Tajuu jinkaku tantei saiko - Amamiya Kazuhiko no kikan

I got the entire of series 1 of this and i thought it was GREAT like a lot of Miike films it doesn't seem to make much sense until you see the end of it and also like other Miike films he has a weird habit of randomly blurring parts out. The story of MPD psycho does pan out quite considerably after the first DVD and does get very involved and interesting, i sat and watched the entire first series back to back and totally enjoyed it. Miike does tend to make films seem somewhat obscure in the way they are written and directed but thats what i find makes him so great, you spend ages trying to work out whats going on and then you're like "Oh of course it is!" and it just seems so obvious the same applies to MPD despite what other people have said i thought it was excellent

It comes to mind immediately for comparison- Twin Peaks, the great cult TV show, as being what Takashi Miike used as influence for his much more 'cult (or rather, little seen but raved in its small circles of fandom) take on an investigation of bizarre crimes in an even more bizarre half real-half dream environment. In so much that Miike, via Eiji Ootsuka's original Magna book, does create something of an alternate reality, where the multiple personalities transfer, where the blurred vision of the girls in the room with strange incantations, and where it rains green drops, this is an accurate comparison to the notorious black lodge in Lynch's universe.

But even through Miike's own acknowledged influence from Lynch (one can see it pretty clearly in Miike's Gozu), it's only something of a surface comparison at best. MPD Psycho is perhaps even MORE confusing, at least at first, than TP, with the circumstances surrounding the crimes to hold a lot more mystery, and just weird f***ed up adult-oriented Japanese theatrics, and with its protagonist with just as many demons and past troubles as those he's after. Plus, in the world of MPD, there's no telling if the actual victim may be the criminal as well, or what might be connected or not.

As with a good whammy of a Manga (or for that matter the average bear of a Miike flick), MPD Psycho is filled with incredible visual tricks and experiments, with animated bits (the little girl drawn before our eyes), intentionally crude visual effects (the rain drops, the quick visions into another personality as it transfers to another), and even creative censorship; who knew that a filmmaker as outrageous and shocking as this could make it a riot to see private parts and ultra-bloody sections blurred out and make it *work* for the sake of the show?

Like Miike at his best, there are very satisfying doses of dark comedy thrown in, sometimes unintentionally ("not your baby miss, you're just a vessel?"), and sometimes with the dead-aim of Miike at his most playful (the scenes in the big police lecture-hall where the one officer creates little clay figures he's very proud of) and savage, like the numerous moments of unexpected violence- here toned down but still graphic in-so-much as what isn't shown, and how uncomfortable the subject matter becomes in dealing with dead-end abortions and whacked out Catholic girls. As with the most depraved scenes in Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q, sometimes one can't help but chuckle through the mayhem.

Reccomending a series like MPD Psycho, perhaps, is a little trickier than in simply going on about what makes it a work where clarity in knowing what is going on- and it's not really incoherent when piecing it bit by bit, which the screenwriters and Miike end up doing very cleverly as each episode goes along (with, by the way, an excellent turn from the ultra-cool but doomed Amamiya/Kobayashi/who knows)- but rather if it would appeal to the average CSI type of TV viewer, or just to Miike's fan-base. In truth, I'd say for the former it's worth a shot, if only to see how Japan goes about turning the conventions of an mystery programmer on its head with levels of rough horror and chills and in-your-face satire. Though that being said, it's certainly not for anyone, not least of which for those who expect their detective stories to make sense every step of the way. This one, at least at the start, seems like a mystery coiled up in another mystery about how the bar-codes work, how they figure into the detective(s) and what Lucy has to do with it all, and Amamiya/Kobayashi's partner, and so on, which can be a little frustrating.

However, if you love how much of a wild-man Miike can get with already subversive material, MPD- Psycho is for ardent fans and casual admirers a trippy concoction where science fiction, film-noir, and the aforementioned Magna combine somewhat into a sweet mini-series event. As groundbreaking as TP? Not quite, but it's a lot of fun watching Miike create silly myth and disturbing subversion all the same.

I like this kind of thing because it is just crazy, the story was quite hard to follow the first time i watched it... lets say i was very tired... & watching the edited English version of the series. Of which i watched episode 1 - 4. So that didn't make much sense, i couldn't really remember much except the action sequences when i came round to watch the whole series just recently. This was an unedited version although i couldn't tell you what was extra and what wasn't unfortunately. Although uncut there is occasionally actually meant to be blurring of 'victims' - lets call this artistic impression as i don't know what you'd actually call it. The artistic impression is quite strong in this series with some strange camera angles and effects. One effect that did look a bit budget was the green rain in a couple of the cut scenes & also the fire effects looked a bit average although they don't play a massive part and probably still added to the series in a way.

The feel of it was quite unearthly and the actual story itself was great as it kept revealing a little bit at a time. You grow to like the comedy element in it, which isn't massive, and get quite involved with the main characters. The violence is there as well, as you might expect from Takashi Miike and yet i feel the story was quite strong and therefore the violence although a massive part of the series only added to the quality of it as a whole.

I also liked the way that there would be a lot of new characters in each episode, and a different new 'psycho' element in each one too. Anyway, so i like it, you get the comment. I would just say that i like a lot of serious anime too, and also a lot of Takashi Miikes films - from films like DOA & Full Metal Yakuza you can tell Miike likes his 'fantasy' - and this series has that element as well.

It's about a detective who is possessed of 3 personalities. One of his personalities escapes and transports between people (barcode carriers) bringing out their worst side as he is in them, then he moves on invariably leaving them to pick up the pieces. Although the 'picking up the pieces' bit is brief as the episodes focus around the 3rd personality of the detective travelling through random people (usually doing something unwholesome), the detective himself and his 'friends' and also Lucy Monostone. We don't know who Lucy is except that somehow he has a part in all this!! This 60's rock musician turned terrorist. Oh and you get to find out if 'Lucy Monostone' is a man or a woman if you watch the series too, although this isn't obvious from the word go. Definitely expect some twists and turns from this series although it does wrap up quite nicely and leave everything pretty much explained. Which doesn't always happen in Takashi Miike stuff.

Worth a look on DVD. This Japanese series melds a Twin Peaks like surrealism, with Manga inspired graphics and story line. Grumpy old detectives try to track down a mysterious being that jumps from person to person through the Japanese underworld, inspiring each one to go on a killing spree. Sounds clichéd, but some fantastic photography melded with oddly juxtaposed CGI and extremely graphic violence take it away from the norm. Pretty incomprehensible to start with, but strangely gripping none the less. In Japanese with English subtitles, which make it even more difficult to follow. First episode is excellent, but later episodes become more formulaic.

I'd liked the Takashi Miike films I'd seen so far, but I found this pretty disappointing. I'd bought it, but I won't be keeping it.

I saw it on the Adness DVD, which has just two episodes. In the first, a killer abducts women, cuts the top of their skull off to expose the brain, plants them in the ground up to their chin, and plants a flower in the brain. You can tell that from the DVD box. In the movie, the top of the head is digitally blurred out by TV static. Had you not seen the DVD box, the viewer wouldn't know what people were looking at until later a young cop produced a small model of the body. Oddly, there is also a flash frame later on of the woman's head and it is not censored. Apart from this, I'm not really sure what was going on. Some women get phone calls, and a sketchy animated character cavorts around when that happens. An animated character also appears on TV screens sometimes. It's unclear if anybody sees it.

In the second episode, pregnant women are being found cut open and their babies are missing. Again, a cop produces a model of what the corpses are like, which is helpful since again the actual body is censored. There is also a natural birth in the movie, but oddly even that baby and the umbilical cord are censored! According the the DVD box, uncensored versions were not kept when this was originally made. Perhaps even if they had, if they knew they were going to be censored, maybe they didn't bother actually showing anything...? Not sure.

If I hear the later episodes are better, maybe I'll look for them. As it is, I won't bother.