MPD Psycho

I'd liked the Takashi Miike films I'd seen so far, but I found this pretty disappointing. I'd bought it, but I won't be keeping it.

I saw it on the Adness DVD, which has just two episodes. In the first, a killer abducts women, cuts the top of their skull off to expose the brain, plants them in the ground up to their chin, and plants a flower in the brain. You can tell that from the DVD box. In the movie, the top of the head is digitally blurred out by TV static. Had you not seen the DVD box, the viewer wouldn't know what people were looking at until later a young cop produced a small model of the body. Oddly, there is also a flash frame later on of the woman's head and it is not censored. Apart from this, I'm not really sure what was going on. Some women get phone calls, and a sketchy animated character cavorts around when that happens. An animated character also appears on TV screens sometimes. It's unclear if anybody sees it.

In the second episode, pregnant women are being found cut open and their babies are missing. Again, a cop produces a model of what the corpses are like, which is helpful since again the actual body is censored. There is also a natural birth in the movie, but oddly even that baby and the umbilical cord are censored! According the the DVD box, uncensored versions were not kept when this was originally made. Perhaps even if they had, if they knew they were going to be censored, maybe they didn't bother actually showing anything...? Not sure.

If I hear the later episodes are better, maybe I'll look for them. As it is, I won't bother.

I like this kind of thing because it is just crazy, the story was quite hard to follow the first time i watched it... lets say i was very tired... & watching the edited English version of the series. Of which i watched episode 1 - 4. So that didn't make much sense, i couldn't really remember much except the action sequences when i came round to watch the whole series just recently. This was an unedited version although i couldn't tell you what was extra and what wasn't unfortunately. Although uncut there is occasionally actually meant to be blurring of 'victims' - lets call this artistic impression as i don't know what you'd actually call it. The artistic impression is quite strong in this series with some strange camera angles and effects. One effect that did look a bit budget was the green rain in a couple of the cut scenes & also the fire effects looked a bit average although they don't play a massive part and probably still added to the series in a way.

The feel of it was quite unearthly and the actual story itself was great as it kept revealing a little bit at a time. You grow to like the comedy element in it, which isn't massive, and get quite involved with the main characters. The violence is there as well, as you might expect from Takashi Miike and yet i feel the story was quite strong and therefore the violence although a massive part of the series only added to the quality of it as a whole.

I also liked the way that there would be a lot of new characters in each episode, and a different new 'psycho' element in each one too. Anyway, so i like it, you get the comment. I would just say that i like a lot of serious anime too, and also a lot of Takashi Miikes films - from films like DOA & Full Metal Yakuza you can tell Miike likes his 'fantasy' - and this series has that element as well.

It's about a detective who is possessed of 3 personalities. One of his personalities escapes and transports between people (barcode carriers) bringing out their worst side as he is in them, then he moves on invariably leaving them to pick up the pieces. Although the 'picking up the pieces' bit is brief as the episodes focus around the 3rd personality of the detective travelling through random people (usually doing something unwholesome), the detective himself and his 'friends' and also Lucy Monostone. We don't know who Lucy is except that somehow he has a part in all this!! This 60's rock musician turned terrorist. Oh and you get to find out if 'Lucy Monostone' is a man or a woman if you watch the series too, although this isn't obvious from the word go. Definitely expect some twists and turns from this series although it does wrap up quite nicely and leave everything pretty much explained. Which doesn't always happen in Takashi Miike stuff.

If you are a fan of Boys over flowers, you will love this.

No! I'm kidding.

How to describe this.

Gruesome, funny (although not very often, but I did laugh out loud at least once) bizarre, disturbing, wacked out.

Worth a look on DVD. This Japanese series melds a Twin Peaks like surrealism, with Manga inspired graphics and story line. Grumpy old detectives try to track down a mysterious being that jumps from person to person through the Japanese underworld, inspiring each one to go on a killing spree. Sounds clichéd, but some fantastic photography melded with oddly juxtaposed CGI and extremely graphic violence take it away from the norm. Pretty incomprehensible to start with, but strangely gripping none the less. In Japanese with English subtitles, which make it even more difficult to follow. First episode is excellent, but later episodes become more formulaic.

Takashi Miike was given the daunting task of translating the MPD Psycho manga onto film, and no other Japanese director could have done it as successfully as he has.

Let me clarify my above statement: the MPD Psycho series is nowhere as good as Audition or Ichi The Killer, but given the material and the constrictions of Japanese television, Miike used his experience to craft a tense, psychological story that hits a nerve with me every time I watch it.

Miike has a knack for exploiting weaknesses in the scripts he's given, and MPD Psycho is no exception. The manga is dense with plots, subplots and characters, and I get the feeling that Miike recognized the fact that translation would be difficult, so he chose a schizophrenic approach to making the series. This approach works for any viewer (like me) that has enough patience to watch the entire series from beginning to end. Watching one episode will get you confused, but watching them all in chronological order is a satisfying experience that eventually unfolds a colorful and chaotic story.

Technically, the series - on first look - suffers from a low budget, but once again Miike exploits this as he has on several of his other films. Colors are saturated and sharply contrast with each other, light and shadow are over-accentuated, and it all give the feel of seeing the world through the eyes a synesthesia-suffering psychopath. The special effects are overdone (neon rain, urine-colored skies), but it all adds to the effect. It's like watching a serial killer music video from the early 1980s.

The plot is probably the hardest thing for people to get around. I had to watch the entire thing from beginning to end several times before I finally understood what the hell was going on; there are so many subplots and twists that the viewer becomes overwhelmed after the first ten minutes. In addition, Miike's use of flashbacks and juxtaposition, while adding to the schizophrenic feeling that underlines the series, makes it hard to follow the storyline without feeling slightly unbalanced at the end of each episode.

There are so many characters introduced by the end of the second episode that you start to lose track of who's who and why they're doing what they're doing. That's why it's a MUST to watch it all chronologically. Some of the characters don't have their motivation or importance in the story explained until way after their introduction. At points, some characters disappear entirely until they make another reappearance further down the line. It's all rather overwhelming but very rewarding- each character is entertaining and has some sort of story to tell. My favorite is police chief Sasayama (wonderfully played by Ren Osugi), who goes through so much crap to expose the truth that by the end of the series you've got to feel sorry for him.

All in all, MPD Psycho is certainly not one of Takashi Miike's best works, but it showcases his talent and showmanship more than any of his other projects. Watch it through its entirety and you won't be disappointed, especially if you're a Miike fan.