COMICS REVIEW: METALZOIC (1986)

 

Written by Pat Mills

Art by Kevin O'Neill

Lettered by John Costanza

Edited by Andrew Helfer 

Cover Painting by Bill Sienkiewicz 

Published by DC Comics Inc. A Warner Communications Company in 1986 as 'GRAPHIC NOVEL NO. 6'

. . .

"But know this . . . on the day the god-beast dies, the end of the robots is near, and the sun shall set on the era called . . . METALZOIC."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

This is the story of Armageddon and Amok, two mechatyrants engaged in a death duel for supremacy over a race of highly evolved robots in the distant future. 

We're not talking about Asimov's rational, servile robots. These are some wildass machine beasts, whose evolution has been turbocharged by the succession of Cold War military-industrial-infotainment complexes and totalitarian surveillance systems gone rogue. Add in a side-salad of sprawling, hyper-mutational chameleon plants known as Traffids, and you've got yourself a buffet of post-human, future-botbarian savagery-what fun!

Amok is a kind of robot mammoth on tank treads. He leads a massive herd of similar creatures. He manufactures an heir by combining data with a female wheeldebeast, and then pumping liquid steel into her womb-foundry. Out rolls junior, a little guy, who will be built and modified with new, larger parts as he accumulates data over time. 

Amok is the oldest robot, and therefore the God of this cruel world. But as Amok ages, and his parts are damaged, and become dysfunctional, other 'bots may arise to challenge him to a death duel to attain the God position. 

Armageddon is a cruel and treacherous being who has conducted surgery on his own positronic brain to become a more perfect slaughter engine. Armageddon is determined to best Amok in combat and become the God. 

But Armageddon and Amok must endure a world of dangerous mechabominations if they are to have their fated duel . . .

Polaris nuclear submarines that have merged with robosharks.

Predatory eaters that camouflage themselves with the rusty hulks of junked-out 'bots'n'infrastructure. You're scavenging for parts in a boneyard when a terrible, mechanistic maw opens wide to consume you . . .

The organic traffids, genetically engineered carnivorous plants of yore who have developed a taste for steel.

Manipulative religious leaders-shameks-who try to psych you out by manipulating your positronic brains with strategic radio waves . . . or is it wi-fi?!

All of this craziness is drawn with mindbending detail. You'll want to take this one slow, lingering over each page, savoring the comic grotesqueries of each beastbot battle. 

Metalzoic is a clever comedic riff on how human technology is bound up with our values, our fantasies, our pathologies, our tribalisms, our stubborn refusal to let go of outdated mythological and religious motifs. 

And yet . . . these terrible 'bots carry on human idiosyncrasies and desires. Truly, they are making the most of their dreadful human heritage as the misbegotten spawn of late twentieth century war machines. 

Terrifying vessels of an ambiguous spark . . .

COMICS REVIEW: WINNERS (2015)

 by Anna Ehrlemark

Published by Floating World Comics October 2015.

. . .

"I'm not for the trash yet."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Swirling whiteness giving anguished, uncertain existence to various tortured human forms in lands of shadow.

But no worries: life in the world of Winners is a guaranteed waking hell. If you want to be a winner this world makes you work for it, baby!

A woman is convinced that her sister is an artificial construct assembled by other synthetic people known as 'biosapiens.' She believes very strongly that she is the original-not just the first out of the womb-and that her sister never even gestated. Talk about sibling rivalry!

A sleeping woman's face almost seems to float like a discarded Halloween mask upon a dark river, until she awakes in a hospital bed that swallows her whole. Or does she sink forever into the mattress of her own volition in order to achieve some kind of eternal sleep? 

Yet another pair of sisters seems to have been grown in a lab to appear normal when viewed from behind, but then they have monster faces when they turn around. Or, depending on how you interpret the 'edit' of the panels do these monster faces come bursting out of the backs of their heads? Or did the mad scientists brew up what they intended to be as some kind of 'perfect girl' . . . but then the girls were like 'Fuck it' and manifested monster faces to fight free of being manufactured images?

A desperate, starving homeless man warms himself by a bonfire alongside his unhoused comrades until a helicopter descends from the sky to disgorge a sexy woman in skintight pants with large breasts to whisk the starving man away to a feast of rich people in a skyscraper penthouse. That's it. The other homeless men get left out in the cold. 

Two women have sex inside a giant champagne glass before a live studio audience until one is seemingly dissolved by the force of the other's willpower in some kind of clandestine struggle. Pornography and the gladiatorial are combined by some perverse alchemy. 

Winners all.

This is a world of mutability, jealousy, sadism, competition, paranoia, envy, paradox, oppression, despair, and desperate fantasies of vengeance and/or ludicrous good fortune that makes a mockery of all our notions of meritocracy. 

No reasons are given beyond elemental desires for retribution for harms done and a longing for a freedom from want. 

The visuals are sinuously grotesque. 

It's also quite funny in a sicko way I admire. 

Yes, it's a collection of short-short comic book stories, but it works more like an album of thematically connected songs than an anthology of formulaic narratives. I didn't mind this. 

Appropriately, the climax occurs inside a circus tent . . . but you'll just have to see that part for yourself.

Hey, you want to be a real winner, right?

Gotta put in the work. 

COMICS REVIEW: MULLET COP #1 (2021)

 EPISODE ONE: RISE OF THE BUFFET WARRIOR 

Created by Tom Lintern.

Edited by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari.

Production by Marcus Guillory.

Published by Scout Comics September 2021.

. . .

"ONE MAN CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

In the not-too-distant future-the year 2099, no less-huge indoor shopping malls have made a comeback as the centers of culture and as the engines of prosperity. So, all these YouTubers posting dead mall exploration reels are pointing the way to the future after all, it would seem . . .

But all is not well inside this capitalist utopia. The upper levels full of trendy, cyberpunky consumers are built upon the ruined lower depths where vicious biker gangs who cop their style from The Road Warrior, Akira, and Fist of the North Star shit it up however they please, occasionally rising up to rob and kill and destroy the shoppers and-more importantly-the goods and infrastructure these consumers worship.

To counteract these miscreants we have Mall Cops, who ride in the saddles of militarized Segway scooters kitted out with mini-rockets and Vulcan cannons. 

During a battle between the forces of Law and Anarchy, one of these Mall Cops is grievously shot in the face by a ganger, and when he awakes from his coma, he finds he has a grotesque mullet to go with his aborning sense of disillusionment. Soon, he is recruited into an undercover operation to root out the criminal scum from the lower levels of the Megamall.

Our titular Mullet Cop is a deeply unattractive man. But powerful things often come wrapped in ugly wrappers. Mullet Cop finds a renewed sense of purpose as he is introduced to his cybernetically enhanced colleague and a talking robot microwave that plays K.I.T.T. to Mullet Cop's Hoff. 

The criminal scum run an elaborate death game in the lower levels which allows for an extended goof on The Running Man, which I appreciated. 

The dialogue is full of deadpan absurdities such as,

"What’s all this? Looks like Darth Vader's bathroom in here."

The look is pleasantly pukey pastel neon.

If it gets optioned for an underwhelming movie adaptation they can cast the guy from Eastbound and Down to play Mullet Cop. 

This is allegedly the first issue of many to come, but that might just be another gag. 

I wouldn’t mind more. The jokes landed for me. The look is comically lazy and derivative of whole bunches of other shit. The dialogue is hysterical in places.

There's even a fantasy world-building map at the very end which suggests more off-kilter escapades for our mulleted avenger to blunder into and survive by the skin of his teeth. 

Mullet Cop. 

He's keeping an eye on things.

I'll keep an eye on him. 

COMICS REVIEW: HAROLD (2014)

 by Antoine Cosse  

Published by Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics in 2014.

. . .

"It's a love story, sir, so brace yourself."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

In a black and white future, dogs of shadow and light chase a film director's limousine across a simplified landscape just on the border of a great metropolis and a blank-inducing wilderness. Maybe the wilderness is so obliviating because the humans and clones and animal-headed people in this story can no longer see past a world of media and celebrity and paparazzi and trendchasing.

The film director's driver/bodyguard is a burly clone named Harold, who wears a weird little mask over his mouth. Harold and his fellow clones all look the same-same mask, same burliness, same shaved heads with a tuft of hair on top. 

I mentioned the animal-headed folks-those are the paparazzi. I think they might be jackal-headed, and/or dog-headed, and/or donkey headed, or some chimerical mixture of the three. If this were an Enki Bilal comic, I would assume them to be Egyptian deities of yore, fallen out of the heavens, and cursed to work sleazy jobs upon the dusty Earth.

Harold and his boss park outside of a luxury hotel, waiting for the boss's wife to check out, when animal-headed paparazzi swarm the area. These pictorial scavengers are looking to get photos of a princess who is staying at the same hotel, no doubt looking vaguely pinched and resentful-kinda like the thousands of photos of skinny Los Angeles-based actresses looking deeply skeeved-the-fuck-out as they are surveilled going to and from the gym that get uploaded to Instagram. 

The film director doesn't know anything about the princess or the past history of this black and white world, and so Harold obligingly enlightens him. There was once a King who lived in a fancy house atop an unlikely hydraulic lift-think of a fantasy residence pitched between Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky and Edgar Figaro's Burrowing Castle from Final Fantasy VI-that could be activated to elevate the royal family above the unwashed masses. Civil war breaks out below. The King strikes a neutral stance, and allows the lower compound to serve as a hospital for Royals and Rebels alike. The King's daughter-the Princess-desires escape from her gilded cage and contact with gritty reality. Therefore, the Princess descends to be among the tumult and gore of the people's uprising . . .

Harold is a comic of about 60 pages that uses what Scott McCloud would probably describe as a 'decompressed cinematic' style. We flow smoothly to and from the pursuing dogs of shadow and light, and the pages are sequenced to give the feeling of moving our imaginary camera in and out of large-scale setpieces, featuring swarms of animal-headed paparazzi, and the flashback involving the fanciful hydraulic mansion. 

The story encompasses a vast, bloody history . . . that is seemingly of little interest to the movers and shakers of this world. The paparazzi and the media beast whose maw they feed are only interested in the surface glamor and voyeuristic sex appeal that can be extracted and/or manufactured from taking photos of the Princess. The film director-another kind of content producer-is also indifferent to history. He is a wealthy creative impatient to get from Point A to Point B.

As for Harold . . . well, he is a mere driver, and a bodyguard-a clone, at that. We see a gang of his fellow clones run interference on behalf of the Princess at one point. 

This is all the work that's left to be done in this world. Creation of vacuous distractions from the weight of history. Playing the role of a celebrity to be vampirized by the image hungry media beast. And the body guarding clones who act to ration out the vanishing table scraps to the image jackals.

But Harold's here. Trying to keep the history alive. 

Here's to Harold.

I pray to the Angel of History . . .

 . . . "Why oh why have all the good Billy Joel jokes been made? Do you rejoice in leaving your servant no choice but to debase themselves by opening a fashion boutique called Toscanini Dacron? Why must it be thus?"

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEWS #20: WIZARDRY: PROVING GROUNDS OF THE MAD OVERLORD/OVERLOAD (NES VERSION) (1990)

stalking dark corridors

the treasure can't be trusted

if it's not booby trapped

it's a monster in disguise

our greed turned against us

gotta go slow

embrace the methodical

speed kills 

ten floors deep

wireframe and theatrical flat suggestions

of blando corridors 

you'd think the domains of some maniacal wizard would be more flamboyant 

but this monotony could all be to a purpose:

drive the enemy out with confusion and tedium 

leave theatrical evil to Count Dracula and his aristocratic indulgences 

Werdna's austerities of form and place have their own anti-distinctive protective mojo 

leave the seductions and the spectacles to the pretentious bloodsuckers of this world 

maybe this is Werdna's Way

of evoking a monstered community

ravaged'n'hollowed out

by capital-as-per-usual

fuck the hero quest

this is some kind of an eviction, 

ain't it?

play it with a homebrew OST

of sounds of demolition 

chatter of trash-out crews

heroic dungeoneering no more

now the party's doing a slow motion tear down

of some unwanted, unauthorized Labyrinth

that the state has turned a blind eye to

for far too long

no doubt the Mad Overlord's gonna turn it all into a shopping mall combined with underground Apocalypse shelters for all his oligarchic friends 

THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF PREMIUM RETAIL SURVIVALIST LIFESTYLE IMMERSION 

brochures come to mind

you

the player character 

ain't even really playing at anything

you roll up a crew 

you're gathering workers 

you

the player

are just some form of

uh

what?

a . . . spooky supervisory consciousness 

that'll do 

minimal interface

strip out the human

rationalized processes of erasures 

the hardcore gamers are like "fuck the story" 

which is good basis

for trash-out supervisory consciousness 

Werdna

or so I hear

got rehoused

inside that blazing bland low-cost development 

Werdna's pension's just enough to cover it

better than getting disappeared by the Mad Overlord's secret police,

I guess,

but His Madness is trying to put on a happier global capitalist face

and Werdna's not making a stink

and he's got Murphy's Ghost to keep him company,

now there's a sad sack spirit,

the Murphy's (Law) Ghost

wandering the blazing blando development 

mutter-composing some endless letter

chronicling his great unrecognized Protagonist-hood 

to some fanbase 

that only exists inside Murphy's spectral skull

well,

least Murphy's still got that hustle

however much of a Godot Routine it might be

Werdna's just staring into television 

drinking beer after beer

likes them microwaveable Santa Fe rice and beans

and the Swedish meatballs are just fine,

too

heard that the Mad Overlord's in talks with Count Dracula to do something special with the newly renovated underground 

say,

player,

they're gonna need you 

to crew-the-fuck-up 

put on some security theatre for the influx of oligarchs and fugitive war criminals 

looking to occupy

some newly valuable space

pays well

or so I hear

-June-December 2021  

And yes . . .

 . . . I wore my Godzilla 1984 t-shirt when I got my COVID-19 booster. 

And I'll wear it again and again for however many future boosters it's gonna take to survive the gauntlet of ruthless viral mutants and anti-vaxx/anti-mask/anti-mandate idiocy that lies ahead of me.

Fuckin-A-through-Z. 

Okay, so . . .

 . . . Omicron isn't looking too dire for someone like me-someone who's fully vaxxed and boosted. 

Good to know.

I'll dial back my alarmism a bit.

Still, it seems to be the unvaccinated who are filling the hospitals . . . oh, boy . . .

You know what?

It's outta my hands.

I've tried talking sense to people IRL, and failed. No chance of getting through to anyone who is dead set against getting a jab here in the Internet echo chamber.

I think I'm gonna put my focus elsewhere for a bit.

I'm working on a few different things, one of which will probably be announced here sometime after the New Year.

I'm gonna take it easy.

Mask up when and where necessary.

And keep alert for the next booster if I end up needing another.

I'll take all the boosters I can get!

Load me up, Doc!

Recently . . .

 . . . I was checking out some Cthulhu merchandise. It was that time of year. 

There was this-I dunno-I guess it was supposed to be, like, a Trapper-Keeper? With a Cthulhu on it? 

I was a spiral-bound notebook kid back in the day, so I never fucked with a Trapper-Keeper before. First time for everything. And you're never too old. And all the rest.

But, ah, like . . . the Cthulhu on this Trapper-Keeper thing . . . it had a weird design to it. I looked at it, and it became obvious-to my eyes, anyways-that this Cthulhu was a monster with the big batwings and the tentacle face . . . except it wasn't actually its face. It was some big-ass monster wearing, okay, wearing a tentacle face mask. That's what it was when you looked at it.

So . . . you know . . . there are . . . what? Implications, shall we say, to this imagery.

The most disturbing of which . . . is that Cthulhu . . . seems to be wearing himself . . . as his own Halloween costume. 'Cause it is that time of year. But . . . I dunno . . . to just . . . wear . . . yourself . . . like that . . . I don't get it. 

It seems . .  like a kind of a . . . a kind of a . . . like a "fuck you" kind of a thing. An expression of . . . disgruntlement. 

Which I don't get. Cthulhu's doing well for himself. Especially considering where he started, okay, startin' out, nobody gave two shits or three fucks about Cthulhu in the early days. But Cthulhu had that hustle-and he's earned it. He's earned all of his good shit, all right, I'm not trying to take that from the guy.

I'm really not.

But, uh, I think he got entitled with his shit I really do. Too much money, too many people kissing his ass, just gettin' ahold of those coattails, and riding the fuck outta that shit, okay, I saw it happen with Kong, I saw it happen with Godzilla, with Gorgo-Gorgo got totally consumed by the hype, I'm telling you.

And this is where Cthulhu is at, too, now, unfortunately. 

Just slapping himself all over this ironic junk-fuckin' daring his public to abandon his ass, fuckin' daring 'em.

Well . . . I'm calling Cthulhu's bluff.

I say, "Fuck that low quality merch. I wouldn't even wipe my ass with it."

That's what I say.

William drops mic.

The consumer public is so goddamn inspired, that they, too, refuse to spend anymore money on Cthulhu merchandise. 

Soon enough, Cthulhu files for bankruptcy, and he's forced to do some soul-searching. But at the end of this period of spiritual seeking, Cthulhu decides to focus on holistic living, and uses some of the money he's got tied up in Crypto and offshore banks to fund a series of meditation centers-"It's all about honing my Inners," Cthulhu says in a penetrating interview on an auto-fellatio themed podcast hosted by a steroid enthusiast. 

And that's the same week that Cthulhu shadow drops an album of quirky and cute singer-songwriter type material that really let's his audience into the REAL-AS-FUCK Cthulhu, not that fake shit printed on the knockoff Trapper-Keeper.

And everyone was so joyous about all of it all the time.

But let's not forget about the guy that set all this in motion.

William. 

He's the one who set it off, and burned it all down.

And from the ashes of the Bullshit . . . we got the New Shit.

That's the gift William gave to the people of Earth.

And that's the power of daring to have an opinion about a consumer item in a store, isn't it?

Yeah. It is.

William is the best person of all times.

Even better than Cthulhu. 

I'm inclined to agree completely. 

See? Even William agrees with our assessment. 

It looks like everything will be perfect forever. 

The End. 

MOVIE REVIEW: VIOLENT COP (1989)

 Directed by Takeshi Kitano 

Written by Misushi Nozawa and Takeshi Kitano 

Cinematography by Yasushi Sasakibara 

Edited by Nobutake Kamiya

Music by Daisaku Kume 

Produced by Shozo Ichiyama, Toshiba Nabeshima, Takio Yoshida 

Starring 

Beat Takeshi as Azuma 

Hakuryu as Kiyohiro 

Maiko Kawakami as Akari 

Ittoku Kishibe as Boss Nito

Nobuyuki Kaisube as Deputy Police Chief Higuchi 

. . .

"Maybe we'll get in a shootout."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Dear Reader, I have a question for you. If a movie has a title like Violent Cop, what kind of an ending do you suppose it will have? A happy ending? Is it about an unswerving avenger-with-a-badge who blows away the bad guys and makes the world safe for consumers, taxpayers, churchgoers, and children? Is it going to be a tragedy of systemic corruption, normalized betrayal, irrational outbursts of violence, and urban alienation? Could it possibly be a story of finding love in the least likely places?

Dear Reader . . . what if I told you . . . that a movie with the title Violent Cop . . . was 'All-of-the-Above?'

Hear me out . . .

Late 1980s . . .

A prosperous city in Japan . . .

People got money to spend . . .

The fashion is on point . . .

Great suits . . .

Great music inside glittering nightclubs . . .

Great shit to snort or inject or smoke . . .

Lots of fuckin' to get into . . .

You can party all night . . .

Nice sit-down restaurants . . .

Lots of electronic consumer goods to purchase . . .

It was a happy time . . .

Had to be . . .

We begin with an elderly homeless man who is seemingly about to enjoy a quiet evening meal, when he is brutally attacked by a gang of teenage boys. This man may be an off-kilter invocation of the unhoused street comrades from the sublimely quirky culinary comedy Tampopo. In Tampopo, the big city is a place of both conflict and gritty perseverance. Life can be hard, but people pull together, things can be worked out, and we can imbue our toils with love, and thereby a sense of meaning. 

We're not in Tampopo anymore. 

The little teenage monsters torment their helpless victim, and disperse into the night. The ringleader makes his way home to a very nice house. Two stories. Upstairs bedroom full of action figures and sports gear. Oblivious parents. Looks like wages without sin, doesn't it?

That's because it is.

But then along comes our avenger: sardonic and stony faced Azuma, our titular Violent Cop, as we will come to discover. Azuma shambles out of the night. At first, it's not entirely clear if he actually is a cop. He could as easily be a serial killer or a con man impersonating the law. Azuma bulls his way into the house, and, hopefully, instills righteous fear in that little terrorist's heart. 

We're rooting for Azuma at this point. This is the guy that sorts out punks. He's Uncle Buck without the power drill. 

But something is off. As the movie unspools, it's never made clear how Azuma knew where to find the ringleader. The elderly victim was in no position to make a positive ID due to his failing eyesight, and the filmic language implies a smooth temporal flow from the opening assault to Azuma's righteous home invasion. So, how did Azuma know to show up at the exact right house?

This suggests to me that Azuma must’ve been lurking in the shadows, and observing the teen gang's attack on the homeless man. 

So . . . why didn't Azuma intervene to spare the elderly man the brutality?

Well . . . maybe Azuma liked what he saw. And Azuma's rousting of the teen terrorist wasn't an act of righteous justice, but merely an extension of Azuma's good time.

Yeah . . . it ain't called Justice Cop.

Or Normal Cop.

It could've been called Sadist Cop, I guess. 

Azuma, as we will discover, likes getting into fights and chases and shootouts. He also likes observing violence. He even gets a kick out of anticipating violence. Azuma prefers to dominate, and when his rage is fully loosed, only sheer weight of numbers seems to contain him. But then we see a moment where tears are pouring down his cheeks. It's Azuma's only moment of emotional release that seems halfway justifiable by any sane framework of mental and moral health. And this only comes when a ruthless gangster has a gun to the Violent Cop's head. Could it be that Azuma has a somewhat more cuddly Masochist Evolution Form chained inside his tormented heart?

There's a Cop vs. Gangster plot afoot. Gangsters sell drugs in nightclubs. Cops endeavor to stop this popular form of recreation and commerce. Gangsters make so much money that some of the Cops want in on the action. So you got Cops vs. Crooked Cops in the mix, too. 

None of the Gangsters seem interested in going over to the Cop Side, which is interesting, and may have something to do with the fear that Azuma spreads as he ruthlessly pummels and tortures various suspected criminals. 

Azuma's excesses get him a handslap from his boss, Higuchi, a newly appointed authority figure. Higuchi chastises Azuma in front of other people, but privately expresses support. Higuchi could be described as a kind of mild-mannered tyrant: not too fond of civil rights, but not comfortable going full police state. Higuchi seems to be a stand-in for a certain kind of voyeur: a coward who likes to authorize and spectate violence, but no desire to get his knuckles bloody. 

To his credit, Azuma clearly has no respect for Higuchi. Nor should he. Of course, this is because Azuma is locked into his own obsessive death trip as opposed to any sort of rational principles. But even once Azuma crosses a few too many lines, the spineless Higuchi still expresses furtive admiration for Azuma. 

Hey, that's love for you. Sometimes, you have to settle for beholding your truest heart's desire from afar . . .

Luxurious sighs . . .

The Gangsters are led by a heartless son-of-a-bitch named Nito, a contemptuous toad of a man who could easily be a United States Republican Presidential candidate if not for endemic white supremacy. Nito loves money. Nito loves giving orders. Nito loves bribing cops who come sniffing around his various nightclubs and sit-down restaurants with rubber-banded stacks of cash. Nito isn't used to having people tell him no. Nito, like Higuchi, likes to keep his hands clean. Unlike Higuchi, though, Nito makes no pretense of upholding some sacred order . . . at first . . .

You see, Nito has come to depend upon a ruthless hitman named Kiyohiro. Kiyohiro likes to kill people with a knife. But Kiyohiro is also good with guns. Kiyohiro is flexible. Kiyohiro is a snappy dresser. He’s also a good lookin' guy. You wouldn't peg him for a remorseless killer. Kiyohiro blends in, gets where he needs to, and kills the people Nito orders him to kill. 

Much like Azuma, Kiyohiro emerges from shadows, strikes, and fades. And, unlike Azuma, doesn't have to sit for a debrief, or fill out paperwork. Gangsters ain't so big on leaving paper trails, y'know?

Kiyohiro is an overachiever, and ends up killing a few too many people. This pisses off Nito-who's a bit of a control freak-and results in humiliation for Kiyohiro. Nito slaps Kiyohiro and verbally berates the hitman . . . and Kiyohiro seems to take it kind of hard. As scary as he is, Kiyohiro has taken on the truly worthless Nito as some kind of surrogate father figure. 

You know what they say:

Gangsters can't feel good inside . . .

Meanwhile, Azuma's one non-Cop relationship is with his sister, Akari, recently released from a psychiatric hospital. Akari isn't capable of taking care of herself or holding down a job. Because we view her through Azuma's eyes, we never understand what her condition is, because, unfortunately, Azuma isn't equipped to understand all this. He's too consumed with his rage to engage with Akari. He tries. He doesn't mean to ignore Akari. But he seemingly disengages to protect her from his rage. This is probably the most unsatisfying element of this film. Needless to say, Akari, too, becomes trapped in the vortex of mayhem that ensues. 

As frightful as they are, Azuma and Kiyohiro are the two most competent characters in this story. Therefore, they are also the most despised, because they serve corrupt, idiotic systems-Cop and Gangster-that foolishly chose to cultivate walking time bombs as their champions. 

Azuma and Kiyohiro are on a fated collision course. Because they have identified themselves with their systems. But also because they are the only people who can authentically connect in a world of vacuous capitalist hypocrisy. Sure, their shared love language is one of extreme violence, but at least there are no lies between them, no bogus promises, no pretense, just action. 

It ain't pretty. 

But it could be an annihilating kind of love.

Which is better than nothing, right?

It was a happy time . . .

Had to be . . .