Having imagined I was back into totally random territory this time around, only now do I notice that there actually is kind of a theme here, or at least some weird coincidences. We have a couple of titles that contain the word "fight" and feel that it needs backing up with an exclamation mark or two, and a remaining couple that are about hired killers, and as far as names go, they're all seriously violent.
Well, whatever, let's run with it! Here in the Drowning in Nineties Anime scarily-aggressive-naming-that-may-or-may-not-include-the-word-fight special, we have Fight! Iczer One, Lupin the Third: Island of Assassins, Fight!! Spirit of the Sword, and Crying Freeman: Portrait of a Killer...
There are great movies, and then there are great B-movies, and anime has produced more than its share of both over the years, but I don't know that I could point to a finer example of the latter than Fight! Iczer One. It's the B-movie par excellence, and particularly the anime B-movie par excellence, doing an abundant amount of stuff and doing it all with such skill and verve and demented commitment that it rarely ceases to impress.
Of course, strictly speaking, it's not actually a movie but an OVA in three parts, but aside from a lengthy plot recap at the opening of the third and longest episode, it flows together so smoothly that it might as well be a film. Indeed, it's surprising that the re-cut movie version put out in Japan never found its way to an international release; so far as I know, this wasn't given much of a push by publisher AnimeWorks, perhaps because it was old news by the time they got to it. As such, Fight! Iczer One remains relatively unknown, though it's one of those titles that serious vintage anime nerds mention often in hushed whispers. And no wonder! Like I said, it's excellent, but it's also a compendium of just about every trend that was going on in the world of late eighties and nineties Japanese animation, flinging around giant robots and body horror and big-ideas sci-fi and even a few tentacles with cheerful abandon. The plot that this is in service of is fairly nondescript, but that barely counts as a criticism, because plot would only get in the way of its breakneck pace and heady stylishness.
And it's very stylish indeed, with an aesthetic that at once screams of the late eighties - see our hero Iczer's impossibly garish costume and ginormous hair - and has enough originality to hold up pretty well even today. In terms of craft, there's much less that says eighties animation rather than nineties, besides the somewhat more rounded character designs; at any rate, it frequently looks stunning, with no end of detail and fluidity and something absolutely eye-popping happening at a rate of roughly once a minute. Come to think of it, that's often someone's eyes popping out, because Fight! Iczer One spends quite a bit of time being gross, exploitative, and trashy in various combinations, which normally I'd count as a flaw, but here is delivered with a combination of general kind-heartedness for even its most villainous characters and such unadulterated glee that it's impossible to take offence. In theory, it's all quite dark and nasty, but among the virtues that director Hirano brings is a joyful energy that refuses to let the material sink into grimness when the alternative is more fights, more explosions, more cool shots, more everything. Underscore that with composer Michiaki Watanabe's delightfully hyper music and the results are compulsive entertainment.
And here we are at the end and I'm conscious that I've not done a very good job of selling Fight! Iczer One, or even of pinning down precisely what it is, in part because it's so all over the place that it's hard to know how to begin summing it up. Nonetheless, you'll have to trust me on this one; if you've any fondness for horror-tinged science fiction and enjoy good animation, it's tough to see how you wouldn't like it. Fight! Iczer One is a true lost gem of vintage anime, and like all great B-movies, an example of how bonkers trashiness can become transcendent and thrilling if you throw enough heart and passion and raw talent into the mix.
Lupin the Third: Island of Assassins, 1997, dir: Hiroyuki YanoMore than most franchises, Lupin the Third has a certain flexibility, so that while the average Lupin adventure is likely to be a comedic, frivolous affair with plenty of action, perhaps a bit of sexual innuendo, and not much in the way of weight or substance, none of that's baked into the essential formula. So it's no wonder that, the late nineties being what they were, someone thought it was time to take one of these many TV specials that were produced over the years in a somewhat grittier, more plot-driven direction.
The surprise, indeed, is how well it works, and also that director Yano found the right degree of restraint that the result still feels essentially like a Lupin entry. Though certainly the opening few minutes might lead you to believe otherwise, at least once they're done wrong-footing you into expecting everything to be business as usual. Lupin is heisting as only Lupin can when his arch-nemesis Inspector Zenigata ambushes him with a mob of policemen in tow, claiming Lupin was foolish enough to announce his crime in advice. But Lupin points out that he'd hardly do that, and in fact he's only here to find out who did, which is about when a bunch of tarantula-tattooed assassins burst in, violently murder a whole lot of people, and shoot poor Zenigata with a Walther P38, Lupin's weapon of choice.
Thankfully, the movie doesn't waste much time in trying to persuade us that Zenigata is genuinely dead, but there are plenty more shocks and twists to come, as Lupin and his consorts head off after the assassins, who come from the titular island of assassins, which happens to be the one-stop shop for hired killers in the world. Getting in proves easier than getting out, and the greater part of the plot sees Lupin striving to outwit the island's fiendish security systems, while following the lead provided by the Walther P38 and possibly stealing a huge quantity of gold along the way. All of that adds up to an unusually story-heavy entry with more drastic stakes than usual, and if I've a complaint, it's that more could have been done in that direction: in particular, a setup that finds Lupin forced into the league of assassins with little choice except to comply gets terribly squandered. And actually, now that I think, that's a symptom of a wider problem: there's scope for a darker take on the Lupin world, and Island of Assassins flirts hard with being that, but I can't help wondering if really digging into the morality of these characters might have yielded even more satisfying results. Notably, the artwork, though generally pretty fine, suffers from a similar flaw: the character designs never fully reconcile the classic look of our heroes with the more realistic take here, and the result is a number of shots where, splendid though the backgrounds and animation are, faces are somewhat odd and devoid of personality. The more severe Lupin we get glimpses of is an interesting take, but one the film isn't willing to commit to.
By the same measure, it's possible to imagine this exact same plot but with a touch more of the usual humour and action, and might that version perhaps have been more fun? I mean, not that Island of Assassins isn't, I'd hate to give that impression. Its first and last thirds, I would say, are among the best Lupin material I've seen, and if the middle sags slightly, it's probably a necessity brought on by setting up such an intricate final act. As such, I'd absolutely recommend this if you're a Lupin fan, and perhaps more so if you're not, because it's an excellent thriller in its own right and devoid of a lot of what I used to find so irritating before I warmed to the series. It's just a mite unsatisfying, that's all, an interesting experiment that might have yielded even more impressive results with a touch more commitment.
You have to wonder what AnimeWorks were thinking when they released Fight!! Spirit of the Sword. The obvious answer would be "money", except that it's hard to imagine a time when the anime market was so undercrowded that people would be rushing out to buy a thirty-minute-long OVA adapting a manga that I'm going to assume never made it to the West, and which I'm further assuming went under a different title - astonishingly, there's no Wikipedia page for Fight!! Spirit of the Sword. Oh, and yes, you read that correctly, AnimeWorks put out a release that was thirty minutes long including credits.
Now admittedly, that needn't be deathly. There are a couple of very short films in my collection that I treasure deeply; Cat Soup, for example, is a minor masterpiece despite its brevity. But Fight!! Spirit of the Sword ain't that. Instead, it's a wholly average, or perhaps slightly subpar, adaptation of something I suspect wasn't particularly inspired in the first place, and certainly comes across as a lot like a lot of other releases coming out of Japan at the time. Long story short - or rather, short story shorter! - our hero Yonosuke Hikura is the inheritor of a magical demon-fighting sword that's possessed by a spirit protector named Tsukinojo, who's either a grown woman or a big-eyed chibi version of a grown woman depending on what's happening, and who can't stray more than a few feet away from the jade hilt that the sword springs lightsaber-like from when it's in use. So it's no good thing when Yonosuke manages to lose the hilt, and therefore Tsukinojo with it, or when both fall into the hands of one of the demons they're meant to be fighting.
Even with that meagre length, it's easy to conceive of a version of Fight!! Spirit of the Sword that felt somewhat worthwhile, but sadly it's not the one the makers opted for. There are two ruinous mistakes, the first being to cram in way too much backstory and a side plot that goes nowhere, and the second being to make the big fight at the end an extraordinarily dull sequence in which Yonosuke flails at demons that resemble badly animated bursts of wind. That latter is really what brings the thing to its knees: a good climax would have taken the edge off the slenderness of what's on offer, since what's come before is pleasant enough, and director Yasumura shows a moderate amount of flare that keeps the mediocre animation from becoming a hindrance; heck, there's even one genuinely ingenious shot transition I've never seen done elsewhere, so hats off to him for that. But when it's all setup to nothing, it's difficult to remember the bits that were mildly engaging.
And here I am, wasting more time reviewing Fight!! Spirit of the Sword than I did watching it, when clearly it's utterly useless and not worth anyone even thinking about tracking down in this day and age. Well, except for one thing: the fifteen minute mini-documentary with the Japanese voice cast is actually kind of a fun time capsule if you're as obsessive about this stuff as I am, certainly more so than the non-event it's accompanying. Still, though, even given AnimeWorks' shameless lack of quality control elsewhere, this really is one for the record books, a release so contemptuous of its potential audience that it would take real effort to sink much lower.
It's a weird experience to watch an anime you only know from a live-action adaptation, but it's an even weirder one, especially if you're a committed fan of the animation medium, to discover that the live-action version is notably better. And here I should admit a degree of bias, since I've a long-term fondness for director Christophe Gans' Mark Dacascos-starring 1995 take on the material, and up until Alita Battle Angel appeared, would cheerfully have declared it the best anime adaptation ever made, despite the wholesale manner in which it plays fast and loose with the Japaneseness of the material. Nevertheless, I'm being as objective as I can, and the fact remains: Crying Freeman the movie is a vastly better interpretation, pilfering what works, discarding what doesn't, and inventing much necessary connective tissue to hold together some whopping narrative gaps.
Both tell essentially the same story, that of Yō Hinomura, a potter forced into the role of assassin, and his romance of sorts with Emu Hino, whom he inadvertently lets witness his bloody work not once but twice and then can't bring himself to do away with like everyone thinks he ought to. In the anime, this is largely a delivery system for lots of violence and nudity, which would be fine so far as it went, except that the animation is bland and the character designs are overly simple, shooting for the relative realism of the source manga and missing by a mile. The result is fight scenes that aren't terribly exciting and a couple of sex scenes that are about as titillating as doing the ironing. (In fairness, this was a failing of Gans' take, too, there's only so much you can do to redeem a sex scene when one of the parties is fully expecting to be murdered straight afterwards and just wants to lose their virginity while they can.)
With all of that together, plus a mismatched and uninspiring score, and then the fact that I've watched this same story told with a great deal more panache, you can imagine how the first fifty-minute-long episode on this, the first of three disks ADV released, didn't blow me away. So that even though the second episode is objectively worse, and much sillier, and probably quite offensive toward the mentally ill, obese people, women, and maybe the Chinese and Japanese as well, given that all the characters behave idiotically to a greater or lesser degree, I at least got a bit of enjoyment out of how dumb and weird it all was. Also, we finally get a bit of shading, which makes the animation look somewhat less cheap than it continues to be, so there's that.
Of course, it's unfair to be dismissive of an anime OVA for not being a live-action film that succeeds in part by heavily ripping off the best parts of said anime, and I suppose the reasonable thing to do would be to try and predict how this would play for the viewer new to the story. But I honestly can't see how it would make much difference. The OVA version, Portrait of a Killer, simply doesn't work, hammering through its tale at such a pace that it's never clear what anyone's motivations are, least of all the organisation Hinomura is enslaved to, who seem to function as villains or allies based on what the narrative needs at any given moment. In this version, it's simply a bad story told badly, and ugly to boot, and while that doesn't preclude the odd good scene or cool-in-a-late-eighties-way explosion of violent action, it also doesn't warrant your time.
-oOo-
On a side note, yeah, I know it makes zero sense that two of the titles here are actually from the eighties when I literally just put up a post focusing on eighties titles in isolation. But remember how I said there that all four felt like they belonged to a different era in a way nineties anime tends not to? Well, that's not true of Fight! Iczer One, which feels startlingly fresh, and for all its copious flaws, not really true of Crying Freeman either, I guess since there's a certain timeless quality to crummy anime. Which, by the way, we still have two more disks of to get through, so there's something to look forward to...
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