Urotsukidôji: La légende du démon

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.

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!

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

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.

This manga film is a sick movie! Women are getting raped by monsters. At one point sperm is being licked off the face of a woman by a monster. There is a lot of slash and gore. The story is very simple and yet they manage to tell it in a confusing way.

I think I just don't get Japanese animation.