, a member of Citizens Intelligence Bureau who is currently investigating the effects of the Cognito virus, causing self awareness and consciousness to grow in the entourages. While investigating this however, Re-l discovers the existence of a strange and monstrous figure the authorities are trying to suppress knowledge of. Discovering the monstrous figure is a "Proxy", and that there are more than one of them, she finds herself being watched even through her robotic partner Iggy and compromised by everyone including the security group led by Raul Creed.

From http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4106sNGWrCL.jpg

Very much catering to a Western audience, the first quarter of the series is a post-Ghost In The Shell franchise creation, very much trying to replicate the mix of seriousness and action of Mamoru Oshii's 1995 adaptation and the other adaptations from other directors after that. Significantly though, while Oshii's films, including the sequel, had actual philosophical discussions, Ergo Proxy merely tries to have philosophical sounding dialogue discussing fate and existence, placing it very much in the ballpark of anime earnestly taking on serious pathos to their material, mixing this with moments of action. It's black, grey and brown hued colour is immediately striking at first - Re-l is as Goth as you can get with her Panda eye purple eyeliner, black night clubbing clothes and boots, and a long trench coat - but it eventually becomes repetitive immediately after the first couple of episodes, causing one to desire more colour and the story to escape the oppressively drab Romdeau. Tonally it's better keeping you engaged, appropriately bleak without becoming morose, more so that in catering to its Western influences the production went as far as having Radiohead's Paranoid Android used as the end credits song, thankfully able to be kept for the Western releases out of permission from the band themselves and apt for the tone of the work.

From http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/ergoproxy/images/8/80/
Monad-proxy.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100711185939

Things become more interesting as the world opens up beyond Romdeau, when its revealed there's more to the world in spite of people dying in the wasteland if they are not treated to adjust to the contaminated air. Re-l with her robot partner Iggy encounter Vincent Law, an "immigrant" whose connection to the proxies force him on the run from Romdeau's forces, and Pino, a small robotic girl originally built as a surrogate child whose is infected by the Cognito virus, becoming more human than some actual humans as she acts like an actual girl who loves life and is naturally curious about everything around her. Vincent Law in particular is as stereotypical as you can get for the show, the shy guy whose secret dark side is another stereotype in itself when its finally revealed, but as the shows escapes the trappings of replicating a cyberpunk mystery the characters in spite of their stereotypical behaviours get more interesting as the show strays off its narrative path. Pino in particular is the most rewarding character in terms of entertainment; thankfully she is never viewed in a sexual light, and while she is the stereotypical cute child who wears a pink bunny costume a great deal, she is a lovable character who is far from annoying. Because of Akiko Yajima 's voice acting and how the character is depicted, she is loveable in an admirable way with her mimicking of other's behaviour and friendliness. That she's a robot with a soul adds to her character a great deal without blatantly discussing it at length as does when she has to learn of concepts such as death without the show becoming morbid about such moments.

From https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-SZxS5AnrZUU/TnlbH7VkKwI/AAAAAAAAQyo/w1
7JrqJ_sBo/s800/Ergo%252520Proxy%252520-2.jpg

When the show reaches its halfway point it almost entirely severs itself from a direct narrative and the city of Romdeauas the protagonists explore the other cities in the wasteland. Not only does the aesthetic style improve as more of the world is shown - cities where only the robots remain to populate them doing their chores on deserted streets, an amusement park dome, dark caves containing mutants - but this is a case where it's the filler episodes, episodic tales, that prove to be stronger than the actual narrative in construction. I was not a fan of filler episodes once but that's changed as I realise how useful and fun they can be. It helps that this show's episodes still drip feed important plot points, as the show intercuts back to Romdeau to follow both Creed and Daedalus Yumeno, a young male doctor whose emotional connection to Re-l becomes problematically obsessive when she is gone, allowing a narrative to still be built. But the episodes where the protagonists step out of the main narrative, barring some small plot details, help flesh them out immensely. Some of the episodes are deliberately abstract in tone, facing possible doppelgangers or Vincent entering a subconscious encounter with his darker self involving a book seller, and others are deliberately jarring. What could become a monster of the week show when other proxies are revealed becomes more of the production team likely stepping out and experimenting with their material, thus letting down their hair and becoming incredibly creative.

From http://media9.fast-torrent.ru/media/files/s3/dm/ps/ergo-proksi.png

One episode for example, even playing with the opening credits for a fourth wall joke, is literally a game show, out of the blue and the best episode of the whole series as it crams major background story into its form, questions to baffled protagonists, and is completely jarring, the bright colours of a studio set drastic alongside its cheerful tone in spite of the fact the loser of the show's game will be killed. Another, which is another candidate for the best episode, involves the aforementioned amusement park dome, turning the serious show into a tribute to classic western animation like the Fleischer brothers and explicitly referencing Walt Disney. When the show does swerve into episodes like this, the virtues long form anime series can have with longer lengths is shown, adding to each characters' personality in spite of their stereotypical ticks and keeping material fresh; for another great example, one where the heroes are stranded in wasteland, you get to see Re-l develop into more than a moody female protagonist when she starts to go stir crazy over simple things as Vincent leaving the toilet seat up, bringing normalcy in a humorous way into a sci-fi story. Whilst a thirteen or so episode series can prevent a story from becoming meandering and improvising episodic plots badly, shows with longer lengths can allow to use the unpredictable to their advantage, the rollercoaster as mentioned in the beginning, where a serious show visibly and tonally in debt to Ghost in the Shell ends up with a character having two anthropomorphic comedy sidekicks for a late episode. This also helps as, once some colour and further personality beyond Romdeau's conformist greys and blacks is added, Ergo Proxy has a high artistic quality to admire. Great animation is added to the bleakness of the world, destroyed by an unknown plight and adding religious tones to the plots' secrets, fleshing it out further. It's clichéd as hell as a story, as massive and monstrous humanoids called proxies tear chunks out of each other if they cross paths, scored characters named after philosophers talking about fate to the cast, but once the filler episodes allow the animation to stretch its legs and do more, the seriousness starts to be sincerer.

From https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a3/
d9/95/a3d995938c30554d307f225a7d64b9cc.jpg

It's unfortunate however, despite how rewarding the series is, that the last three episodes feel so abrupt, returning back to Romdeau with a sudden, undisclosed jump in time where chaos has reached the streets. One flaw with the Romdeau setting is that, despite there being background characters, the show from the beginning felt empty in terms of scope, with no one baring silhouettes in the background to add meat to the dystopian tones. When it returns to Romdeau in the midst of chaos, without showing the cause of it barring hinted dialogue in an earlier episode, and with only a few riots killing entourages to represent it, the shift is lacking. Trying to quickly tie together its narrative, it becomes a series of muddled monologues and unexpected religious imagery that, while eye catching, does jar with what came before unlike the game shows and Disney references which were playful and by themselves. The show's attempts at serious philosophy eventually collapse into one of the worst stereotypes of anime when characters deliver convoluted monologues in the middle of a final fight instead of trying to actually fight , vague and against the more rewarding material of before.

From http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y7/n00dle_king/lolilil.jpg

And in lieu of how like a rollercoaster the show already is, its disarming that a science fiction story which does hint at spirituality and fantasy, but grinds it into some natural reality, suddenly ends with such a scene as a feather winged woman, a doppelganger of another, carrying another person by the hand up into the clouds in a mix of Icarus and an angel taking someone to heaven. While it could've worked perfectly if the religious overtones had been more prevalent in the earlier chapters, the ultimate flaw with Ergo Proxy is that its structure is a mess because of the ending, the main narrative far less interesting than the tangents it goes into with the attempts to make the narrative engaging by its end abrupt. What actually hit a great groove of quality from episode fifteen onwards, where even predictable episode plots sparkled with importance for characters and plot, is disappointed when the structure is lets the side down. Ergo Proxy still can raise its head high for some utterly memorable middle episodes, proof filler can be healthy for the show, but it fails when it needed to climax perfectly. 

From http://burrowowl.net/wordpress/wp-content/
uploads/2006/09/ergo_proxy_19_will.jpg

#24: Yuki Terai - Secrets (2000)

From https://myanimeshelf.com/upload/
dynamic/2011-11/07/211.jpg

Based on a original premise

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Yuki Terai - Secrets is an obscure compilation DVD, as obscure as you can get and probably for the better as in all honestly there's no real value to the set of shorts baring another curiosity in terms of early computer animated anime, another one covered for the blog but with an added factor that this is a portfolio for a fictitious female idol entirely created on a computer. This belongs to a series called Virtually Real that, in the weird early existence of DVD from 2000 and the first few years of that decade, was released in the UK alongside many a weird obscurity; in fact, from the trailers on the DTS sound enhanced disc, there are two more of these devoted to their own idols out there and can still be found on Amazon. Yuki Terai herself is a permanently seventeen year old girl who is brought to life by actresses in VR costumes and animators, able to star as multiple characters and show off many talents over the shorts contained in the disc. She is the titular figure of Comet the Thief, stealing a priceless guitar and fighting the owner over it in a fist fight, then a singer in a jazz club in Fly Away Home. She is trapped on a spaceship infected by a virus in Lazy Gui, the damsel whose love for an American is contrasted by being a spy in World War II in teaser Project BB-11. She sings, does her own action scenes, stars in a comedy with a cute robotic dog in Das/Chin or is terrorised by her own reflections in The Mirror.

From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059814.jpg

Like the other proto-3D animated anime I've covered on the blog, this is another case of time being unkind to the material. A lot of it is clearly meant to demonstrate the graphical capabilities of the animators creating Terai, particularly an individual named Kenichi Kutsugi, a videogame visual effects and CGI cut scene designer, who overlooks this work altogether; unfortunately due to this emphasis, rather than plot or anything away from predictable stories, it lessens any chance for anything great to stand out now the animation is obsolete. Worse, this was released in the UK in 2002, after (entry #20) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), making it look dated even back when it was first released. Comet the Thief, the first on the DVD menu, is a perfect warning of its lacklustre look, the fight scene in the middle between Terai and a male crime boss resulting in stilted character movements against basic backgrounds. It's detail in hindsight to viewing all these works - from this to (entry #3) A.Li.Ce (1999) - that is the ultimate crippling flaw of all the ones I've covered, the reason I have to flog a dead horse in these reviews of praising one called Malice@Doll (2001), an anime I need to review on the blog at one point,  for doing something different by melding 2D animated details on 3D models. This detail also has to be a personality too, which is why  The Spirits Within was bland even though the animation was innovative in its day on an extremely high budget. Particularly with Yuki Terai - Secrets I cannot help but compare it to old videogames, why once high calibre games which pushed graphics have mostly been forgotten but people still go back to old 2D Megadrive and SNES games, although from context its clear the compilation wasn't even the highest quality possible of its kind.

From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059819.jpg

Most of this compilation is pretty bland, less than five minutes long a piece, which cannot get out of the mind set of test demos or plain old music videos in the case of Fly Away Home and especially My Dearest You, which is a clear music video with the model of Yuki Terai against what appears to be a lava lamp for a background. Whether it's the jazz club of Fly Away Home or the interior of a WWII battleship, there's little aesthetic style to these models or even a mood. Even in Lazy Gui when Terai is threatened by a virus that gets into the security system, cuts off her oxygen and even turns off the gravity, the short is mainly set in one corridor with a computer figure with no emotional draw or a quirk to make it stand out. Something like Dos/Chan only stands out because of the cute dog, with an iPhone for a face, which doesn't determine quality by itself. This is worse for a short like A Life, about Terai as a suicidal young woman, lacking any emotional connection especially as it ends with her shooting herself. The exception, which could've been utterly rewarding if polished and worked on by itself in terms of its visuals, maybe even animated in 2D rather than 3D, is The Mirror where there is a creative and bold story at hand about Terai being haunted by her mirror reflections. It's not a great short, but it manages to have a dreamlike tone where her doubles crawl from any reflective surface - mirrors, windows - they can and she can fell into a puddle of water into another reality. It goes as far as having countless duplicates pin her in the corner of a subway car, jumping out of it only to be hit by another train passing by and being absorbed into its reflective front window. The only real flaw with it is that, with a final rooftop battle between her and a double with a neon sign involved and a cheesy pop sign on the end credits, it does get a bit silly at the end, needing a drastic rewrite if it ever got remade.

From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059818.jpg

Within all these shorts, Yuki Terai is a figure we're meant to emotionally engage with, created by Kenichi Kutsugi for a manga of his in 1997 and having a string of appearances by the time of this DVD. This is part of a long line of virtual idols that particularly exist in Japanese pop culture, the likes of Vocaloid, a voice synthesiser, can make possible, able to sustain a popular audience but contrasting with real female idols. It reminds me of Sharon Appleof Macross Plus (1994), a virtual pop idol who however could only exist, in that anime's plot, because a former idol has to implant her personality into its software. The virtual idol, especially when you get into the issue of virtual film actors th, is still stuck with being a figure that needs human life put into it to actually have a personality. The idea of actors being replaced by CGI ones, taken to its biggest extreme in the Ari Folman film The Congress (2013), has been brought up occasionally and was the case with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within where the female protagonist, a mere 3D character design barring her voice actress, was meant to become a star in her own right who went on to other films in numerous roles. That never took place and it's an immensely failed idea as, not only was the "uncanny valley" as much a problem for a mega budget film like that let alone this compilation, but also there's the issue that these 3D figures can be completely bland and usually end up with tedious personalities as a result of their character designs and/or the narrative they're in.

From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059827.jpg

Terai here is just a model of a seventeen year old as depicted by a male otaku, beyond a pretty face the kind of bland figure that'd sink a conventional anime TV series through her lack of personality. The character is meant, be it to the point of being exceptionally creepy or narrowly avoiding it, to personify a cuteness meant to attract male viewers; amongst the two other Virtually Real DVDs, one is of a stereotypical pin up with gravity defying breasts who in one of the scenes in her DVD's trailer is wearing only sexy underwear and body tattoos fighting zombies with katanas, thus showing that a fetishisation is as much part of the series as any other reason. Terai's lack of personality is also defined by her bland character design, which is ironic as she's clearly the only figure that has been giving some care of her design baring the robot dog. Like other 3D anime I've covered for the blog, the male side cast such as in Comet The Thief is comically rudimentary, like basic templates from a 3Ds Max programme, the obsession with bald heads probably better than the American soldier of Project BB-11's plastic blond hair. She herself is as much part of the problem with the whole compilation, neither protected by kitsch as early eighties and nineties CGI has been nor belonging in quality roles hiding behind a dated shell. Only the recognition of the animators pushing this animation really stands out for me, admiring their work despite the time that has passed, but for an anime of any sort it needs to actually engage beyond the technical details behind it. 

From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059830.jpg

#23: Dead Leaves (2004)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZOohJceHbdY/UVABsPSU1KI/
AAAAAAAAIv4/rAdH2BqhEnw/s1600/dead-leaves.jpg

Director: Hiroyuki Imaishi

Screenplay: Takeichi Honda

Voice Cast: Kappei Yamaguchi (as Retro); Takako Honda (as Pandy); Yuko Mizutani (as Galactica); 666 (as Mitsuo Iwata); 777 (as Kiyoyuki Yanada); Chinko (as Nobuo Tobita)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

In lieu of the unfortunate passing of Videotape Swapshop, I've decided to replace the absence of the tie-ins I planned for that site with linking this blog to my origin Cinema of the Abstract. This'll make a lot of sense with the more stranger and unconventional anime I'll end up covering, Dead Leaves a pretty great example of this type of anime with its maniac bullet heavy action. A link to the review can be found HERE. 

#22: Gyo - Tokyo Fish Attack (2012)

From http://pics.filmaffinity.com/Gyo_Tokyo_Fish_
Attack-420136789-large.jpg

Director: Takayuki Hirao

Screenplay: Akihiro Yoshida, Takayuki Hirao

Based on a manga by Junji Ito

Voice Cast: Mirai Kataoka (as Kaori); Ami Taniguchi (as Erika); Hideki Abe (as Shirakawa); Hiroshi Okazaki (as Professor Koyanagi); Masami Saeki (as Aki); Takuma Negishi (as Tadashi)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

This is the second anime based on the work of a legendary horror manga author I've covered. The first was (entry #8) The Curse of Kazuo Umezu (1990) which is based on the work of the titular man who is as known for his obsession with red and white stripes as he is chilling readers' blood. In Umezu's case I've unfortunately yet to read his work as of this review's date of publishing, but the author of Gyo, Junji Ito, is someone I've been pleasantly (or is that unpleasantly?) introduced to thanks to the recent reprinting of his work from Viz Media within the last year or so. Ito is a unique voice, both with his trademark drawing style and his storytelling; the fact that, early into publishing his work again, Viz have even released his autobiographical story about raising cats means that, if his work does well, we will hopefully get the likes of his uber popular Tomie stories in the future¹.

A bold characteristic of his horror stories is that, while he does use various tones to his story ideas, he does tap a great deal into cosmic horror, the same type of horror of mankind being in the dark with the scope of the universe that was cemented by the tales of HP Lovecraft. Uzumaki (1998-9), his most well known story including its 2000 live action adaptation for film by Higunchinsky, is entirely Lovecraftian; even though its premise is uniquely strange to Ito, about spirals terrorising a small town to the point they transform both flesh and reality for all those trapped within the local area, the story especially with what wasn't filmed in the live action movie evoked entirely the psycho-mythological horrors of a Lovecraft work like At The Mountains of Madness (1931). The monsters and beings that terrorise the living in Ito's work, from what I've been able to access with the new Viz Media releases, usually exist outside the rational minds of human beings even if they are ghosts, the kind of irrational terrors that Lovecraft specialised in. Gyo evokes both Lovecraft's Dagon (1919) and the nautical horrors of William Hope Hodgson and while its premise is ridiculous on the surface - dead fish with mechanical legs, thus proving there's something worse than Jaws when a shark can walk on land - the result is creepy, legitimately disgusting in its obsession with decay and putrid rotting. With both the manga and the animated film there's an appropriately apocalyptic tone where the fish march out of Okinawa and eventually take over Tokyo, Japan and likely the world.

The adaptation is not as good as the manga, but it succeeds (pun not intended) on its own legs despite some flaws by managing to perfectly capture the story's central idea. The film succeeds in creating an end of the world scenario that admits how absurd it is but is still gross inducing horror, the fish monsters the result of a gas (and bacteria within it) that if it infects a host - aquatic, animal, human - turns them into a bloated gas bag, the machinery on them a gas powered entity which combines to create horrific bio-mechanical creations to overwhelm modern Japanese motorways and streets. A pinch of salt has to be taken that a premise like this which involves bodily gases as a main plot point could evoke giggles or merely gross people out without the inducing of horror, but horror is as much a genre to deal with that which is considered inappropriate to discuss in ordinary conversation - disease and illness even if it contains aspects that may be unintentionally funny, like farting, are still potentially distressing. Revulsion is still a powerful emotion to induce especially as the body is still seen as taboo in certain bodily functions to this day, so the disgust the story induces is appropriately required as the horror of death. The rotting of a living person from man to schoolgirl, when its revealed later in the plot, leads to the bacteria turning their skin almost frog green as gas comes out of every orifice, still distressing when witnessed animated, more so when the human body meets machinery, tubes going into places they dare not go and the mix of black humour, disgust and sight of things one feel shouldn't be depicted out of politeness makes this a potent cocktail². In a slight spoiler that you can skip to the end of the paragraph about if need be, the mechanical legs as well are revealed to have been a creation of the Japanese military in World War II to harness the gas as a biological weapon, the premise upturning the habit of Japanese horror and sci-fi reflecting their monsters through the American involvement in the war with a creation the fault of the Japanese themselves on the future generation. As well, this is a tale of nature eventually overruling mankind, something as absurd as fish land inspired the more you think about it; one, if you see the dead eyes of fish heads on food stores, there is something unsettling about the appearance of fish in terms of their appearance especially as something we kill in thousands and eat; two, the absrudity of the idea, while in danger of not being scary to some, is more original than another vampire or zombie as, while the resulting fish are technically undead zombies themselves, they reflect the idea of anything being dangerous, especially as like zombies they are dangerous on mass; and finally three, back to Hodgson and sailor's tales of yore, the ocean is a place which holds danger for human beings, not only covering most of the Earth but a place with legends of giant octopus, (one such creature appearing in the anime), white whales which destroy ships, and real life creatures that are poisonous or accidentally confused humans for seals and rip pieces out of them.

The film changes plot points. A major one is switching the protagonist's gender to being the girlfriend who is concerned for her boyfriend in Tokyo during the attacks rather than the male hero, the characters from the original story Kaori and Tadashi switching places with Kaori the one we follow rather than the other way around. This is a change which may actually be the one virtue the anime has over the original manga as, while it's still a great book, the idea that Kaori, who is originally a damsel who is drastically different in personality and is part of  a plot point that becomes a plight for Tadashi, is changed into a passive heroine here is a nice little change which alters a great damn deal of the tone as a result.

Other changes are mostly in the characters created for the film and their characterisation. The main heroine is surrounded by two female friends who get a slice of the screen time. One is the stereotype of the nerdy, shy girl but she at least gets to be involved with one of the manga's more memorable images. The other is unfortunately the stereotype of the glamorous young woman who sleeps around, one whose only possible reason for existing as she does in the anime is so that the depiction of a sex act with three people (discretely shown) that would usually only be seen in live action porn can be written in; she as a depiction is the one real blot in the adaptation which stings as, while he uses stereotypes, Ito even when he has sexually explicit moments or female characters as monsters was always more tasteful even in the tasteless, preferring either the truly alien, likable characters, sympathetic monsters or those with his trademark madness projected from their wild bulging eyes.

Thankfully the choice of a female protagonist is treated with the respect it deserves as a radical change, where even thought she shows signs of the events happening around her hurting her, including breaking down and crying like a child when stopped by military personal from reaching a place, she's able to eventually accept the fate of what is likely the end of humanity around her. It also means that, when in the manga originally it's the boyfriend who had to deal with a longer plot line involving her being drastically changed physically that he has to cope with, the shorter take here with her having to deal with it really changes the way the story goes. It may come off as crass to say this, but considering the stereotypes of girlfriends that can be found in horror in any language of being a mere damsel, simply changing the gender of the person we follow, not even taking account the effect depicting them as gay or bisexual, can alter the span of a story if, following a heterosexual woman, the one in peril she has to find is her boyfriend. Followed here by a male photographer wanting to learn the truth of the outbreak, a new side is shown that nicely mirrors what Ito does in the manga where its Kaori having to feel the grief of what happens rather than the boyfriend having to feel grief for what happens to Kaori.

In terms of adapting the manga in general Gyo does have to truncate the plot and bring the story up-to-date from 1999 to the 2010s, the internet and YouTube (implicitly described) playing a great sub textual part in how it both informs the public but proves to be useless against the natural threat. The film manages to create an appropriately destroyed, abandoned cityscape where the streets are only populated by monstrosities, filling this with a fully fleshed-out narrative which manages to cover a great deal in only seventy minutes or so, quite a feat which the anime has to be applauded for despite its flaws in some of the priorities in storytelling. It even manages to include the circus segment of the original manga - a strange tangent where, in the middle of the end of the world, people have taken infected members of the public and turned them into an attraction in a circus of decay - without feeling like its missed the important plot points it has to deal with to make sense. The result of this economic storytelling as well is that, fitting the work its adapting, it develops its own idiosyncratic quirks that would make Ito proud, all the while avoiding what happened with the live action Uzumaki film, which was longer in length, in having to abruptly end with no real climax that used still shots of events it sadly didn't depict.

Technically the only issue to be found with Gyo is that, using 3D animation for the aquatic monstrosities at times, the glaring difference between 3D models and 2D animation can be spotted, a common issue still with many anime, only with sharks with mechanical legs sticking out like a sore thumb. Altogether it's an impressive production in terms of trying to adapt a source that could've immediately become too absurd in motion, not only succeeding in adding the menace that is in Ito's work alongside clear absurdity but also making itself stand out as having its own personality alongside the original source. Sadly its likely to be neglected with the otherwise superior original comic, but as adaptations go particularly in the barren area of horror anime, its commendable as an example which feels suitably unique rather than lacking in comparison to manga.

==========

¹ As of this review being published, we might be getting Tomie by Christmas in a deluxe set, pleasing me greatly. As for any of the live action adaptations made in Japan, if I could see any they might appear on the site even if they have no connection to anime.

2 This is a common trait of Japanese horror manga I've cherry picked that I've grown to admire even if at times I worry I'm becoming desensitised to material that would cause others to puke. Currently, the day this footnote was created, I am going through the first omnibus volume of Franken Fran (2006-12) by Katsuhisa Kigitsu, a work that deliberately steps over the line in terms of good taste from the beginning with grossly depicted body horror in the panels. As much as I fret that this type of material is too gross at points, too transgressive to the point of merely being offensive and crass, like with Ito I also realise the discomfort their imagery cause if probably more morally appropriate for horror storytelling and also more important in getting gut reactions out of people and forcing them, through the usually great illustration of Japanese manga, to look at their own sack of bones and flesh they call their own body with greater thought. 

#21: Elfen Lied (2004)

From http://stuffpoint.com/elfen-lied/image
/104515-elfen-lied-elfen-lied-cover-art.jpg

Director: Mamoru Kanbe

Screenplay: Takao Yoshioka

Based on a manga by Lynn Okamoto

Voice Cast: Chihiro Suzuki (as Kouta); Sanae Kobayashi (as Lucy / Nyuu); Emiko Hagiwara (as Mayu); Hiroaki Hirata (as Professor Kakuzawa Yu); Mamiko Noto (as Yuka); Maria Yamamoto (as Kanae); Yuki Matsuoka (as Nana)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Out of all the anime I admire greatly, Elfen Lied is the most compellingly flawed. Out of its thirteen television episodes, and an additional one released straight-to-video later, its virtues are as much amplified by its strange production decisions as they exist in spite of them. It's a series that regardless of its weird tonal shifts manages to tap into a nihilistic teenage angst that is sincerely dark, rather than the cliché of the moody teenage angst other anime fail with. It's as appropriately ugly and messy as the emotions one feels as a young adult as much because of its strange decisions as well as the plot, tapping into something more visceral as a result. The series is still available today whilst other more famous ones have been out of print, both for its infamy through its gore but clearly because it touched viewers emotionally. Particularly, what was once clearly made for Japanese male otaku became more twisted and emotionally razored as its developed a fan base, which you can see just from looking on Deviant Art showing this hit something personal despite its erratic qualities.

In an alternative modern Japan, young girls are being born as Diclonius - genetic mutants with natural pink hair, natural pink/red eyes, two small horns growing out of their heads and vectors, usually four invisible arms alongside their own, the result of a enlarged pineal gland, which can both move objects but can also slice through any objects including flesh and bond with ease. Diclonius are seen as a threat to humanity, killed at birth or locked up to be experimented on by a secret government organisation, who can only reproduce by infecting males with the touch of their vectors and are viewed as an evolutionary stage meant to replace mankind, mostly sociopathic and even capable of murdering their parents from the age of being  a toddler in the eyes of those trying to stop them. One of the most dangerous, the "Queen Bee" who can reproduce normally and may be the origins of the Diclonius, is Lucy, a young woman who escapes confinement in the first episode in a gruesome manner. A sniper manages to hit her in the head before she flees, the trauma causing Lucy to become dormant and a new personality to take over, a child like savant completely unable to look after herself found on the beach by cousins Kouta and Yuka. Dubbed Nyuu, from the only word she can say at first, she is taken in at Kouta's new home, a former restaurant, leading to her meeting various people, and opening up many traumas and anxieties of all those involved as Lucy is still within her sub-consciousness. Kouta's amnesia especially of the death of his little sister and father, Yuka's unrequited love for him, and Lucy's conflict as a Diclonius and as traumatised young woman, all the while the scientists who had her captive use anything from psychotic soldier to her own kind to find her.

From http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee210/
angeltakesflight07/Elfen%20Lied/elfenlieddvd1cap006.jpg

Elfen Lied is laced, intoxicated, with very exaggerated melodrama. Everything is fraught with emotions unsaid, building up as new characters converge at the home and bring their own baggage - a young runaway called Mayu and Nana, a Diclonius sent after Lucy who is mutilated by her and had to blindly stumble into the world naively as a member of this mutation who is alien to the destructive desires of her kind and only cares to be enjoy life. This emotions, where there is an average of one scene of crying in each episode at points, are exaggerated further by the extremes of the content, warning you as a viewer what to expect when the first ten minutes of the first episode is a barrage of dismemberments and gore as Lucy escapes a government lab. This is capped by a clear message of intent as a clumsy young female secretary, cute in her habit of tripping over her feet and a likely protagonist for another anime, has her head popped off by invisible hands like a coke bottle lid in one of many moments where stereotypes of cuteness and sweetness get mangled in the series. It's amazing, based on the age ratings set in stone in Britain, that Elfen Lied has always been acceptable for fifteen year olds to see and buy. Not only is there extreme levels of gore, harkening back to the infamous examples of gory anime from the nineties, and a lot of nudity but there are some incredibly dark themes brought up throughout the narrative. Some of it could only be acceptable to depict visually animated, the Diclonius viewed as monsters yet, despite Lucy happily killing people depending on her mood, the scientists more than capable of torturing and experimenting on them even when they're children.

While its heavy handed in places, one of the most interesting creative decisions for the anime is that, even if someone like Lucy is sociopathic and murders innocent people, human beings barring sympathetic characters are actually worse than the Diclonius; the officials use their polite digression and view that they'll save mankind to hide acts of violence in the name of scientific study, like firing giant steel balls at a chained up Diclonius, adults commit sexual child abuse and even children will harm a small animal to torment a peer. An obvious idea, but alongside the possible humanity still left in Lucy as the Nyuu side blurs with her own, the idea that it may be for the better if mankind was violently replaced by Diclonius rears its head frequently even if there are human characters capable of only kindness like Mayu. This in itself probably explains the popularity of this series as I brought up in the first paragraph - adolescence angst taken on a wider scale, nihilism and hope confused with exaggeration an important part of that depiction. Alongside Lucy's back-story, there is a theme of trauma as its clear many of the Diclonius are the result of neglect, emotional and physical abuse or isolation from birth, the monsters firmly created by their apparent victims treating them like freaks. That most of the Diclonius are female and the scientists mostly male, even if it was unintentional, cannot help but bring up a theme of misogyny, as I cannot help find it blend into a theme of nature versus civilisation from the horns the Diclonius have, evoking pagan gods and vengeful natural spirits. The series, while light in tone in spots with comedy, is unbelievable grim at points as a result, comparable to (entry #15) Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) only with a bipolar tone and a cavalcade of decapitated heads and ketchup gore.

From http://i.imgur.com/Q90ZEhC.png

The bipolar nature of Elfen Lied is as much an added personality to the show's tone as much as it is a distraction. It suffers from a problem like many anime of it being completed when the original manga had yet to be finished, but contrary to how I first saw it, it's not as jarring in how it ends, still having a smaller and sufficient emotional one that does work as a close even if there's a lot of loose ends left. The cutting between events in the middle of scenes back-and-forth is an interesting editing style which does cause a varying emotional reaction, clearly deliberate in places even though it does lead to one moment where day and night apparently switch between each other. Character behaviour, adding to the hyper melodramatic tone, flips within the same scene, though it is possible to imagine its closer to a theatrical acting performance cycling between emotions than the leisured tones of other stories. Some continuity errors stick out and the decision in the last episode to recycle parts of Lucy's childhood back-story does come off as cheap padding.

The area where the series both has its best and worst aspects is in the work of screenwriter and series composer Takao Yoshioka. He does an admirable job with the story but significantly,  his work includes (entry #6) High School DxD (2012) and the Ikki Tousen series alongside other works with heavy amounts of fan service, not pop culture references but "fan service" in terms of nudity and sexuality, and this series shows his other work's trademarks including as a detriment. Some of it is appropriately unsettling, discretion or the act of purposely creeping out the viewer taking place as the Diclonius are treated less than experimental lab rats. Some however is pure titillation and, like with other anime with underage characters, its discomforting especially when there's a difference between tackling the awkward passions the characters would have around each other, even as a comedy moment, and just being tasteless. Particularly with Nyuu, a child savant who is yet a grown young woman, some of this is inexplicable when she starts to be able to interact with more than one word and starts behaving in odd ways along this way. Some of it works as fittingly weird - an act of dry humping, which she is perfectly with as Kouta is frozen stiff mortified during it, reminds one of a scene Lars von Trier could've added to The Idiots (1998), but having her gropes Yuka at one point for a joke is just dumb. Thankfully this isn't High School DxD but the traits Takao Yoshioka likely emphasised in that series can be found in brief flashes here. A dream involving "naked crucifixion" with sentient yen money possessing limbs and waving burning torches is as mad as a box of frogs and was probably written by one of the amphibian occupants within said box. Cumbersome attempts at humour usually in the sex comedy vibe, while some of it works, are probably the biggest potential hindrance to viewers even above the misanthropy and gore. It's both absolutely distracting and yet, depending on one's reactions, fittingly bizarre for such manic material, the whole barrel of hormones soaked into a story fitting for its young adult and teenage cast, even ones with pink hair and horns, alongside the trauma and depression, as appropriately in poor taste as it is good taste rather than sabotaging the entirety of the series.

From https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/
51/2a/41/512a416b3b659f03bc125694e5497516.jpg

In defence of Elfen Lied's tone, it knows when to be serious. As much of this is in the presentation as well as the script, and just from the opening credits one is brought into a series, despite its haphazard nature, this is going to do its best to be earnest and thoughtful. While it may seem sacrilegious, recreating the paintings of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt with the characters - The Kiss (1907-8), Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) etc. - is incredibly effecting and appropriate, all the paintings referenced from Klimt's famous Golden Period which were very sensual, erotic but in cases melancholic. The titular "Elfen Lied" is a German poem, a music box version playing an important part as a plot point. Visually the series proper is the standard of digitally assisted, brightly coloured animation of the early 2000s, bolstered by its story and gruesomeness, thankfully as far away from digitally assisted camera pans and CGI vehicles as possible. Musically the series is helped immensely; baring a mandatory cutesy pop song on the end credit and surprising use of drum 'n' bass, most of the score is also coral like the opening theme and ethereal, adding greatly to the show's tone. In general, while it can be a haphazard thirteen episodes - the bonus episode trying to add more to Lucy's back-story using a subplot from the manga but jarring against her emotional trajectory at the point its set, thus making it useless - but what had kept me going back to Elfen Lied, and more than happy to defend it here, is this concoction of emotions that still feels rawer than a lot of anime, as messy as the themes its depicting and causing one to feel as messed up by the end of it as the characters themselves. It's an anime that does punch you in the gut and I access its mistakes as part of its personality, making it far more meaningful as a result.

#20: Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (2001)

From http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/4/
4a/FFTSWPoster.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130405010722

Director: Hironobu Sakaguchi

Screenplay: Al Reinert and Jeff Vintar

Inspired by the videogame series produced by Square Enix

Voice Cast: Ming-Na Wen (as Doctor Aki Ross); Alec Baldwin (as Captain Gray Edwards); Ving Rhames (as Ryan); Steve Buscemi (as Neil); Peri Gilpin (as Jane); Donald Sutherland (as Dr. Sid); James Woods (as General Hein)

Viewed with English Dub

Over the last twenty reviews there's been an inexplicable build-up towards a review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a spin-off adaptation of the legendary RPG videogame franchise. A US-Japan co-production, it would be the only feature film made by Square Enix's film department Square Pictures before the box office failure of this film collapsed them,  only to be heard again one last time to contribute to The Animatrix (2003), an anthology tribute to The Matrix's clear anime influences. The first anime film which used three dimensional character designs and landscapes was (entry #3) A.LI.CE (1999), a brave experiment but less than the sun of its parts, whilst many films and straight-to-video works that would come after it of the same ilk would become doomed  by the hype that surrounded this big blockbuster. The likes of A.LI.CE, Malice@Doll (2001)  and (entry #16) Galerians: Rion (2002) would become immediately obsolete in comparison to this film and its than state-of-the-art and realistic character designs and budget. The hype, that I remember still to this day growing up when this film was supposed to mean something, was huge, the scope of it meant to revolutionise this type of filmmaking. Like many of hyped blockbuster before it actually gets released, the future is reaped with irony. What might've been a warning sign that this hype might've been a bit silly, if I was an adult back then, was that like anime heroines and fictitious female characters from games like Lara Croft, there was already a cheesecake shot of Professor Aki Ross, who in the film is a meek and sombre woman who is more interested in gathering plants and animals to save the Earth, in a bikini before there was proof that she'd be remembered as an iconic character. There were plans for the character design to be a reoccurring actress in more animated films like one of Osamu Tezuka's favourite roll call of characters who'd appear in multiple roles in different manga of his.

From http://theredlist.com/media/database/graphisme/3d/3d_begginings/final_fantasy_creatures
_de_lesprit/021_final_fantasy_creatures_de_lesprit_theredlist.jpg

Then it failed at the box office. With fifteen years of hindsight, it was an admirable and important push for realism and scope that shouldn't be ignored. The idea that it would lead to actors being replaced with computer generated people however is utterly comical and ironically, based around the destruction of humanity by ghost-like aliens who can literally pull the life-essence from people, the last surviving humans living in closed-off cities, it was like many videogames used to promote new graphics first than plot that's dated greatly as technology improved. Now it's as dated as a work like A.LI.CE; whilst it's still technically superior than many anime that use three-dimensional designs, its shown its age compared to how this computer animation would greatly improve over the decade in large budget cinema, and without a distinct look that wouldn't have aged it shows cracks in the sheen. You can see how few actual characters and environments there are, even a massively expensive and bold project like this limited by the practicalities of the technology, able to make realistic looking characters but not able to be ridiculously expansive in the mythology of its world. Baring the main cast, you mostly have soldiers who wear the same masks or faceless civilians, whilst locations are wasteland, an empty wasteland city and corridors only. Exactly like Galerians: Rion but on a significantly bigger budget, to fill in more detail would've cost prohibitive and more time consuming than it already would've been.

From http://i1.2pcdn.com/node14/image/article/
201506/01/20150601051532a0e40c55bwizczwv.jpg

The area which hasn't aged, and is the main draw now, is the non-human entities which populate the film; non-human characters are less problematic in animation, and not surprisingly for a work based on Final Fantasy, they're inventive from malformed humanoid grunts, flying snake dragons and strange monolithic entities with tendrils and spiders' legs straight from HP Lovecraft fan art. The bright idea to make the aliens orange and the life-force of Earth blue, the later to be collected by the heroes as a final way to end the alien threat, also helps in preventing the grey and golden brown post-apocalyptic environments from becoming drab, adding some aesthetic distinction to the proceedings. Particularly now when, for the hard work on them, the human cast shown the limits of the time badly now, these designs make up for the beginnings of trying to create realistic human beings onscreen. A lot of lavish care was put on the female lead Aki with her freckled, meek look but the rest of the cast particularly the males are as generic as you can get in this day and age. The worst offender, for example, being the main villain General Hein with permanently sinister brow line, frozen in maliciousness in his desire to use his giant space laser on the aliens by any means necessary and signposted as bad from the facial deformity before you recognise James Wood is voicing him.

From http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com
/images/305294/305294_full.jpg

As for the plot, this is where the film was ultimately doomed. One could immediately go to the mythology and blame it as esoteric gobbledegook - that the heroes, including the heroine and soldiers lead by an old flame, need to tap into the life-force of Gaea, Earth as a living entity, found in anything from plants to soldiers' bio-battery packs, to protect themselves from what are actual alien ghosts with no consciousness of their violence, restless and destructive - but that's the interesting part of the film that's barely dealt with. These parts are the clear influence of this being a part-Japanese production as this is the type of storytelling you find in many anime - like the failed, but admirable, attempt to make Hein and his scowling frown a more complicated character, with a moral reason behind his malice, these are admirable attempts at bringing greyness and a more interesting depth even for an action sci-fi film. The problem I'd squarely blame on the US side of the co-production, adapting the film for a Western audience. As much as a film from Japan could be just as terrible as one from the US if the script is poor, the problem exactly is an irksome tendency prevalent in American cinema, one still plaguing current blockbusters, where there's a common and over repeated through line for the plot, the repetition of the hero's journey plot with the same character archetypes and, worse, a stagnated and marketed version of the phrase "believing in yourself" rather than letting the viewers think this for themselves. When I now spot these habits, I have a Pavlovian reaction suspecting a film's going to immediately collapse in quality even after the first ten minutes.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xi59pyCjgM8/UcDf5Zy415I/AAAAAAAAI8E/
x9UPLSqEbJU/s1600/finalfantasyphantom.jpg

The interesting ideas that the film had eventually become complicit in its failure, making the obsession with Gaea theory and life force padding on the rotten structure. The characters are so generic and provided with such bad dialogue that, considering the calibre of some of the voice actors for the English dub, it becomes worse. Steve Buscemi has made a name for himself, as well as being a great character actor, for being the comedic sidekick too, the one here without any decent jokes. Ving Rhames is stuck in the background, James Wood is the aforementioned villain only defined for most of his screen time by a menacing brow, and inexplicably its Alec Baldwin who's the romantic love interest, as bland as white bread military captain Aki loves, when he should have literal brass balls in his hand as he does in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Slight desperation can even be found in the tough female solder (clearly copying Pvt. Vasquez from Aliens (1986) without the charisma or anything to differentiate that archetype from this version. Probably the worst thing is that, given a leading voice role for something she immediately wanted to make, Ming-Na Wen as Aki Ross, in a curious career that includes The Joy Luck Club (1993) to playing Chung-Li in Street Fighter (1994) to Mulan (1998) and voice acting, is stuck with a film around her that lets down the chance to get centre stage.

From https://galacticpillow.files.wordpress.com/
2001/07/final-fantasy-the-spirits-within_02.jpg

I had hoped to write about a folly, possibly one with virtues to redeem it or at least memorable as a box office bomb and in context of all the other three dimensional anime that faded into obscurity because of it. What I've ended up with however is a casebook example of the many flaws with English language plot writing for mainstream films.  This is not like a Battlefield Earth (2000) in collapsing spectacularly, or in context of anime a compelling example of ambition crashing and burning at the box office like Odin: Photon Space Starlight (1985), but a bland, lifeless movie that has thankfully disappeared into obscurity baring its innovation in CGI. I sadly couldn't come to this as a fan of the original games, haven't never played a whole of one, but as a videogame adaptation, as tentative a one as possible, this is the sort of thing that'd crush a fan's heart if they went to see it on its original cinema release. In general it would've been a worse sensation for a devoted fan as, with the exception of Final Fantasy: Advent Children (2005), which was a direct sequel to one of the most loved games of the series, the anime adaptations of Final Fantasy have been infamous for their lack of quality. The Spirits Within would probably be the most painful to sit through, with those other adaptations all possible to cover depending on their accessibility to me, due to the expectation and budget behind it, collapsing like many videogame adaptations have. It ends with a shot of a valley with a dreary, Lord of the Rings-light ballad, one that finishes it appropriately with a deathly wheezing. 

#19: Vampire Hunter D (1985)

From https://41.media.tumblr.com/c2a3162baa311844f2b7d7
c070267079/tumblr_nn6dycyAiD1spaq6ho1_500.jpg

Director: Toyoo Ashida

Screenplay: Yasushi Hirano

Based on the light novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi

Cast: Kaneto Shiozawa/Michael McConnohie (as D); Michie Tomizawa/Barbara Goodson (as Doris Lang); Satoko Kitô/Edie Mirman (as Lamika); Seizo Katou/Jeff Winkless (as Count Magnus Lee); Ichirô Nagai (as Left Hand); Kazuyuki Sogabe/Kerrigan Mahan (as Rei Ginsei)

Watched with English Dub

From http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5138a6d4e4b0908a3a990080/t/
52e435e7e4b0eeee546814ba/1390687722352/vampire-hunter-d-conde-magnus-lee.jpg

Having only known of Vampire Hunter D through its two animated adaptations, the one I'm covering today and the more critically acclaimed follow up from 2000 by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, I'm a novice in my knowledge of a momentous pop cultural franchise. Like (entry # 16) Galerians: Rion (2002), I first heard of the franchise through a videogame tie-in in one of my old Playstation One magazines, though its origin as a series of light novels would go on to spawn many a tie-in beyond that game. A huge factor to these books' reputation is the art by Yoshitaka Amano, whose work if you research him on Google is some of the most beautiful and artistically satisfying to be created for a Japanese pop cultural object. His work and Vampire Hunter D in general, including the anime adaptations, are heavily influenced by European art and genre motifs, to the point the most beloved of the two anime, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust by Kawajiri, was a US-Japanese co-production where the English dub came first.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mPuu9HNUcN4/hqdefault.jpg

The influences and how Vampire Hunter D used them to create its unique world is ultimately the best virtue of the 1985 version alongside its OVA quality animation. Melding Gothic horror with the post-apocalyptic, with frontier western vibes crashing against post-medieval towns, it envisions a world thousands of years in the future where, after a calamity, mankind survives in a society scattered across apocalyptic wasteland where demons and mutants gladly co-exist, where werewolves prowl the lands and, in lieu of the title, vampires stalk the night and require paid vampire hunters to eliminate. A dhampir named D, half vampire and half mortal man, wanders the landscape being paid for jobs, the only constant being his left hand which, with a human face, is sentient and cannot shut up, mocking his attempts at resisting his vampiric blood. The plot is pretty basic after this established character is introduced over eighty minutes, a young woman named Doris Lang hiring D after an ancient vampire Count Magnus Less has marked her to be his bride. Like a lot of pulpy characters, as much in anime like this, its these characters including those introduced for a single story that bring out the personality, the plot thickened by a mutant who'll gladly help the Count in hope for immortality and the Count's own daughter Lamika who is appalled about both the idea of a mortal peasant joining their royal lineage and becoming her mother-in-law.

From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/
richardsplash/INVASIAN/VampireHunterD2.jpg

The basic nature of said plot, where D has to repeatedly struggle against new obstacles each scene, from ghouls to the aforementioned mutant, means that the entertainment is in the world itself being depicted onscreen. Horror, as mentioned in previous posts last year for Halloween, is a surprisingly neglected genre in anime, only starting to pick up in amount within the last ten years and especially with stuff like Tokyo Ghoul (2014) getting popular in animated and paperback form. While action orientated, seeing a Japanese work entirely devout to a fetish of European horror, even in the big eyed eighties character designs, is utterly welcoming.  The melding of science fiction and gothic horror manages, despite being potentially awkward bedfellows, to work in these two anime adaptations, reined in by the general tone and looks of both. They exhibit one of the most extreme, but ultimately satisfying, examples of a genre melting pot in how many influences there are - period townsfolk and frontier western clothing against robot horses, the vampire count dressed like Bela Lugosi against the bloodier violence of straight-to-video anime - and yet because of the art style this first adaptation makes it all seamlessly work together.

From https://thomfiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/vampire-hunter-d.jpg

The animation style does add to the film immensely. The only real botch to this version decades on is that the female lead occasionally looks like a twelve year old in scenes, even in the context of the eighties character designs, certainly cringe worthy when you notice it when there's a scene where she melancholically tries to seduce D only for him to struggle with wanting to bite her neck. The gothic, realistic character designs of the 2000 version are the best, but as a film meant to bring the D character and his world to the video screen, the original eighties version is still handsome in quality and gets right the most important of the story in terms of the fantastical nature of it. Against anything from giants to an imp-like witch, the protagonist D exists in a world of the phantasmagoric melded with sci-fi; where the ruined castles would have to be dank and oppressive, where the pits below have the centuries old skeletons laid about from a war and snake women to seduce people, as the post-apocalyptic content is as appropriately bleak. The more unconventional aspects, such as D's talking hand, add to this is giving the film its own distinct personality. The only thing that spoils the general mood that is so well added are that, one, the original English dub is terrible with stilted line readings and, two, the end credit song is a wildly inappropriate New Wave influenced J-pop number, especially after the ending takes on both a sudden abstract series of seasonal changes and both a sombre, clean act of saying goodbye. The dub is only a problem depending on the version of Vampire Hunter D you see; now with the recent American re-release of the film, the company realising it Sentai Films had to create a new English dub due to the original dub's materials being too damaged for restoration. The end credit song however is one you're stuck with.