ANIME REVIEW: THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023)

Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Music by Joe Hisaishi

Theme Song by Kenshi Yonezu

Cinematography by Atsushi Okui

Edited by Takeshi Seyama

Produced by Toshio Suzuki

Voice Cast

Soma Santoki as Mahito

Masaki Suda as Grey Heron

Yoshino Kimura as Natsuko

Aimyon as Lady Himi

Ko Shibasaki as Kiriko

Jun Kunimura as Parakeet King

Takuya Kimura as Shoichi

Shohei Hino as Granduncle

. . .

“The tower’s full of parakeets.”

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

During World War II a Japanese boy named Mahito lives on a huge country estate run by servants far from any military violence. Mahito is not free from inner turmoil, however, as he is afflicted with grief he cannot express. His mother died during a hospital fire, and his father Shoichi-the boss of a factory that constructs cockpit canopies for fighter planes-has married Natsuko, his dead wife’s sister. Mahito can’t quite accept the reordered family arrangement even though his new mother is kind and loving. The boy is also starting to understand something about the imperial aggression of his nation when he witnesses a military parade meant to boost people’s morale complete with tanks, flags, and stirring slogans. 

Mahito’s father likes to flaunt his wealth by puttering around in a tiny automobile. Shoichi drives his son to school, thinking that the other students will be impressed by the sight of the boy arriving in high technological style. Mahito, who is always dressed in a pristine militaristic uniform, comes off as a bit of a prince. The other boys decide to take him down a peg or two by beating him up, but the prince actually takes his licks better than expected. Mahito doesn’t win, but he’s still able to walk away from his beating with his head held high. In fact, Mahito ends up doing the most damage to himself by masochistically smashing his own head with a big rock. At first, this act of self-harm seems to be Mahito’s method of avoiding further humiliation at school, since this injury allows him to stay home for a week or two. Considering his toughness even in the face of defeat, one could see this little prince possibly earning the other boys’ respect if he stuck around, but he seemingly prefers solitude, or maybe solitude is all he’s capable of understanding at this stage of his life. This extreme gesture may alternatively be Mahito’s way of exerting control over a frustrating situation by determining the extent of his own defeat. But this head wound takes on a significance both stranger and deeper as the boy starts seeing weird supernatural beings and phenomena.

A grey heron that harrasses Mahito by speaking as a human.

A mysterious ruined tower that is believed to be full of sinister magic. 

A great number of talking frogs that swarm Mahito’s body head to toe.

The talking grey heron eventually cajoles Mahito into following it inside a creepy derelict tower that functions as a gateway to a magical realm where spirits and talking animals rule. 

Within the tower, Mahito confronts an empire of huge, belligerent parakeets led by a Parakeet King who would shatter the order of dreams to satisfy his unsatisfiable ambitions.

Most disturbingly, Mahito bears witness to a spiritual process of death and rebirth wherein cute, highly merchandisable plushy spirits ascend to be reborn as flesh and blood creatures of the “real” world . . . unless they are eaten while in transit by rapacious pelicans! 

Is Mahito actually experiencing supernatural adventures, or has he deranged his perceptions by smashing himself in the head with a rock? Are we seeing the escapism fantasies of a boy overwhelmed by grief and frustration or are we meant to take what’s happening at face value? Could it be all of the above?

Magic and dreams manifest ambiguously tantalizing powers in The Boy and the Heron. Almost everything that occurs-whether in the “real” world or the “fantasy” realm-could be interpreted in various ways. You could approach it as a psychological allegory of Mahito’s loss of innocence as he reckons with grief and his growing understanding of the injustices of imperialism. Mahito is in an in-between stage of life: not really a child, not really an adult, everything in flux as he tries to make sense of a tumultuous world falling apart and reconstituting itself all around him. The Boy and the Heron could also just be a magical adventure bound up in its own hermetically sealed fantasy logic with no larger significance-which could also be a cosmic perspective, couldn’t it? All the wars and dreams and adventures and joy and suffering of the human species are pretty much doomed to be forgotten when the sun explodes. Nuclear annihilation could happen for any reason and at any moment. Climate change-which humanity seems unlikely to substantially address-could create dire circumstances that erase history and foreclose the future. Future plagues could emerge from evolutionary processes to snuff out humanity, shut down our carbon pollution nonsense, and give the rest of Nature a fighting chance to explore other paths of existence. Maybe humanity deserves to be subdued by the ferocious parakeet armies. 

There’s also the pure visual pleasure of it all. The rigorously designed mysterious ruins of a tower that fell to earth “before the Meiji Revolution” or so the local legend goes. The hilarious colorful warrior parakeets who gleefully sharpen their blades to butcher Mahito. A labyrinth of illusions ruled by electrical living rock. A tough fisherwoman who educates Mahito on the realities of life and death by teaching him how to gut a bigass dream fish. 

All of this comes from the venerated Studio Ghibli and the peerless taskmaster Hayao Miyazaki, a man who says he’s going to retire after each film, yet seems fated to die at his drawing board. The Boy and the Heron could well be Miyazaki’s final work . . . or he may yet outlive us all. Perhaps the visionary and masochistic Mahito expresses the plight of underpaid/overworked Japanese animators who abuse themselves in pursuit of sublime artificial visions of glory.

In the “real” world Mahito smashes himself in the head precipitating a torrent of blood, and, perhaps, a flood of visions.

Later, in the “fantasy” realm Mahito gobbles bread anointed with jam which almost seems to miraculously increase to match the boy’s hunger. 

The Boy and the Heron could well be some kind of sadomasochistic classic.

ANIME REVIEW: AKIRA (1988)

 

Original Manga by/Character Designs by/Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

Screenplay by Katsuhiro Otomo and Izo Hashimoto

Art Direction by Toshiharu Mizutani

Director of Photography Katsuji Misawa

Edited by Takeshi Seyama

Music by Geinoh Yamashirogumi

AKIRA HAS A CREW OF HUNDREDS OF HARDWORKING PEOPLE WHO I DON'T HAVE TIME TO LIST IN THIS REVIEW. I SINCERELY APOLOGIZE. A MOVIE LIKE AKIRA TAKES AN ARMY OF DEDICATED ARTISTS AND CRAFTSPEOPLE. IT'S SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND. 

Voice Cast

Nozomu Sasaki as Tetsuo

Mitsuo Iwata as Kaneda

Masaaki Okura as Yamagata

Takeshi Kusao as Kai

Yuriko Fuchizaki as Kaori 

Mami Koyama as Kei

Tessho Genda as Ryu

Hiroshi Otake as Nezu

Taro Ishida as Colonel Shikishima

Mizuho Suzuki as Dr. Onishi

Sachie Ito as Kiyoko (no. 25)

Tatsuhko Nakamura as Takashi (no. 26)

Kazuhiro Kando as Masaru (no. 27)

Yosuke Akimoto as Bartender

Koichi Kitamura as Lady Miyako (Doomsday Cult Leader)

. . .

"KANEDAAAAA!!!"

"TETSUOOOOO!!!"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Post World War III.

In another 2019.

In another Tokyo.

A corrupt government suppresses civil rights. Slimy politicians promise the New Olympic Stadium will 'Make Japan Great Again.' Slimy politicians pocket huge sums of money, dole out enough spare change to their donors and sponsors to stay in power until they croak on the job. 

The people take to the streets to make their voices known through acts of civil disobedience, even as they are brutalized by military police. Some take up guns and bombs and wage guerilla warfare against the state. Many try to pretend everything is a-okay by continuing to show up for jobs and school and go on dates at restaurants. Still others seek oblivion in drugs and sex and apocalyptic religions. Young people form motorcycle gangs, and raise all kinds of hell in the streets through indiscriminate acts of violence, vandalism, and defiance of polite societal norms.

A name from the past echoes through all things: Akira . . .

In the futuristic megacity of Neo-Tokyo, a dystopian gerontocracy (arbitrary

rule by old fucks) deposits public funds into the bank accounts of special interests, the military, the cops, and corporations while cutting education, welfare, and civil rights programs. One project that the gerontocrats are looking to ax is known by the codename Akira. This is a top secret superscience operation focused on cultivating psychic powers-though I wonder if it actually isn't obscured by state secret classification so much as it is occluded by the traumas/social breakdowns of World War III, mass global slaughter, nationalist mythcraft, and capitalist greed. Who wants to remember a past so filled with horrors? You turn on the daily news and you know the fix is in, right? You don't have to be a psychic or a historian to know that past is prologue, that shit was permafucked before most people alive today were even born. Even so, Neo-Tokyo is alive with neon-holographic advertising fantasias, premium speed to keep you up for days at a stretch, and all the fucking, fighting, and property destruction you can handle. Akira-the movie,the state of mind, that most fearsome of fantasy vacation hotspots-has something for everybody. 

You've got the motorcycle punks led by teenage hooligan Kaneda, who rides a bright red future bike with matching self-made uniform. You've seen it. Kaneda and his turbo-whip are the iconic marketing, the poster. Even if you've never seen the actual film you've come across the imagery of the crimson clad rebel-without-a-future somewhere in your life. Amusingly, Kaneda turns out to be more of a comedy character than the badass he imagines himself to be, but he doesn't lack for spunk.

Kaneda's best friend is Tetsuo, a troubled kid, full of rage at being bullied from kindergarten onwards. Tetsuo is starting to resent Kaneda's big brother routine, and covets that big red bike. Tetsuo is dating a shy girl named Kaori. Kaori could probably do better than Tetsuo, but she's naive and lacks confidence. Tetsuo is no catch as a romantic interest, but he does become the secret protagonist once he awakens to his psychic powers. Although whether he is his own agent or the expression of some wilder, untameable force remains a mystery to this day.

Also in the gang are tall guy Yamagata and short guy Kai. They kick ass. Don't underestimate the short dude. He'll fuck up all of your shit. 

Kaneda and his gang are in a neverending street war against the Clowns, biker scum who dress like clowns. They're led by a burly dude named Clown. They have a theme going, but it's kinda mysterious.

Kaneda's crew has a motorduel with the Clowns. From out of nowhere, a small strange child uses telekinesis to blow up Tetsuo's bike. Military police show up to arrest the punks, and haul Tetsuo off to the hospital. This accidental collision between the street and the state sets off an apocalyptic chain of events that will transform Neo-Tokyo into a psionic disaster zone. 

Not the first time, y'know . . .

The small, strange psionic kid is Takashi, and he has the number 26 tattooed on the palm of his hand. A guerilla fighter busted him out of a government facility, perhaps to exploit telekinesis as a revolutionary weapon. The guerilla and the psychic brat confront a military police unit, and a building gets destroyed by the brat's uncontrolled brainwaves. Takashi has great power, but he's not a hardened fighter. When he panics at the sight of someone being gunned down by the cops, he looses indiscriminate invisible force. This is a major idea in Akira: social dysfunction and injustice resulting in chaotic destruction. 

Takashi is part of a trio of kids who have been subjected to secret experiments to cultivate their psionic powers. This secret program is managed by white lab coat rocking Dr. Onishi and has the backing of the embittered Colonel Shikishima, who sees psychic kids as a safeguard against future calamity. The other two psychic kids are a girl named Kiyoko and a boy named Masaru. The psychic trio also seem to view Shikishima as a father figure, since he's trying to protect them from being shit-canned by a government that no longer sees the utility of the Akira program, and also wishes to avoid the fallout of being associated with human experimentation. Kiyoko, who has oracular powers, has had a vision of doom befalling Neo-Tokyo. The Doctor gathers data. The Colonel attempts to convince the corrupt politicians and their business backers to take the prophecies seriously.

One of the Colonel's political enemies is a representative named Nezu, who is secretly channeling funds and intel to a terrorist guerilla group led by a man named Ryu. Ryu's faction are responsible for busting Takashi loose. One of Ryu's most loyal followers is a teenage girl named Kei, who has a kind of naive crush on Ryu. Not that Kei isn't committed to the cause, but Akira also has a theme of young women having shit options when it comes to dating. Ryu isn't into underage girls, thankfully, but he is into dying for a cause-and also having other people die if necessary. Like Kei, for instance. 

Kei crosses paths with Kaneda in jail, and Kaneda hounds her for a date. Kei's so over high school guys, but Kaneda tries to win her over by bullshitting his way into Ryu's faction. Revolutionaries and street punks ought to have more common cause. 

All of these actors are, ultimately, locked into narrow visions of vengeance, order, money, ideological purity, scientific obsession, or accumulation of power. Neo-Tokyo cannot go on as normal, because there is no normal. Capitalism and militarism have effectively thwarted social justice. Now comes the rage. 

And what a rage it is: motorcycle showdowns that would make the Hell's Angels shit their adult diapers; psychic battles that put X-Men to shame; fashionably dystopian cityscapes that make Blade Runner look like the coffee shop from Friends; and orgasmic vistas of mass destruction that make Godzilla look like Barney the Dinosaur. Akira offers up a festival of annihilation for those tired of the bullshit, and a nightmare of desolation for those clinging to a fantasy of a return to a normal that never existed.

Many images and sequences stand alone in their ferocious power and lurid colors:

A massive memory play assembled from the wreckage of a rubbled city and childhood trauma-I wonder what Katsuhiro Otomo would do if he ever adapted Arthur Miller's After the Fall or Death of A Salesman.

Tetsuo defiantly turning away from us to walk into hellfire-now you know where Sephiroth copped his whole routine!

A trio of psychic children battling an intruder within their private playpen, walls adorned with optimistic future cities straight outta Astro Boy and the Jetsons. These flimsy imaginings crumble like everything else.

A psychic punk squaring off against a fucking tank. Don't bet on the tank. 

Slow motion motorcycle wipeouts that make me wonder what Otomo would do with J.G. Ballard's Crash.

The shock and horror on a young guerilla's face the first time she kills a soldier. 

Out of control full body metamorphosis escalating to cosmogenesis. 

A disillusioned military man marching into certain death for reasons he no longer understands with nothing but his sidearm and samurai spirit to guide him. 

A motorcycle gang war crashing a yuppie couple's dinner date.

A vast amoebic cloud of tear gas enveloping a street protest.

The look on someone's face as they channel another's consciousness.

Acid trails of tail lights whipping all over on the air before us, a terrible power we can only grasp in the wake of the ruins it leaves behind itself . . .

All of this set to driving doomsday chanting and percusive instruments. The soundtrack goes with all this quite well, but also stands alone as its own experience. Give it a listen. 

The only downside? All the video game versions suck. Not a single one worth one half of one dog turd. Maybe someone has run their own homebrew tabletop Akira role-playing game somewhere out there in TV land? That could be something.

ANIME REVIEW: GENOCYBER (1994)

 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.

ANIME REVIEW: HEAT GUY J (2002)

Creator/Director Kazuki Akane, 

Character Design Nobuteru Yuuki, 

Music Try Force

Review by William D. Tucker.

Heat Guy J tells the story of the city state of Judoh, one of seven cities managed by a high tech cadre known as the Celestials. In the future, war and other largescale conflicts between nation states have been eliminated by careful management of high tech human societies. Judoh and the other city states have all the amenities and many of the problems of real world cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo, or London: pollution, traffic jams, crime, racketeering, and poverty, but the affliction of disease and the threat of open warfare and imperialistic aggression have all been curbed.

How?

Control of technology. The Celestials are the only human group with the know-how to maintain the machinery and sophisticated computer architecture that allows Judoh and the other six city states to continue to function. The know-how to build firearms, armored vehicles, mechs, nuclear missiles and other weapons of mass destruction has been excised from public knowledge.

Some people opt out of this system. Outside the boundaries of Judoh is the wilderness of Sieberbia, where people go to live in seemingly Edenic tribal bliss, growing their own organic food, living in open air huts, and dressing like San from Princess Mononoke. Others live in the subterranean Underworld of the city state, a kind of managed zone of illegality where people in the know go to cut loose, deal in contraband technologies, and operate businesses outside of the offical tax structure.

But, as is almost always the case in anime, all is not well in the perfectly engineered future. War has been eliminated, but human desire has not. And human desire for greater power and control over fellow humans still exists.

Heat Guy J starts out as a conventional episodic police procedural in a sci-fi setting: brash young hero-cop Daisuke Aurora and his hulking android partner J. battle the mafia, led by the psychotic Clair Leonelli. Clair has inherited the leadership post known as "Vampire" for the Vita Corporation, which is the respectable, tax-filing face of the Leonelli mob. Clair has inherited the position from his newly-deceased father. He shows up at dad's funeral with a grenade, and the intent to hurl it in after his father's coffin, in lieu of flowers I suppose.

Daisuke and J, along with their office manager Kyoko, form the Special Services Bureau, a kind of anti-organized crime task force under the direction of Shun Aurora, Daisuke's brother. Daisuke is in his early twenties and is the classic hotshot cop. J is a towering, Gigantor-like robot who acts both as Daisuke's protector and as the young man's conscience. J is constantly spouting pre-programmed axiomatic statements relating to the nature of manhood, duty, and justice, however, as the series goes on, it seems that his AI begins to pick up on things and formulate standards of ethical behavior on his own. Kyoko is mostly stuck in the office, but her verbal sparring with Daisuke provides humor and counterpoint to Daisuke's playboy nature. Later, Daisuke and J meet Kyoko's unusual family . . .

One of the amusing elements of the series is how it plays with cop show conventions. Daisuke is cast as a kind of hotshot cop, and yet he is only allowed three bullets for his gun on any given assignment. And he has to ask permission in advance from office manager Kyoko, who is the only one with access to the combination safe where the bullets are stored. Sometimes, he doesn't have any bullets. This forces him to rely on the superhuman speed and strength of J., but even then the problems they face aren't necessarily resolvable through brute force.

Almost all of the characters in the course of the series reveal something unexpected in their natures and this in turn illuminates some complex facet of the fictional world they inhabit. Daisuke's constant wrangling with Kyoko over ammunition ties into the dilemma of illegal arms smuggling in Judoh: who's bringing in the weapons? how are they being manufactured? Why? Daisuke's high tech gun also has various kinds of high tech ammo: stun rounds, high explosive rounds, traditional ballistics, etc. Is the solution to crime to let the hero bring heavier artillery to bear on the perps, or is it a matter of eliminating the presence of deadly weapons altogether? Is it possible to wholly eliminate arms in human society? What about self-defense? If you are being threatened what is the appropriate amount of force to bring to bear in self-defense? How does technological innovation tie into all this?

The notions of defense, control, and technology on both an individual and societal level permeate the series as it shifts gears from cop show situations to the larger world-political situation in which the cop show elements are but one piece of the puzzle.

What's life like in other city states? This question is addressed in part by the character of Boma, a fearsome, lycanthropic swordsman who shows up as a kind of sword for hire in the Underworld. In other nation states, criminals are punished with genetic tampering which causes them to grow animal heads and exhibit feral qualities. Is this what's happened to Boma? Boma's situation and the revelations surrounding his character make for one of the most interesting developments in this series.

Other important supporting characters include hard-boiled homicide detective Edmundo, who seems like an anime version of Columbo; Dr. Bellucci, the beautiful roboticist who helps maintain J in working order; Monica a ten-year old street urchin who takes pictures of tourists and whose best friend is a donkey named Parsley; and the prostitutes Cynthia, Janis, and Vivian, whom Daisuke hangs out with for information gathering purposes much to Kyoko's consternation . . .

The characters, major, minor, supporting, are all interesting and have simple, but memorable designs. In many ways, Heat Guy J could be interpreted as a reincarnation of Escaflowne, and this would not be too far off. Kazuki Akane was involved with Escaflowne as was character designer Nobuteru Yuuki. Fans of Escaflowne, such as myself, might also be intrigued by many of the parallels between the two series. On the surface, Heat Guy J is a kind of high tech cop show, and Escaflowne is a high fantasy swords and sorcery type deal, but both series deal with the complexities of human conflict and schemes of control and oppression in intriguing ways.