Saibâ shiti Ôedo 808

A piece of antiquity in my eyes, brutal, blunt and abrasive, generally, a classic piece of 'lads cinema' - just as fun today as when I was twelve.

The glory of Manga's cyberpunk collection, Cyber City is three episodes surrounding the collar-wearing criminal police force of a future 'neo-tokyo'.

Full of classical clichés; the quick snapping hard man sporting a mullet and a snazzy red trench coat. The enormous, goggle garbed somehow Japanese- Italian- American computer hacker and oddly, a long haired transsexual - Bentin, with his flashy pedicure and exceptionally effective cheese knife.

But, the wonder of Cyber City is its' shameless tough man aesthetics, (the sort of characters that say 'yeah I gotta a mullet/Mohawk or a nice pretty dress! What of it!) Simply striving off the spine-tingling, dramatic action that every fella is ashamed to love, knows he does but just doesn't know why. Cyber City is a show for the boys whatever age so long as the ladies aren't home, its just one of these boys' animations that the girls just cannot understand nor will they ever care to.

So for a few tins, a blast from animation past, f'in, blinding, beating, killing and great cheesy action, it's a show and a half!

I first saw this on Channel 4 (UK) when it was aired here in 1994/5 and I was blown away, one of the reasons was the amazing Rory Mcfarlane UK edition alternative rock and electronica score which fit it perfectly.

Unfrotunatly not nearly enough people, let alone anime fans themselves have even heard of this which is a shame. Im no die hard anime fan who watches all these new random animes but i do like a well produced one and the guy who created this created Ninja Scroll (which i also have)! Its a very well realized, animated, written OVA although its short with only three episodes, its very sweet. I highly recommend this for any anime and cyberpunk fan who wants to see where cyberpunk began and was at it best.

Welcome to Cyber City Oedo.

Cyber City is pretty good. The story is that three Cyber criminals decide on taking high risk jobs with the police or stay in prison. They take the job in hopes that they can one day be free again. That is just the intro to the series.

The three episodes rely mostly on one of our heroes for their time to shine and character development, if little development at all. The plots for each episode are clearly sci-fi. The heroes are pretty likable and have some serious attitude.(They are criminals after all). This only went on for three episodes that I know of. For what it's worth, the three episodes are fun to watch and are a little longer than I thought.

The voice acting: The Japanese acting is terrible. With all do respect, they sound awful. It's as if they are merely just reading their lines without a care at all. The English voice acting is awesome. Like watching a good movie good. Plus the English dialog is much better than the original dialog that is boring and dull, the new dialog is strong, gritty, vulgar, and up in your face!

The animation: Superior. For 1990, they set the standard here. The animation is very close to flawless as anime can get. A little dated now but still good looking.

The Last Word: Nice. Not to much to say here though. This only lasted three episodes. Did not get a chance to shine. Shame. This wasn't bad. I liked this.

Yoshiaki Kawajiri once again takes the helm and delivers one of the best Anime series of it's kind.

Kawajiri is no stranger to anime, having directed the fantastic Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D he knows how to make them good.

As with the other films it's quality all round. Meticulous detail has gone into the artwork and animation to create a truly atmospheric cyber futuristic setting which looks amazing.

As with many others I saw this in the UK on it's first broadcast on Channel 4 and having been somewhat of a stranger to anime back then, having only seen parts of Akira, needless to say I was completely blow away by it. Something just struck a chord from the fantastic artwork, the rich and colourful characters to the incredible soundtrack by Rory McFarlane (One of the first things to grab me!)

I cannot stress enough the importance of this now discontinued UK edition of the series. The voice acting is exceptionally well done (rare for an anime!) and the music is a stunning 80's prog/synth metal charger in the vein of Vince Dicolas Transformers (1986)

In Martial Arts films I prefer subtitles, but in anime, due to the vast amount of visual work on screen I prefer dubbing as looking away to read subs takes some of the enjoyment away.

It is such a shame they only ever made 3 episodes. For ages (Pre internet) I searched for more episodes only to discover there were none, but in a way this only adds to the vintage that is Cyber city!

Thrilling, epic, action packed and brilliant!

Get it!

You Know, without Lee Marvin the Dirty Dozen just wouldn't have worked. But here I think he would probably be surplus to requirements.

This is a very enjoyable fillm/series, however the version I witnessed suffered from a very irritating affectation of dubbing companys - that of inserting expletives every few words. This is normally done in an attempt to gain a higher classification and raise the films status in some way.

The film itself is rather enjoyable, several convicts recruited to fight crime etc.. etc.. the plot makes more sense than some other 'concatonated-series' films as everything has been left in and new plot clinching characters are not neglected untill the final reel.

Hours of fun. (well, just)