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.

Blood Shadow (2001-02)

Blood Shadow is an anime OVA from AT-2 Project comprising three episodes released in 2001 and 2002, directed by Nao Okezawa. I believe it has also been released as Crimson Lotus and Red Lotus. It was based on the PC game Guren.

The setting is Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). A brigade of elite warriors has been established to fight demons. They are the Crimson Lotus and they are answerable only to the shogun. They have been trained since childhood. They have all kinds of ninja skills as well as demon-hunting skills. Since this is anime you won’t be surprised to learn that most of the members of the Crimson Lotus are very cute young women. Their leaders are a young man named Rekka and a slightly older woman, Tsukikage. Tsukikage was Rekka’s mentor and he sees her as a kind of big sister.

The other members of the Crimson Lotus are girls, Misako, Akane and Ayano.

I’ve been able to find out very little about the production history of this anime. It seems to be regarded as rather disreputable and is often dismissed as mere hentai. Technically this is hentai. It includes hardcore sex scenes. I think it’s a little unfair to dismiss Blood Shadow as nothing more than hentai. There’s plenty of action and plenty of horror content. I’d call it erotic horror with both the erotic and horror elements being reasonably extreme.

Episode 1, The Demons, introduces us to the hero Rekka and Tsukikage as they are battling a particularly troublesome demon. Tsukikage sacrifices herself to save Rekka.

During another fight with demons Rekka encounters Haruka. She’s a sweet girl but she’s not entirely human. She has some demon blood, and she hates herself for this. She is shocked when Rekka wants to have sex with her - how could a man want to make love with a girl tainted by demon blood? She expects him to be repulsed by her but it turns out that they both enjoy themselves a great deal. Haruko is recruited into the Crimson Lotus.

They also hear a rumour of a mysterious group known as the Black Steel.

In Episode 2, Darkness, their mission is to persuade the legendary demon huntress Kureha to join the Crimson Lotus. At first she’s not interested but eventually she relents. There’s another mission as well - to destroy a powerful demon named Burai who preys on women.

They discover that the Black Steel (or Kagemai) is another demon-hunting group, but they seem more ruthless and perhaps more morally ambiguous than the Crimson Lotus. Rekka has by now made a discovery - not every demon is evil. That’s not just because of Haruko.

Rekka and Kureha also make a discovery - a hard day’s demon-hunting puts them both in the mood for a bit of bedroom fun.

Things get much more crazy in Episode 3, Laughter, as Rekka starts to figure out what is really going on. There’s evil afoot but the evil is much more complicated and twisted than he’d thought. Key characters will find out things about themselves. There have been betrayals by powerful people. Certain forces have been unleashed.

Blood Shadow is a pretty decent horror tale with lots of demonic mayhem and rivers of blood.

The idea of sex-obsessed demons isn’t really all that outlandish. Sex demons (such as succubi and incubi) are an important feature of many folklores and let’s face it every vampire story is to some extent about sex.

Whether you enjoy Blood Shadow or not depends entirely on how you feel about depictions of graphic sex and how you feel about hentai. If you can handle some of Jess Franco’s more extreme blendings of sex and horror (such as Female Vampire and Doriana Gray) you should be able to handle this. While it’s certainly scuzzy I think hardcore scenes are easier to take in anime form than in live-action form. The erotic content is part and parcel of the story here. But if you really don’t care for hardcore scenes you might not enjoy this anime.

I thought Blood Shadow was not outstanding but still pretty good. I recommend it, with the caveats alluded to above.

Blood Shadow has been released on Blu-Ray by Critical Mass. It offers the Japanese language version with English subtitles, and for those masochistic enough to want to watch anime in an English dubbed version that option is offered as well. The transfer is excellent.

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989)

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend, released in 1989, is one of the most notorious of all animes. It was based on a manga series by Toshio Maeda. There were in fact several Urotsukidoji OVAs.

The first thing I want to say is that although it is often described as hentai I think that’s very misleading. There is some reasonably explicit sexual content but the sex is probably the least excessive and outrageous element in a very excessive and outrageous anime. I would certainly not describe this as hentai. And there’s a great deal more to Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend than sex.

There are three separate worlds - the human, beastman and demon worlds. After sleeping for three thousand years the Chojin (or Overfiend as it’s somewhat unfortunately rendered in the English title) is about to awaken. According to legend the Chojin will unite the three worlds. This will be a good thing. Perhaps.

The Chojin will be reborn in human form. Nobody knows the identity of the human in which the Chojin will be reborn. Various factions within the beastman and demon worlds are very anxious to find this human host, although they are not entirely sure what they then intend to do.

It seems likely that the human host is a student at a particular Japanese university. There are at least three students there who are possibilities. One is Nagumo. Nagumo is in love wth a sweet girl named Akemi. A muscle-bound athlete named Ozaki is another possibility, as is the socially inept Niki who is sexually obsessed with Akemi.

Amano and his sister Megumi are from the beastman world. They want to find the Chojin, preferably before the demons find him.

The problem is that the human host has no idea that he is the Chojin. Even when he finds out he still doesn’t know what his purpose is, or what his destiny is. Nobody knows what the Chojin’s destiny is. Nobody knows what will happen when and if he tries to unite the three worlds.

This is not a straightforward good vs evil story. The demon world might be disturbing but that does not necessarily make it evil. The Chojin might be good or evil. You have to bear in mind that Japanese concepts of the supernatural are very different from western Christian concepts.

Amano has been given a glimpse into the future and it worries him.

The rebirth of the Chojin certainly makes an impact, although whether it’s going to be a good thing or a very bad thing remains uncertain. Suffice to say that the Chojin is not what anybody expected. And it appears that whatever forces have been unleashed may be unstoppable.

There’s a weird romance angle which will have strange consequences. There are prophecies to be fulfilled and destinies to be achieved.

Along the way there’s a breathtaking amount of mayhem and carnage.

Amano is as close as this movie comes to having a hero. He and his sister Megumi and their odd little demon pal Kuroko are the good guys. Or at least they think they’re the good guys.

This is a movie in which there are forces that represent pure evil, but perhaps they’re not pure evil. It depends on your point of view, and on the price you consider worth paying to achieve goals that may or may not be desirable.

The violence is extreme but it’s so over-the-top that it’s less disturbing than more realistic violence would have been.

This movie’s reputation would lead one to expect truly shocking sexual content but I really don’t think there’s anything overly shocking here. It’s certainly an anime for grown-ups.

It’s the stylistic excess that is most shocking here. It’s stylistic excess pile upon stylistic excess to the point of madness. There’s a certain appeal to that. This is not an anime constrained by considerations of moderation or good taste.

It’s a wild ride but I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

The Kitty Media release includes the movie version as well as a slightly different version on DVD. The Blu-Ray offers the option of watching in Japanese with English subtitles. The English dubbed version is included as well but I have no idea why anyone would want to an anime dubbed into English.

Perfect Blue (1997)

Perfect Blue is a 1997 Japanese anime psycho-sexual thriller directed by Satoshi Kon.

This is the story of Mima. Mina is a pop idol, a member of a J-pop girl group called CHAM. They are moderately popular but have never quite made the big time. Mima feels she’s going nowhere and decides to make a major career change, quitting CHAM to try to establish herself as a serious actress. We’re already getting a glimpse of one of the movie’s major themes, as Mima has decided to abandon one artificial role in order to take on another role that is equally artificial.

She lands a role in a TV crime drama called Double Bind. It’s an amazingly lurid series focusing on a cop and a psychiatrist investigating sex murders. We see lots of clips of Double Bind and I’m inclined to doubt whether such a sleazy series could ever in reality have been screened on television in Japan (or anywhere else) in the 90s. But that’s not a flaw in the script for Perfect Blue since this is not a movie about reality.

Mima’s acting career progresses slowly but she does start to make a bit of a name for herself. She is a minor celebrity (just as she was a minor celebrity as a singer in CHAM). She supplements her income by doing nude modelling.

Her character in Double Bind undergoes a personality crisis after being raped. Mima’s own personality seems to be unravelling at the same time. She keeps seeing herself, but is it her?

Then people associated with the Double Bind TV series start getting murdered.

Mima has already acquired an internet stalker who posts things about her on the net. His website is called Mima’s Room. She is concerned that he seems to know an awful lot about her. It crosses her mind that he may in fact be watching Mima’s real room, in her apartment.

The lines between reality and fantasy become more and more blurred, for both Mima and the viewer of Perfect Blue. There are multiple levels of reality - the real world, the artificial reality of the entertainment world, the world of the Double Bind TV series, the world of celebrity culture, the internet and the world of Mima’s fantasies or dreams or illusions. Assuming that they’re her fantasies and not somebody else’s. And Mima doesn’t seem to know if any of these worlds corresponds to objective reality. The viewer isn’t sure either.

Mima is so accustomed to playing a part (firstly as the cute squeaky-clean pop idol and later as the sexy actress with a reputation for doing sleaze) that it’s possible that she’s forgotten how to play herself. It’s even possible that she doesn’t really have a self.

But don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t assume that Mima is crazy. This movie is open to various interpretations.

To find out whether Mima finds her way back to any kind of actual reality you’ll have to watch the movie.

It’s interesting that although this movie was made in the very early pre-social media days of the internet it’s extraordinarily prescient about the effects that the internet was about to have on society.

I have seen this movie described as Hitchcockian but apart from the fact that there are hints of voyeurism I don’t see it as being the slightest bit Hitchcockian. There might perhaps be some hints of De Palma.

This is much more of a surrealist film. It’s closer in feel to Jess Franco films like Necronomicon - Geträumte Sünden (AKA Succubus, 1968) or Paroxismus (AKA Venus in Furs, 1969) than it is to Hitchcock.

Modern viewers might find the animation style old-fashioned but I think it works, emphasising the unreality and artificiality of everything we’re seeing.

This is certainly an anime for grown-ups. There’s sex and there’s nudity, including frontal nudity. There’s violence.

Perfect Blue is a twisted but somewhat cerebral psycho-sexual thriller about madness, obsession, the nature of reality and the masks people wear and the ways in which the masks can become more real than the people behind them. Highly recommended.

The Shout! Factory steelbook release offers the movie on both Blu-Ray and DVD. The extras include a reasonably interesting interview with Satoshi Kon conducted at the time of the film’s release and a much more interesting lecture delivered by him a decade later to film students. Unfortunately Satoshi Kon’s extremely promising career was cut short by his premature death in 2010.

Angel Cop (1989-94)

Angel Cop is a 1989-94 Japanese anime OVA. It comprises six 30-minute segments.

There is some slight cyberpunk flavouring but this does not have the feel of fully-fledged cyberpunk.

It has a near-future setting. Terrorists are trying to destroy the Japanese economy. An elite anti-terrorist unit, the Special Security Force (SSF), has been set up. They have a licence to kill. In fact they have a licence to do anything at all they consider to be necessary. They’re a law unto themselves.

Their latest recruit is a sexy girl cop known as Angel. Even by SSF standards she’s ruthless. When asked if she would shoot a terrorist who was using a hostage as a human shield, even if it meant killing the hostage, she replies that she wouldn’t like doing it but she’d do it anyway. We’ve already seen her in action. We know she isn’t kidding.

The SSF has captured a terrorist leader and they need to keep him alive. There are lots of people from various groups who want him dead.

The SSF’s approach to anti-terrorist operations is ruthless to say the least. It soon becomes apparent there are other groups out to kill terrorists. There are the Hunters, and both their nature and motivations are obscure.

As the six linked episodes progress more and more conspiracies come to light, and each revelation has the effect of making the entire situation even murkier.

The Hunters are simply trying to exterminate all terrorists. There seems to be another group hunting the Hunters. There is infighting among the terrorists. There is infighting on the government side. The SSF is a government agency but there are other government agencies trying to destroy the SSF. And when I say destroy I mean they intend to kill every single member of the SSF. There’s also a possibly unstable scientist with access to very high technology who seems to have his own agenda.

These factions are all extremely well-funded with access to advanced weaponry. They have powerful shadowy backers. Some of these backers may be domestic, some may originate outside Japan. Some of these backers may be pro-Japanese while others are anti-Japanese. There are factions within the Japanese government. The motivations of all of these factions and groups might be ideological, they might simply be motivated by greed or they might be out for power for its own sake. There’s no way of knowing just how many conspiracies there are.

The paranoia levels are off the scale.

While this OVA can be considered as a kind of political thriller don’t let that put you off. It’s not obsessed with ideological preaching. Angel Cop is more focused on the nature of political power games considered purely as power games. The truth is that none of the players are actually motivated by ideals.

There’s also a considerable interest in the corrupting effects of power. The SSF routinely employs hideous methods of torture. There’s one chilling scene in which a suspect is being horrifically tortured while in the office next door the female SSF operatives calmly catch up on their paperwork, oblivious to the screaming.

Another theme of Angel Cop is loyalty. Angel is a loyal Japanese. She has always assumed that loyalty to the Japanese government and loyalty to Japan are perfectly compatible and indeed almost synonymous. Unfortunately that assumption might prove to be incorrect.

There are lots of other things going on in Angel Cop. The nature of the Hunters is mysterious. They have just be the products of ultra high technology. They might be supernatural entities. They might have psychic or paranormal powers and if so those powers might be enhanced by technology. Their powers look like magic but it would be a mistake to jump to conclusions.

Angel is an interesting heroine. She’s tough, brave and very competent but she’s no super-woman. She also has some serious character flaws. As far as she is concerned she’s a cop. A cop does her duty. Angel has never thought beyond this. She lacks empathy. She has repressed her emotions entirely. She is breathtakingly ruthless and callous. She will have to learn to be a human being as well as a cop. The question is whether she will be capable of doing this.

She has been partnered with Raiden. It’s an uneasy partnership. Raiden doesn’t trust her. You can’t blame him. Their relationship will evolve but not in the way you would expect in a non-Japanese story.

There’s an immense amount of carnage and it’s extremely graphic. There are epic battles involving both conventional and psychic weapons.

The tone is generally dark and often very dark. It gets steadily darker and more paranoid.

The ending has lost none of its power to shock. It is deeply Japanese, reflecting distinctly Japanese cultural attitudes such as bushido, the code of the samurai. To understand the ending I think you have to assume that Angel does indeed see herself as a samurai, and not in a superficial way. And that Raiden comes to see himself as a samurai as well. They have chosen the way of the samurai and they are prepared to accept everything that that entails. I don’t see any other way of making sense of the ending.

The Discotek Blu-Ray looks terrific. It includes the Japanese language version with uncensored English subtitles. For hyper-sensitive souls there’s also the option for censored subtitles or there’s the censored English dub. The censorship has nothing to do with bad language or sexual references. The original version would have been considered antisemitic and would have been totally unacceptable to American distributors. It’s unfortunate that many people have been so distracted by this element that they have overlooked two other far more interesting elements that reflect an uncompromisingly Japanese point of view that would have been deeply disorienting to American audiences.

Angel Cop is fast-moving and action-packed with an enormous amount of very graphic violence. It’s a bleak paranoid vision of the future. It’s not for the faint-hearted but I highly recommend it.