Directed by Koichi Ohata
Written by Shou Aikawa, Emu Arii, and Koichi Ohata
Music by Takehito Nakazawa and Hiroaki Kagoshima
Character Design by Atsushi Yamagata
Production Design by Kimitoshi Yamane, Shinji Aramaki, Koichi Ohata, Yoshio Harada, Hitoshi Hukuchi
Voice Cast
Akiko Hiramatsu as Elaine/Diana
Kaoru Shimamura as Rat
Seizo Katou as Dr. Reed
Mitsuaki Hoshino as Dr. Morgan
Kazuyuki Sogabe as Mayor Grimson Rockwell
…
". . . Don't worry
if there's hell below
we're all
gonna go . . ."
-Curtis Mayfield from his album Curtis (1970)
…
Review by William D. Tucker.
A child's suffering, a child's death.
In the near future, the United Nations goes hard on an agenda of Unified Global Governance.
Does it count for much in this world?
A true One World is at hand. Later for nationalistic conflicts.
Children starve to death every day. Children die in wars. Children die of malnutrition. Children shit themselves to death because of lack of access to clean water. In the USofA, my country, children die in grotesque mass shootings due to uncontrolled proliferation of assault rifles.
But alas, in the chaos of transformation, greedy corporations field high tech private armies augmented with cyborgs and psychics to carve out their own turf.
What if a child's cruel murder could trigger the Apocalypse, Armageddon, Ragnarok, the End of Every Last Thing? Would we change our ways? Would we ensure clean water and nutritious food and an end to war and terrorism and abuse, if only to save our collective ass?
And in the midst of this tumult, a young woman's friend is killed.
Imagine a terrible, indestructible devil thundering down from the sky the instant a bullet tears into a child's head, or any other act of destruction against a child. This devil kills with but a thought. There's no defense. The usual oppressors and perpetrators have no power against this devil. No gun lobbyist. No warlord. No Republican Senator. No white supremacist. No tyrant. No abusive parent. No schoolyard bully. No general. No foot soldier. No gangster. No molester priests or pastors. No drone operator. No bomber pilot. No President. No greedy businessman. No one can stand against the killing thoughts of this vengeful devil. No weapon can kill it. No money can bribe it. This devil pictures your doom inside its mind . . .and that's it.
A young woman's heart is shattered . . .
And now the devil's rage burns out of control, for there is no bottom to this devil's appetite for retribution. All must burn.
. . .loosing the power of Armageddon . . .
Doesn't seem fair. But since when was life ever fair?
. . . indiscriminate Apocalypse, well beyond Good and Evil . . .
Genocyber is the saga of a strange monster powered by the souls of two sisters driven to do battle with the forces of oppression on Planet Earth in the near and far future. Genocyber is born of pain, cruelty, technology, paranoia, and love. Genocyber has telekinesis, super-strength, plasma-wing enabled personal flight capabilities, teleportation, mind manipulation, destruction resistant naturally occurring armor skin, and a rich well of undiluted rage she can channel into a primal scream which can reduce an entire metropolis into a huge smoking crater.
This bizarre monster begins with the mad notions of a Dr. Morgan of the Morgan Institute. Dr. Morgan develops the idea of a 'vajura,' which is the psychic capacity to access 'mind shadows' which are potent manifestations of willpower and/or desire that emanate from a realm of pure imagination. Mind shadows can be used to create and/or destroy. Focus your vajura to conjure a mighty monster body to stomp your enemies into gory messes of burst intestines and shattered bones. Focus your vajura to teleport across vast distances. Focus your vajura to induce terrifying hallucinations within the mind of your enemy. Focus your vajura to commune with the spirits of the dead. Master your vajura, and the mind shadows can fuel your every last desire!
Metamorphosis. Strength. Illusions. Mind over matter. Destruction of all personal limits. Unlimited vengeance upon all enemies. Total dominance of all who oppose you.
All this can be yours.
If you master your vajura!
Dr. Morgan is murdered by Dr. Reed, a rival mad scientist in the employ of the sinister Kuryu Group, a Japanese corporation engaged in weapons development, applied psionics, and live human experimentation. The Kuryu Group sets up a vajura/mind shadow R&D campus in the city of Hong Kong with Dr. Reed taking over as Lead Developmental Mad Scientist. Dr. Reed's Number One Henchperson is his daughter, Diana, a powerful psychic born with severe physical disabilities corrected by transplanting her head, central nervous system, heart, lungs, and digestive tract into a durable cyborg body. Diana has been the subject of Frankensteinian experiments by Dr. Reed, who rather creepily expects her to exist as both a dutiful daughter and a live experimental subject. Diana also acts as enforcer to capture escaped lab subjects who mostly seem to be children. Echoes of Akira's secret esper programs for sure.
We have a ghastly scene of Dr. Reed putting his hand inside Diana's abdominal cavity, presumably to perform some kind of "maintenance," but it soon becomes obvious that our mad scientist is a sick fuck who gets off on invading people's bodies and minds. Dr. Reed's scientific staff-who all sport de rigueur white lab coats by day-are known to don creepy death masks by night and commit mutilation murders against anyone who comes sniffing around the Kuryu Group's HK campus. While no explicit reason is offered, the implication is that the depraved Dr. Reed has staffed his lab with people who share his Mengele-esque proclivities. It may also be possible that the death masks are some kind of mind control device. Genocyber contains ghoulish mysteries even to this day.
Diana has a sister, Elaine, who is also a powerful psychic. Elaine cannot speak, but her body is intact, unlike her sister Diana, and she is therefore not dependent upon Dr. Reed for cyborg maintenance. Elaine uses her psionics to teleport away from the oppressive Kuryu Group campus, and makes her way as a feral street urchin on the mean streets of Hong Kong, befriending a young boy nicknamed Rat, who's involved with a low-end counterfeiting gang. This friendship between Elaine and Rat ends up being a key factor in the final obliteration of 21st century human techno-civilization.
You see, Elaine's fourteen, and Rat looks like he's in the fourth grade. They develop a sibling bond, with big sister Elaine looking out for little bro Rat. Rat's being both bullied and exploited by the other teen street punks who themselves are just low level funny money distributors for the Triads. Elaine's X-Men psychokinesis and teleportation powers along with her feral wolf girl persona make her into a living comic book character in the eyes of Rat. Being a homeless child on the mean streets of cyberpunk Hong Kong ain't so bad after all! Dude, it's just like living a comic book but for real! Awesome!
Diana dons a fearsome mecha suit that amplifies her psychic powers and goes hunting for Elaine as per their father's orders. Dr. Reed simply cannot allow an esper as powerful as Elaine to slip through his perverted fingers.
Meanwhile, the Kuryu Group's headquarters back in Japan has decided to take control of the Hong Kong campus. To this end, a trio of cyborg mercenaries are deployed to subdue any troublesome espers and put the screws to Dr. Reed. HQ seems to be consolidating its assets as part of a scheme to negotiate its own position within the new United Nations global governance structure. The fruits of Dr. Reed's madness-stolen from the forgotten Dr. Morgan-are fine. But Dr. Reed's depravity must be totally erased. It's a new day, doncha know!
Elaine battles Diana and the three cyborgs from the home office, and is seemingly killed. But her spirit ends up merged with Diana's mind. The sisters struggle for dominance within the eerie realm of mind shadows. Elaine prevails, but she does not destroy Diana, and instead incorporates her sister's soul into herself. Elaine's rage at having her friend Rat kidnapped by the cyborg trio causes her to conjure up a fearsome new body for her and Diana to inhabit as she retaliates against the Kuryu Group and all its works. This new body is a giant muscular blue devil with armor skin and superheated plasma wings. Elaine and Diana form the twin soul of this formidable beast . . . enter Genocyber! Exit the human future!
Elaine is the dominant spirit, with Diana operating as a sort of voice of doubt. Diana hates being trapped inside a monster, just as she resented being the plaything of Dr. Reed. But Elaine's outrage gives her vajura extreme power. Genocyber generates massive waves of uncontrolled psionic power that sets Hong Kong ablaze, and causes two of the Kuryu Group's cyborgs to mutate into grotesque living war machines. Genocyber is a true apocalypse beast unleashing both raw destructive power and the innermost natures of those who can survive its mutational presence. The two cyborgs unveil their murderous natures, growing all manner of weapons, and clothing themselves in the skulls and intestines of countless innocent bystanders as the psionic waves emanating from Genocyber strip them of their every last pretense of "civilization." Genocyber and the cyborgs do battle causing massive death and destruction to the people and structures of Hong Kong in the process. Elaine's rage has spun out of control . . . with the worst yet to come . . .
When the battle is done, Elaine discovers that Rat has been killed, possibly by one of the cyborgs, possibly as collateral damage during Genocyber's rampage. Elaine howls in anguish. And then Genocyber unleashes a spiritual hydrogen bomb blast annihilating Hong Kong from the face of the Earth . . .
. . . with the worst yet to come . . .
From this point on, Genocyber becomes a wandering terror upon the Earth, manifesting to oppose the schemes of the Kuryu Group as it offers itself up as an arms manufacturer to the United Nations Government as it goes to war against the rogue nation of Karain in the Middle East. Genocyber's agenda is visceral: she fights for those she sympathizes with in the moment even if her extreme power creates destabilizing cataclysms and mass slaughter. Genocyber's psychic emanations call forth ghosts, cause insanity, and inspire unpredictable transformations in other people. The vendetta between Genocyber and the Kuryu Group shatters the hope of the One World, reducing Earth to a vast and desolate battlefield.
In the fullness of time, the Kuryu Group's army of robotic war machines and the sky terror of Genocyber seemingly obliterate each other, but the blue devil cannot die that easily. Seriously worn down by centuries of battle, she lapses into a coma, and her monumental body becomes the idol of a religious sect. This sect evolves into a radical social justice movement when the dictatorial city state of Ark de Grande arises in the far future. Deep underground, Genocyber slumbers, even as the Mayor of Ark de Grande rules with an iron fist using paramilitary police and fundamentalist religion to establish a fascist surveillance state of public spectacles of holiness, bounty hungry informers, and mass killings.
Genocyber's rage powers it across multiple centuries, multiple Armageddons, multiple Final Boss Battles. She aligns herself with children slaughtered by warfare; a mother whose child died in the destruction of Hong Kong; and a blind girl murdered by the Ark de Grande stormtroopers. Hers is a cataclysmic, unfocused power, arguably causing more harm than good, tragically embodying both the dark allure and maddening futility of vengeance. Yet, it's hard not to sympathize with Genocyber, even if we also live in mortal terror of her arrival. She's a vindictive deity that makes sense-not some rhetorical device exploited by politicians and fanatics-born of superscience and supertrauma. If she ever battled the Incredible Hulk, an earlier pop culture fusion of rage'n'superscience, ol' Greenskin's heart would stop from sheer terror.
As animation, Genocyber is low budget, but imaginative, employing an eclectic mix of hand drawn art, computer graphics, live action miniatures, and still images. The eclecticism conveys the conflicting realities of science and spirit; personal desire and global schemes; vengeance and love; destruction and creation.
Genocyber is not ashamed of its roots in hyperbolically violent OVA (Original Video Animation), which was Japan's uninhibited straight-to-video wonderland for a few decades. A mighty steel hand crushes a rapist's skull with one squeeze. A crimson tentacle dragon rips out a skull with attached spinal column in one firm tug. A cyborg tears out his own brain as he is afflicted with hallucinations of bugs burrowing inside his skull. The ghosts of children blown away on a battlefield torment a jet pilot causing him to crash-you won't see anything like that in Top Gun: Maverick!
Genocyber's storytelling is dense, erratic, setting up multiple frames, then blowing them to pieces. Early on, we have elements of police procedural and paranoia thriller woven in with the X-Men/Scanners/Firestarter/Akira stuff, and then we are diving into gristly Clive Barker gore and thunderous Godzilla allegory action. Genocyber begins as a Frankenstein's Monster and evolves across time into an apocalyptic death god in the hearts and minds of desperate people praying for deliverance from tyranny. It's bonkers, but it's one of my all time favorite character arcs.
In the final era, as Genocyber unleashes her vengeance against the dictatorship of Ark de Grande, she finally develops a new talent: raising the dead. After centuries of using her psychic power to destroy, she uses it to heal someone. It's a shift from the singleminded pursuit of annihilation. If Genocyber's apocalyptic brain waves can unleash innermost savagery, maybe they can also unveil innermost healing. The ending is, well, inconclusive on this point. But the possibility exists.
