Seventy-seven posts in, and here's another milestone: we have what I think is the last of the titles I recall being really curious to see and missing out on back when this stuff was first arriving in the West. As much as it probably seems that way, the driving force here has never exactly been nostalgia, in part because I wasn't watching a lot of anime back in the nineties, aside from the usual touchstones of Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Ghibli movies and such; but I have been trying to plug those gaps, as and when I could. I unconditionally loved the live-action sequel The Guyver: Dark Hero back in the day (I mean, I still kind of do!) and yet I somehow never got around to hunting down the anime. Well, it took me a while, but I got there.
That aside, the unplanned Lupin and Black Jack marathons trundle on, and we've one of those random standalone titles that seem to be getting harder and harder to find, which gives us The Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor, Volume 1, Black Jack: Parasite, Lupin the Third: Voyage to Danger, and Sorcerer on the Rocks...
I mean this as a compliment, though maybe it won't sound like one: the first volume of The Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor does a terrific job of telling three hours' worth of story over the course of three hours. Okay, yes, that does sound like faint praise, but let's face it, many an anime from the period failed to do that, and it's all the less likely with such an action-heavy title as this, where it's easy for six episodes to devolve into six fights broken up with sufficient setup to clarify whatever plot there is and keep the budget at a manageable level. Which, now that I describe it, is exactly what this does, so I suppose what I'm really complimenting it on is doing so in a fashion that works. Within the episodic structure dictated by its material, it nevertheless succeeds in offering features like rising action, meaningful arcs, and late-game plot twists in such a way that we feel we're getting a single coherent tale.
That tale follows teenager Sho, who, along with his best friend Tetsurou, happens to stumble into a very messy set of circumstances involving the evil Chronos Corporation, who've misplaced a suitcase containing three wearable bioweapons - that's to say, Guyvers - and are busy trying to find them using their other, more readily available bioweapons, the monstrous Zoanoids, because if there's one thing Chronos is all about, it's bioweapons. And wouldn't you know it, who should stumble on said suitcase and get himself bonded with a Guyver unit than young Sho, who soon finds that he'll be spending his day - and indeed, most of the days following - punching gross monsters in the face until they explode.
To return to my original point, you can very much see how that might go if it didn't go well; we've probably all come across the odd anime that closely resembles watching your mate play through a series of video game boss fights. And in a sense, that's what we're here for. At heart, The Guyver is a much bloodier version of an older form that's been kicking around in Japanese culture for decades; what we have is absolutely a Super Sentai show in the vein of Might Morphin Power Rangers and its progenitors, and nobody goes to those in search of narrative sophistication, do they? They go for people in suits punching out monsters.
But what The Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor brings to that formula is just enough story, and just enough twistiness and characterisation, to provide a meaningful backbone to the fights and to ensure they escalate nicely, keeping a genuine sense of danger right through to the end. And, again at the risk of damning with faint praise by comparing with less successful shows, it's a bonus that, though there are definite fluctuations, the designs and technical values feel broadly of a piece across all six episodes. They're never outright bad, they're rarely amazing, but they're consistent. And what all this consistency and competence does is let us enjoy the coolness of a teenager in a terrifying sentient suit made of alien flesh getting into startlingly violent fights with a carnival of imaginatively designed monsters without feeling like the whole business is hopelessly dumb and empty.
Black Jack: Parasite, 1999, dir: Osamu Dezaki
Here we are with the eighth episode of the Black Jack OVA series, released on the cusp of the end of the nineties, and for the first time, I find myself incapable of reviewing an Osamu Dezaki-directed title with either open hostility or, as has been getting more and more common, tentative praise. No, the fact is that his work here is a top-tier piece of visual storytelling, taking an interesting notion and using the medium of animation to bring to the surface its grace notes and reveal its hidden depths. Heck, I can't even grumble about his grab bag of tricks and stylistic excesses, because here they're deployed to perfection, discreetly enough to be an interesting surprise and so well-timed that they always achieve precisely the effect Dezaki was evidently aiming for. At one point, for instance, he does that thing he was so fond of whereby the animation stops on a painted still, and it's both such a compelling image and so intuitively placed that it's a little bit heart-stopping.
Here we are with the eighth episode of the Black Jack OVA series, released on the cusp of the end of the nineties, and for the first time, I find myself incapable of reviewing an Osamu Dezaki-directed title with either open hostility or, as has been getting more and more common, tentative praise. No, the fact is that his work here is a top-tier piece of visual storytelling, taking an interesting notion and using the medium of animation to bring to the surface its grace notes and reveal its hidden depths. Heck, I can't even grumble about his grab bag of tricks and stylistic excesses, because here they're deployed to perfection, discreetly enough to be an interesting surprise and so well-timed that they always achieve precisely the effect Dezaki was evidently aiming for. At one point, for instance, he does that thing he was so fond of whereby the animation stops on a painted still, and it's both such a compelling image and so intuitively placed that it's a little bit heart-stopping.
To all of that lavish praise, I'd add that I'm really beginning to fall in love with these Black Jack OVAs, and it's incredibly galling that they're so tough to find. It takes a bit of getting your head around their appeal, magical realist medical thrillers not being a particularly busy sub-genre, but when they work, they really work, crafting something outstandingly weird and exciting that hews just close enough to reality to not feel utterly silly, while still going to some distinctly odd places. Here, in the episode U.S. Manga Corps released under the title of Parasite, for example, we have a schoolboy apparently becoming infected by the massive, possibly sentient tree that protects an isolated village, but also is the favoured local suicide spot. It's the sort of setup where you can see the broad outlines almost from the get-go, yet the specific turns it takes, along with the profoundly bizarre imagery it presents, add up to something legitimately unique. And Dezaki finds a perfect tone, balancing the material between wonder and horror, so that we're never certain which way it will tip. One minute it feels like a Miyazaki homage, the next it's closer to David Cronenberg, and frankly, if you've never been curious as to how a Miyazaki / Cronenberg collaboration might turn out, you're probably reading the wrong reviewer.
What's perhaps most striking for such a relatively short film, though, is that it manages to sneak in some genuinely strong characterisation. The schoolboy and his brother are pretty boring, it has to be said, and Black Jack is essentially a cipher, but this episode does great things with his assistant Pinoko - though granted they wouldn't make a lot of sense if you weren't familiar with her history. At any rate, it's nice to see her being put to meaningful use. The real star, however, is one-off character Armando, who could easily have been nothing but a source of exposition and instead gets a heartrending arc of his own. He's surely my favourite thing here - though the opening, a gorgeous combination of music and imagery that Dezaki choreographs to perfection, comes a close second. And actually, there's that phenomenal surgery sequence too, which brings all the latent body horror bubbling into full view. Oh, and the closing theme is marvellous. Really, Black Jack: Parasite is so full of good parts that I could sing its praises for twice as many words as I've used here.
With so many Lupin stories out there, it's a sure thing that a sense of repetition will be bound to set in eventually. To some extent, that's part of the charm: there are elements we can confidently expect to appear, and the basic structure of all things Lupin is largely the same, insomuch as these are nearly always action-comedy heist stories centring around the titular thief and his band of ne'r-do-wells. But it's frustrating that, for me, the point where familiarity tipped into over-familiarity happened to arrive with the TV special Voyage to Danger, which, for its first few minutes, felt like it was going down a far more surprising route. Its opening scene sees the dogged Inspector Zenigata surrounding Lupin's latest headquarters, as he's done many a time before, only for him to dismiss the army of policemen who are accompanying him. Zenigata, it turns out, has been pulled from the case that's been his life's work, and he's here not to arrest Lupin but to drown his sorrows and reveal that a much worse foe is waiting in the wings. Having grown tired of his incessant failures, Zenigata's superiors have decided to solve their Lupin problem once and for all by hiring a mercenary and making it clear that they don't much care what shape he brings his quarry back in.
If, like me, you're a Zenigata fan, this promises great things, and the early scenes are a joy, delving into the mutual fondness and respect that's always ticking away in the background of the Lupin / Zenigata relationship. When Lupin decides the best solution for everyone is to involve himself in the case Zenigata's been shunted onto, that of an arms smuggling ring named Shot Shell, and to rip them off in the process because after all he's still the world's greatest thief, it really seems we might be in for a unique take. So it's disappointing when Zenigata drifts into the background and a more recognisable structure takes over. There's nothing in Voyage to Danger that could be called bad - indeed, its a perfectly enjoyable spin on the Lupin tropes - but once we clear the opening ten minutes, there's nothing very novel either, and that only becomes truer as things progress. This isn't helped by the usual problem that tends to infect these films, whereby the middle act gets a bit baggy and mechanical, and though the third act picks up the pace, it does so by diving headlong into Lupin cliché. Indeed, it would be more shocking if the foolproof plan enacted with a good thirty minutes of plot left didn't go wrong, and if poor, mistreated Fujiko Mine didn't switch sides and shack up with the villain of the week.
What this most feels like is 1997's Island of Assassins, and admittedly it's mean-spirited to blame a film for being ripped off and done better four years later, but nevertheless, its true. They even share the somewhat more realistic character designs and a shift away from the goofiest extremes in favour of a story somewhat grounded in reality. That Voyage to Danger doesn't push so hard in that direction, while simultaneously feeling like it wants to and probably ought to, is another minor strike against it, and of course Island of Assassins benefited from a gap in which this sort of mid-budget animation had improved in many small but noticeable ways. Though with that said, Voyage to Danger is still a strong entry when it comes to the visuals, and another of those Lupin specials that feels close to the point where you could stick it in a cinema and no-one would be terribly aggrieved.
Where does that leave us? If you haven't seen Island of Assassins, and especially if you're quite new to the world of Lupin in general, I'd say with a clear recommendation: this is by no means a weak entry, and the worst that can be said about it is that it front-loads its best features. And if you've encountered plenty of Lupin, it's still an enjoyable way to pass ninety minutes, with strong direction, impressive visuals, some nice tweaks on the familiar aesthetic, and enough original ideas to make it feel reasonably distinct, even if not all of them get capitalised on the way you might hope they'd be.
I feel slightly dirty for having enjoyed Sorcerer on the Rocks, and even dirtier for recommending that anyone else might enjoy it. Its main joke - nearly its only joke - is that the hero is a total and irredeemable bastard. And while the forms of his bastardy are many and varied, a lot of them involve being obnoxious to his assistant / lackey Gin Fizz, who's following him about in the thankless hope of saving whatever he has that passes for a soul. Whether it's dragging her around on a chain or forcing her to dance for chump change, our "hero" Shibas Scotch will sink to any depths without a second thought.
Oh, all the characters are named after alcoholic drinks. It's very much that sort of show.
Anyway, the point I was making is that Sorcerer on the Rocks is deeply obnoxious, and to cap it off, has the budget and running time of roughly two TV episodes, with nothing besides some moderately pleasing character work to recommend it on the level of style. It feels very much like a pilot that failed to be picked up, whereas in fact it's a spin-off from the show Sorcerer Hunters, which I suppose adds up to much the same. It's cheap tat, albeit tat made by people who clearly knew what they were about enough to produce respectable work with the odd nice visual detail here or there.
And also, lots of bare breasts. It's very much that sort of a show, too.
But, as the saying goes, all a comedy has to do is be funny, and Sorcerer on the Rocks is funny. Like, laugh-out-loud funny on occasions, with just enough of a baseline of mild amusement capped off with half a dozen really solid gags that you get to the end feeling you've had your comedic money's worth. And also, far more surprisingly, it has a decent story, with quite a startling number of twists and turns for its less than an hour of running time. Really, that's the aspect that surprised me more than anything: it's a remarkably terse and competent bit of storytelling, and that it manages to do that and not forget to be funny is actually an accomplishment worth celebrating, even if only slightly.
Nevertheless, it's certainly obnoxious, and it certainly does involve a woman being repeatedly humiliated for laughs, most of which really don't land, and it's certainly very inconsequential and not likely to stick in my memory past the end of this week. So obviously I'm not saying you ought to rush off and find a copy or anything like that. All the same, if you're truly craving a bit of unusually mean-spirited anime comedy, and the notion of a main character who really is an incurable wretch doesn't put you off, then it would be churlish to pretend I didn't enjoy the brief time I spent with it.
-oOo-
Sorcerer on the Rocks was undoubtedly the low point here, and yet, sad to admit, but weeks after I wrote the review, it actually has stuck in my memory, possibly because I immediately watched it again for some reason. Anyway, I still wouldn't pretend it's any good or anything, but as low points go, we've surely had lower. And the rest get a definite thumbs up: Voyage to Danger was a middling Lupin movie, but middling is pretty good where Lupin is concerned, the first Guyver volume was an unexpectedly fine example of the thing that it is, and this week's Black Jack marked the point where I really began to appreciate that I'd stumbled onto something special. Damn it, how has this not found its way to blu ray yet?
Sorcerer on the Rocks was undoubtedly the low point here, and yet, sad to admit, but weeks after I wrote the review, it actually has stuck in my memory, possibly because I immediately watched it again for some reason. Anyway, I still wouldn't pretend it's any good or anything, but as low points go, we've surely had lower. And the rest get a definite thumbs up: Voyage to Danger was a middling Lupin movie, but middling is pretty good where Lupin is concerned, the first Guyver volume was an unexpectedly fine example of the thing that it is, and this week's Black Jack marked the point where I really began to appreciate that I'd stumbled onto something special. Damn it, how has this not found its way to blu ray yet?
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