Demon City Shinjuku

Not Bad. Actually better than a lot of anime's out there. Usual storyline. Demons trying to take over tokyo thus the world. Father tries to stop the villain but fails, 10 years later comes the prodigal son and wham-bam blah blah & so on....Good action, english dubbing is Ok. Needed a little bit more insight on the storyline and the characters lacked some depth. If you follow Kawajiri's work you can c glimpses of his genious. But fans who r looking for Kawajiri's mastery wont find a lot of it in this one.

Demon City Shinjuku (1988) is a Japanese animated movie currently available on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows a man named Rebi Ra who has opened a gate to hell after killing a martial arts expert who tried to stop him. As various demons and beasts emerge from hell the deceased martial artist's son picks up his fathers sacred sword and sets out to stop Rebi Ra and close the gate.

This movie is directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Animatrix) and contains the voices of Hiromi Tsuru (Trigun), Kiyoshi Kobayashi (Lupin the 3rd), Yûsaku Yara (Ninja Scroll), Takeshi Aono (Metal Gear Solid) and Kôji Totani (Wicked City).

I love the animation style which is classic late 80s/early 90s. The narrator could have been better selected but the settings, characters and universe are well portrayed. The characters are fascinating and the dialogue is very good. The final 7 minutes of this film is epic and the concluding battle gives you everything you want to see from this film.

This movie is far from perfect but is a worthwhile viewing. I would score this a 7/10 and recommend seeing it once.

This film is considered some sort of sequel of the 1987 Wicked City anime because of the demons, and the director.

It certainly doesn't have the darkness, sexuality and violence of the former, but it's a decent anime.

The story, I'd even say it holds better than Wicked City, the setting and atmosphere is very interesting and plays a big part, but the character designs are not that interesting, not bad, but not at the level of Vampire Hunter D or Ninja Scroll, from the same director, two of my all time favourite animes.

The first scene and the main villain, I think, shows a lot of influence from Highlander (1986), I really enjoyed it!

The action is also ok, but not as good and intense as the previously mentioned, or as dark and sexual as Wicked City.

The strongest flaw for me was the underwhelming final fight, everything is ready for some badass action and it suddenly ends. Very disappointing!

Still, it has some good moments, even some moving scene involving a "lost child".. Overall I enjoyed the film, I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Yoshiaki Kawajiri films, but definitely worth watching if you want more from him.

Yoshiaki Kawajiri has made his reputation for eye-popping fright visuals and this is his masterpiece of terror. Shinjuku, in Tokyo's business district, has become a portal through which shape-shifting denizens of the demon realm are seeking to invade earth. Humanity is threatened with enslavement by creatures who can appear human but who are terrifyingly inhuman when they reveal their true form. But a plucky girl and jaded street samurai are on hand to foil their plans.

What follows is a fast moving, action nightmare highlighted by nightmarish visions of seemingly ordinary people and objects morphing into their terrifying demon forms.

Genuinely scary stuff.

This is an anime that used to come on the Scifi channel back when it was known as the Scifi channel and not SyFy. It mainly came on when they had anime week and that is when I saw it and a few others. I recently saw an uncut version of this film and there are a few things that were not on the cut version, but for the most part all the scenes were there, just a lot of sex references. I always enjoyed this one, though it seems as if it should have been part of a series or something to explain some of the stuff that is going on, but a lot of anime films are like that; essentially, setting up a world with little explanation and really jumping right into the action.

The story has a man dueling with another. One has been blessed with the powers of the underworld and he soon dispatches the other man. Years later, this man makes his move to open the portal to hell fully and it is up to the son of the man killed to try and stop him. The younger man is a master of an art where he fights with only a kendo stick, but with the help of the president's daughter, a dude on mechanical roller skates and the mysterious Mephisto he just may have a shot at defeating the man the underworld chose as their champion!

I wish I had seen this with subtitles as the dub is not the worst, but there are a couple of characters that were just dubbed poorly. Mainly that small dude on roller skates they for reasons unknown gave a Spanish accent to. The character of Mephisto is cool as you never really ascertain his intentions and it is cool watching evil dispatched with a stick!

The film was good and enjoyable, it could have been a bit longer to allow more character development, but then sometimes that can slow down the pace and the pace of this one is rather good. Our hero must battle a giant spider demon, a strange hairball thing that almost is like a sloth and get by the villain's magic to get by. Totally enjoyable and wish there were more films like this instead of the over saturation of series that is prevalent in anime today.