Demon City Shinjuku (1988)

The evil-looking Rebi Ra (Kiyoshi Kobayashi) proves that you can judge a book by its cover when he fights the heavily bearded Genichiro (Banjo Ginga) atop a building in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo.  Genichiro’s Nenpo (which I assume is not to be confused with Ninpo, the martial art of the Ninja, as Nenpo deals with controlling and channeling one’s chi) and his wooden sword are no match for Rebi Ra’s demon sword and magical powers (one of which includes regeneration, which Genichiro also fails at as two of his limbs are hacked off), and the bad guy causes an earthquake which rends Shinjuku in half and unleashes demons into the sector.  Ten years on, Genichiro’s son Kiyoya (Hideyuki Hori) is conscripted into the struggle between good and evil when Sayaka (Hiromi Tsuru), the daughter of the Federation President who has been attacked by Rebi Ra’s forces, approaches Kiyoya, and he falls in love, or lust, or something.

Yoshiaki Kowajiri’s Demon City Shinjuku (aka Makaitoshi Shinjuku aka Hell City Shinjuku aka Monster City) is an anime loaded with monsters, shit-talking characters, virginally innocent victim women, mystical powers, and lots of action.  So, basically, an anime from the late Eighties.  There is all manner of gruesome creatures, but the key difference between this and something like Kawajiri’s Wicked City is that the monsters here are external.  No human characters explode from some vile beastie escaping its human meat cage.  Also, it moves along at a nice clip, and it is focused on its main narrative (in other words, you can pretty much make sense of it from beginning to end as a single piece).  

One of the points of the film is the old saw about absolute power corrupting absolutely.  Rebi Ra is given power, and it not only corrupts him to the core but it also corrupts Shinjuku.  Rebi Ra’s consolidation of power leaves the area in ruins (why monsters wouldn’t want to live in a nice house is beyond me), like a nuclear bomb producing a postapocalyptic wasteland, just without the bomb.  This corruption attracts, of course, the worst elements of humanity.  The people who walk the streets are vile, manic punks (and again, why they would want to live here instead of leaving via the extremely convenient and unguarded bridge is half-mysterious; in this Shinjuku, there is no law to stop them doing whatever they wish).  When Sayaka approaches a man to lead her to Rebi Ra (in what is one of the clearest indications of both her naivete and the writer’s [Kaori Okamura, based on the book[s] by Hideyuki Kikuchi] desire to get the viewer’s blood pumping with some threats/dress tearing), he and his hysterically cackling cohorts corner her in an alley.  No locals are around to help her, and we know none would, anyway.  The park at the initial quake’s epicenter has been transformed into a purgatory for orphaned kids who have been turned into fire demons.  Below the streets, Chibi (Kyoko Tongu), the rollerskating, opportunistic youngster hides, doing what he needs to survive.  He’s a friend to Kiyoya and Sayaka in as much as they’re human and won’t kill him, and he gets monetary recompense for his troubles.  Chibi knows the new Shinjuku, but he doesn’t participate directly with it, so he’s not totally corrupted by it. 

In this same way, there is a less developed (but still visible) theme about technology and its effects on people in opposition to “the old ways.”  All I know about the actual Shinjuku is that it’s a big commercial area where a lot of businesses are headquartered, so I can’t say if the decision to set the demon city there has to do with the idea of big business being bad, the technology prevalent there being bad, or Kikuchi just wanted to set it there for some random reason and/or wanted to see it destroyed (or a combination of all three).  At any rate, there is a delineation between the forces of good and evil drawn along technological lines.  Kiyoya and the good guys practice Nenpo using thin wooden swords.  Their focus is on empowering and developing the inner spirit (think: The Force in the Star Wars movies before they fucked up its ancient mystical aspects with that Midichlorian bullshit).  They are simple, peaceful people, though still human.  Contrast this to the characters in the demon city.  Rebi Ra’s sword (the clearest distinguishing aspect between he and Kiyoya/Genichiro) is large and wide and steel (a double metaphor for the phallus and the uncaring hardness of the villains), though it also channels power (just externally from the demons through Rebi Ra, not internally from Rebi Ra’s chi).  The guy who accosts Sayaka in the alley has an arm that’s either robotic or heavily armored (we’re never told explicitly which).  Chibi’s two-headed dog was created by humans using science and technology (he’s menacing but a good guy, most likely because, as we all know, animals intuitively sense goodness in people, and it doesn’t hurt that Chibi raised him from a pup).  The hag who owns the music store is represented as images in a bank of television monitors.  She, naturally, is as avaricious as anyone else, though without the barrier of technology to protect her, she’s much more forthcoming.  Sayaka even gives up her laser ring gizmo.  A simple, low technology life frees one from the spiritual clutter that blocks the channeling of chi in this world.  It’s how you beat the bad guys.

As an anime, and as a story, Demon City Shinjuku is satisfying.  It doesn’t bog itself down with subplots taken from the books that it can never develop in its runtime.  The obstacles/battles are interesting in their variety and character designs, and they all move the plot a little bit closer to its finale.  Sure, the dialogue is dumb, but it would be more egregious in a poorly-paced or a more schizophrenic narrative.  While it doesn’t top (for me, at any rate) Kowajiri’s Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust or Ninja Scroll, it would certainly make a nice B feature to either one of them for an evening of anime fun.

MVT:  The designs and the animation are smooth and visually striking.

Make or Break:  The opening sets the stage well in terms of world building, violence level, and basic storyline.

Score:  6.75/10

Darkside Blues (1994)

Let me see if I can get this right.  The Hazuki family run a corporation called Persona Century that basically owns most of the world.  A group of resistance fighters (the Anti-Personas) struggle against them and their Enhanced Human assassins.  Mai (Kotono Mitsuishi) and Kenzo (Akio Otsuka) are a couple of mercenaries (?) who call themselves Messiah, and they are hired by a wounded revolutionary named Tatsuya to protect him.  Meanwhile, the nebulous Darkside (Akira Natsuki) comes on the scene in his intergalactic carriage, and there’s a young boy named Katari (Nozomu Sasaki) who may be more than he seems (but what does he seem to be?).

If ever a nation embraced the whole Goth thing (and embraced it early), I would suggest from an outsider’s perspective that it was the Japanese.  At least partially inspired by the punk movement, Goths love their eyeliner, puffy shirts, and late Eighteenth/early Nineteenth Century outerwear.  While, Noboyasu and Yoshimichi Furukawa’s Darkside Blues showcases at least two out of three of these things, it also combines them with the other thing the Japanese seem to love: science fiction.  Perhaps the best example of this melding of aesthetics is the Vampire Hunter D franchise, but unfortunately, we’re not discussing those.  So, for example, the Hazukis live on an asteroid that orbits the Earth.  The aforementioned Enhanced Humans are basically psychotic cyborgs.  There is a machine that turns people into gold statues.  Mai has a wrist blaster.  On the Goth side, the Hazuki manse is baroque and grotesque like Dracula’s castle is typically portrayed.  The first shot of the film is a clock with thirteen hours on it.  A gross-looking spider swings off it and drapes it in red webbing.  Darkside dresses like Baron Frankenstein (though I would contend the biggest influence on the character is likely Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, another Goth icon), and his horse-drawn carriage moves through time and space (he enters the film via a ripple in the fourth dimension, which I always thought was Time, but what do I know?) like the Silver Surfer’s surfboard or The Doctor’s TARDIS.  Like everything else in the film, however, the two artistic tastes just kind of float around in each other’s proximity.  They don’t combine with each other, they don’t really define anything in the film, and there’s so much left unsaid about almost everything having anything to do with them, it’s confusing as hell.

Add to this the fact that Darkside is also a drifter cowboy figure (he does wear boots and spurs) in the tradition of Yojimbo, High Plains Drifter, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, et al (and please note, I’m fully aware that two of these are remakes of another of them).  He appears in a town that needs him, does something to save them (this is extremely arguable in this case), and then kind of fades away.  He stays at the local small time hotel with the “colorful” proprietor (here an old woman and her cat).  Mai naively falls in love with him, even though this love can never be requited (he’s a loner, Mai; a rebel).  What Darkside doesn’t have like a cowboy is a six-shooter.  Instead, he does this thing where he transports whomever he’s with into another dimension.  There, they can battle, relive past traumas, and so forth.  Darkside refers to what he does as “Renewal,” like he’s an amalgamation of a shrink and some New Age bullshit guru.  Instead of dueling in the streets, Darkside forces people to face the truth about themselves.  That said, he’s not above actually fighting and/or killing people in this dreamtime realm of his; it’s just not his go-to maneuver.  

Doorways play a large part in the film.  Everything from windows to mirrors to, yes, doorways are employed, and they relate to the idea of portals.  Katari carries around a small glass globe, and he uses it to open doorways to (I’m assuming here) the Fourth Dimension.  This same portal manifests in the gigantic mirror in the Hazuki compound.  It also appears in the entrance to Tamaki Hazuki’s personal torture chamber.  Darkside makes his arrival through all of these simultaneously.  The doors to the Mirage Hotel where our protagonist stays are focused on at great length, and the lobby itself is a portal to the individual rooms, which I would imagine is really convenient if you’re a lodger there (or a bellboy).  I believe all of these in some way or another involve the concept of Renewal that Darkside keeps hitting on, because they all deal, diametrically or obliquely, with time, mistakes of the past, and the opportunity to change oneself.  The darkness in which Darkside envelops his “patients” and/or enemies is Truth.  Some will be transformed by it, others will be destroyed by it.

Nonetheless, for all that I think the film is trying to do, it fails fairly miserably.  The primary reason for this is because the film is so hellbent on the bigger picture that the details which should support it are indistinct, undeveloped, and, in many cases, unresolved.  The world the movie tries to set up is hinted at just enough to give us a rough idea and nothing more.  There is no resolution to the Mai/Darkside relationship.  There is no resolution to the conflict between the revolutionaries and the Hazukis.  We never even see the patriarch of the family, and there is a sister who is shown very briefly in the beginning and then totally written off with a throwaway line.  Brother Enji Hazuki shows up but never interacts with the rest of his family.  Darkside is likely one of the most passive characters in the history of storytelling, despite the importance implied by his appearance in it.  Katari is introduced as a character who will be integral to the story.  He isn’t.  At all.  The film only settles one storyline, and even there, we’re left hanging with where this is going.  In fact, the film doesn’t really end at all.  It just stops.  Was there supposed to be a sequel?  Is there a series?  Is this based on a manga that explains any of this crap better than this film does?  If you care about the answers to any of these questions, I really can’t help you, because I found myself not giving the slightest of shits (okay, I did do some digging just for the sake of curiosity, and the manga this is based on was created by Hideyuki Kikuchi, who also created Vampire Hunter D, so there’s one mystery solved).  Darkside Blues is so sketchy it should have been animated in pencils only.

MVT:  The film has all the elements for a fun, interesting tale.

Make or Break:  If you can make it through the first five minutes of this movie, and you like what you see, you’ll be fine.  If all you’re doing by the end of that time is squinting at the screen and scratching your head, you’ll be better off tuning out.

Score: 4/10    

Curse of the Undead: Yoma (1998)

“In the age of wars, innocent civilians’ blood sank into the earth.”  Ninja Hikage (Kenyu Horiuchi) and Marou (Kaneto Shiozawa) stand on a desolate battlefield as men strip the arrows from the scattered corpses.  Marou has a bit of an episode and runs off after smooshing the sodden ground between his fingers.  Shortly thereafter, the leader of their clan is murdered, and Hikage is dispatched to track down Marou, who may or may not have had something to do with it.  Meanwhile, all manner of demons (read: yoma) are appearing, feasting on human beings and trying to take over the world.  More or less.

Takashi Anno’s Curse of the Undead: Yoma (aka Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma) is a two episode OVA (Original Video Animation) based on a manga by Kei Kusunoki (presented outwardly as one film for its video release [at least in America], though it’s really just the two programs [including opening and closing credits] shown back to back, but since I watched it, I’m counting it as one).  Consequently, I would bet my bottom dollar that this anime is a massive abbreviation of the original story (one of the things I always found fascinating about adaptations of manga, one of the most decompressed storytelling styles in the world, is whether they leave out large chunks of the story [usually things like exposition] or if they just go off in a direction inspired by the original; for example, Osamu Tezuka’s Akira manga is over two thousand pages long, while the anime is a little over two hours, but it’s still a superlative adaptation [it doesn’t hurt any that the original artist was also the film’s director]; I’m hard-pressed to say which version I prefer).  Marou is introduced with nary a word spoken, and from the way he acts at the opening, we might be led to think that he’s the protagonist.  Instead, he’s the villain, but even this isn’t made clear until much further down the road, even though it’s not treated like a big reveal.  We’re given glimpses of Marou and Hikage playing as children, but it’s always the same scene, and nothing of any consequence happens in it to either move the story forward or provide any insight.  This is especially confounding, because this scene is in heavy rotation in the film.  The anime leaps forward in chunks of time (hours, days, years), occasionally making light attempts at some sort of characterization, very little of which has any tangible impact.

The film is ostensibly about the bonds of friendship and how they are torn asunder.  Nevertheless, the relationship between Hikage and Marou has no substance to it; only hints at subtext.  As a result, it makes it difficult to invest any sort of emotion in the proceedings.  It doesn’t really help any that these two characters never have any meaty interactions after the chase is on, so outside of the constant flashbacks to the pair as kids, the only sense of weight in regards to their friendship comes in the form of Hikage’s obsession with finding Marou.  He is single-minded to the point of disobeying his boss, in fact.  Simultaneously, the relationship between Hikage and Aya (played by Hiromi Tsuru and Mina Tomunaga) is meant to bestow some alternative to the platonic love between Hikage and Marou.  I should state here (and you may have picked up the hint from the actor credits) that Aya is, technically, two characters.  The first is a simple villager with a death wish.  The second is a fellow (novice) ninja who follows along on Hikage’s journey (perhaps a death wish of another kind).  Both love Hikage in an immediate sense that never rang true for me, but when time is of the essence, best to cut to the chase, as it were.  Hikage is injured from an earlier fight with his friend, causing him to wear a bandage over his right eye for part of the story.  Likewise, the first Aya’s face is disfigured on the left side.  There is a circularity to this visual distinction that I quite like, but I won’t get into details for fear of spoiling anything.  The point is, everyone in the film is damaged (including Marou) by the war-ravaged world they inhabit, and the struggle to connect with another person is, not only the most important thing in their lives, but also the most damning.  That’s not to say there isn’t a kind of happy ending to the story, but it is more a silver cloud with a grey lining than the opposite.

This anime, to absolutely no one’s surprise, is loaded with elements of body horror.  Corpses are found disemboweled.  Throats are slit with a gush of arterial spray that would make Tomisaburo Wakayama green with envy.  Innards are shredded via oral application of Hikage’s nifty, Wolverine-esque claw gauntlet.  Yoma erupt through the flesh of their human forms to showcase the corrupt monstrosities hidden within.  And this is, pardon the pun, the real meat of the film.  The Japanese absolutely love showcasing grotesque, slimy, hirsute things tearing through and transmogrifying humanity down to its core, and this speaks of a commentary (intentional or not) on the perverting of human beings by the world they inhabit (which, by extension, we read as our world).  Very rarely are the protagonists in horror anime left unscathed by this condition, and Curse of the Undead: Yoma is no exception.  Here the criticism is on war and what it does to both the participants and the bystanders.  The war between humans becomes a war with yoma.  Still, the humans continue their own conflicts, even drawing the yoma into it directly, further degrading situations and characters already at base levels.  This theme is certainly nothing new in anime (or film in general), but it neither adds to nor detracts from this particular narrative.

Ultimately, and despite my criticisms, I found myself enjoying Curse of the Undead: Yoma.  It moves along at a nice enough clip, the creature designs are interesting if somewhat uninspired, and there’s action enough to spice up the basic story the filmmakers seem to go to great lengths to ignore.  This wouldn’t be a very good introduction to anime for some people, because it does have some of the more impenetrable anime elements non-Japanese viewers may find a bit too demanding.  That said, I found myself going with the flow, and the runtime passed by breezily.  I can think of worse ways to curse a film than damning it with faint praise (see what I did there?).

MVT:  There is a foreboding atmosphere at work in the film that maintains interest through the audience’s curiosity as to who will fall the hardest and how far they will drop?

Make or Break:  When the first big boss monster shows up and tells Hikage what the plot is (which is just as subject to change as a pair of socks), you’ll know whether the trip has been worth it for you or not.

Score: 6.5/10