Angel’s Egg (1985)

Angel’s Egg is a 1985 anime OVA written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. 

It was devised by Mamoru Oshii and Yoshitaka Amano.

Whether it’s fantasy or horror or science fiction I can’t tell you because I don’t know. Maybe it's all three.

Or maybe it's something else entirely. 

It could certainly be described as art-house anime.

It was not a financial success and it stalled Oshii’s career for several years.

It begins with a young girl and a large egg. She feels that she must protect the egg.

She wanders through an apparently deserted city. It looks like a medieval European city but we will soon come to have doubts about the nature of this city. It may have been subjected to some calamity, possibly war or a plague.

It feels like a fantasy movie but then fairly on the machines arrive. Assuming that they’re machines.

The girl encounters a young man. He might be a wandering soldier or even a wandering knight. He seems determined to be her protector. He carries a weapon which looks slightly machine-like.

The girl is unsure about him but he has become her shadow.

He tells her about a bird he once saw. He asks her what is in the egg. She either won’t tell him or doesn’t know.

There is very little dialogue in this movie and very little plot. It’s a succession of images and moods.Striking, moody, disturbing images but disturbing in a subtle way. Everything is slightly off-kilter.

There are no clear delineations. Where does the water end and the city begin? Is this a city of the living or the dead? There are ruins, or are they skeletal remains of creatures or of machines, or even of gods? Is the man’s weapon a gun or a sword? Is he the girl’s protector or her enemy? Is he human or non-human? Are the girl and the man alive or dead? Are they real? And the fishes. What on earth are they?

Is this a dream or a vision? Is this another planet, or some distorted version of Earth or an entirely imaginary non-real world?

The egg might be the egg of a living creature or of a god or it might be something else entirely.

Asking what this movie means is probably to miss the point. It’s almost as if Mamoru Oshii has conjured up a movie from his dreamworld and is now asking the viewer what it means because he isn’t sure either.

This sounds very arty and very philosophical and possibly mystical and it is all of those things. It has been interpreted as having some Christian significance since many people believe that Oshii was at one time training to be a Christian priest. This appears to be a misunderstanding. He has stated that he had a considerable interest in Christianity but never was training to be a priest. He does know his Bible but he is also interested in religion and mythology in general. Perhaps in Angel’s Egg he is trying to create his own personal mythology.

As for the ending, you’ll have to decide for yourself about that.

The images are as stunning and extraordinary as you would expect given the involvement of Yoshitaka Amano.

Umbrella’s Blu-Ray release (the 4K disc is included as well) looks terrific.

Angel’s Egg is hypnotic and puzzling and if you like plot or character-driven stories this may not be for you. But if you hypnotic and puzzling stories then it’s highly recommended.

Millennium Actress (2001)

Millennium Actress is a 2001 anime feature film co-written and directed by Satoshi Kon. His first feature film, the superb Perfect Blue (1997), had been a surprise hit and received widespread critical acclaim. Millennium Actress was the first feature that was Kon’s own project right from the start and on which he acted as both writer and director. Millennium Actress, like Perfect Blue, deals with the blurring of the line between fantasy and reality.

Millennium Actress was greeted with enthusiasm by critics and is now established as one of the great anime feature films.

This is a movie that you have to stick with. At first it seems fairly straightforward but it becomes steadily more complex and more fascinating.

It begins with the demolition of a movie studio, the studio at which the famous actress Chiyoko Fujiwara had made all of her films. Chiyoko is now in her 70s and retired and lives in seclusion. Somehow documentary filmmaker and Chiyoko Fujiwara  superfan Genya Tachibana has persuaded her to be interviewed on camera. He arrives at her house with his cameraman in tow.

As Chiyoko reminisces about her life and career Tachibana and his cameraman find themselves inside her memories, filming her life as it happens. But is Chiyoko remembering her life or her films? Are the two indistinguishable to her? It appears that Tachibana and his cameraman are inside her films as well as her memories. In fact Tachibana becomes several characters in her movies.

The central obsession of Chiyoko’s life is her attempt to be reunited with a man she only ever met once, briefly. She spends years trying to find him. Or maybe that happened in one of her movies? It is impossible to separate her memories from her movies. The pursuit of a mysterious man seemed to be the plot of all her movies!

The man is a political dissident but politics plays zero part in this movie. The man is a young girl’s romantic fantasy - a handsome dashing rebel. He’s a rebel in the 1940s but he’s a rebel in lots of other eras as well.  

Does the man exist? He does exist for Chiyoko. Maybe he’s real if she believes he’s real. And of course he could be real.

There’s also the curse, and the key. And the man who hunts Chiyoko’s man across the centuries. We know the key is real. We’ve seen it. Her mystery man gave it to her for safekeeping. It unlocks the most important thing in the world. When she finds him again he will tell her what that is.

You can’t assume that Chiyoko’s whole story is a fantasy. There’s reality and there’s movies and they intersect or co-exist or exist simultaneously. Maybe reality creates movies or maybe movies create their own reality.


And there’s the role played by an older actress Eiko, who right from the start saw Chiyoko as a rival.

It might all sound a bit cerebral but this is also a movie about overwhelming emotions. This is a movie about love.

And it’s a movie about having a quest. About being willing to do anything, dare anything, risk anything, to find the one you love. It doesn’t matter if it takes decades. 

It’s also a movie about movies. It’s a love letter to cinema.

Millennium Actress was made using old school cel animation techniques and it looks great.

Finding a satisfying ending is always a challenge in this sort of movie but Kon pulls it off superbly. Millennium Actress is very offbeat but it’s a fascinating moving magical movie. Very highly recommended.

The Shout! Factory Blu-Ray looks great and the extras include interviews with the producers.

I’ve also reviewed Perfect Blue (1997).

Armitage III: Dual Matrix (2001)

Armitage III: Dual Matrix was released in 2001.

Something that needs to be clarified in regard to Armitage III: Dual Matrix right at the start is that this is not the third film in a series. It’s the second film in a two-movie series. It’s a sequel to Armitage III: Poly-Matrix. It’s called Armitage III because the heroine, Naomi Armitage, is a Third.

Armitage III: Poly-Matrix was in fact an OVA which was later edited into feature film format.

You need to have seen Armitage III: Poly-Matrix first, otherwise you won’t understand where the heroine is coming from and you won’t understand what she is. The background from the first film is that this is a world in which Mars has been colonised and has a large population of both humans and robots. Robots have become ubiquitous. The second-generation roots, known as Seconds, are useful for routine work. The Thirds, the third-generation robots, are a different matter. They are almost indistinguishable from humans, which makes many people uneasy.

Armitage was a cop working for the Martin PD, partnered with a human cop, Ross Sylibus.

Thirds have something very much akin to human emotions. Armitage knows she is a robot but she feels that she is also a woman.

As Armitage III: Dual Matrix opens Armitage is married (to Ross) and they have a daughter, Yoko. Yoko really is Armitage’s daughter. But Armitage is a robot. How can that be possible? It’s possible because Armitage is a Third. That’s the secret of the Thirds, the secret that has been closely guarded but now a sinister robotics tycoon is determined to get hold of that secret.

There’s also a move afoot to give robots legal rights. That has triggered a major political storm on both Earth and Mars.

There’s more to this struggle than is apparent on the surface. It has some connection to much earlier events, an apparently robot-inspired revolt known as the First Error.

It’s not just stubbornness that makes Armitage determined not to reveal the secret of the Thirds. It is vital that the secret remains a secret.

This is one of a number of cyberpunk movies (from Japan and elsewhere) dealing with the blurring of the line between humans and machines. In Blade Runner there’s Rachel who doesn’t know she’s a robot because she has her childhood memories (which are actually someone else’s memories). That’s her tragedy. In Ghost in the Shell Motoko has an entirely prosthetic body but she still has her (genuine) human memories. She still has her “ghost” - the essential human core of her consciousness - within the shell (the body). But she has to wonder if that’s enough to make fully human.

And here we have Armitage. She knows that she is a robot but she is a robot that may have crossed the threshold into consciousness. She feels things the way a woman feels things. But is she a woman?

One thing I love about the Armitage films is that Armitage is not a kickass action heroine who could just as easily have been a male character. Her femaleness is at the very core of the story. And being a mother is at the core of the story.

And although in the first movie Armitage and Ross start out having a kind of regular cop buddy movie relationship in this second film their relationship as husband and wife, and mother and father to Yoko, is crucial. This is what motivates all of their actions.

There is of course a vast amount of violent mayhem, done with energy and style.

By the mid-1980s anime dealing with complex grown-up subject matter was becoming a big thing. This was around the same time that cyberpunk was becoming the fashionable style of science fiction. In a way anime and cyberpunk grew up together. The Japanese took to cyberpunk like a duck to water. They loved the mood and the aesthetic.

By the time the first instalment of Armitage III came out in 1996 there had already been some great cyberpunk anime. Ghost in the Shell (1995) obviously but also Goku Midnight Eye (1989) and Cyber City Oedo 808 (1990). There’s also a slight cyberpunk flavour to the excellent Angel Cop (1989-94).

Armitage III: Dual Matrix is top-tier cyberpunk anime and it’s highly recommended.

I have the old Madman DVD which is sadly out of print.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is writer-director Mamoru Oshii’s sequel to his 1995 masterpiece Ghost in the Shell. 

Both take Masamune Shirow’s brilliant manga as a starting point.

This 2004 film is a sequel. I’m not going to reveal any spoilers for the first film here but you absolutely must watch the earlier film first. Not because of the plot but because of something very very important involving one of the main characters that happens in the first movie.

Gynoids (female androids) have been running amok and killing their owners. That’s disturbing. What’s really worrying and puzzling is that often the gynoids then commit suicide. That’s something that androids do not, and cannot, do.

Batou is assigned to the case. Togusa is now his partner, the Major Motoko Kusanagi being (for very complicated reasons) unavailable for duty. They’re initially puzzled that this case should have been handed to Section 9. Section 9 usually deals with much more overt threat to public security.

The gynoids are personal servant androids but the first thing that Batou and Togusa find out is that the gynoids causing the problems are a special type of gynoid. They’re sexbots.

The various branches of the Ghost in the Shell franchise all deal with the intersection of the human and the digital worlds. The blurring of the lines between man and machine. In this future cyborgs and androids are ubiquitous. Batou is a cyborg and there’s not much of him left that is entirely human. Motoko Kusanagi is entirely a cyborg. The only human element to Motoko is her Ghost. But of course the Ghost is the most important thing of all. Cyborgs have human brains and cyberbrains. The Ghost resides in the human brain. It comprises our memories and it’s our memories that make us human.

This is obviously the kind of territory that has been extensively explored in cyberpunk fiction and cyberpunk movies such as Blade Runner and Total Recall. The Ghost in the Shell franchise takes a deep dive into this territory.

Batou and Togusa are making progress, or so they think. That’s assuming that the things they have found are true. They may be trapped in a web of illusions and lies.

When they reach the ship things get seriously weird. Reality starts to fragment. In a world of virtual reality and artificial intelligences is there any actual reality? If everybody is permanently connected to digital networks and everybody has a cyberbrain would you be able to tell if you were real or not?

There’s plenty of violent mayhem but this is a very cerebral movie. This is not a cool sci-fi action movie. It’s cool, but it’s cool in an incredibly complex and philosophical way. Western sci-fi movie-makers (and makers of TV sci-fi) will flirt with really complex ideas but it’s the Japanese anime makers who are prepared to take those ideas to the limit.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is visually stunning but it looks nothing like the first movie. It’s moving into entirely new aesthetic territory. And it’s tonally quite different.

In western cinema the advent of digital technologies, CGI and the like, had mostly disastrous results. That was not the case with anime. In an anime movie such as this one what matters is having people who can use these techniques as something more than a crutch. Or a gimmick. And these techniques can be blended seamlessly into animated movies. In live-action movies they seem like they’re shoe-horned in.

You do need to watch the 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie first. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is a very different movie in many ways. It’s different thematically and stylistically. But to fully appreciate it it helps to have seen the first movie and it helps to have read the original manga. That makes it easier to understand why Mamoru Oshii chose not to make a straightforward sequel.

The extensive Ghost in the Shell franchise has a complicated history. It began as a manga by Masamune Shirow. Then came the first movie in 1995, directed by Mamoru Oshii and written by Kazunori Itô. Then in 2002 came the excellent Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series. It does not follow on directly from the movie and may possibly take place in a slightly different timeline. In 2004 there was a second series of the TV series. And also in 2004, the second movie. In 2006 came the movie Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society. There have since been other iterations. It’s been a spectacularly successful franchise.

You could argue that it’s not a franchise in a conventional sense but rather a complex web of interrelated works.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is strange and moody and surreal and it’s very highly recommended.

A Kite (1998)

A Kite is a 1998 anime and its release history is rather interesting. It’s a two-episode OVA (intended for direct-to-video release). Given the subject matter this could never have been screened on television, either in the U.S. or Japan.

Releasing it in the U.S. raised some tricky problems. This is not an adult anime. It is not hentai. It does however contain hardcore sex senes. Yasuomi Umetsu conceived the idea of an anime about a girl assassin and he was also approached to do an X-rated anime. He decided to combine the two ideas. It was made as an X-rated OVA. The American distributors did not want to release it as hentai - there’s not enough sex for that market and it was clearly a very high-quality production that deserved a regular release as a violent action crime thriller. It’s not an adult anime but it is very much an anime aimed at a grown-up audience.

The answer to the U.S. distribution problem was to censor it. It was released and was successful. That censored version was later released in Japan as well. Then it was decided that it should get an uncut release. In fact this new version was not completely uncut. Then a few years later a totally uncut version was released on Blu-Ray.

As a result of all this there are about five different versions of A Kite. The most recent Discotek Blu-Ray includes three versions - the heavily cut version, a fairly uncut version and the totally uncut version.

The version reviewed here is the totally uncut one.

A Kite was clearly influenced to some extent by Luc Besson’s two 90s masterpieces, La Femme Nikita and Leon The Professional.

Sawa is a cute young woman. She’s a hitwoman. She’s deadly and she’s ruthless. She is given assignments by two men, Kanie and Akai. Akai is a cop. They also employ a young male assassin, Oburi.

How Sawa came to be a professional killer is connected to events in her past, and those events explain her complicated relationships to both Kanie and Akai.

Sawa and Oburi are attracted to each other, which is likely to have repercussions.

The emotional attraction between Sawa and Oburi is important in plot terms but the focus is very much on Sawa. Her responses to situations as they develop drive the plot.

A contract on a movie star causes major problems. The hit does not go smoothly.

And Sawa has confirmation of some suspicions about her past.

The violence is frequent, very brutal and very graphic. It’s both the extreme violence and the sex that make this an anime for grown-ups.

If you don’t mind the hardcore sex I recommend the uncut “International” version. The very complex power dynamics played out between Kanie, Akai, Oburi and Sawa are fuelled to a large extent by the sexual relationships Sawa has with both Kanie and Akai. They might not be healthy relationships but they’re very intense and the fact that Sawa may be a willing participant (although her feelings and motivations are very tangled and contradictory and complex) is important. It’s also important to realise that despite these tangled motivations she gets physical pleasure from the sex.

We also need to take account of the fact that Sawa has an agenda. She has a reason for being willing to engage in the sexual encounters. There is something she knows, something she has known in her heart for a long time, and for that reason she has to remain close to Kanie and Akai, and that means agreeing to be used as a sexual plaything.

This makes Sawa a much more interesting character and without the sex scenes her actions would be less comprehensible. Apart from being an action thriller this is an erotic thriller. My impression is that Mr Umetsu decided that if he had to include sexual content he might as well make it a pivotal ingredient in both plot and character terms.

Most reviewers just cannot cope with the idea that explicit sex might serve a purpose, that maybe the sex scenes needed to be raw and confronting and intense to get across to the viewer the extent to which Sawa has been drawn into this world of dangerous unhealthy twisted sex. Those scenes are supposed to be a kick in the guts.

Everything in this OVA was intended to be a kick in the guts. This is not a feelgood story.

A Kite is very disturbing. But in its own way it manages to be quite powerful. The power of a movie does not necessarily come from the plot (which in this case is fairly straightforward). Often the power comes from the atmosphere, the tone and the sheer intensity and shock value of the imagery. That’s where A Kite scores highly. If you’re too timid to watch the uncut version then you’ll be seeing a routine violent action thriller. If you’re prepared to brave the uncut version you’ll be seeing something a lot more disturbing and a lot more hard-hitting.

A Kite is highly recommended, but it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

If you go into Belladonna of Sadness expecting the kind of anime movie you’re accustomed to you’ll be confused and disappointed. This is not even remotely similar to what we now think of as anime. In fact it’s not even a true animated movie. It’s partly animated but relies to a huge extent on still images.

Belladonna of Sadness was released in 1973. It was made by Mushi Production, an important company in the early history of anime. They made many of the best-known 1960s anime TV series, such as Astro Boy. Belladonna of Sadness was the third in Mushi’s Animerama series of adult-oriented anime feature films. All three films were commercial flops and the box-office failure of Belladonna of Sadness pushed the studio into bankruptcy.

It has something of a fairy tale feel, at least superficially. It’s based on Jules Michelet’s 1862 history of witchcraft, La Sorcière.

The setting of the movie is France in the Middle Ages and it reflects Michelet’s virulent anti-Catholic anti-monarchy views. Jean, a simple farmer, and Jeanne are about to be married. The wicked lord deflowers Jeanne (reflecting the popular but entirely false myth that feudal lords had this right). Jeanne responds by calling on Satan, although when he appears Satan tells her that he’s already inside her. Satan is like a cute little floating penis.

With Satan’s help Jeanne prospers but her wealth makes her unpopular with the people and attracts the jealousy of the lord’s wife. Jean becomes a wealthy tax collector and an alcoholic. Jean and Jeanne experience lots of ups and down until finally the movie just devolves into bad acid trip territory.

Finally we get a kind of bizarre nightmare orgy scene which is rather hair-raising.

To me Belladonna of Sadness doesn’t feel the slightest bit Japanese (which might explain why Japanese audiences didn’t bother seeing it). It’s clearly heavily influenced by European art cinema and by all kinds of counter-culture elements such as American underground comics.

This is a psychedelic freak-out movie. It’s not a movie, it’s a happening. Can you dig it?

There is a plot. The plot is not terrible. It’s your basic selling your soul to the Devil and getting mixed up in witchcraft kind of plot.

You can tell that the visual artists involved were real artists because so much of the artwork is incredibly crude and ugly and looks like it was done by a deranged five-year-old. Overall this is a movie that looks hideous. A large part of the problem is that that late 60s arty aesthetic has not worn well. The 60s aesthetic is terrific when it’s done with wit and style in a very “pop” way but when it’s done with serious arty pretensions it can be cringe-inducing.

The frustrating thing is that there are some very good visual moments. It does have to be said however that those moments are very hippie-dippie.

This movie uses a variety of animation techniques and only uses traditional cel-and-ink animation sparingly. It’s all very experimental and avant-garde.

It’s a movie that is quite divisive. Some people think it’s a masterpiece. Some people think it’s an embarrassing train-wreck. I lean more towards the embarrassing train-wreck theory. It is at times an interesting train-wreck. I tend to like movies that are interesting failures but this one really didn’t grab me. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right head space man.

This is a movie that was for many years little seen although despite legends to the contrary it was never a lost movie.

If you want to see this movie through to the end I’d advise getting in a large supply of mind-altering substances. Then you’re really be able to groove to it. Maybe. I can’t really recommend seeing this movie but I’d be reluctant to advise people not to see it. All I can say is that if it sounds like the sort of thing you enjoy then see it but if it sounds like the sort of thing you won’t enjoy then don’t see it. Belladonna of Sadness is just not my cup of tea.

The Discotek Blu-Ray offers a nice transfer with a number of extras. The audio commentary includes a lot of fascinating information about the tumultuous history of Mushi Production and the movie’s troubled production history.

Ergo Proxy (TV series, 2006)

Ergo Proxy is a 2006 Japanese cyberpunk anime TV series. 

This is cyberpunk with quite a few other added flavourings.

This is a complex intelligent puzzling fascinating grown-up anime with multiple layers of meaning and lots of narrative uncertainty. And lots of ambiguity.

You can find my full review at Cult TV Lounge.

Genocyber (anime OVA, 1994)

Genocyber is a five-episode 1994 anime OVA directed by Kôichi Ôhata based on Tony Takezaki’s 1992 manga Genocyber: The Beauty Devil from Psychic World. The anime is a fine example of a good idea somewhat weakened by self-indulgent visual excess.

There’s a cyberpunk influence here, and a monster movie influence. Among other things it’s a mad scientist story.

This is a near-future world where attempts are being made, unsuccessful as usual, to eliminate war. As usual it seems that this peaceful utopia will be a global totalitarian state. National armies will be outlawed. There is a problem. Private corporations such as the Kuryu Corporation have more military power than most countries. And their ethical standards are much the same as those of governments - in other words they don’t have any ethical standards.

There are actually two mad scientists and they have been investigating the powers of the mind. There is within the human mind a mind shadow that can harness life energies and make them tangible, and potentially powerful in the physical world. The result is a kind of corporeal mind-creation, the Vajra.

Their research is centred on two sisters, Elaine and Diana. Whether they can be described as sisters or perhaps twins or whether they’re something else entirely is open to debate. They may be the daughters of one or other of the mad scientists.Diana has no functional body, only a cyberbody. Elaine has the mind of a child, or perhaps that of a wild animal.

Eventually two monstrous creations have come into being, the Vajranoid and Genocyber. This is the world of anime so it wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions about which is good and which evil.

As usual when people try to bring about world peace it leads to war. A US supercarrier is involved. By chance Elaine is aboard the carrier. She has been adopted by a kindly female doctor, Myra. There’s another mad scientist and he has harnessed the Vajra to create the Vajranoid, a superweapon which is both cybernetic and biological and maybe something else. A lot of mayhem ensues. Cities get destroyed.

There’s an enormous amount of blood and gore. There’s so much that it quickly ceases to have any impact. Seeing a head explode might shock the first time but seeing a head explode for the 143rd time becomes tiresome. This anime needed more creepiness and dread and less gore.

That’s the first three episodes. Then it changes gear completely for the final two episodes. We’re in future society, the last refuge of humanity. It’s a utopia and like all utopias it’s actually a totalitarian dystopia. There’s another pair of sisters. There’s a young man and a young blind woman making a living with a sideshow act. There’s a strange religious cult. The cult incorporates element of Christianity combined with loads of other millenarian stuff. The connection with the three earlier episodes is rather tenuous. These two episodes feature a lot less gore, they’re much more atmospheric, they’re much weirder and much more interesting.

There are some genuinely cool ideas here. The plot is never fully explained. In fact the plot is totally incoherent. This OVA is not a complete success but it does have lots of WTF moments which I enjoy. I do like all the weird disturbing never-quite-explained sister stuff. These are sisters with a psychic link but the link is more mystical and mysterious than that. There are also plenty of suggestions of weird things being destined to happen.

I don’t object to gore but it tends to bore me. Too often it’s used to cover up a lack of real imagination. That’s a pity here since there is some real imagination in Genocyber. There’s a stupendous quantity of action. There’s some nudity and a small amount of sex.

This is a product of an era in anime when boundaries were being pushed and in which a major selling point for violent anime was that it was seen as very much not kids’ stuff. That did lead to excess for the sake of excess and Genocyber is guilty of that at times. Genocyber is very very violent indeed.

Whatever its faults Genocyber is unpredictable and in its own way memorable, and entertaining in a bizarre way. Recommended.

If you enjoy the wild crazy sex and violence-fuelled excesses of late 80s/early 90s anime then Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989) does it much better, as does the 1989-94 OVA Angel Cop.

Discotek’s Blu-Ray presentation is fine. The only worthwhile extra is a fairly informative essay.

Demon City Shinjuku (1988)

Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s supernatural anime Demon City Shinjuku (AKA Hell City Shinjuku AKA Monster City) is a follow-up of sorts to his superb 1987 Wicked City. It deals with very similar themes - a confrontation between the demon world and the human world - but does so in slightly different ways.

It begins with an epic fight between two master swordsmen, Genichiro and Rebi Ra. Both have learned to harness the life energies of the universe who gives them almost supernatural powers. Genichiro is on the side of good. Rebi Ra has sold his soul to the forces of darkness in order to gain unlimited power. Rebi Ra plans to turn the human world into another version of the demon world. He doesn’t quite succeed but he unleashes a massive localised earthquake which devastates the Shinjuku district.

Shinjuku is now a wasteland dominated by demons.

Flash forward ten years and Rebi Ra is ready to try again. Only Genichiro’s high school student son Kyoya might possibly be able to stop him.

Rebi Ra had tried to assassinate the world President. Kyoya hooks up with the president’s daughter Sayaka. Together they enter Shinjuku, with the aim of stopping Rebi Ra.

They get some assistance from a lively cynical streetwise kid.

They also encounter Mephisto. Mephisto is an ambiguous figure. He is human but so disillusioned that he figures things can’t be any worse if the demons win. But Mephisto does offer some aid to Kyoya and Sayaka. Whether he will become an ally or a foe remains to be seen.

There are lots of terrifying monsters to be defeated. Kyoya has also still not fully developed his powers and he’s running out of time to do so. He also has to defend Sayaka with whom he is slowly falling in love.

The biggest problem with this movie is that you are inevitably going to compare it to Wicked City and Wicked City is much the better movie, with ideas that are more fully developed and complex and with more complex characters. Demon City Shinjuku is just a bit too straightforward in plot terms. Kyoya doesn’t have to work hard enough to harness his full powers. Sayaka is cute and likeable but there’s not much depth to her.

We also never really feel that Sayaka is in great danger. That would have added a bit more bite to the suspense and it would have given Kyoya more of a chance to show us some emotional depth.

Mephisto is the most interesting character and perhaps the movie should have focused on him a bit more.

Demon City Shinjuku also lacks the kinky eroticism of Wicked City. Wicked City is full-blown erotic horror done superbly. The lack of eroticism in Demon City Shinjuku makes it seems a little bland.

There are no love scenes between Kyoya and Sayaka which make their romance seem a bit too much like two high school kids experiencing puppy love.

Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s involvement would lead you to expect something visually spectacular and that’s what he delivers. Demon City Shinjuku might be a slight disappoint in other ways but the animation is excellent and there are plenty of very very cool images.

The fire monster is not just visually interesting - it provides the movie’s most effectively chilling and emotionally wrenching moments. This is where we see what evil really entails. This movie needed more moments like this.

Demon City Shinjuku looks impressive and it offers action and excitement. It just doesn’t have quite enough substance to back up its unquestioned style. I’d still recommend it.

Demon City Shinjuku has been paired with Wicked City in a two-disc Blu-Ray set which I recommend.

I’ve reviewed Wicked City (1987) which really is superlative.

Gunbuster (anime OVA, 1988-89)

Gunbuster is a 1988-89 anime OVA. It features an epic struggle for survival with space monsters, giant robots, time paradoxes and scantily-clad (sometimes unclad) babes. 

An intelligent, subtle, emotionally resonant complex sci-fi tale. 

It's absolutely superb.

My full review can be found at Cult TV Lounge.

Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)

Blood: The Last Vampire is a fascinating anime film that, with its running time of 48 minutes, is not quite a feature film.

It was shot in a mixture of Japanese and English. The Japanese characters speak Japanese and sometimes English, the American characters speak English. There’s also a mixture of traditional animation techniques and CG and you’ll either like that blending or you won’t depending on personal taste. Overall I found the visuals to be effective and atmospheric.

It starts in a wonderfully enigmatic fashion. It is Japan in the 1960s. A young Japanese girl (we will later learn that her name is Saya) slaughters a passenger on a train with a samurai sword. Then she is joined by a couple of American guys. David might be Saya’s boss. He might work for the Japanese Government or the US Government or for some shady outfit like the CIA or he might work for some private organisation. Whoever or whatever he is he is in the same line of work as Saya - killing chiropterans. We don’t yet know what chiropterans are.

There’s some tension between Saya and David but there’s obviously some trust as well. Maybe they’re uneasy allies but they’re definitely allies.

Then Saya goes undercover as a student at the school for the children of American military personnel at a U.S. Air Force base in Japan. For some reason she wears a Japanese schoolgirl uniform although it’s an American school. Saya looks rather weird dressed that way - she doesn’t look like a cute teenager, she looks like a stone-cold killer.

She has an uneasy encounter with the school nurse. The school nurse gets very disturbed when Saya whips out her sword and slices up another girl student in front of her. The nurse is horrified but she’s even more horrified when she gets a good look at her first chiropteran. They’re horrifying demon monsters.

We then get a rollercoaster ride of action and mayhem.

What I love most about this film is the thing that a lot of people dislike. It gives us nothing but tantalising hints at the backstory. You expect a Van Helsing-like character or a scientist to pop up to explain what is going on. But that doesn’t happen. We have to figure things out for ourselves.

We find out a few things about Saya but they raise more questions than they answer. The very short running time means there’s no time for detailed explanations. We are plunged straight into very strange and frightening events and we really don’t know much more than the unfortunate school teacher caught in the middle.

Which makes things much scarier. We don’t know the full extent or the exact nature of the threat. We don’t know how heavily the odds are stacked against Saya.

This is a very stripped-down very minimalist story. There are no subplots. Virtually no exposition. It hits the ground running and the pace remains frenetic. I like that. I’m told there was a later live-action version with double the running time that ruined the story by adding the backstory that was very deliberately and wisely left out of the original.

Right at the end we find out something very important about Saya but once again we don’t get a full explanation. It answers some of our questions but it adds further puzzles.

There was clearly a reason for choosing the mid-60s as the time setting and for including Vietnam War footage. Presumably the point was that we humans are every bit as bloodthirsty as the chiropterans. Fortunately this stuff isn’t intrusive and it does add to the atmosphere of paranoia.

Saya reappears as a character in the 2011 TV series Blood-C.

Hiroyuki Kitakubo directed. Blood: The Last Vampire was made by Production I.G. and originated in a study group set up by Mamoru Oshii (director of Ghost in the Shell) to explore ideas for future films. Kenji Kamiyama wrote the screenplay. He went on to be director and chief writer for the excellent Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex TV series.

Blood: The Last Vampire is very much about style. That style is very harsh, dark and brooding. This may be the least cutesy anime ever made. Very entertaining movie. Highly recommended.

The Manga DVD (they’ve now released in on Blu-Ray as well) looks very good and includes a “making of” featurette which is interesting for the insights it offers into the aesthetic choices that were made.

Ninja Scroll (1993)

Ninja Scroll is a 1993 anime film written and directed by one of the anime greats, Yoshiaki Kawajiri. It combines action, adventure, swordplay, fantasy and horror and it is very much an anime for grown-ups.

It is set during the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868). A Koga ninja team has been sent to investigate an epidemic that wiped out an entire village. This may not have been a natural occurrence. The Koga ninjas encounter of of the eight Kimon demons and are wiped out with just a single survivor - a young woman ninja named Kagero.

As a result of this disaster she encounters Jubei Kibagami who seems to be a wandering ronin who makes his living as a mercenary. He has had a colourful past which he has perhaps not quite come to terms with. And Jubei encounters a strange little man named Dakuan who is a lot more formidable than he looks. He is a government agent. He’s on a mission as well.

Kagero, Dakuan and Jubei don’t have much in common but they do have a common enemy. The nature of that enemy is not clear at first but the Shogun of the Dark is undoubtedly behind it. The Shogun of the Dark is a member of the Toyotomi clan who ruled Japan before the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate and he aims to restore his clan to power. That would unquestionably trigger a catastrophic civil war.

Jubei has little choice other than to help Dakuan. He has been poisoned. It is a slow poison but it will kill him eventually, and of course only Dakuan has the antidote. If Jubei carries out this mission for him Dakuan will give him the antidote and a hundred gold pieces. This is known as an offer one can’t refuse.

This ill-assorted trio will encounter more of the Kimon demons and each seems a bit more terrifying than the last one. One can produce huge swarms of killer wasps. Benisato is a female demon with several tricks up her sleeve. She can shed her skin in an emergency. She can also produce venomous snakes from her lady parts.

Jubei, Dakuan and Kagero have a few magic tricks of their own. They are after all trained ninja. One of Kagero’s tricks is that her whole body is poisonous. Any man who has sex with her will die. Kagero gives the impression that this doesn’t bother her but it does. She is a ninja but she is a woman also. And as much as she tries to deny it to herself she is strangely attracted to Jubei.

The chief henchman of the Shogun of the Dark is the sinister Gemma. Jubei and Gemma had clashed before, Jubei was certain he had killed Gemma. But Gemma is very much alive.

The key to the plans of the Shogun of the Dark is gold. A huge hoard of gold, enough to put the Toyotomi clan back in power.

There’s huge amounts of mayhem and plenty of gore and gushing blood. The violence gets quite extreme. There’s some nudity and sex and sex is certainly to some degree a motivating factor for several of the characters. This is a world in which sex can be rather dangerous, and sometimes nasty. Sensitive souls may find the violence and eroticism a bit confronting. This really is a story for grown-ups.

Ninja Scroll was one of the animes that at the time were pushing the edge of the envelope in terms of outrageous imagery. It still looks impressive.

The plot is a classic tale of power struggles and betrayals with both Jubei and Kagero being manipulated by both the bad guys and the good guys. They’d both be better off if they could learn to trust each other but trusting people does not come naturally to either of them. They’d also be better off if they could just accept that they’ve fallen in love but that’s not something they’re comfortable with either.

There is a certain amount of cynicism, or at least scepticism, towards authority. The Tokugawa Shogunate represents the good guys not because it’s especially virtuous but because it represents stability. It’s a whole lot better than the alternative which would be civil war.

If you love full-blooded action with lashing of slightly perverse eroticism there’s a great deal here to be enjoyed, and Ninja Scroll is highly recommended, and if you’re fascinated by the ninja thing then it’s pretty much a must-see movie.

Ninja Scroll belongs to the period from the mid-80s to the mid-90s when anime for grown-ups was gradually establishing a foothold in western markets. Vampire Hunter D (1985), Goku Midnight Eye (1989) and Wicked City (1987) were significant titles from this period and Yoshiaki Kawajiri was already becoming a major figure in adult-oriented anime.

The Australian Madman DVD (which is the edition I own) offers a very satisfactory transfer. There has also been a Blu-Ray release.