This is an entirely typical batch of reviews by our regular standards, but for me it was a particularly exciting one in that I've been curious to see the 1994 OVA series Genocyber for a long, long while now, partly because it's one of the few truly notorious titles from the time that I'm yet to cover but more so because it's also generally regarded to be pretty damn good, which can't be said for a lot of its ultra-violent kin. Well, thanks to Eastern Star and their recent rescue of the title, I at last got my chance to discover what all the fuss was about, so let's have a long-awaited gander at Genocyber, along with Suikoden: Demon Century, Go Nagai World, and If I See You in My Dreams...
Genocyber, 1994, dir: Koichi Ohata
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Genocyber from a reviewing standpoint, even taking into account the fact that there's an awful lot about it that's puzzling, is that, though it's absolutely definitely a single OVA working its way through what's basically all one plot, it nevertheless manages to tell three largely separate stories that are each very much their own thing. I don't know that you could watch any of them in isolation - though the first is at least pretty self-contained - but at the same time, the second and third chunks go off on such wild tangents that, even in the world of vintage anime where wild tangents were common enough to be practically the norm, I'd be pushed to think of a title that goes quite so far.
The result is that it's tough to make definite statements about what Genocyber is and what it does that might give you a clear sense of whether you'd want to devote two and a half hours of your life to it. I might say, for example, that it's one of the most outrageously gory films I've come across within or outside of anime, and that's absolutely true of the first three episodes, which feel more extreme and legitimately nasty than anything I can think of in a medium and during an era when nastiness was very much often seen as a goal to be worked toward. But then, the last two episodes, which make up the third self-contained arc, are relatively bloodless. By the same measure, if I were to describe the show as near-future cyperpunk horror, those last two episodes ruin that, too, by shifting the action to a post-apocalyptic diesel-punk city that feels totally distinct from what's come before. Heck, even the middle arc, though it's still up to basically the same stuff as the lengthy opening episode, comes at that material from a very different angle, stuffing its plot into a single location and going for a somewhat altered, though equally limit-pushing, brand of gore. In short, Genocyber is surprisingly experimental in its narrative for what on the surface could easily be mistaken for mere exploitation.
Then again, that oughtn't to be a surprise when we consider that the guy at the helm was Koichi Ohata, known mostly these days not as the excellent mecha and character designer he was but as the director of the risible M. D. Geist and its sequel and the arguably kind of brilliant Cybernetics Guardian. Based purely on the latter, I've quite a bit of time for Ohata, and there's no getting around how he uses what could easily be an exercise in gore for the sake of gore to push the envelope in surprisingly inventive ways. Aside from the bizarre narrative shifts, the most noticeable is animation that throws in live-action footage and stills, some unexpectedly decent CGI, stop-motion, physical models, and various other gimmicks to create something thoroughly strange and abrasive. As shocking as the violence often is - and I can't overstress how gross the title is on a routine basis - Genocyber's impact comes as much from the sense of visual shifting sands, since you're never certain what Ohata will throw into the mix next.
Part of me wants to be critical; after all, it's kind of ridiculous that one OVA series should be up to such inconsistent stuff that it's easy to imagine a viewer who might love the first part and hate the third or vice versa. And if we wanted to be sniffy, it's not like all this is happening in service of a particularly exciting or original story. The sense is that the appeal of the unfinished manga Genocyber was expanded from was less that it was a work of genius begging to be retold in a new medium and more than it offered plenty of room for all the weird gimcrackery Ohata brought to the project. Yet, say what you like about Genocyber the anime, it certainly knows how to keep you on your toes, and it's never boring ... horrifying, often hard to follow, and overall slightly mystifying, but not boring. Ultimately, its experimentation makes it difficult to love, in that you can all but guarantee that whatever aspects you're enjoying won't last, yet I can't but admire anything so ferociously odd and confrontational that it still feels dangerous almost three decades later.
Normally it's either brutally obvious why a title never made it to DVD or else a searing injustice with no conceivable rhyme or reason. When it comes to Suikoden: Demon Century, however, it's tough to have strong feelings either way. It's not bad, as such, as far as forty-five minute OVA films go; had it appeared in Manga's budget Collection range, for instance, it would have been comfortably around the middle of the bunch. On the other hand, there's absolutely nothing original here, such that it's actually quite hard to talk about. A bunch of disparate heroes who also happen to be reincarnations of figures from out of history band together in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo to take on a big bad, you say? I'm pretty sure I've heard that one before, and indeed watched more shows exploring each of those individual elements than I care to remember.
If Suikoden: Demon Century stands out in any way, both for good and bad, it's by merit of the inclusion among its core cast of trans female character Miyuki Mamiya, which is nice to see from a progressive point of view but, in the American dub at any rate, handled with all the insensitivity you'd expect and a bit more besides. I'm singling out the dub because the animation and design work presents Miyuki more sympathetically, to the extent that it very much feels as though Tiffany Grant, in charge of the adaptation, went out of her way to pile on the homophobic quips. Not that nineties anime wasn't capable of its own homophobia, heaven knows, but it definitely feels as though there's a somewhat three-dimensional character bursting to get out here that's being constantly stymied by the script's flailing attempts at humour and Aaron Krohn's lisping performance - because, yeah, of course they cast a male actor in the part. (In fairness, so did the Japanese original, which means I'm likely giving that more credit than is due.)
It's frustrating to see an opportunity to bring a bit of diversity to an otherwise largely cliched cast being blown in such a fashion, but let's face it, Suikoden: Demon Century doesn't fare any worse on that score than an awful lot of other anime (and of course non-anime) from the time, and perhaps it only gnawed at me so much because there wasn't a ton of other stuff to divert my attention. The animation is resolutely fine and buoyed by some energetic action sequences, which are a definite plus when action's about all that's on offer but don't fill up enough of the running time to actually become a selling point. Director Negishi would have a solid but unspectacular career, and that feels appropriate given that this is solid but unspectacular work, though in fairness its hard to imagine how any amount of visual style could have distracted from how fundamentally hackneyed the narrative is.
If all this weak praise seems to clash with my opening comments, all I can say is that the nineties generated more than their share of crushingly average OVA short films, and Suikoden: Demon Century is competent and lively and engaging enough, if not to stand out, then at least not to get altogether lost in the crowd. It's mildly surprising that it never got as far as a DVD release when many a worse title did - it seems to have come awfully close, to the point that ADV even advertised a planned DVD version - but then again, I can't imagine anyone regarding its absence as a crushing loss to the world of animated entertainment.
I don't know that Go Nagai World needed to be half so good as it is. And that's a strange observation, I realise, but hear me out ... what we have here is a comedy spin-off of the works of arch provocateur manga creator Go Nagai, in which the bulk of the joke is that his characters are cutesy, chibi-fied versions of themselves that are thrust together into one shared reality, there to play off each other in appropriately silly ways. As I've often noted, comedy mostly just needs to be funny, which means that it doesn't have to be well plotted or sophisticatedly animated to succeed, and indeed I could point you to plenty of genuinely great anime comedies that are neither of those things and get by entirely on the strength of the laughs they provide.
Go Nagai World is funny, although it's not uproariously funny and a lot of the humour is tied into the concept, so that if you're not a fan of the properties involved - primarily Devilman and Mazinger Z, with a hefty chunk of Violence Jack toward the end - and also not the kind of person who's likely to be amused by characters from a series you like being small and ridiculous, you're unlikely to find this hilarious. Still, there's enough else going on beyond the central concept that it's a perfectly good bit of comedy, and if that was all there was here, I'm sure I'd have given it a modestly positive review.
Yet not only is that not the extent of Go Nagai World's ambitions, it barely even seems to be where the majority of its attention is pointed. That it has an actual plot is a surprise, and that said plot gets fairly involved and incredibly meta before it's done is downright baffling; for something so overtly dumb, it gets up to some awfully sophisticated narrative high jinx. But that's nothing compared with the animation, which is gorgeous in a way I barely know what to do with. That's most noticeable in some stunning background art, which ties into how well the narrative works, since those detailed, imaginative images give life to the various locations, however outlandish they often are. But the character work is pretty fine too: since all the cast (barring the odd "real world" sequence) are simple chibi versions of themselves, there's no real need for shading, which leaves room for animation that's much smoother than you'd expect of an OVA from 1991. Put that all together and add in how well the super-deformed character designs have dated, and take into account a top-tier print from Discotek, and you have something that's aged spectacularly well. And on top of that, we have a score by the wonderful Kenji Kawai, which largely ignores the comedy side of things and focuses on being an excellent score of the sort Kawai knocked out on an alarmingly regular basis. Really, the technical values are hard to fault.
In short (pun not intended, but hey, now that it's out there!) I return you to my opening point: Go Nagai World goes far beyond the call of duty into the realms of what could only be considered labour of love territory, and that's especially weird given that it's certainly not driven by blind affection for Mr. Nagai. In fact, part of what makes it so exciting in the late game is the harsh eye it turns upon the act of creativity and the open and honest way in which it addresses how these sorts of works come to exist. A nagging part of me wonders if this was truly the way to go with such a property - I can't deny I'd have liked to see more Nagai characters included outside of their cameos in the opening and closing credits, and it could definitely be a good bit funnier - but by the same measure, it's always exciting to come across something made with so much obvious passion and enthusiasm. All that really holds this back from classic status, then, is how niche it is: here in the West, where Nagai isn't such a household name even among anime devotees, it's hardly an obvious recommendation for the average viewer. So I guess all I can fairly say is that if you fancy it at all and have even a glancing knowledge of Devilman and Mazinger Z, you absolutely ought to give Go Nagai World a look.
For a three episode OVA romcom that nobody much remembers these days, If I See You in My Dreams offers its share of surprises. And the main one for me was how far it leans into the rom half of that equation. Its slender tale introduces us to hapless salaryman Misou, who's somehow made it into his twenties without so much as snatching a first kiss, and is assured by a fortune teller that his lack of luck with the ladies is set to continue until his dying days. However, that begins to seem fractionally less of a sure thing when a chance encounter and a small act of kindness leaves him pining for the beautiful - but equally perennially single - Nagisa. Of course, the path of true love never did run straight, plus it's not altogether clear how interested Nagisa is in him, especially as Misou's blunders in his efforts to get closer to her begin to mount up, and with other people chasing after both of them, how much of a chance do they really have?
What I didn't see coming was how seriously If I See You in My Dreams treats its material and indeed the matter of young love in general. Neither Misou nor Nagisa are anything like perfect; Misou's crippling shyness doesn't need much encouragement to slide into creepiness, and though Nagisa is more of a catch on the face of it, she's awfully quick to jump to the wrong conclusion and then catastrophically overreact. It's not hard to see how this pair reached their twenties without a single date between them, yet they're appealing enough that it also makes sense that they're both attracting the romantic attention from others that leads to most of the show's mishaps. In fact, by the third episode, I wasn't sure whether I ought to be rooting for them or not; rather than their suitors being obvious jerks as they'd probably be in a Western romcom, here they might actually be better matches, and that adds a significant wrinkle to what might otherwise be an overly simple drama.
What that leaves us is a romantic comedy that makes very little effort to be funny, and, if we're to be critical, is absolutely at its worst whenever it heads in that direction. The supposedly humorous situations can't possibly have seemed fresh back in 1998, and even if they had, they'd still be more cringeworthy than amusing. However, their repercussions play out with startling seriousness, and there's something genuinely disconcerting in seeing this sort of material strapped into the framework of an actual romance with actual adults and somewhat realistic emotions. Which leads us to another surprise, which is that director Watanabe, who spent most of the nineties churning out Slayers movies, brings so much artistry and restraint to the project. I liked those Slayers movies just fine, but nothing in them led me to suspect he was the sort of director who'd ever favour introspective character moments over laughs. However, what Watanabe pushes for here time and again is a plaintive, melancholy atmosphere that's well-suited to his protagonists and their predicament, and with less than ninety minutes of running time to play with, it's remarkable how much he's willing to take his foot off the pedal to let a quiet moment sink in. Add to that some rather more complex animation than you'd expect for a title of this ilk and a lovely, emotive score and perhaps the biggest surprise with If I See You in My Dreams is how often it manages to tap in to genuine emotions.
For all its merits, that still leaves If I See You in My Dreams as very much a minor-feeling title, the sort of thing that probably made almost no splash at the time and has since been done better and bigger; it doesn't exactly feel rushed at three episodes, yet that running time does leave it seeming somewhat insubstantial, where another episode or two might have really let the creators dig deep into the central relationship. Nevertheless, that doesn't detract from what a nice little OVA it is or how much it accomplishes with the time it has, nor how thoroughly it won me over in the brief time I spent with it.
-oOo-
