As a general rule of thumb when it comes to trash cinema, it’s Hong Kong for live-action and Japan for animation, but occasionally Japan produces a film with real people in it that delivers the pizza. ‘Gunhed’ certainly is worth watching, though I kept having to remind myself that it wasn’t just very good animation, as it has all the elements of some anime: large weaponry, enormous robots and explosions that dwarf both. This feeling of unreality isn’t helped by the fact that the comic of the movie has already been published here, so that it feels more like a movie-of-the-comic rather than the other way round.
Virtually all the characterization is done through action, with little in the way of an initial set-up. A voice-over gives the basic facts: in the year 2005 Chiron-5, a massive computer controlling an industrial complex on an island, went rogue and declared war on humanity. Twenty years later, Chiron-5 is dormant and a team has been sent to try and reclaim the island. Before you can say “influenced by ‘Aliens'”, they’re trying to fight their way through the automatic defence system.
And coming off seriously runners-up. Damage and power loss means this is merely the BACK-UP defence system but it rapidly proves itself capable of shrinking the team, thanks in no small amount to it’s bio-droid which combines the power of a machine with the cunning of a human. This first third has a heavy cyberpunk feel with the characters looking like refugees from Chiba City, switching from English to Japanese almost at will. This is cool, and has the added benefit of meaning that the story isn’t too hard to follow, even in it’s original Japanese version.
Before too long, the team is sliced ‘n’ diced down to two, Brooklyn (a mechanic who can fix anything) and Nim (a bounty-hunter picked up on the way). Her appearance came as something of a surprise – in the comic, she looks about 12, in the movie she’s definitely not (conclusively proved thanks to her penchant for tight-fitting costumes!) but one thing that’s faithfully transferred is the large weaponry she wields.
The remainder of the story has the pair struggling to reach Chiron-5’s core and stop it turning itself into a nuclear reactor – the only reason it went dormant was to wait for humanity to develop Texmexium (wince!), a nuclear fuel which it wants to use to destroy the world. Brooklyn rebuilds a GUNHED (Gun UNit/Heavy Elimination Device) left over from a previous assault and it starts charging up the 400 storey central building which houses Chiron-5 while Nim, aided by two children who are the descendants of the team that originally maintained the computer, runs interference against the bio-droid. A nasty twist is that after it’s original bio-droid was destroyed, Chiron-5 builds a new one using the corpse of one of Nim’s colleagues as an ingredient…
There are plenty of other memorable moments as the story unfolds, notably GUNHED’s use of a novel fuel and Brooklyn wielding what may well be the largest gun ever carried by a single character! Overall, it’s highly enjoyable stuff, if scarcely mind-taxing – the effects and sets are mostly very impressive, save the odd squirm-inducing model and it’s definitely a loud movie, that should ideally be seen in 70mm Dolby stereo, or since this is virtually impossible, perhaps on laser-disk with a top-notch hi-fi system (all contributions gratefully accepted). However, it is due out in the States this summer and who knows, perhaps it’ll follow ‘Akira’ across?
A Better Tomorrow 1 & 2 (John Woo) + 3 (Tsui Hark) – From the director of ‘The Killer’, the first two could be considered as a single entity although they’re sharply different in style. The first concerns a gangster trying to keep his ‘career’ secret from his policeman brother and gain revenge for some treachery, helped by hitman Chow Yun Fat (HK’s answer to Rutger Hauer). It’s mostly solid, if slightly earnest, drama, that swings wildly from splatter to soap opera. Tt was enormously successful in Hong Kong, so naturally led to a sequel. Problem: Chow Yun Fat was blown away at the end. Solution: he had a twin brother in New York, who’s dragged in when a friend, trying to go straight, is framed for a murder. Cue a ‘Taxi Driver’ impression, a perfect mix of melodrama and tension and an awesome final 15 minutes, with more corpses than Highgate Cemetery, to which no description can do justice. This is Hong Kong cinema at it’s very best – go down your local Chinese video library now and beg them to give you a copy. Tsui Hark’s entry is a prequel to the first two parts, set in the last days of Vietnam; much of the film gives the impression of being shot in slow-motion, it’s stately and graceful, with the obligatory mega-kill finale. The three movies virtually define the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre and should ideally be viewed in one session, as otherwise it’s easy to lose track of who’s taking revenge for who, on who! 7, 10 & 8/10 respectively.
Bloody Ghost (Yuen Cheung Yan) – At least, that’s supposedly the title – it was totally illegible on the video. No matter, this is high fun on a low budget, cramming in more plot elements than you can mention: bar hostesses who can do a mean Bruce Lee impression thanks to a pregnant & irate ghost they nicked from a gang leader who’s sent out a hitman to get it back. Oh, and dumb policemen in red underwear. This may not be as spectacular as some entries in the genre, it’s is just as enjoyable. 8/10.
Final Run (Philip Ko) – Burdened by too many characters who all seem to be related to each other, ‘Final Run’ suffers from a rare affliction in Hong Kong movies: an over complex plot. It, like so many others, has evil drug barons; that’s about all I really understood, thanks to perhaps the moat incomprehensible set of subtitles ever inflicted on the English language. You’re grateful when characters die, as it’s one less person to worry about – fortunately, the attrition rate is pretty high. Reasonable mayhem at the end, with Yukari Oshima doing her best. 4/10.
God of Gamblers (Wong Ching) – Chow Yun Fat is one of the few Hong Kong actors capable of gripping you without having to fly through a plate glass window to do it. Here (deep breath!), he plays the ultimate gambler (capable of throwing five dice and getting a total of four pips) who suffers amnesia after a blow to the head and falls into the hands of some low-lifes (with hearts of gold) who realise his potential but not the fact that the entire underworld is looking for him. Phew! It’s more unusual than your average revenge movie, yet also has enough action to keep things going. Chow Yun Fat is superb (as ever), both as the God and as the child he becomes following the accident, complete with a chocolate craving. Baccarat has never been more exciting. 9/10.
I Love Maria (Chung Chi Man) – Another Tsui Hark “production”, so it’s anyone’s guess who really directed it. Obviously heavily influenced by ‘Robocop’, it has the Hero gang using an ED-209 creature to try and take over the city, only to find their way blocked by the Maria of the title (definite shades of ‘Metropolis’) who was re-programmed by accident to the side of good. From here, things just get faster and faster. And faster. People, robots and cameras fly through the air with the greatest of ease, taking your breath with them, right until the climax in what looks like a power station. Wow. 8/10.
Men Behind the Sun (T.F.Mous) – In the last days of WW II, the Japanese developed bacteriological weapons: 731 Battalion, in occupied Manchuria, was a top-secret establishment for testing these on the local population. ‘Men Behind the Sun’ describes the activities that went on, in graphic detail, yet manages to avoid the pitfalls of other pseudo-historical docudramas. It devotes time to building the characters: although the sympathy is clearly with the victims, the Japanese are not sneering caricatures but real people who believed they were doing the best for the Empire. This makes it even more harrowing as they lose all human emotions towards their test subjects, or ‘marutas’ as they call them (in an effort to dehumanize them, just as the Americans called the Vietmanese ‘gooks’). Even though half an hour elapses before the first atrocity, this is no sanitised TVM, it’s a slow descent into hell. Great detail is paid to historical accuracy – we get victims’ names and ages, dates and places which contrasts markedly with the fast & loose approach of more exploitative films. There’s no morally sound, happy ending, either – this could well be the ‘Henry’ of war movies. It’s not a film to enjoy, or even to like (and so can’t be ‘marked out of 10’) but it’s undoubtedly one to be respected.
Magic Cop (Tung Wai) – When cops try to arrest a suspected drug trafficker, she ends up getting run over. However, the autopsy show she died a week previously. Fortunately, they can call on the services of Lam Ching Yin (from ‘Mr.Vampire’ – the one with the odd haircut), a combined cop/exorcist. His new partners are sceptical, until they see him in action, then they’re behind him 100%. Hiding, mostly, while he takes on Michiko Nishiwaki (rapidly rivalling Cynthia Khan as a favourite) who’s resurrecting the dead as her minions. I’ve seen ‘Zu’. I’ve seen ‘A Chinese Ghost Story’. I thought I’d seen everything. I hadn’t – my jaw spent most of this movie in my lap. A wonderful combination of cop thriller, black comedy and occult movie. 9/10.
Magnificent Warriors (David Chung) – The problem with watching films after coming back from the pub is that specific thoughts are lost, in favour of an alcohol-induced ambience. Preceded, oddly, by a trailer for itself, this one came across as being almost non-stop action, set in China between the wars, with Michelle Khan as an Indiana Jones figure, right down to the whip. The plot was something about the Japanese who were occupying China at the time. I remember enjoying it a lot but would have to watch it again to be sure of precisely why. This must be the cinematic equivalent of pop music; great fun while it lasts and evaporating as soon as it’s finished. I make no claims for it’s entertainment value if sober! 7/10.
Ninja Vampire Busters (Norman Law & Stanley Siu) – What looks like a typically exploitative Colourbox title turns out to be almost accurate, though ‘Kung Fu Demon Busters’ might be a better description. Or indeed, ‘Rabid Daddies’, as a 500-year old demon escapes from an urn to possess the head of one of Hong Kong’s more powerful families. Throw in elements of ‘The Exorcist’ (the ghost moves across to the young daughter), ‘The Thing’ (no-one’s sure who’s possessed), ‘Hellbound’ (monster runs amok in hospital), a hint of blasphemy, some Jacky ‘Chinese Ghost Story’ Cheung and you get a solid 90 minutes of fun. 8/10.
Pantyhose Hero (Samo Hung) – After two homosexual men are murdered, Samo Hung and Alan Tam assume the identities of gay lovers to try and track down what happened. With dialogue like “Oh no, now my bottom’s really for it”, this is not a subtle or sympathetic portrayal of alternative sexuality. However politically incorrect it may be to say so, it’s still (mostly) funny with both actors struggling to retain their decency and anal virginity. There are a few wasted opportunities, for example, an aphrodisiac spiked bottle of champagne isn’t as well used as it might be (???) and it also tries too hard to be too many things – comedy, romance, thriller, kung fu. What the hell, it succeeds on most levels, just don’t take your local bleeding-heart liberal to it. 7/10.
Tiger on the Beat (Liu-Chia Liang) – A seriously young-looking Chow Yun Fat is a seriously laid-back cop who finds himself teamed up with the same policeman who came seriously close to blowing him away mere days previously. ‘Serious’, in the superlative sense, probably sums up this movie better than most words, most notably in the final fight sequence which has a chainsaw battle that beats anything I’ve seen anywhere. Chow Yun Fat does other nifty work with weapons unlikely to pass the BBFC as he takes on…(all together now)…a gang of drug smugglers! While there might not be much new here, the execution is almost flawless making it one of CYF’s best. And that’s seriously good. 9/10.
Animation
Ariel. Ariel stands for All-Round Intercept and Escort Lady: pride of the Earth’s defence force, a four hundred foot tall “pink fairy” (to quote the trailer), though “female robot” might be more accurate. Controlled by three school-girls, the episode of this I saw had them fighting to save the Earth from a guy who wanted to destroy it, seemingly because he’d been spurned in love. Sounds fair enough to me. As ever, Tokyo gets trampled by the monsters he controls – until the pink fairy arrives… 5/10.
Dream Hunter Rem. It’s well known that anime heroines all have eyes like saucers, but Rem truly takes the proverbial ginger snap – she could use dustbin lids for shades. The cuteness is enhanced by a mini-skirt that won’t stay dead, but is at odds both with her car (a rocket launcher equipped Metro City) and her large sword (with a capital F). Like a modern day Captain Kronos, she faces all manner of occult nasties – the episode I saw had a headless samurai who eventually finds his skull and immediately grows to such a size that Ariel (cf.) would have problems. Despite the sword, the problem is not solved by chopping it into small chunks, which is a nice change. 8/10.
Guy. Certain themes recur repeatedly in Japanese animation. ‘The Thing’ would seem to inspire a number of films where people turn into the sort of creatures H.P.Lovecraft described as “indescribable” (usually just before he spent several pages describing it). This is a good example: there’s something unpleasant in a mine that makes you go icky and start ripping heads off bodies. Spectacularly messy, with a helping of sex as well, including some rather nasty stuff with a gun barrel. 6/10.
My Neighbour Totoro – On the other hand, the gentler sort of anime: no space-ships, no monster robots tearing each other apart and absolutely no tentacles doing unpleasant things to anyone. Director Miyazaki has turned out some great stuff in the past (‘Laputa’ and ‘Warriors of the Wind’), and this is even better still. It’s like ‘The Railway Children’, perhaps with overtones of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, as a young girl (no sniggering please, this is strictly legit) moves into the countryside when her mother has to go into hospital, and meets the mystical inhabitants of the forest. None of whom have tentacles. About the only frightening thing is that I enjoyed it so much “despite” it being all gentle and nice. Complaints about TC going soft are acceptable only from people who’ve watched this and not gone gooey! 9/10.
Once Upon a Time– An ultra-rare item, anime released here without being entirely mutilated, this ranks as the most depressing animated movie I’ve seen. Beautifully done though, with characters who possess more depth than many live-action films, and a harsh condemnation of war that pulls surprisingly few punches for it’s ‘U’ certificate. Ignore the naff cover and the very naff trailers for other MY-TV cartoons, get to the main feature and you’ll be hooked. Worth far more than the 4.99 you’ll pay, if you can find it. 8/10.
Patlabor. Another favourite anime theme is the characters in mechanised body armour (a primitive version of which Ripley wore at the end of ‘Aliens’, or see ‘Robojox’ – if you must) fighting wars, each other, or as in this case, criminals. More than that I can’t really claim to have understood: there’s a lot of running around before we get to the interesting bit: a battle in which the villain appears to demolish most of the police force. ‘To be continued’ apparently, though it’s not a prospect I view with enormous enthusiasm. 3/10.
Pop Chaser. The setting here is part Western part sci-fi: the heroine rides into town in her battle armour and finds the place strangely deserted. In the local saloon she finds this is due to a gang of outlaws led by Zack – that night, Mai, one of the saloon girls, asks for her help and they indulge in some tasteful lesbian love. The next day, Zack kidnaps Mai, only to find her a bit too much of a lap-ful and after lots of explosions his gang are defeated. A pleasant mix of soft-core sex and violence. 8/10.
Robot Carnival. A compilation film of eight parts, done by different animators, loosely linked by the theme of ‘Robots’. As with all such things, the results are variable but there is only one dull segment, a terribly New Age sequence with lots of clouds. The rest are mostly good to very good and there’s one incredible piece about an inventor who builds a female robot only to find her falling in love with him, which has to be one of the most moving pieces of animation I’ve seen. If any anime deserves a wider release, it’s this one. 3-10/10.
Vampire Hunter D. The title is about as far as my understanding goes: the hero, who may well be a vampire himself, travels about an alien world (complete with dinosaurs) taking on various nasty critters, helped by a female he rescues on the way. Nice opening sequence of a dinosaur hunt that goes wrong and thanks to the striking visuals, this is an example of a film that’s always interesting even if you don’t know what the hell’s going on! 7/10.
Wings of Oneamise. Unusually deep anime, more ‘The Right Stuff’ than ‘Top Gun’. Set on another planet, where one nation is on the verge of getting into space. I was expecting the usual techno-overkill (not that I dislike techno-overkill, I hasten to add!) so it was a pleasant surprise to see that it remained low-science and concentrated on the characters involved who, for example, worry about the worth of the project when the money could be used for “better” things. Intelligent and engrossing. 8/10.
“Westerners in Japan spend much of their time being confused”
It’s an alien country, unlike anything you’ve ever seen. The transport systems are impossible to use. The cost of living is unbelievably high. The food is hostile. The natives and their language are incomprehensible. The weather is foul. The customs are unfathomable, and any foreigner there is treated like a quaint and distasteful oddity.
The above facts are pretty much a summary of what I had read and heard about Japan before I left England. I’d prepared for this trip, revised harder than I ever did for my exams. Guidebooks, language courses, The Rough Guide to the World. As I stood waiting for a bus at Narita Airport (which is about an hour’s drive from Tokyo itself), I must admit to being a little worried. Still, here I was, and here I was going to stay for the next two weeks. Having no tangible assets whatsoever, I had put myself in debt for a year to pay for this. It was just something I had to do.
It took me one day to realise that guidebooks on Japan can be compared almost universally to a Texas Longhorn: a point here, a point there, and an awful lot of bull in between….
Not only do they lie a lot, they also miss out things that they should really tell you. For a start, I wasn’t expecting the pavement to be full of bicycles. I stepped out of the hotel at eight in the morning on my first day and suddenly I was in the middle of the Tour De France. They were everywhere, and none of them were doing less than thirty. Only a heroic leap sideways saved me from being sliced laterally into about a dozen pieces. The shriek of mortal terror was purely for show. I found myself in a shop doorway, having my legs hosed down by a tiny Japanese woman in a brown kimono and a baseball cap. I was ready to take this personally until I realised that every doorway in the street had water jetting out of it. They were washing the pavement down before business, just like they did every morning.
While squelching away from this particular revelation I got my first real views of Tokyo from street level. Looking out of the bus window was enough to leave me open-mouthed with wonder, but it’s not the same as standing there and having it all happen around you. Right opposite my hotel was the Korakuen Amusement Park, extending as far up as it did to either side, and containing some of the most sadistic-looking rides I have ever seen. Behind this catalogue of terrors lay the Tokyo Dome, known locally as the Big Egg. They ain’t kidding. It’s a covered baseball stadium and racecourse that makes Wembley Stadium look like a putting green. Using the park’s taller features as a reference point, I got down to the serious business of exploring Suidobashi, the area where I was staying.
Suidobashi’s shops all sell either books or sporting equipment, and they are taller than they look. Within twenty minutes I was more lost than I have ever been in my life, and the park was completely hidden. It had probably retreated below ground, like the base in Stingray. I had my map, given to me back in London by the people at the Japan Travel Centre, but Tokyo city planners obviously don’t like naming their streets in any way that can be read by the human eye. I began to feel pretty stupid, until I realised that there were groups of Japanese people who looked more lost than I did. By the time I spotted the Korakuen big wheel six hours later I had seen a lot of Tokyo. My feet looked like Bruce Willis’ at the end of Die Hard.
I’d seen a lot, but I’d fallen in love and wanted more. I was getting a kick out of the simple things, like the Japanese writing confronting me wherever I looked, the multicoloured taxis, the dozens of vending machines on every street. If you have a 100 Yen coin in your pocket, you can never run out of cigarettes of canned drinks in Tokyo, regardless of the time. I liked the sound of the language, the faces of the people: the open, interested expressions of the girls, without any hint of the smug self-awareness so typical of the western female. Schoolgirls beam and giggle, old ladies nod and smile, their eyes bright and knowing, and businessmen will happily reveal that they speak better English than you do.
That was the last time I got lost in Japan, because the next day I discovered the Tokyo Underground System. It spreads like a vast spiderweb under the city, connecting everything to everything else. Wherever you look there are station entrances, clearly labelled in English and occasionally Japanese. Once inside you can be anyplace in Tokyo within twenty minutes. What surprised me was the state of the trains themselves: I had never seen tube carriages that were clean, comfortable, and free from litter, graffiti, and drunken skinheads. Some of them had computer displays telling passengers which station they were approaching, which they had just left, what the time was and the latest baseball scores, all in the ever-present Kanji with English translation. How long would that last in Britain without some moron’s Doc Martin going through it?
After I’d gotten the hang of that, I decided to hit Ginza and look for some food, since Aeroflot’s in-flight meals had killed my appetite for the past two days. Ginza is Tokyo’s fashionable shopping district. The department stores there (Depatos) all look like half-a-dozen Harrodses in a stack. They’ve got beer gardens on the roof, food halls in the basement, and everything else in between. I’d read all about this, of course. I’d even seen photos of it. But the reality was enough to turn my brains to jelly. I was walking around like a baleen whale feeds, gob wide open and sucking in experience like krill. Eventually I plucked up enough courage to go into a Sushi bar and try some of the stuff. My first real mistake since arriving. It wasn’t just the bones, the eyeballs, the bits of tentacle with the suckers still attached: the whole thing just tasted vile, kind of a cross between lavender soap and Dettol. I crammed as much of the awful stuff down my throat as I could stomach, trying to convince myself that it is practically impossible for octopus tentacles to reconstitute within the human gut and exact a terrible, Alien inspired revenge, then paid up and staggered off.
That little adventure cost me nigh on twenty quid. Since it’s terribly bad manners to count your change in the shop, I was at least able to get outside before I started crying. Let me state now that this was an isolated incident. As long as I steered clear of raw fish, I got on very well with Japanese food. Japanese drink, too. When drunk hot, Sake tastes like Christmas, and couldn’t get into the brain quicker if it was injected. They have soft drinks there called Pocari Sweat, Post Water (advertised by Bruce Willis, no less) and Fuzzy Navel, and you can get tea and coffee in cans, hot or iced. Noodles are delicious, whichever type you try, and a huge bowl (more than I could eat) can be bought for less than a pound. If you know where to look, you can survive in Tokyo for pretty close to nothing.
I didn’t. Get by for nothing, that is. I’m pretty sure I survived, but changed in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible. I was a lot poorer, for one thing. The hotel I stayed in cost nearly forty quid a night, and that was just room, no food. Two people sharing would pay about thirty each. This is using the coupons issued by the Japan Travel Centre in London: if I hadn’t used these, hotel prices went from fifty-six to nigh on two-hundred quid a night!
Schellack at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I also spent far too much on stuff to bring back. Being a rabid Anime fan, video tapes were an essential purchase. Unfortunately, there is very little sell-through in Japan, and my copies of Dominion 3+4 and Adventure Iczer-3 cost me forty quid a time. All in all, I spent about seven hundred on books I can’t read, videos I can’t watch, and CD’s I can’t listen to (no player). Various conversions cost another hundred when I got back….
Time to go home arrived a lot quicker than I’d have liked. For some reason, I felt more at home in Tokyo than anywhere in England. Maybe it was the feeling of perfect safety prevalent everywhere except the roads and the bicycle-infested pavements: you can ride a Tokyo subway at midnight and be in no danger at all. Even drunk Japanese are totally non-belligerent. They just sing louder and cry a lot. Maybe it was the fact that everything seemed to work. Whatever the reason, it hardly felt any time at all before I was back at Narita airport with a suitcase that exceeded my weight limit by ten kilos and a young Japanese lady telling me that I couldn’t board the plane home because I had not reconfirmed my flight.
This was something else I hadn’t been told about, and it put me at a bit of a loss. Not to mention screaming panic. I had spent all my remaining money on Pachinko the night before, and now I was being told that I would have to stay in the airport for another twenty-four hours….It would have been okay if I could have afforded another night in Tokyo. Thankfully (miraculously!) an English guy turned up at the same time and offered to swap flights with me: he had a reconfirmed ticket but had lost his passport, and would have to return to Tokyo to get it. While I rained burning kisses on his shoes the Japanese lady gave me his ticket home. Fourteen hours in a Russian-built jalopy of an airliner and the grubby lights of Heathrow swung pestilently into view.
When I landed, it was raining. It was cold. The train home was full of morons and the wheels for my suitcase had come adrift somewhere over Moscow. This was supposed to be home. I didn’t like it. I still don’t. The English have got no bloody manners and the shops shut too early. But give me a year to clear the debt and I’ll be back in Tokyo, doing it all over again. I’ve just heard that the Japanese hire about three hundred Brits a year to teach conversational English to pretty little High School girls. I think I may be making some enquiries soon….
Since the beginning of the 80’s, the West has slowly been discovering the popular culture of Japan, a country hitherto known only for ‘The Seven Samurai’, a handful of similar art-house features (often by directors disliked in their native Japan) and vast numbers of dire monster movies.
I’d like to say it began in Britain earlier, but probably it was indeed Clive James’s look of pained disbelief as Japanese salarymen willing tied themselves to tractors, in order to be dragged half-naked over sunbaked gravel, that revealed to the British public at large the truth about this little known island. We loved it. Gradually, better (and more horrendous) forms of entertainment were discovered so that by the late 80’s and Channel 4’s Japan season, the myth of the Japanese as mild-mannered, Bonsai-trimming car-manufacturers had been totally destroyed.
Despite changes since World War II, Japan is still the same culture it was when the Portuguese and Dutch came in the 16th century. Beneath a surface gloss of civilization runs violence: then, as samurai defending his lord’s honour in battle, and now, as a hero on the silver screen dispatching victims with the precision of a micro-surgeon.
In Japanese film & TV, violence is intrinsic and natural, certainly the only thing holding it back is the cost and difficulty of any special effects. But what live action can’t manage is carried out by animation studios (in Japan, these produce 150 cinema releases per year) to satisfy an eager audience. The obvious advantages of animation are exploited to the budget’s limits when it comes to thinking of new ways to kill people on screen and anime has succeeded in throwing up (literally!) some of the most shocking and creative sequences of designer violence ever, whether in fast paced fight scenes or nightmarish visions of terror.
And so dear readers, here in reverse order, are what your humble author considers the ten ‘best’ examples of extreme violence in anime. Dependent on your personal proclivities, any or all of these are worth seeing…
10 – Black Magic Marionette M66
A good example of violent action in an excellent ‘Terminator’ style movie. The feature contains little more than two set pieces: one is set in a tower block, but the better one for my money has the rogue androids (of female design, no less) attack an army road checkpoint. The androids easily kill most of the soldiers in an impressive display of martial arts and whilst blood and gore are not greatly in evidence, the style of the piece more than makes up for it.
9 – A.D. Police File One
Being largely invulnerable to gunfire will help prolong any violence and the protagonists in A.D. Police, again female robots, are just that. The scene that counts has the police trying desperately to destroy a robot by cutting it’s head off. However, it gets a gun and proceeds to pump enough lead into one guy to sink his corpse, with each round sending either a limb or about two pints of blood flying.
8 – Yoma, Volume One
A single picture stands out in this one, aside from some nice human-spider transformations. The best image is of the spider overlord (who is distinctly human), sitting in his nest eating a human head. If you’ve ever seen pictures of children brought up by wolves to eat raw meat and run wild, then you’ll recognise the look on the creature’s face.
7 – Outlanders
The film of the comic, although heavily condensed, retains the carnage of Kham’s arrival on Earth. Heads lose contact with necks, arms touch the floor without their respective bodies having to bend and death scenes all contain enough blood to paint the town red.
6 – M.D. Geist
This one really is a lot of cobblers, but it does contain a lot of very gory violence. Our hero, M.D. Geist himself, is more than capable of crushing a man’s head with his bare hands. If this show is to be believed, in such circumstances the human eye will merely pop out due to the pressure. Again, blood is much in evidence, one guy at least having a seemingly endless supply.
5 – Megazone 23, Part II
The key sequence here involves a very one-sided space battle. Imagine, if you will, the effect that masonry drill (attached to flexible tubing so that they can go anywhere) would have on your skull. Got it? Good. That’s a pretty good description of what attacks the bridge crew of a space craft. The deaths of the characters are both protracted and very messy – in case you missed any first time round, most of it is repeated later on in the film as a gory captain’s log.
4 – Five Star Stories
Another entry in the Stylish Violence bracket. Again, it’s decapitation and dismemberment but it’s an altogether better class of death and destruction than previously. Choice moment has to be when a knight uses a light sabre to slice through a guy’s head, and the two parts slide apart. Or perhaps the ‘multiple beheading by pole-ax’ is more to your liking…
3 – Akira
There’s no denying it – ‘Akira’ is a very violent film, it’s impact largely coming from it’s realism, the excess of blood being replaced by accurate portrayal of internal organs. Tetsuo’s transformation into the pile of molten flesh being all the more unpleasant for the lack of blood. The film’s ability to shock is outstanding, how this got a ’12’ certificate, I will never know.
2 – Violence Jack
I’m pleased to say that I’ve only seen part of this, but what I did see was highly unpleasant. The nastiest anime generally involves sexual violence and this is no exception. A motorcycle gang attacks and rapes a group of models trapped in parking lot. Help comes their way when Jack intervenes, a man whose idea of justice is to tear the offender in two by grabbing a leg in each hand and ripping. Everything about this was sick. It’s still not as bad as…
1 – Urotsuki Doji
This is sick. Really sick. Also known as ‘Wandering Kid’, it has quite a degree of infamy, as shown by the fact that it had the highest audience of any film at Eastercon ’90 (the national SF convention). It’s plot, what little there is, revolves around an angel, thrown out of heaven for being too brutal, fighting demons on Earth. All this is just an excuse for three set piece sexually violent sequences. By far the worst, in my opinion anyhow, is when the young ‘hero’ (a pervert who enjoyed watching his girlfriend get raped), killed in a car accident but resurrected as a demon, literally fucks a nurse to death. His penis then extends to well over a hundred metres long and tears it’s way through the hospital, trapping the souls of countless victims. Not only is this the most violent anime I’ve ever seen, it’s the most extreme piece of any sort. Indeed, it is a relief to know it’s “only a cartoon”, but leaves me with one thought: what sort of people are the animators?
[Editor’s note: I agree that it’s no.1, but for me the worst section is where a schoolgirl is molested by her female teacher, who then turns into a many-tentacled demon which rapes said schoolgirl. In every orifice. Simultaneously. In close-up…]
The films of Jackie Chan have a far greater fascination for me than those of his Western counterparts in the martial arts genre, such as Jean-Claude Van Damme. I find ninety minutes of sadistic nastiness of limited interest and greatly prefer Jackie’s brand of spectacularly enjoyable violence where no-one, not even the bad guys, ‘really’ seems to get hurt. I use quotes deliberately because he has probably suffered more injuries while doing his own stunts (still the case, even though he’s now a star) than most Western stunt-men (never mind actors!), most notably a fractured skull during filming in Yugoslavia on ‘Armour of God’. When Jackie limps, it’s probably for real.
Jackie Chan, real name Chan Kong-Sang, was born on April 7th, 1954 in Hong Kong. When he was seven, his parents sent him to the Peking Opera -perhaps the best way to describe this venerable institution, responsible for producing some of the best Oriental martial artists, is to call it a cross between a stage school, a circus and an SAS training camp. There, under his master Yu Chan Yuan, he spent ten years learning acting, gymnastics, singing and, naturally, martial arts – his teachers remember him as not outstanding, but he always gave 100%.
Just like Bruce Lee, Jackie started his career as a child actor and he then worked as a stuntman for several years before getting any major breaks. His first film, ‘Master with Cracked Fingers’ shows a very different JC to the one we know today, not least because he’s since had cosmetic surgery to Westernise his eyes. It has to be said that a lot of his early movies, which he merely acted in rather than directing, were low-budget hack-jobs, churned out under tight budgets and schedules. His later fame also meant that any film in which he’d appeared suddenly became ‘starring Jackie Chan’ – not that this means they are automatically worthless of course (‘Half a Loaf of Kung Fu’ has it’s moments) but you’re advised to view with some caution.
The first turning point in Jackie’s career came with ‘Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow’ (below), made in 1978 under director Yuen Wo Ping, later responsible for ‘In the Line of Duty 4’, one of my all-time favourites. The same duo virtually remade this movie as ‘Drunk Monkey in the Tiger’s Eyes’ -different fighting style (this one roughly translates as ‘Eight Drunken Fairies’, and requires the participant to drink a lot of alcohol!), almost the same plot.
Shortly afterwards, Jackie took over directing his films, and has done so on most of his appearances since, though after a couple of movies, he made a brief excursion to America for ‘The Big Brawl’ directed by Robert “China O’Brien” Clouse. This was followed shortly afterwards by a small part in ‘The Cannonball Run’: Jackie also appeared in the sequel, but that’s not his fault.
Opportunity knocked, and Jackie left from a first floor window to meet it. The result, and the second turning point, was ‘Project A’. The rest, as they say, is history. Big box-office followed and Jackie was firmly established as the biggest star in Hong Kong, although his fame here has been mostly limited to video, with cinema releases of his films being distressingly few and far between,
Humour plays a vital role in Jackie’s films, a pleasing contrast to the unremitting seriousness that affects most of the Western output (‘Blind Fury’ being a notable and worthy exception). Learning much from masters of physical slapstick such as Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan has become adept at using humour to provide an outlet for the energy his movies generate, without detracting in any way from the tension. Credit for this must also be given to Samo Hung, acknowledged as the master of “funny kung-fu”, and with whom Jackie has worked on many movies. These two are master craftsmen and if either of them are directing a film, you’re virtually guaranteed a good time. And ‘a good time’ is what sums up Jackie Chan’s films more than anything else – here are my personal favourite five, all directed by him except where noted:
5. Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin (Chen Chi-Hua) – This one’s my favourite early Jackie Chan, perhaps because while it’s less spectacular than his later efforts, it’s 96 minute running-time seems to be almost entirely fight sequences! Jackie plays the only surviving master of the titular fighting technique who’s carrying the manual describing the style and who thus becomes a target for virtually every clan in existence. All is not quite what it seems, however. This is a ‘classical’ kung-fu movie, and so may not appeal to everyone, but I like the feel of it and the ease with which it slotted a relatively complex plot into the small gaps between the battles.
4. Project A – Jackie’s first big directorial hit is set at the turn of the century, when pirates ruled the waves because the police and coastguard were too busy bickering with each other to fight crime. An impressive opening bar-brawl and the best bicycle chase since the days of silent movies are capped by perhaps JC’s most amazing stunt ever, when he falls fifty feet or so from a clock tower onto solid ground – admittedly, there are a couple of awnings in the way, but all they seem to do is ensure he falls on his head. If after this, the film’s pace does slacken a little, it’s understandable! [If the sequel is less spectacular, it’s higher in humour and still decent viewing]
3. Dragon Lord – This provides a great example of the indeterminate time in which many Oriental films are set – it looks like turn-of-the-century China, yet at one of the sporting events there are cheerleaders, complete with pom-poms. Hell, it’s good fun, even though it’s more humourous than martial for the first hour as Jackie and his cousin vie for the affection of a girl and play some amazing pastimes – I especially liked the football -badminton cross. When the kung fu comes, it’s a bonus but is easily up to standard as he takes on a bad guy trying to illegally export antiques. I guess it’s a variation on the old drug smuggler theme!
2. My Lucky Stars (Samo Hung) – Great mix of comedy and action, as might be expected given the director. Jackie appears mainly at the start and end as a cop sent to Japan, who has his partner kidnapped and sends for help from his old orphanage buddies. These include Samo Hung and Yuen Biao, and the party is accompanied by the delectable Sibelle Hu, to whom everyone gets tied during a sequence that’s among the funniest in any film I’ve seen (especially if watched after a couple of pints of Guinness!). The mass brawl at the end is incredible, even if on the small screen you get the feeling you’re missing half the action out the edges.
1. Police Story – Any movie that starts off by destroying an entire village clearly has a severe disregard for property. And when two people plunge head-first onto concrete from the top deck of a bus shortly afterwards, it’s clear this attitude extends to human life. Jackie’s a cop protecting a reluctant drugs witness but this is nearly irrelevant, especially in the UK version which loses 20 minutes of plot, and things move inexorably towards the best end sequence in any martial arts movie. Easily the most violent ’15’ rated movie I’ve seen, you wonder how the stuntmen and Jackie can walk off the set. Then, under the end credits there is a sequence of out-takes and you realise that quite often, they don’t. [The sequel, disappointingly, takes about 70 minutes to get going -an oddly deviant section where three cuties engage in nasty interrogation techniques is a highlight of an otherwise dull movie, though the final battle just about recovers things]
FILMOGRAPHY
Deep-breath time again. The following contains ‘significant’ roles only, excluding films in which he acted as a child or was “only” a stuntman. For an exhaustive rundown, see ‘Eastern Heroes’ No.12 (details in 3-Pin Plugs).
1971 – Master With Cracked Fingers (very, very, barely starred!)
1976 – New Fist of Fury
1977 – To Kill with Intrigue Snake & Crane Arts of Shaolin Killer Meteor Eagle Shadow Fist Hand of Death 36 Crazy Fists (dir) 36 Wooden Men aka Shaolin Chamber of Death
1978 – Drunken Master aka Drunk Monkey in the Tiger’s Eye Half a Loaf of Kung Fu Magnificent Bodyguards Snake in Eagle aka Eagle Shadow Fist Spiritual Kung Fu aka Karate Ghost Busters Dragon Fist
1979 – Fantasy Mission Force Fearless Hyena (+ co-dir) Fearless Hyena II (see Master with Cracked Fingers!)
1980 – The Young Master aka Young Tiger The Big Brawl
1981 – Cannonball Run
1982 – Dragon Lord (+ dir)
1983 – Cannonball Run 2 Project A (+ dir) Winners and Sinners Kung Fu Girls
1984 – Meals on Wheels
1985 – My Lucky Stars The First Mission aka Heart of the Dragon
1986 Police Story (+ dir) Armour of God (+ dir)
1987 Dragons Forever Project A Part II (+ dir)
1988 Police Story II (+ dir)
1989 Miracles (+ dir) aka Mr.Canton and Lady Rose
1991 Project Condor (+ co-dir) aka Armour of God II Island on Fire
