Obviously these reviews have never been intended to serve much point beyond my own strange amusement, but still, I do try and keep in mind that someone might legitimately come to them advice. But one of the flaws there is that, more and more over the years, I've stumbled down the collecting rabbit hole. My original mandate was to focus on titles that were readily available in the UK, but we left that point behind a fair while back, and now it's a vanishing memory. As such, this time around we get a couple of titles that are on the seriously rare side and one that's of pretty much legendary status. But what to do, eh? I somehow found them, and they're wonderful, so I can't not talk about them, can I?
And with that confession out of the way, let's take a look at Devilman: Demon Bird Sirène, Battle Athletes, Sonic Soldier Borgman: Last Battle and Lover's Rain, and Spirit of Wonder: Miss China's Ring...
My main concern coming to this second Devilman OVA wasn't so much that it wouldn't be as good as the first, a lot to ask when Devilman: The Birth was something of a minor classic, but that it wouldn't be as stunningly animated. Anime often bucks the rule of Western releases that a sequel is usually cheaper, but part one set the bar awfully high. So it's a relief to be able to say that Demon Bird Sirène looks just as good, if not better. There's nothing on a par with the two sequences of surrealist fantasy horror that made The Birth stand out, but the return is a higher general proportion of ingenious and ambitious shots. Put them together and you get two of the most visually impressive OVAs from the brief period around the turn of the eighties that was perhaps the finest flowering of Japanese hand-drawn animation.
So that's the animation nerds taken care of, but what about everyone else? The Birth not only looked great, it brought enough imagination to bear on its standard "hero confronts evil by becoming it" tale to stand out and threw in plenty of legitimately freakish, nasty horror along the way. And on those fronts, Demon Bird Sirène doesn't fare quite so well. There are certainly scenes nearly as unsettling as anything part one had to offer, and its narrative is hardly rote, but both suffer from the fact that, where The Birth had a specific story to tell, Demon Bird Sirène is content to be a middle section. We learn more about the demons and about our hero Akira, but essentially what's on offer is a series of fights.
But what fights! All credit to director Iida, it's a remarkable achievement that each of the three showcase battles feels distinct and consequential. The first is practically a self-contained vignette and opts primarily for psychological horror, but does a fine job of setting the tone for what follows: an inventive haunted house sequence of sorts, and then the coup de grâce, a lengthy, bloody scrap between Devilman and the titular Sirène, a half-naked eagle woman with giant wings sprouting out of her head. There is, by the way, a heck of a lot of semi-nudity, and indeed total nudity, in this second episode, but Sirène actually makes for a surprisingly sympathetic and interesting antagonist, one with that best of villain traits: she legitimately believes she's in the right, to the point where it's hard not to root for her.
The result is that rare sequel that doesn't disappoint. Arguably it's up to something less sophisticated than its progenitor, but on the other hand, it does that thing superlatively, and looks (and sounds) terrific in the process. If I missed those scenes of phantasmagorical fantasy horror that made the original OVA stand out, there were no shortage of compensations and no shortage of fresh stand-out moments: the demon-possessed house attacking its occupants is splendid nightmare fuel, as is pretty much the whole of the prologue. Ultimately, this short-lived saga amounts to some of the finest action horror to come out of a period that excelled at such stuff, and - considering that the Discotek re-release sticks both episodes on a single disk, along with a radio drama of all things - is a must-watch for fans of the genre.
My expectations for the six-part OVA Battle Athletes stretched to it being a comedy sci-fi show of the kind that anime frequently does well, but with a sports theme tacked on; and given that I had a fair idea of the basic ingredients going in, I couldn't have been much further from the mark. Battle Athletes is a sports anime front and centre, and the science fiction, bar one episode, is principally there to get us in place for its central conceit, while what comedy there is comes largely as a side-effect.
But let's get that main concept out of the way. Via a weirdly elaborate and rather beautifully animated prologue, we're introduced to a far-flung future in which all human endeavour is devoted to sporting prowess and physical perfection and ultimately to the yearly athletic competition that bestows the title of 'Cosmic Beauty' - which seems to only be open to women, though it's altogether impossible to tease out how gender politics are meant to work in this setting. Anyway, the show finds this state of affairs not horrifyingly fascistic but basically okay so long as everyone behaves themselves, and our protagonist is one Akari Kanzaki, daughter of a previous Cosmic Beauty, who's determined to take the title herself and who we meet as she begins her new life at the University Satellite, school for - well, battle athletes, I guess.
What we get from there is, as you might predict, the story of Akari's quest to become a champion via a series of wacky futuristic events, zero gravity lacrosse and orienteering through a deteriorating abandoned space slingshot and the like. However, it's actually more about its characters, to the extent that, by the end, that side was informing the sports drama and not the other way around. Which, as it turns out, is a good thing, because that's far and away its strongest aspect. All of Battle Athletes' cast are interesting, even if they generally fit into well-worn archetypes; but there are a couple who certainly don't, and chief among them is Akari's roommate Kris Christopher. It's fair to say that nineties anime doesn't have a lot of openly gay characters, and that when they do appear, they're not always handled with the greatest sensitivity, which makes Kris stand out from the off. So that she's also a pacifist trainee priestess raised on the moon and studying in the hope of achieving a transcendental encounter with the divine is icing on the cake. Kris is such a legitimately fascinating character that, as involving as the sports stuff is - and it actually is, despite the eccentric trappings and innately dodgy concept - it was the question of her will-they, won't-they relationship with Akari that held my attention. More surprising still, Kris is far from being the only LGBT character in the show, and those characters, and the themes surrounding them, are treated positively without feeling remotely preachy or tacked on.
In short, aside from being the fun, sci-fi-tinged sports adventure with a bit of comedy thrown in that I was expecting, Battle Athletes is a tremendously kind-hearted show, one that's eager to accept its characters for who they are and gently nudges the viewer to do likewise. Combine that with appealing designs, frequently impressive animation, and a rousing score, and you have something legitimately special: a great example of what it appears to be on the surface that comes laden with extra depth for those seeking it, and featuring one of the most singular characters I've encountered in all of this long trawl through a decade's worth of anime.
I'll say this for vintage anime, it certainly throws up its share of interesting reviewing challenges! Today's case in point is a sly bit of money-grabbing from ADV: a release pairing the two movie sequels that, in close succession, followed the show Sonic Soldier Borgman, which - here's the important bit! - was never released outside of Japan.
Now, admittedly this isn't quite the problem it might be. The initial film, of around an hour in length, is set firmly after the events of the series, and, as its title of Last Battle suggests, is very much in the business of bringing the protagonists back together for one last continuity-free scrap. It assumes a degree of foreknowledge, but also does a fair job of reintroducing the cast, making for a relatively standalone affair. Unfortunately, it's also not terribly interesting in and of itself. The first half, in which not much happens besides those various introductions, is more successful than the second, in which the gang band together to face off against the new and predictable threat that's arisen, in a lengthy action finale that feels the need to take one of our three heroes out of play for the duration ... in a team of two men and one woman, I bet you can't guess who spends twenty minutes tied to a chair! The animation is functional if undistinguished, but the designs are both achingly of their time and too garish for the material's tone, and all in all, it's hard to say what ADV saw here that would be so appealing that viewers would ignore how they were essentially watching an epilogue.
Lover's Rain has its own problems, which, impressively, are almost the exact opposite to those in Last Battle. Despite being made a year later, it's set before the previous film, which is all sorts of confusing if you're watching them in the sequence they appear on the disk. The main thread here involves two characters getting together who are already a couple (and indeed were in the midst of breaking up!) by the beginning of the previous entry. For this reason and others, Lover's Rain relies more heavily on a knowledge of the show and calls back more explicitly to what I assume were crucial events and plot threads, including a big bad to be beaten that hasn't much resonance without that wider context. On the other hand, this second release is more interesting in and of itself, director Murayama brings more sense of style, and the closing scrap is more imaginative and visually stimulating. However, where Last Battle was spread over a leisurely hour, Lover's Rain lasts for barely over half that, so that by the time it gets going, it's pretty much done.
At the time, I'm sure it's fair to say this had more to recommend it. Even with a combined running time that's only that of a standard feature, there's a sense of value that comes with getting two "films" together. But now that it's somewhat hard to track down, their failings are distinctly apparent, and it turns out that being sequels to an impossible-to-see show was barely the half of it. There's nothing new here, nothing to stand out, and probably there wasn't much more three decades ago, making this the rare title were I'd suggest that getting swallowed by the sands of time was probably the best thing for it.
I can claim no impartiality when it comes to Spirit of Wonder: the manga, what little of it was released in Europe and the US, is among my favourite things ever. Primarily it tells the story of Miss China, immigrant owner of the Tenkai restaurant, which she runs alone on an island apparently off the coast of England (though it's named for one in Australia.) Miss China, as the narrator informs us, has been sole proprietor of Tenkai since she was eighteen, and as though that wasn't difficult enough, has for a tenant lecherous, freeloading genius and all-round mad scientist Professor Breckenridge, a situation that China tolerates, barely, because she's in a tentative relationship with Breckenridge's assistant Jim.
It's an intriguing setup in its own right. Manga writer Kenji Tsuruta doesn't shy away from the ways in which China's situation is far from ideal; in the book, she's presented as having a less than perfect grasp of English, and that, along with the tribulations of running her own business at a young age, are enough to leave her frequently feeling down and on occasions turning to drink. (The literal translation of the Japanese title for the story this OVA was taken from is actually "Miss China's Melancholy.") However, to further complicate matters, the world of Spirit of Wonder isn't quite our own. Though it's portrayed realistically for the most part, it soon becomes apparent that it's closer to the fiction of Wells and Verne than any reality, and the result is that, absurd as Breckenridge's experiments are, they also have a tendency to work.
So it goes that what starts out as a story about China violently hassling the professor for the latest month's rent and getting suspicious of Jim's relationship with the local flower girl spirals into something much weirder and more fanciful - though what sets Spirit of Wonder apart is that it never lets go of its mundane aspects, preferring genuine human emotions over whimsy and letting notes of real sadness and heart stray in. The book, if you can find a copy, is something genuinely special, and the anime has the sense not to mess with what doesn't need mending. Director Hongo and writer Michiru Shimada stick to their material tenaciously, adapting a single story with absolute fidelity; indeed, this must be among the most faithful adaptations in any medium. Yet Hongo still manages to bring a bit of voice and technique to the telling, despite an obviously modest budget. There are a handful of noticeably complex shots, deployed with care, and along with a faded colour scheme that's a perfect choice for the material and Tanaka Kôhei's lovely score, there's enough going on to warrant the shift to anime.
I suppose I shouldn't oversell the thing. It's incredibly slight, and also stretched somewhat thin even with a running time of a little over forty minutes. For that matter, a later adaptation from 2001 probably does even more justice and is a heck of a lot easier to get hold of - which is to say, not basically impossible. Spirit of Wonder: Miss China's Ring was an early release from AnimEigo, who no doubt assumed it didn't have a very broad appeal, and they appear to have printed about ten copies. You can find the dub on YouTube, and it's pretty good except for the total miscasting of China herself, with actress Carrie Savage deciding to play up her Americanness in a manner that couldn't possibly work for the material. With all of that said, I'd absolutely recommend the later release, Scientific Boys Club, and of course I highly recommend Miss China's Ring if you can somehow lay hands on a copy (it took me a couple of years and a spot of good luck!) Failing all that, the dub is better than nothing, though it's heartbreaking to think it's the only way most people will experience one of the more delightful OVA's ever made.
-oOo-
This is one of those posts where, reading over it, I immediately want to go back and watch everything again - heck, even Sonic Soldier Borgman, though I'm sure it was as thoroughly mediocre as I've made it out to be! Spirit of Wonder is a big component of my personal pantheon, Battle Athletes is one of the best OVA series I've come across, and Devilman is a real high point of the flood of horror and dark fantasy titles that were everywhere during the eighties and nineties. And wouldn't you know it but those latter three are the titles that are hard (or essentially impossible) to find these days. Ah, the life of a vintage anime collector is a cruel one! Well, not mine, I guess, since I own them all. Hmm, I'm not sure what my point is here...
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