Guilstein: The Monstrous Abel to Gundoh Musashi's Incompetent Cain?!

Naoyuki Sakai is a Japanese writer best known for working on J-Drama, but has also thrown his hat into the rings of tokusatsu (Tokusou Robo Janperson, Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger), anime (Nessa no Haoh Gandalla, Street Fighter II V), & even video games (Onimusha: Warlords, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages). This also applies to manga, one of which being Juuseiki/Record of Beast Star Guilstein, which was drawn by Hisao Tamaki (Star Wars: A New Hope's manga adaptation, Dirty Pair's 2010 manga reboot) & ran in Shogakukan's Monthly Sunday GX (short for "Gene-X") magazine from mid-2000 to late 2002 for four volumes; the word "Guilstein" is a portmanteau of "Guilty" & "Frankenstein". It tells the story of how various children start turning into monsters once they hit the age of 15, with the populace calling them "Guilstein", & how young Iori Takigawa tries to use his recent transformation into a Guilstein to help save humanity, rather than destroy it. If you are curious, it actually saw English release digitally by Wowmax Media back in 2010 under the title Teen Apocalypse: Guilstein, & is still available for purchase over at Amazon for $5, though only the first volume ever saw release.

Along with making that manga, though, Sakai also helped bring the concept to animation, with the end result being the movie Guilstein, a 2D/CG hybrid film that debuted in Japanese theaters on June 15, 2002... Maybe. You see, the film was actually finished back in 2001, and according to Amazon Japan the OST came out in March 2001, while the DVD release was in 2003, so I can't truly tell when the film debuted in Japanese theaters. Regardless, aside from having a similar basic concept behind it, the film has pretty much nothing to do with the manga. The film was produced by ACC Production, which had recently opened a new studio founded by Nobuyuki Sugaya, a director of photography-turned-producer who'd been around since the 60s, & the legendary mangaka Kazuhiko "Money Punch" Kato, both of whom have since passed away.

Wait a minute... ACC Pro? Monkey Punch? Nobuyuki Sugaya?!
This is from the people that gave the world
Gundoh Musashi?!

Yes, it is indeed the same exact studio & producer, though this movie came first. In fact, Sugaya & Monkey Punch even held a panel at San Diego Comic Con in 2001 (even though neither seemed to be there as guests, oddly enough), alongside John O'Donnell & Christopher Couch of Central Park Media, where they actually hyped up the Guilstein movie & talked as if a North American release was in the works (the third link is about that, in particular). From what I could tell, which included asking former employee (& former Answerman for ANN) Justin Sevakis, CPM never actually licensed the movie, so why O'Donnell & Couch were a part of that panel is beyond me. About a year ago or so I made a visit to the Book-Off store in New York City, and I actually came across the Japanese DVD release for Guilstein over there for a couple of bucks, so I think taking a look at a horror-ish anime movie produced by the studio that would give us "The Disaster Anime" itself a few years later is a perfect way to celebrate Halloween!

It's the year 2088 and the organization Yashiro Arcology has complete control over the dystopian cityscape of the Orient District, outside of which is a desolate area where the guerrilla resistance force Anagura operates. Sabi Suad is a young woman who has escaped Orient, after her mother & little sister were killed by giant monsters called Guilstein, created by Yashiro Arcology's experiments, & her scientist father Orion was kidnapped by the organization. After an attack by a Guilstein, she winds up underground & meets Anagura, only to discover that they have within their ranks a Guilstein... One that has retained his human mind & heart. That would be Chous Distour, a former student of Yashiro's academy who found out about the secret "Caduceus Project" that was creating monsters. He got sold out by his friend Lee Igarashi after admitting to let the truth go public, resulting in Chous becoming the first ever human Guilstein. He escaped & made his way to Anagura, while his girlfriend Reimei Kanan, who first revealed to him the truth behind the project as she was a part of it, was told that Chous died. Seeing a link between them, Sabi & Chous decide to break back into Yashiro Arcology to rescue Dr. Orion Suad & finally put a stop to Mudem, the man behind the Caduceus Project, while Anagura follows behind to destroy Yashiro once & for all.

Whenever there's an elephant in the room about something I review, I like to bring it up right away, & in Guilstein's case it's the various monsters that carry the film's namesake. As you can see above, while the majority of the movie is done in 2D animation, every single of the Guilstein are done via CG... And it's easily the film's major flaw. While the designs for them are honestly really good & monstrous, the simple fact of the matter is that they just aren't rendered all that well, even for the time, & it often just doesn't quite mesh with the 2D assets. While CG was nowhere near perfected in anime by 2001, when this film was apparently finished, it could still be mixed in really well with 2D in small doses, but Guilstein is one of those films that just goes all in & pushes the usage as a selling point. I get that they are meant to look inhuman & not-of-this-world, but the end result is that they just look way too artificial, and the way they're shaded just doesn't mesh with the characters or environments they exist alongside & within, respectively. Granted, the film does try to do some neat lighting effects with the models here & there, but overall you just wind up wishing that the entire film was done via traditional animation, because the end result here suffers, as you'll constantly be chuckling whenever a new Guilstein appears. Is it better or worse than Geisters: Fractions of the Earth, which aired around the same time Guilstein finished production? Hard to say, honestly, though Geisters did seem to be animated digitally, while Guilstein was obviously animated the old fashioned way, so while the CG for each production doesn't mix in well, it might actually be somewhat less blatantly terrible in this movie.

So, with that out of the way, how is Guilstein as a movie? Honestly, it's not bad at all, and works mainly because of its straightforward execution. Out of a total 90-ish minutes, the first 40 minutes or so are all about introducing things, first by showing how Sabi comes across Chous (pronounced similar to "Kaosu", the Japanese pronunciation of Chaos) & Anagura, followed by an extended flashback that shows how Chous went from regular science student to monstrous creature, all because he wanted to do the right thing & reveal the truth behind the Caduceus Project. Through it, you get a good feel for the kinds of characters Sabi & Chous are, as well as establishing the likes of Lee & Mudem as villains, with Reimei being given a hint as to what really happened to Chous, after he shields her from accidental police fire during his escape. Beyond that, & after some set up where Sabi makes up with Chous (as she shot the hell out of him early on, in a panic), the rest of the movie is all about the assault on Yashiro Arcology's main tower, whether it's Sabi & Chous' search for Dr. Orion Suad or Anagara's attack elsewhere. To its credit, the movie does mix it up enough during this (majority) portion of the plot, like Chous meeting up with Lee & Reimei again, showing what really happened to Dr. Orion, Chous dealing with the prospect of a vaccine that can revert Guilstein back to human form, & the final encounters with Mudem. While it sounds like the film is nothing more than an action-fest, & it does advertise itself as a "Creature/Monster Battle Movie", there is enough of an actual plot in there for characters to develop & make tough choices, especially for Chous.

However, once you go past our two main leads the rest of the cast are rather one-note & simplistic. In regards to the people in Anagura, the main four are pretty much defined by their designs & early actions, with only one or two late bits of added development. Donega is the old & wise leader, and is later revealed to be the former leader of the Orient Area, cast away 30 years ago by Uryu Yashiro, the head of Yashiro Arcology who only appears in about two scenes throughout the film. Oohashi (who I swear looks like John Blade from Sin the Movie) is the giant, gun-toting weapons expert with his own experiences, namely a late-debuting sub-plot (literally, this comes up about an hour into the movie) about his lover Shina, an Anagura spy who infiltrated Yashiro prior to the events of the movie, only for them to realize she was turned into a mindless Guilstein during their assault. Nuu is a wild-looking fellow gunner, though she's much more compassionate & caring than her looks give off. Finally there's Iyu, the group's child hacker... And that's really the main extent of her character; she's a semi-innocent kid who's just great at hacking into computer systems. Lee makes for a good villain in how he sold out his own friend for apparent personal gain, & there might be some indications that he wanted Reimei for himself, while Mudem is your standard evil villain, but plays the role just fine. Finally, Reimei makes for a fair character, neither becoming a damsel that needs rescuing, nor becoming an "action girl" type, since Sabi takes that spot; she isn't stupid, but rather underestimates just how low Lee can go.

Really, what's most interesting about Guilstein is that it really feels like it's from a different era. Even though it was made & released in the early 00s, the designs & traditional animation look & feel like it's actually from the 80s, or early 90s at most. The entire film feels like it'd be more at home alongside the likes of Baoh, Violence Jack, Crystal Triangle, Wicked City, or even Darkside Blues in terms of tone, i.e. dark, brooding, or even hyper-violent. Unfortunately, it came out about a good decade too late, resulting in it not exactly delivering on that feel, and one could argue it's because it came out in an era where that style was considered passé. Sure, there is a bunch of blood spraying about at times, and a bit of gore, but it's pretty much exclusively towards Chous mutilating other Guilstein, so it doesn't look all that good, and while humans are killed in the movie, the truly violent moments are either cut away from right before it happens, or are simply only alluded to. Honestly, I wouldn't dock the movie too many points for this, because the overall plot is still done fairly well & it does showcase Chous' most violent actions as being a negative & him giving in to his more animalistic side, but the fact of the matter is that it COULD have been more visually violent had it changed one part of the production; I'll explain later, but keep this in mind.

As for the production side of things, the film was directed by Tsuneo Tominaga (Initial D: Fourth Stage, The Galaxy Railways Season 2), who also helped do the storyboards, and overall (aside from the CG) the movie looks rather good, with no real animation errors that I could find, though I believe the DVD by Shogakukan wasn't properly encoded, as I noticed all sorts of interlacing problems during fast movement; Tominaga isn't known for handling anything major, but at least looks to run a tight enough ship. Naoyuki Sakai himself wrote the script, so at least I can guess that this movie stays true to the general themes & style that Sakai utilized for the manga, even if the plots & characters are wildly different; it also delivers two surprisingly sudden kills for the villains, though one feels unfulfilling. Yes, he'd also go on to lead the writing for Gundoh Musashi, but I won't hold that against him, as nobody bats a thousand. The character designs were done by the late Yasushi Nirasawa, a legendary creature designer who worked on TV series like the Kamen Rider franchise & Garo, movies like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within & Godzilla: Final Wars, video games like Deep Fear & Enemy Zero, anime like Hells & Bleach the Movie: Memories of Nobody, and even Hollywood-produced films like Space Truckers & Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy. With Akira Kano (Souten Kouro, Disgaea TV) helping adapt them for the 2D animation, Nirasawa's visual style is really what makes the movie look as good as it does, and while the CG isn't flattering in any way, Nirasawa's various Guilstein designs do look as good as they can, considering the technology used. Though he was a co-founder of this new endeavor for ACC Pro, Monkey Punch had nothing to do with this film, though he was asked for his opinion on it during the SDCC panel; he gave a generic response that vaguely praised it, of course.

As you can see, Lee doesn't exactly endear himself to Reimei, or the viewer.

The music was done by Japanese alt-rock/pop band Adenosine Tri-Phosphate, or ATP for short, which MP3.com actually called "the greatest unknown band from Asia" back in 2000. It's a small soundtrack with a nice mix of rock & electronic, generally matching the film's downbeat or harsh mood; there's even a fair amount of lyrics to them sung by the band's keyboardist, Taata. The opening theme, which is also played throughout the film at points, is "Dreams Within (Main Theme)", which is a hauntingly beautiful song, with fittingly bleak lyrics, like "Life is a process of dying every day". The ending theme, which also plays during some fight scenes in vocalless form, is "Bio Blood Society" by Nicotine, and it is an absolutely rocking song, performed in complete English (& rather well, at that), sounding more like something you'd hear in a Guilty Gear game; to clarify, that's absolute praise. As for the voice cast, it's lead by Yasunori Matsumoto (Gourry in Slayers) & Atsuko Enomoto (Emi Sendou in Cardfight!! Vanguard) as Chous & Sabi, respectively, and they both deliver fitting performances, while the voice modulation done for Matsumoto when in Guilstein form makes him sound nigh-identifiable, which is neat. After them, I'd say the standout performance honestly comes from Kazuki Yao as Lee, as his voice completely seals how evil & selfish the character can be. Similarly, Shozo Iizuka (Tetsugyu in Giant Robo) delivers a solid performance for Mudem, making him sound completely unrepentant for his actions & greed for power. The only remaining "major" member of the cast would be the eternal 17-year old Kikuko Inoue as Reimei, and she sounds just as caring & endearing as she usually is in her roles. The rest of the cast is rounded out with the likes of Kenichi Ogata (Donega), Tessho Genda (Oohashi), Masako Katsuki (Nuu), Maria Yamamoto (Iyu), Akio Nojima (Dr. Orion), Katsuhisa Kouki (Yashiro), & Rei Sakuma (Shina).

Finally, the DVD release includes some neat extras, like quick messages from the major cast, plus short bits of the actors doing their recordings (Kazuki Yao's is all about him accidentally saying a line meant for Chous), but the biggest one is easily the original ~2.5-minute pilot film, back when the title was spelled "Gillstein". This is where my complaint about how the movie "COULD have been more visually violent" comes in, because this pilot is 100% 2D animation, making it look even more like it was done during the 80s, and there's no hesitation at all in showing Chous mutilating humans, even lopping a head off at one point. It also, arguably, shows off Nirasawa's designs for the various Guilstein better than the actual film does, since they get to be hand drawn completely here. While Nirasawa & Sakai were here from the beginning, handling the designs & "scenario", this pilot was directed by Shigeru Yamazaki (Psychic Academy), who's mainly an episode director & storyboarder, and overall it works fine as a proof of concept, as it certainly got enough interest to make into a feature-length film; you just wish that the use of CG wasn't pushed as much as it wound up being.

In the tagline, I brought up the idea of Guilstein & Gundoh Musashi, both anime Nobuyuki Sugaya produced over at ACC Pro, being like Cain & Abel, the Biblical original sons of Adam & Eve; obviously, we'd have to swap ages, since Cain is supposed to the firstborn. Much like how Cain become infamous for having committed an atrocity by killing Abel in an act of jealousy, Musashi has become infamous for being an absolute disaster of a production, so much so that Guilstein has pretty much become like Abel, i.e. the innocent victim of its' sibling's actions that no one really knows much of anything about. In fact, Sugaya even wound up choosing a favorite son, as a scheduled airing of the movie on BS-i in 2006 got replaced at the last second by an airing of three compilation episodes for Gundoh Musashi, all in an attempt to continue riding the hate-popularity of that series at the time. Unlike the short life of Abel, though, one can still give Guilstein a watch if you come across the DVD, and while it is flawed, it's still a good film on the whole, and infinitely better than its younger, more (in)famous, sibling; nothing mind blowing, by any means, but fun nonetheless. Really, Guilstein's biggest issue is the heavy usage of CG for the titular monsters themselves, which is a shame, because if it had been done completely with traditional animation, like the pilot was, I'd honestly recommend hunting it down. As it is in its final form, I still think it's worth a watch if you manage to come across it & are curious, mainly because it'll obviously never get licensed (or even fansubbed, quite frankly) as ACC Production went out of business in late 2007, but you will have to get past the CG, and I know for some that's a wall they just won't be able to climb over.

Anime © ACC Production