Taki (voiced in the American dub
by Gregory Snegoff) is hipped to the
transience of our world’s tenuous treaty with the Black World (a parallel dimension
[?] populated by grotesque monsters) after a near death experience with
not-so-hot bar pickup Kanako (Edie
Mirman). A member of the secretive
Black Guard who defend humanity from the Black Worlders, he is assigned to
protect Giuseppe Mayart (Mike Reynolds),
an ancient, pervy old man who is the key to renewing the accord for another
five hundred years. The beauteous Makie
(Gaye Kruger), Taki’s opposite
number in the Black World, is forced upon our hapless human hero (apologies to Stan Lee), but will tensions flare
between this mismatched pair, or will love blossom? If you guessed neither, you’re not far off.
With some tweaks to the details
of the story, one could believe this anime sprang from the mind of someone like
David Cronenberg or Clive Barker, but it actually crawled
forth from the pen of Hideyuki Kikuchi
who created the Wicked City property
in 1985 with the first book, Wicked City:
Black Guard. I’m uncertain if the
franchise spawned a manga or not, but the anime, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, is one of two
adaptations of it for motion pictures (though I think this was an OVA [Original
Video Animation, i.e. it was produced for and released directly to the home
video market], so it never saw theatrical play). The other was Tai Kit Mak’s 1992 live action take (produced by Tsui Hark), and the only thing I can
distinctly remember about that one is that it was an indecipherable mess,
visually and narratively. The anime,
while slightly easier to understand, is, in my opinion, just as much of a
mess. The characters are cardboard
cutouts without personality (what personality is there is patently unlikable
and uninteresting), and their relationships completely fizzle, in part because
every line is delivered as if pronounced by somnambulists. The story is paper thin and been done to
death for decades. That would be all
well and good, if there was something else to bolster the retreading, and there
is (sex and violence), but, somehow, here it’s just not good enough, even
though brief moments do shine quite brightly, which makes it all the more
disappointing (and if you want to see an actually good collaboration between Kikuchi and Kawajiri, I would suggest checking out the ultra-fun Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust). I honestly can’t say I’ve been more bored by
something as over the top as Wicked City in
a long, long time.
There has been some debate over
whether or not this cartoon should be considered hentai (for the sake of
simplicity and expediency, think “tentacle porn”), and even though I’m not
anime guru enough to fully debate the issue, pro or con, I can say definitively
that there is some explicit stuff going on here. There is a vagina dentata (of a sort) on
display. There is a woman’s body that
opens up like a giant, diseased vagina (shades of Videodrome). There is a
woman being involuntarily fingered by a former friend/lover. There is a penis-snake-like monster that
fucks a woman’s mouth. There is a gang
rape. Sex in the world of Wicked City is dangerous, whether you
want to have it or not. It should be
noted that a lot of this sexual violation and violence happens to the same
woman, so it’s difficult to believe that there isn’t some kind of dislike for
her going on under the surface (okay, it’s right there in front of your face;
there’s nothing subtle about it).
Compare that to the men in the
film. They are consummate womanizers. Giuseppe lusts after Makie and blatantly grabs
her ass as well as rubs her legs while she tries to ignore him. Taki wins a bet with his bartender pal when
he scores with Kanako. Giuseppe loves
his porn (he even tries to get Makie to watch some with him; what woman could
resist?) and is simply dying to get his rocks off with a prostitute. Bearing this in mind, the men get to have
voluntary, pleasant enough sex with women before being attacked by whatever
monster into which the woman will transform (and this setup where all of the
women that the human men have sex with are literally horrors is telling; women
clearly can’t be trusted in the slightest, and the men are dolts for not being
able to choose their lays better).
Further, the monster women seem intent on eating the men (or some vital
aspect of them), and not in the foreplay sense of the word. The males are violently consumed by the
females, the females are violently penetrated by the males. Naturally, neither turn of events is
especially desirable, but the latter has an innate sense of sleazy misogyny to
it that’s rough going. However, it’s the
choice the characters get to make before the violence that makes the
difference, and the women don’t really get a choice at all. Although it doesn’t particularly bother me in
the context of the film and its universe, the sexual politics of the anime will
turn some people off, just as it will turn others on, so you’re aware.
Like so very, very many mismatched action
partners (Riggs and Murtaugh from the Lethal
Weapon films, Sykes and Francisco from Alien
Nation, Gallagher and Beck from The
Hidden, ad infinitum), Wicked City
has a duo that is diametrically opposed but is forced to work together. Well, that’s something of an overstatement,
actually. Makie and Taki don’t really
have anything against each other beside their dislike and distrust for the
other’s “country” of origin. They don’t
bicker and argue, they don’t have any physical altercations with each other (that
I can recall), and there is no begrudging respect that builds between the
two. The instant they meet, Taki refers
to Makie as “disgustingly perfect” (what a honeydripper!), and you know it’s
basically a waiting game until the two are in bed together (and it’s not a very
exciting waiting game at that). Sparks
do not fly, because none of the emotion the filmmakers are trying to convey is
earned, and even if they did earn it (which, I maintain, they didn’t), it feels
hollow and false, because these characters are merely sacks of meat going
through the motions with other sacks of meat.
The anime is loaded from stem to stern with bodies displayed inside and
out, but none of them is filled with anything I would call a heart.
MVT: Sex and violence is the
name of the game, and the film delivers the goods in these regards. It just doesn’t deliver anything else that’s
all that interesting or involving.
Make or Break: The opening
scene (you’ve likely seen a fairly famous still from it if you’ve ever searched
for this movie on the internet) sets up the world and the type of characters
who inhabit it handily. It also
forewarns of the film’s problems early on, so if you’re not all in by the end
of this scene, you never will be.
Score: 5/10
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