Urotsukidôji: La légende du démon

One of the earliest 'hentais' to make it state side, this helped spark the uber obsession America's geeks have with anime. Featuring graphic violence, explicit sex and an adult-themed apocalypse story, this is one of anime's best offerings.

The world, it seems, is divided in to 3 parts. The human world, the beast world and the demon world. Demons being evil, beast being good, and humans caught in the middle. An ancient prophecy speaks of a creature, called the Overfiend, which will be born of man and will bring either peace or destruction to the three realms. The race is on to find it's vessel on Earth and harness it's potential power.

The story has more than it's fare share of fantasy and horror, it seeks to balance the two elements and does a nice job of it. But the main reason most people will watch this is the same reason I did: anime-sex. For inexplicable reasons that stuff is just plain hot, probably because they do things in the medium one would never see in a live action film.

The sored acts include all manners of regular sexual activity all the way up to tentacle rape. Yes, I said tentacle rape. However, unlike most other products of it's kind the sex doesn't feel like cheap excess nor does it come off as the only viewing point. Graphic (often fully explicit) though it may be, it serves a purpose with in the larger story. Rather than a stopping point it furthers the action.

Horror purists will be happy to know that mixed in with the sex and fantasy elements is a healthy dose of horror, J-pop style. Dr. Suess-inspired underworlds, great creature designs, and gobs of spilt hemoglobin. The ultimate conclusion is a little hard to get past at first (as with many J-horror films), but it still wraps up nicely.

Anime fans, horror geeks, and the rain-coat crowd should definitely seeks this one out.

9/10

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!

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.

Many people see this as nothing else but another stupid hentai title with cute little girls being raped and killed for no good reason. Well, with such way of thinking, Neon Genesis Evangelion would be nothing more but stupid big robots fighting for entertainment that little boys can watch. Well, that of course isn't the case, is it? Such an opinion is a serious understatement.

First of all unlike other hentai titles I've come across, this series is strongly plot driven. In fact, (almost) all of the sex scenes serve the storyline and drive the story forward in some way, let it be consensual or not.

As for the characters, this movie is unique already in the fact that it's one of the very few films that actually has made me feel something for the characters. Like the character of Niki for instance, or the doomed love of Nagumo and Akemi...I wanted to shed a tear or two for them.

To sum it up simply, Urotsukidoji is very much worth of watching, if you can take the content, that is. If demons with multiple penises raping schoolgirls (which actually happens quite a little, in the first series at least) and the excessive violence doesn't disturb you, I highly recommend this one. As a hentai title, it's 5 out of five. As a movie among others...3 1/2 out of 5.