Chôjin densetsu urotsukidôji: Original gekijô kôkai-ban

Wow, if you're reading this review; you've probably heard all the hype and controversy surrounding this movie and to tell the truth it deserves it. From the first 10 minutes of a female teacher turning into a demon and raping a student, to orgies to sodomy to some graphic depictions of violence; this film is an endurance test for a movie-going novice. I enjoyed this first segment in the series, I think the 2nd one (Legend of the Demon Womb) was slightly better, but they are both better than any other in the series including RETURN OF THE OVERFIEND or INFERNO ROAD. The later in the series, the more confusing and stupid it gets. Don't say you weren't warned!

The main problem with this film is it tries so hard to offend that everything else (plot, character, good dialogue) gets thrown out of the window. The graphic scenes of sex and violence wouldn't really worry me too much if they were relevant to the plot but alas, the initially intriguing sci-fi premise is soon ditched in favour of a "let's see which one of us can do the sickest and most disturbing scene in the film" between the animators. Such a shame, if they actually put a bit of effort into developing the plot and less time testing the audiences morality then we might have something interesting here. Oh yeah, and what was the point in dubbing all the original Japanese voicework with completely out of place American accents? (which have to be squeaky of course, to suit the films Tokyo setting.) Couldn't they just have kept the film the way it was and added sub-titles at the end? Oh sorry I forgot, the studio thinks the average Yank doesn't have the patience to read them AND watch the film at the same time... Cheers for that vote of confidence there, dudes. In conclusion, this film is like that foul-mouthed child you stick in the corner for using bad-language: They try to get your attention by trying to shock you as much as possible, but really all they succeed in doing is make you realize just how sad and desperate they are.

There is a certain type of individual that I greatly admire. It is the individual who can sit across a table from me and explain in exhaustive detail the very complicated plot fabric of Urotsukidoji: The Legend of the Overfiend, fully divulging all theories and histories and backstories and somehow never crack a smile. The smile comes to my lips when I realize that they have explained this movie over and over again to various people and are skilled at dodging the question of how and why a movie about a universal demon war includes scene after scene of naked lesbian schoolgirls.

What also puzzles me is how they can explain the movie with a straight face after they've introduced the film to their friends by waving a VHS tape, smiling and saying "Dude! You gotta see this". For those of us who have had this movie shoved down our throats, that experience is communal.

Those individuals waving the tapes aren't hard to find. They very often hide the tape in the underwear drawer and their only real female attachment is either a paper fold-out or is telling them for the third time to take out the garbage (I know them, I know them well). Not to say that everyone who engages in hentai is a pathetic momma's boy but based on my experience they seem to make up a good chunk of the fanbase.

Hentai (porn, let's just call it what it is), for those of us who don't indulge in such questionable "entertainments" is more or less and endurance test. The filmmakers throw in as many splatter-fied effects and forbidden sexual tableaus as their imaginations can allow. It is often called "sick" and "disgusting" but I find less interest in the movies themselves and more interest in the people who gawk at them. These are individuals who did not discover whitehouse.com by accident. (Freud would have eaten these people for breakfast).

I should start by telling you that the movie is a carnival geek show, a vile bag of cartoon garbage that wallows in perversions when it isn't splattering the canvas with guts and brains. It has, needless to say, become legendary for it's infamy. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, perhaps you are not familiar with this nasty little item. For you, I will try and explain in the terms that the movie was explained to me:

There are three worlds and three levels of reality - the humans, the man-beasts (or Jyujinkai) and demons (or Makai). A prophecy tells that every three thousand years a creature called Chojin will rise up and unite these three worlds and will recreate all three worlds in his own image.

Two sibs from the Beast World, Amano Jyuku and Negumi, have come in search of Chojin who lives within a young student named Nagumo, whom they believe will bring about the aforementioned unity.

Nagumo has fallen in love with a cheerleader named Akemi, who was raped by a demon posing as her (female) health teacher and understands the circumstances behind Nagumo's destiny. But opposing forces begin showing up to challenge Nagumo. For the Demons, Beasts, and Humans, this looks like either unity or utter destruction. Now, based on the creature that shows up at the end with three sex organs with which he demolishes the city, my guess would be the latter. There is far more plot that this but there is far more plot than the movie needs. I am told that there are two sequels to this but I think I'll pass, thank you very much.

The gentleman who explained it to me went into massive amounts of details about the inwards and outwards of the demon world while I waited patiently so that I could ask how it all merits the pedophilia, the teen sex and the fountains of blood, guts and bodily fluids. `That's just anime' he told me at which I simply rolled my eyes and bolted for the door. And no, he never smiled.

This is rightly considered the greatest of all Hentai movies. Even anti-hentai Anime fans have praised it as revolutionary. But there are some elements of Urotsukidoji should have been dropped altogether. The pointless scenes of rape for one thing. And that schmaltzy scene at the end is badly done. But for all it's extremities, this has the kind of mind-blowing action, plot and animation which could have put it up there with Akira. Behind the sex and violence, director Hideki Takayama and writer Toshio Maeda have nonetheless managed to give us an acute observation of teenage sexual anxiety which has wrongly been interpreted as violent porn. Let's face it, we've all been like Nagumo at some point, hopelessly in love with Akemi but without a chance of catching her. It's both intelligent, observational, with touches of humour and outbursts of outrageousness. In short, it's anime fantasy at it's most humanist level. Very well done.

Urotsukidoji is a textbook example of Epic. This film is HUGE and is very, very complex. Sure the Japanese have a somewhat misogynist view on things but who are we to judge them? It's about culture. Urotsukidoji boiled down to the essentuals is basically about the search for the meaning of life (and destiny), morality, yes! sexuality BUT in context if you look at it the films are about doomed love.

I don't have time to go into the ins and outs but if you look at the series using a feminist perspective one will find that the series actually treats all characters with the same distain. Yes, the destruction of the female principle is there (fascism reference- justified once again by the context of the series as A WHOLE) but it is the female characters that have the most depth. Take Megume for example, the so-called 'slut' archetype. if you look closer to the overall story her storylines are much more philosophical.

Take even Amano, who at the begining takes a certain ambivalence to other people's suffering, towards the end he becomes more humanist. Take his metaphor of nature (how it goes round and round), we live and die then become one with the world. (See also THE WICKER MAN (1973))

I could go on but it is far too complex to get into. I suggest reading up on Japanese tradition and mythology...I think you'll find your basic Shakespeare play will have all if not more of the 'deviant' themes that Urotsukidoji has. The difference? Books are treated with reverence...film's aren't. Why? cos Nazi's burned books but what people forget is they also suppressed film. Why? because they knew it had a power over the population that books didn't. (See 'Triumph of the Will' for an example of their abuse of film's emotive qualities).

Nuff said!