It's that time of the year again, when a day that technically means "All Hallows' Eve", as in "the day before we celebrate the lives of all saints, known & unknown", is twisted into a celebration of the dark, mysterious, macabre, & scary; it truly is "Thriller Night". As is tradition on this blog, there must be a piece for All Saints' Eve, and preferably one that focuses on something scary, horrifying, spooky, or at the very least supernatural. With that in mind, let us return to a segment that I introduced earlier this year: Oh Me, Oh My, OVA!. For those who haven't read the pilot entry back in May, OM, OM, OVA! takes a look at the immense well that is the short-form Original Video Animation, i.e. anime released straight to home video that's no more than two episodes long, four productions at a time, with the pilot focusing on the earliest OVAs that came out between Dallos (the first ever OVA) & Megazone 23 (the first OVA hit). Therefore, let's celebrate Pervigilium Omnium Sanctorum, as they say in Latin, with a quartet of OVAs that aren't afraid to show monsters that shed some blood, raise some hell, & let loose some souls from within their mortal shells.
Are they the ones that you wanted? Are they your superbeasts?
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| Here's the rarely-seen Japanese title card! |
As we always go in chronological order, we start with 1987's Lily C.A.T., which is based on an original script by the late Hisayuki Toriumi, who also directs. This OVA is notable in that it features two icons of character design on staff, with Yasuomi Umetsu handling the human characters & Yoshitaka Amano handling the monster. Streamline Pictures would license & released a dubbed VHS tape only in 1995, featuring many of the standard actors that the late Carl Macek relied on for his dubs at the time, and it even saw some TV time in North America back in the day via the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy). Discotek Media would then license rescue it in 2014, releasing it on dual-audio DVD, making the original Japanese audio available for the time over here. So let's start things off with this cult-classic & see what Hisayuki Toriumi brought to the (dissection) table.
It's the 23rd Century & the Syncam Corporation is sending out an investigative unit to a mysterious planet light years away. Seven Syncam employees have been chosen to go into suspended animation on the giant spaceship Saldes for 20 years to research the planet, along with the six-person crew of the Saldes itself; also with them is Lily, the pet cat of the Syncam President's daughter Nancy, who's one of the 13. After the 20 year trip is completed, everyone awakens, but very quickly things go sour. First, the Saldes' crew comes across a message from Syncam that two of the seven employees are actually imposters, but the message looks to have been erased before explaining who the two are. Second, the Saldes itself has seemingly been operating on its own during the past 20 years, gathering research material along the way, despite the computer systems not having an AI capable of doing so. Finally, just before everyone awakened, the last automated material gathering opened a hole in one of the block's ventilation, allowing an alien bacteria to infiltrate the Saldes itself...
If you look up info on Lily C.A.T. online, specifically things like reviews, you'll quickly see that it's commonly compared to Alien, with some even going as far as calling it a "rip-off". Now, to be fair, that's not exactly off the mark, as there are definitely more than enough similarities between the two: Characters being killed by a dangerous & seemingly unkillable alien creature, people not being who they say they are, a mysterious corporation being revealed as simply using the cast as pawns for their own (hopeful) profit, the requisite "final girl", and of course the entire story taking place in a giant spaceship (which could honestly be called a space station, if you're picky). However, what doesn't really get brought up is how Lily C.A.T. adds in touches from other iconic horror/thriller stories to help give the OVA a bit of its own identity, oddly enough. While there is a final "creature" to be found, for the most part the alien entity is instead simply bacteria that kills its victim in a manner similar to Legionnaires disease, eventually spreading & becoming more monstrous over time. Combined with how the OVA initially sets things up, you get a bit of The Thing here, as you initially wonder if the alien is taking over or copying something, combined with the natural sense of distrust that the cast have for the first 2/3 of the ~67-minute runtime. Similarly, the whole "two are faking who they are" aspect brings to mind a touch of They Were 11, Moto Hagio's iconic 1975 sci-fi mystery manga, which actually had been adapted into an anime film a year prior to Lily C.A.T.. Finally, the whole "the ship's computer is screwing over the human cast" element reminds one of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, though without being directly blatant about it.
The end result, then, is both a little bit of what you'd expect a mix of those various influences to be like, but also a bit of not what you'd expect. For example, while there is a slow & decidedly non-lethal initial section to the OVA, roughly the first 1/3, followed by the bacterial menace slowly picking off members of the cast, it's actually not as hyper-violent or commonly grotesque as you'd think an OVA of this vintage would be. As mentioned, most of the deaths come from a Legionnaires disease-esque fashion, resulting in those being rather non-violent in execution, though in the latter half there are a small handful of more disturbing deaths to be seen. Also, due to the whole "AI screwing over humans" aspect, not all of the deaths are actually because of the bacteria, which actually does keep things a bit uncertain as to what will happen next. Finally, the ending is both definitive & bittersweet, helping make it a bit more memorable than if it had a more standard ending from the kind of stories we normally see in plots like this. Overall, Lily C.A.T. is definitely an interesting little sci-fi horror/thriller tale to check out, and while it certainly won't fulfill most gore hounds' violence quotas, it's still more than worthy of the cult status it's received over the decades.
Now if you want blood & gore, though...
We stick with the Studio Pierrot monster train for our next OVA, the legendary Baoh the Vistor from 1989! Based on the short-lived (as in "it only ran for 17 chapters") 1984 Shonen Jump manga by Hirohiko Araki, Baoh is actually the first work by Araki to get adapted into anime, predating A.P.P.P.'s initial JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Part 3) OVA by four years; it was directed by Hiroyuki Yokoyama, though Hisayuki Toriumi supervised. This is yet another OVA that also had a limited theatrical run, in this case running in just Ikebukuro & Osaka as a double-bill with Sonic Solider Borgman: Last Battle. In 1995, AnimEigo licensed & released the Baoh OVA on dubbed VHS & dual-audio "hybrid" LD, though the fact that Viz was also releasing the Baoh manga in English around the same time was just sheer coincidence, as Robert Woodhead has admitted that Baoh was just one of a number of titles he had licensed all at once from Toho. AnimEigo would then re-release the OVA on dual-audio DVD in 2002, and in the ~20 years since Baoh has found itself a bit of an infamy as an early online anime meme, due to its cheesy English dub by Coastal Carolina ("BAOH HAS A LASER CANNON!"). However, is that all there is to Baoh the Visitor, or is there more to this pre-JoJo "phenomenon" than meets the eye?
Ikuro Hashizawa is a 17-year old young man who's been kidnapped by the mysterious Doress Organization & experimented on by being the first human implanted with Baoh, a parasite created by Doress that can turn its host into an unstoppable force. While being transported, though, Ikuro is accidentally freed by Sumire, a 9-year old psychic girl who was also kidnapped by Doress, with the two now being on the run from Doress after escaping, as the possibility of the Baoh parasite now spreading beyond the organization's control is too high. Should things get too hot for the duo, though, the Baoh parasite inside Ikuro activates, turning him into a blue-skinned monster with a variety of "phenomenal" abilities, namely hands that emit extreme acid, hair strands that can be shot out as deadly stingers, razor sharp blades that can jut out of his arms, and the ability to harness 60,000 volts of electricity from his body.
This is... This is... This is... BAOH!!!
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| I could have gone for the (better) broken mirror shot, but I might as well indulge the meme, for the fun of it. |
While the original Baoh manga was no doubt cancelled early by Shueisha, resulting in it only lasting for two volumes, it also feels like a story that Hirohiko Araki never really intended to run for a long time, so in the end it's a rare, shortly-lived Jump manga that actually feels like it has a proper start, middle, & end. Because of that, the OVA adaptation is able to actually tell a complete story, which wasn't exactly a guarantee when it came to home video adaptations of manga during this time. That said, the Baoh OVA is only ~45 minutes long, so some content from the manga had to get removed. Namely, we get all of Ikuro's backstory & character development (what little of it there was) excised, except for how he got captured by Doress. We also lose some extra battles, like the fight with Martin the giant mandrill, the "Aroma Bats", the toxic Nepenthes secretion trap, & the entire section where an old couple take Ikuro & Sumire in for the night (which does play into the epilogue). Yeah, the original Baoh the Visitor manga is all sorts of wild, which is what helps make it such a memorable series, one that still managed to influence people, despite its short length; Shaman King's Hiroyuki Takei most notably cited it as one of his favorite manga growing up, alongside JoJo.
So does that mean that the Baoh OVA is an underwhelming production? Oh hell no, this is still awesome!
While the manga does have the advantage of having more personal moments with Ikuro, which also establish him as slowly becoming more in control of the Baoh powers over time, the OVA is excellent for those who just want to have a fun time watching watching a superpowered human kill a bunch of bad guys in all manner of violent ways, almost all of them featuring some sort of head or limb being cut off (or just melted), and plenty of blood being spilt. It also must be stated that this is a well animated OVA, with lots of nice detail when it comes to Ikuro melting people's faces, blood spills in very smooth fashion, and overall it just looks very nice. Sure, some of Araki's iconic posing (which first was seen in the Baoh manga) is lost in translation, but that's kind of true of any Araki anime adaptation until JoJo started getting the TV treatment in 2012. As it is, the Baoh OVA is a cult-favorite because it's just a very well done "creature feature" of sorts, and the tone it carries really does depend on the language you watching it: In English you get more of a cheesy feel to everything, with some heavy overacting in places, while in Japanese it's given more of a serious vibe, giving the horror aspects more weight. It's disappointing that this was a "Jump Video" release in Japan, which means that Shueisha helped directly produce it (ala the Bastard!! OVA or the various Jump anime pilots), possibly meaning that it's tougher to license it now than it was back in the day, because this deserves a new release today & is well worth a watch, especially during this time of the year.
Just as with the pilot entry, our second OM, OM, OVA! features an anime produced by Mataichiro Yamamoto in the third slot, and just like Greed in that entry, this one is also a debut for a company that Yamamoto founded! In particular, 1995's Bio Hunter is the very first anime ever released by the now-defunct Urban Vision, coming out on dubbed VHS on July 29, 1997, before getting re-released on dual-audio "special edition" DVD in early 2001. Like many of UV's early releases, Bio Hunter comes to us from Studio Madhouse, in this case based on a single-volume manga from 1989 by Fujihiko Hosono (Gallery Fake, Sasuga no Sarutobi), with a script by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, & the directorial debut of Yuzo Sato (Akagi, Kaiji, One Outs), though Kawajiri also acted as supervising director. Ever since shutting down in 2016, following a long stretch of silence after 2010, Urban Vision's catalog is generally best remembered for titles like Vampire Hunter D, Golgo 13, Ninja Scroll: The Series, Wicked City, & Twilight of the Dark Master, leaving Bio Hunter's status as UV's first ever release as seemingly nothing more than a mere historical footnote... But is that a fair assessment of the OVA itself?
Koshigaya & Komada are molecular biologists by day, but by night they're "Bio Hunters" who hunt down people who have been infected with the "Demon Virus" that transforms humans in monstrous creatures. However, the duo have a last resort trump card should things potentially go sour: Komada is infected with the Demon Virus, but is able to control it & can even transform into his demon form at will, though the two worry that Komada may eventually lose all control. While on his way back home, Komada comes across Shizuka, who's being hunted after by mysterious men in suits. Turns out that Shizuka is the granddaughter of Bokudoh Murakami, a master fortune teller who recently was visited by Seijuro Tabe, a government official with plans to become Prime Minister. Bokudoh, though, has gone missing, so the Bio Hunters decide to help out Shizuka, especially since Komada can sense that the Demon Virus is involved with all of this, in some way.
Bio Hunter is something that I've owned on DVD for a long time, but had never checked out until now, and I actually came out of it very amused. In short, this OVA is essentially a buddy-cop story, though in this case they aren't actually cops, but with a neat twist in that they hunt monsters & that one of them can transform into a monster himself. Admittedly, I'm sure this has been done before by 2021, but considering that the manga came out in 1989, I imagine that it might have been somewhat fresh at that time. Also, while Koshigaya plays the (comparatively) aloof & relaxed counterpoint to Komada's straightman, I do like how it's Komada that has the virus in him, giving him his own "wild" side that he has to deal with over the course of the story. Naturally, we also get a budding romance between Komada & Shizuka over the course of the hour-long story, and it works well enough here. In terms of the plot itself, Bio Hunter is rather straightforward but well executed, delivering an enjoyable buddy cop-esque story, though since our heroes aren't exactly action stars there's more of a focus on survival & figuring out the mystery behind Bokudoh Murakami & Seijuro Tabe.
As for the horror, Bio Hunter does a good job, including leaving the violence & gore to only certain points, so that each moment that features it hits harder. The designs for the demons are also well done, especially that of Komada's demonic form, and there's really no hesitation when it comes to stuff like bloodshed & gore when the time comes to show it. Visually, though, Bio Hunter does feel a bit plain for a Madhouse production, and while Yoshiaki Kawajiri did supervise Yuzo Sato's direction, you can definitely tell that he didn't actually direct this OVA himself, as it only has small moments where it has that trademark Kawajiri feel to it, and those are more than likely just because Kawajiri did do some bits of animation here & there; while Sato would go on to greater things as director, it's very much a freshman effort here. That being said, however, I really do prefer Hiroshi Hamasaki's character designs for the OVA over Fujihiko Hosono's original manga designs; they're radically different, and for the better. Also, props to Masamichi Amano's score, which while not exactly memorable after the fact still does a really good job at keeping the entire OVA feel very eerie & moody.
Overall, it's not hard to see why Bio Hunter has become more or less forgotten when it comes to Urban Vision's catalog, but that's not to say that it's bad. It's actually a pretty good watch, enough so that I wish it was just a little bit longer (at least feature-length, instead of ~60 minutes), and it does act as a great indicator of the kind of violent anime that UV would make its name on during its life. I don't ever expect it to get license rescued, but it does make for a good Halloween watch.
Finally, we end our look at monster-themed OVAs with a rare anime adaptation of a horror manga by one of the masters, Junji Ito. In fact, 2012's Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack! (subtitled "Ugomeku Bukimi/The Ghastly Squirming" in Japan) is actually the very first anime adaptation of an Ito manga, in this case 2001's two-volume Gyo. While Junji Ito is a master of dark, uncomfortable horror manga, it's generally been felt that the scant few times it's been adapted into animation haven't really been able to properly carry over that same feeling of dread, especially with the 2018 anthology TV series Junji Ito Collection. In fact, it really says something that the upcoming TV anime adaptation of Uzumaki for Toonami aims to replicate Ito's artwork as accurately as humanly possible. However, what about Gyo? I mean, with a subtitle like what Aniplex of America gave it, does that indicate that animation studio ufotable & director/co-writer/storyboarder Takayuki Hirao (God Eater, Pompo: The Cinéphile) went in a different direction than what Ito originally did with the manga? Or did the increase in length from 30 minutes to 75 result in something all the more "ghastly"?
Kaori is a college grad who takes a trip to Okinawa with her friends Erika & Aki, with the three staying as a summerhouse owned by Prof. Koyanagi, the uncle of Kaori's fianceé, Tadashi. After coming back to the house for the night, the three come across this horrific smell, only to discover a seemingly dead & rotten fish... that's mounted to a contraption with four pointy legs so that it can walk on land. After killing the fish, the three get ready for the next day, only to be attacked a giant shark with a similar walking contraption. After a phone call with Tadashi cuts out after he warns her not to come back to Tokyo, Kaori takes the first plane back in search of her fianceé, meeting freelance cameraman Shirakawa along the way, who joins her as he's looking for Prof. Koyanagi. The walking fish have made their way to Tokyo, and they won't stop, nor will "fish" be enough for those walking contraptions.
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| "I said 'Candygram!', b****es!!" |
The original Gyo manga is a perfect example of Junji Ito's knack for being able to tell stories that can either be silly or absolutely horrific, depending on the situation. The first half, with its "Killer Fish that Walk on Land" concept, is very much like a fun & cheesy horror B-movie, with some touches of something a little more horrifying lurking beneath; it's absolutely something you could see Roger Corman producing. The second half, however, moves things over into being a downright creepy piece of serious body horror, not too far off from something you'd expect from David Cronenberg. In terms of adaptation, the Gyo OVA is actually really interesting, because it changes up a whole lot of stuff, while still being accurate to the manga in numerous places & scenes. The main change is that Kaori is now the main character, instead of Tadashi, which results in either some role reversal between her & Tadashi, or the anime-original characters (Erika, Aki, & Shirakawa) being given scenes that originally went to Kaori & Tadashi in the manga. Also there are some anime-original plot beats to be seen, like the fish being responsible for crashing both an airplane & subway train that Kaori & Shirakawa take. However, that's not to say that this isn't an accurate adaptation of Junji Ito's manga, because you still get all of the scenes that I'd argue are truly relevant or iconic, including some ancillary moments & even the more bizarre, like the Citrus Circus scene.
However, there is something to be said for the OVA not really being able to truly carry over Junji Ito's iconic visual style, so instead we get ufotable & Takayuki Hirao looking to carry over the general mood & feel of the original manga. The end result, then, is that this is honestly what I'd expect an anime produced by Roger Corman to be like, and I mean that in all the best ways. For example, literally every single walking fish is done via CG, seemingly with the intent on making it look as blatantly incongruent with the animation as possible, and I absolutely love it. The first half of the manga really does have a bit of an absurd feel to it, and the OVA manages to be accurate to that mood, and the changes to the plot due to the altered character dynamics & new characters follow through very well. Even the new bits of character development, like Erika & Aki being tonal opposites (thin girl obsessed with looks vs. slightly pudgy & shy girl), feel very much like something you'd see in a Corman film. Now when the OVA moves over to the second half of the manga there is a bit of a tonal shift, much like in the manga, though only to so much of an extent, which I'd argue comes mainly from the visual style of the OVA when compared to Ito's artwork. When the Gyo OVA first came out by Aniplex of America, it received a bit of a lukewarm reception, partially due to a likely expectation from it being based on a Junji Ito manga (despite the fact that Gyo really is one of his more bizarre concepts), and partially due to the fact that being an AoA release meant that it was being sold at a somewhat ridiculous price (~$40 for a 70-minute film); it's also an early AoA release, so it has no legal streaming option anymore.
Is the Gyo OVA good as a replacement for the Junji Ito manga? No, of course not. It goes for both its own visual feel & even its own plot in numerous ways. However, the Gyo OVA is still a lot of weird & bizarre fun if you're in the mood for a true Roger Corman-esque B-movie experience in anime form.
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This brings us to the end of another Oh Me, Oh My, OVA!. Here's to plenty of gore, scares, frights, thrills, chills, & who knows what else can come about from those that go "Bump!" in the night.
Happy Halloween!
Lily C.A.T. © 1987 FlyingDog, Inc.
Baoh the Visitor © 1989 Shueisha/Toho
Bio Hunter © 1995 Fujihiko Hosono/Comic Burger/Toei Video/Goodhill Vision/BMG Japan
Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack! © Junji Ito・Shogakukan/Anime Bunko
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