MPD Psycho

I'm going to do something unusual here. I just watched the first two episodes (out of six) of MPD Psycho, and I'm going to review what I've seen--the beginning of the story, basically. Once I can watch the whole miniseries, I'll supplant this review with a new one.

I would have never watched just the first two episodes, but I always try to know as little as possible about a film before I watch it. I expected that MPD Psycho would just be another Takashi Miike movie. I didn't realize that I was wrong until the first episode ended at 58 minutes. I thought, "That's it? There was no ending and that was so short!" Well, of course there was no ending and it was short. I'd only watched episode one of a six part miniseries. Even when episode two followed the credits (I'm glad I always watch to the end of the credits), I still didn't realize the disc wasn't complete. I would have never watched the first two episodes if I had known that the rest of the miniseries not only wasn't on the DVD, but won't even be released for another few months, at least. Why do DVD distributors do this? I would have gladly paid more to receive the whole thing at once. Doing it this way just annoys me and makes me want to avoid Ventura DVDs. Admittedly, it's my fault for not paying more attention to the marketing, which was somewhat upfront about the incompleteness, but as I mentioned, I prefer watching films knowing absolutely nothing about them beforehand, if possible.

Anyway, on to the episodes I watched. As others have noted, MPD Psycho seems to be Miike's "Twin Peaks" (1990), peppered with plenty of bows to Japanese genre conventions (the phone as a source of horror, regular rain, freaky young women, etc.). To a large extent, it's a police procedural, as was "Twin Peaks", and it's full of Lynchian intentional crypticness. Coming from a director who naturally tends to be cryptic, and where that is the expected norm for the genre in his culture, MPD Psycho, with its intentional stab at Lynchian weirdness, is extremely dense. In other words, you're not likely to be able to figure out what the heck the story is about by just watching the first two episodes.

It has something to do with a former detective, Yôsuke Kobayashi (Naoki Hosaka), who quit the force after a particularly hairy case. Kobayashi was after a serial killer who targeted pregnant women. At the beginning of the first episode we see Kobayashi crack when he encounters the serial killer, who had just done a number on his wife. Enter the "MPD" of the title--Multiple Personality Disorder. Kobayashi is now living in a small town, with a new wife, who oddly has the same name as his former wife and who looks a bit similar. There's a new serial killer on the loose who turns women into potted plants--he cuts off the top of their skulls, exposing their brain, and puts a flower in the middle, often burying them up to their heads below the ground. The pregnant woman killer also seems to be starting up again, even though Kobayashi killed him (they think it might be a copycat, although elements of the crimes that were never publicized are duplicated). Plus there's some bizarre stuff about possession via telephones or the Internet, chimerical women in some kind of "waiting room", they keep going back to this odd Ferris wheel, there's a bit of animation, a number of people have a bar code tattooed on the bottom of their eyeballs, and so on. I can only guess that much of it will make a bit more sense by the end of episode six, but knowing Miike, episode six might end with as many unanswered questions as episode 2 does.

Keeping with what is seeming like a tradition from Miike to me so far, MPD Psycho displays yet another style from him. It has an odd look, largely because it was shot on budget digital video cameras and a number of shots have been processed/manipulated in Photoshop and/or similar software. Although the digital video can give MPD Psycho the look of your average cheap soap opera, the software manipulations are often effective, as Miike tends to use them to make MPD Psycho more surreal. There are also some wonderful, odd angles and set-ups, such as the circling scene inside the Ferris wheel car (despite the camera/tripod shadows), and a Miike incorporates a lot of unusual, highly aesthetic blocking of his actors.

Some have said that the gore and more challenging images have been "covered" by pixelation, but the pixelation varies greatly in structure depending on what's being covered, and not everything pixelated is a controversial image. It seems more like an intentional stylistic device. It's especially effective but bizarre when integrated with the skull/brain flowerpots.

The music that accompanies the "dangerous" telephone calls is sublime and freaky for being so acultural. It sounds like a Beatles-influenced Anglo-Saxon band, like Kula Shaker. The song also provides possible clues to the subtexts of the film in its lyrics--"Sing to the sky, in this strange new world". MPD Psycho, at this point at least, seems to be about (re)birth and death--the life (and reincarnation) cycle as a means of transformation. This is perhaps also the reason for Kobayashi's fluctuating personalities, each undergoing their own (re)births and deaths. Time will tell, when I can finally watch the ending.

There's a good chance my rating will improve in light of the complete MPD Psycho. The miniseries will certainly be worth watching, but unless you do not mind a suspended, complete lack of closure, avoid the DVD release until the whole thing is available.

It comes to mind immediately for comparison- Twin Peaks, the great cult TV show, as being what Takashi Miike used as influence for his much more 'cult (or rather, little seen but raved in its small circles of fandom) take on an investigation of bizarre crimes in an even more bizarre half real-half dream environment. In so much that Miike, via Eiji Ootsuka's original Magna book, does create something of an alternate reality, where the multiple personalities transfer, where the blurred vision of the girls in the room with strange incantations, and where it rains green drops, this is an accurate comparison to the notorious black lodge in Lynch's universe.

But even through Miike's own acknowledged influence from Lynch (one can see it pretty clearly in Miike's Gozu), it's only something of a surface comparison at best. MPD Psycho is perhaps even MORE confusing, at least at first, than TP, with the circumstances surrounding the crimes to hold a lot more mystery, and just weird f***ed up adult-oriented Japanese theatrics, and with its protagonist with just as many demons and past troubles as those he's after. Plus, in the world of MPD, there's no telling if the actual victim may be the criminal as well, or what might be connected or not.

As with a good whammy of a Manga (or for that matter the average bear of a Miike flick), MPD Psycho is filled with incredible visual tricks and experiments, with animated bits (the little girl drawn before our eyes), intentionally crude visual effects (the rain drops, the quick visions into another personality as it transfers to another), and even creative censorship; who knew that a filmmaker as outrageous and shocking as this could make it a riot to see private parts and ultra-bloody sections blurred out and make it *work* for the sake of the show?

Like Miike at his best, there are very satisfying doses of dark comedy thrown in, sometimes unintentionally ("not your baby miss, you're just a vessel?"), and sometimes with the dead-aim of Miike at his most playful (the scenes in the big police lecture-hall where the one officer creates little clay figures he's very proud of) and savage, like the numerous moments of unexpected violence- here toned down but still graphic in-so-much as what isn't shown, and how uncomfortable the subject matter becomes in dealing with dead-end abortions and whacked out Catholic girls. As with the most depraved scenes in Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q, sometimes one can't help but chuckle through the mayhem.

Reccomending a series like MPD Psycho, perhaps, is a little trickier than in simply going on about what makes it a work where clarity in knowing what is going on- and it's not really incoherent when piecing it bit by bit, which the screenwriters and Miike end up doing very cleverly as each episode goes along (with, by the way, an excellent turn from the ultra-cool but doomed Amamiya/Kobayashi/who knows)- but rather if it would appeal to the average CSI type of TV viewer, or just to Miike's fan-base. In truth, I'd say for the former it's worth a shot, if only to see how Japan goes about turning the conventions of an mystery programmer on its head with levels of rough horror and chills and in-your-face satire. Though that being said, it's certainly not for anyone, not least of which for those who expect their detective stories to make sense every step of the way. This one, at least at the start, seems like a mystery coiled up in another mystery about how the bar-codes work, how they figure into the detective(s) and what Lucy has to do with it all, and Amamiya/Kobayashi's partner, and so on, which can be a little frustrating.

However, if you love how much of a wild-man Miike can get with already subversive material, MPD- Psycho is for ardent fans and casual admirers a trippy concoction where science fiction, film-noir, and the aforementioned Magna combine somewhat into a sweet mini-series event. As groundbreaking as TP? Not quite, but it's a lot of fun watching Miike create silly myth and disturbing subversion all the same.

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.

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.

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.