#256: Campus Special Investigator Hikaruon (1987)

 

Studio: AIC

Director: Kazuhiro Ochi

Screenplay: Kazuhiro Ochi

Voice Cast: Mika Doi as Adzumi Hadzuki; Toshihiko Seki as Hikaru Shihodo; Kazuyuki Sogabe as Shirou Amakusa; Miina Tominaga as Yayoi Shiina; Shōzō Iizuka as Demonic Beast; Tesshō Genda as Kyousuke Gomi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Continuing into the catalogue of obscure eighties OVAs, this is the last of the "Pink Shock" trilogy which I have seen all of. Produced by AIC, it was a brief series which came with no real consitent aspect to them barring some eroticism. One was Maryū Senki (1987-9), a three part horror-action release of interest in that genre. The other Call Me Tonight (1986) is one some viewers may have learnt of as it has gained interest in the internet age, a fascinating short predating the notorious Urotsukidôji anime adaptations by parodying it, by way of a lead male character who turns into a tentacle monster when horny and the female phone sex employee who can tame his heart, all in a work that is more progressive for the time then you release. Campus Special Investigator Hikaruon, in vast contrast, feels like a pilot to a show that could have been, a tribute to the likes of live action tokusatsu "Metal Hero" shows like Space Sheriff Gavan (1982-3) only with a darker slant.

At a school an alarming number of suicides are transpiring, and a young male hero, able to turn into an armoured battler, has snuck in as a new transfer student with his female colleague there already as a teacher. There is a female student pulled into the secret force harming the students, and the sense of this feeling like one episode to a longer work than never came to be is felt. The more adult tone is that this entity, masquerading in the school, drives people to suicide or to be devoured by a supernatural force. There is a sense of style to this anime too; the opening, set in a train station almost white with just outlines, the patrons all blank faced, has the one character in colour and fully drawn jumping in front of a train, an inspired opening for any production which emphasises the shock of the scene as a set up. There is also my favourite trope of the older era of anime, maybe still into the modern day if I ever encounter it, of characters being transported to an alien realm, here a surreal chess motif of black and white tiles, and gravity defying steps against a crimson sky. Add to this that the villain is at first a harlequin Pied Piper in appearance, tempting a new victim with wine of her demise. The best of these sequences cross into another of my passions as, with the best of these older anime of strange alternative realms, you could imagine them as the art appearing the front of a metal or prog rock LP.

Hikaruon also has an uncomfortable of victimising the female characters sadly. The other Pink Shock titles as mentioned had an eroticism, and here this is sadly an implicit threat of sexual violence, be it a group of bullies targeting the female student, or how the female heroine, when the number of goons in a bar are too many to fight, is left with clothes shredded and on the floor implicitly suggesting a rape scene to transpire. She is brainwashed to fight the hero thankfully, in another cool aesthetic choice in a paper walled pastiche of samurai combat, wearing an omi demon mask, but that hint is tonally out of place. The hero also sexually harasses her, such as groping her behind, as humour which definitely has not aged well at all. Out of the three Pink Shock entries, this feels like a contractual requirement and out of place, as this feels like a tribute to this genre it is recreating, and only is darker in the villains' plans, not the special abilities or how the episode finishes with fighting a monster.

Maryū Senki has sexually crossing with the grotesque which could be accused as offensive, and out of place for something meant to be erotic, but felt more befitting as ero-guro, a horror story where the sexuality is more for the horror edge than meant to be sexy, whilst Call Me Tonight as mentioned is surprising for what themes it covered in less than thirty minutes. Hikaruon, whilst entertaining, is a disappointment in how I do need to advise a trigger warning for those watching this, and how it really is undercut by this undefendable, and arguably pointless, way to still sell eroticism like the other Pink Shock titles did. It does not even, if the eroticism was not problematic, seem a fit, where it would been more appropriate if this had been a more explicitly erotic pastiche or take on the tokusatsu genre. Considering the opening credits is a sincere animation of the show it could have been, like the pilot of a longer production, shows it is an odd production in some of the creative choices. It becomes, out of the Pink Shock series, the weakest of the trio for the reason it feels like a pilot for a show we never got the whole of.

#255: Alice in Cyberland (1996)

 

Studio: Vega Entertainment (Episode 1); Kyoe Sung Production (Episode 2)

Director: Kazuyoshi Yokota

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka

Based on the videogame by Glams, Inc.

Voice Cast: Yoko Asada as Alice; Kae Araki as Lena; Kikuko Inoue as Rucia; Yūko Miyamura as Juri

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Once ago we envisioned entering an isolation tank full of water to enter cyberspace, to defeat hackers masquerading as monsters, as explained here in the opening credits animation to this obscure production. Alice in Cyberland in this particular case this is a tie-in to a videogame which came at the same time. With the scenario worked on by Chiaki J. Konaka, better known for his work on Serial Experiments Lain (1998) and The Big O (1999-2003), the game was a Japanese-only adventure game from Glams, Inc., who also co-produced the anime. They have unfortunately not a prolific list of titles under their belt, and I half suspect with the tale of Alice in Cyberland, just in terms of the second of the two episodes having been M.I.A. in existence, that they took a risk at a time where many groups who had never made games jumped onto the original Sony Playstation bandwagon. With the game and anime released in 1996 together, they unfortunately burnt out, not releasing a lot more else barring a couple more games including for the Sega Saturn.

Twenty years into the future, from this anime’s release, and the titular Alice is playing virtual reality games with her female friends. Establishing a multi-media franchise, the first twenty-plus episode cannot do much but establish her, that with an estranged father, she is a stereotypical anime female lead but one with a talent for computers and dealing with hackers. This is useful in a future, for all its technological advancements, that has greater concern from hackers. Ironically it is the second episode, which was once presumed lost as we get into, which explained the context to make sense of all this, that like Serial Experiments Lain, the internet has become a huge entity where people can exist within it as virtual figures, predating the reality of advancing technology in its own exaggerated way and with the potential to be relevant still. In this case, the concern for episode one is cyber-anarchists from Eastern Europe. It is an odd choice, and it does show a cartoonish air to it, where in causing anarchy to important technology in Japan, they are focused on sabotaging school pools by hacking the disinfecting system for the water, and playing music through people’s headphones to cause violent memory erasing amnesia. The other clear influence on this is clear as a magical girl story, only with an internet theme, so there is an air of complete fantasy to this premise still, trying to make a version of this genre that is decades old into a new era of technology.

There is a virtue to this, where we can literalize cybercrimes with a data eating tentacle monster, alongside providing me with my favorite trope of surreal unearthly worlds the protagonists are sucked into. With its title this is nodding to Alice in Wonderland, the later aspect could have been embraced further, as Alice has received emails from a mysterious figure name Lucia who comes to her aid and provides her the ability to freely enter Cyberland, emphasizing this as a more cartoonish take on the subject than the metaphorical and abstract nature of Serial Experiments Lain’ symbology. As with a lot of anime, it is a premise that has a lot of promised, its take on the magical girl genre of its time, especially with the crowbarring of terms like “disinfection sword” to combine the two, but lovable as an idea. Even in a work which does have fan service, such as the female leads looking like their idealized and most attractive ideals in the online world, it also has a cool female lead as for all her goofball moments this is a very smart and computer savvy protagonist able to get the hints to snoop after cyberhackers, which is progressive in its own way back at a time when the internet was a new and exciting concept alongside virtual reality in the west and the east.

It is however a teaser, which means a lot was left off the table, particularly as in the version I was able to see. Alongside the goofier slapstick in the game cut scenes you see previewing the other part of this production, there are preview to other Glams Inc. games including for the Saturn, emphasizing this anime was always going to be an advertisement for the game. It is here that there was also the issue that the second episode, previewed too, was not readily available to see. Only really becoming available online from October 2021¹, you become aware that something went very wrong with the production of this anime for the worse, not surprising as Glams. Inc has very few releases after this period in the videogame console generation. (According to Chiaki Konaka himself, they even went bankrupt²⁾. The first episode is nicely animated, with original character designs by Daisuke Moriyama, the author of the original Chrno Crusade manga later adapted into the 2003 series from Gonzo. At first nothing is seemingly amiss with the second episode, starting with how episode 1 ends with repeated footage, and explaining a lot of the context of the world, only to reach its first original scene and everything to be clear. The production dropped in a way I have not seen barring some of the most notoriously disregarded anime I have gone out of my way to see.

Knowing how the later episode was seemingly lost to time, that likely explains why it has not gained the infamy for its animation quality. Starting with the amusingly dark opening where, at a children’s fantasy zone, a figure is deleting anything in his path and traumatizing them online, with no pink dragon or princess safe from disintegration, soon my attention was drawn to the animation quality even in terms of the faces of the leads being differently drawn. Animation faults, especially TV series where one has to get the episodes done quickly, have existed with similar issues, of less than stellar depictions of characters’ face, like they are melting off their necks, and the artistic quality visibly having to take shortcuts, which are usually not this frequent and are removed in the modern day for physical media releases. With absolutely respect for the animators on this, it is obvious that this was a) rushed and/or b) undermined by an unfortunate production disaster, neither helped that this is a promise of a story that is slight. There was a prominent change between two different studios for animation production between episodes; episode one was by Vega Entertainment, whose most prominent work is throughout the Doraemon franchise, a huge one in its homeland, but even with the second company hired for the second episode, Kyoe Sung Production has a prolific career into the decades afterwards³. It instead offers the sense that, having to help finish the second episode, no one is to blame but an unfortunate circumstance where people were forced to produce and release a final episode with this level of quality to it.  

With both written by Chiaki Konaka, the second episode still offers a fascinating premise, of artificial intelligence being able to blend in with humans, but with the danger that this one can replicate infinitely and will need to be deleted to prevent significant damage to cyberspace, even if through a potential skuzzy premise of a young boy one of the secondary female leads is smitten with. Alongside the sense of this being a dry run for Konaka to take this premise further, and that the ideas are simplified here through a monster of the week scenario, thus preventing it from getting more elaborate, the drop in animation quality is so surprising it undercuts the interesting ideas. Even if you do get a giant talking turtle, which is funny especially as it is a nonchalant and rude programmer named Bill in disguise online, few would get past however pointless the episode is by its end, and how you cannot get pass the quality drop in production to the first episode.

The one lasting legacy to Alice is Cyberland is the tantalizing realization this was a predecessor to Serial Experiments Lain itself directly. There were plans for a sequel to the video game with Chiaki Konaka² which never came to be, but alongside Serial Expeiments Lain coming in its place, the protagonists of Alice in Cyberland returned in an entirely different context. There is an Alice Mizuki, one of the main characters, also voiced by Yoko Asada who plays the original Alice, in Lain as an important character to the titular lead, alongside a Juri and Reika like the two other female leads from the older work in other roles.  It is a lovely discovery that this forgotten production, the game and the anime, managed to relive again as clearly Konaka found something he wanted to push with the premise. Serial Expeirments Lain, whilst of its era, has lasted as a relevant and startling series that has lasted, whilst Alice in Cyberland is a fascinating nineties obscurity. The production problems with episode two are tragic, but even that raises so many questions to what happened to Glams, Inc., one of the many who came at both a fascinating time in Japanese videogames and in the anime industry only to disappear so quickly afterwards. Their tale would be fascinating to learn far more of, but what we got at least was this curiosity.

 

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1) Quoted from the review of Alice in Cyberland, published originally on September 2nd 2018, from the blog Collectr's Blog and one of its later blog revision updates:

“Update October, 2021: the complete Alice in Cyberland TV broadcast showed up on YouTube, episode 2 intact. The quality is not as good as the laserdisc, but it's good enough. Now to find a translator...”

2) From the page on Alice in Cyberland 2 Seventh Protocol, from Chiaki J. Konaka's site on his career, Alice 6, written 2nd September 1999. It mentions as well that that subtitle “The 7^th Protocol” was inherited by Serial Experiments Lain, which does indeed connect the two, as it becomes “Protocol 7”, a key McGuffin to the narrative.

3) Anime News Network’s page on Alice in Cyberland, which is the encyclopedic page for the anime to refer to been two animation production studios on the project, Vega Entertainment for episode 1 and Kyoe Sung Production for episode 2.

#254: Zone of the Enders - 2167 Idolo (2001)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsuya Watanabe

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Based on the videogame franchise by Konami

Voice Cast: Takehito Koyasu as Second Lieutenant Radium Lavans; Chiharu Tezuka as Viola; Houko Kuwashima as Dolores; Rumi Ochiai as Melissa; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Dr. Rachel Links

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Idolo as a tie-in does suffer from the issue that, separated from its source, you are aware of the wider franchise it can grow with or lost virtue from, and the inherent concern that if the rest of the multi-media franchise is forgotten, these type of tie-ins rarely get re-released. Only months after this was released, the 2001 animated series Zone of the Enders: Dolores,i was already being broadcast, so there was a considerable push for adapting in animated form the world of Zone of the Enders, a videogame released that year in a big marketing push. Set in a future Earth and its relationship to other colonies, which Idolo deals with from the Martian colony, Z.O.E. as abbreviated was sold as a killer app from Konami for the Sony Playstation 2, a big cultural phenomenon within itself as a videogame machine riding the height of the original Playstation. Zone of the Enders even had Hideo Kojima as a collaborator, which would have hyped the game even in the West when it was released. Ironically though, the legacy of this franchise is more likely held by Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003), which was a much larger work in scale, length and virtues for critics, even having animated cut scenes sourced to studio GONZO.

Obviously, in context to this, Idolo is a tie-in meant to sell the first game as well as expand the story with a prologue, in this case setting up an enticing premise in its sleight original-video-animation length of fifty minutes. That it is produced by Sunrise, the Gundam creators and frequent studio for robot and mecha animation, offers an enticing prospect too this merely touches on. In the future, whilst we have colonised the galaxy there is also unfortunately bigotry, in this case to oppression of those humans born on Mars by Earth, who treat them as second class citizens least when it comes to their army on Mars even beating up Martian soldiers for fun, worse as being born on Martian gravity causes Earthlings to have an advantage in incredible strength. What is enticing to this anime, and is a slight spoiler, is knowledge that this is actually a prologue from the perspective of the future antagonists of the first video game. This sets up the BAHRAM, the military force that will invade and destroy the Jupiter colony the first game's lead survives, setting them up from the perspective that BAHRAM are the product of previous evils; colonial discrimination of the Earth forces sets forth those in this story, lead character and soldier Radium and the character of Viola, one of the more important characters herself from the first game, as those fighting back oppression only to become a destructive force in the future of the narrative. That in itself is really interesting, and this Idolo prologue in itself is tantalising in what you get as, whilst none of this is subtly told, it is a context distinct to tell this narrative from, as wishing to free themselves of the Earthlings, scientists on Mars are covertly developing the titular Idolo, a mecha built from the mysterious material Metatron, which presents a dangerous result both to how it influences the pilot and when the Earth forces catch wind of this machine, wanting to claim it for themselves.

As a piece of a full multi-media project, including that there is a twenty six episode television series which runs from Idolo, set before and after the 2001 game, Idolo does suffer from the fact that it is a slight story, where the scenario is  a prologue to a wider document. As a one-off by itself, I credit this with doing a lot to stand out; it does not, truthfully, have as much visual punch as one could wish for at times but including its bleak ending, which sets up the necessary context for later parts, it has a lot to admire. As a prologue to a larger work, it cannot go further, but beyond this there is a lot to admire in terms of the boldness of its story, as Radium's tale is there are someone being more controlled by the Idolo by its special properties, and simply the entire idea of this being a prologue to the antagonists of this franchise is something distinct, as it forces context of how even villainous figures can be moulded by similarly villainous acts, moral complexity something to admire when done like this and actually succeeding in its little form. Violet in particular, without additional context, would be left a character you wish was developed more, a figure harmed by the evils of the Earth forces, including being a victim as a child of "Space Radiation Sickness", causes by an Earth terrorist attack on Mars' colonies, but who even if a mere fragment has the fascination of where her arch is intended to go. Her emotional attachment to Radium, who brought her into the Special Forces after she tried attacking him on the street as a confused young woman, will become a huge emotional trajectory with the bleak outcome of this story, which does get even some visually striking aspects and a twisted bleakness when it involves the artificial intelligence taking personalities and a hallucinated wedding reception. Considering what the epilogue in the future brings up, and whom Violet comes in the franchise, a key antagonist for the first game and the franchise, and this proves one of Idolo's best aspects.

Even in terms of production, whilst the look and style of the show is not the most elaborate, it is solid, and the music especially by Hikaru Nanase is a stand out from this project, alongside "Kiss Me Sunlight" by Heart of Air as the ending theme a little gem, the group collaborators through this franchise.  Idolo is tethered to this franchise, with its director and key screenwriter continuing with the television series, and these adaptations are obscurer nowadays whilst the games were well regarded. The Zone of the Enders HD Collection in 2012 preserved both games, but it is Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, the sequel which continues this narrative, which clearly left a huge mark for many, including a remaster, called The 2nd Runner M∀RS, which was released in September 2018 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. This does place concern that Idolo is forgotten among this, which is a shame as, in terms of what it was meant to achieve, it does a commendable job. The series, which follows on with this its own prologue, is an entirely different narrative structure in length, and has new challenges as a long form narrative to deal with, but Idolo by itself, as the only one, would have been commendable as a one-off tie-in worth resurrecting.

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

 

Studio: Tatsunoko VCR

Director: Keiichi Sato

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

a.k.a Dream Dimension Gentleman

Studio: Gallop / JVCKenwood Victor Entertainment

Director: Hatsuki Tsuji

Screenplay: Izô Hashimoto

Based on the manga by Yosuke Takahashi

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

 

Studio: Animate Film

Director: Hiroyuki Ebata

Screenplay: Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga by Tetsuya Saruwatari

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

What am I? Spider bait?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4) Example from the manga of this transpiring.

#250: Bartender (2006)

 

Studio: Palm Studio

Director: Masaki Watanabe

Screenplay: Yasuhiro Imagawa

Based on the manga by Araki Joh

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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