One of the things I love about doing these monthly movie themes is that it not only allows me to watch movies I might not otherwise watch, but it gives me a greater understanding of the history of cinema. I learn things I might not otherwise come to know.
For example for Animation in August I’ve watched several Japanese animated movies and this has brought to my knowledge banks the term OVA or Original Video Animation. That’s basically a Japanese version of straight-to-video applied specifically to animation.
Like straight-to-video releases OVAs had more freedom than their cinematic or televised productions had in terms of length and mature content. An OVA could be as long as it needed to be and they were allowed more freedom in the amount of violence, adult language, and sex/nudity they could use.
Demon City Shinjuku is an OVA adapted from a novel of the same name. It follows a reluctant hero’s journey into the heart of Tokyo which has been overrun by demons.
It has more than a passing similarity to Star Wars, with some terrific animation, and some pretty cool demon designs. But it suffers from some terrible writing (or possibly a very bad translation).
In a prologue, we learn that an evil dude called Rebi Ra has allowed himself to become possessed so that he can wreak evil havoc upon the world. A good dude called Genichirou tries to stop him but is killed in the process. A giant earthquake happens during their battle wrecking the Shinjuku part of Tokyo. Demons quickly take over this area.
Ten years later Genichirou’s son, Kyoya Izayoi is tasked with going into the city and destroying Rebi Ra. He is accompanied by Sayaka Rama the daughter of the World President who has just been kidnapped by Rebi Ra. If they fail Rebi Ra will unleash all the demons and conquer the world.
Along the way, they obtain help from a short rollerblader who is just out for himself but ultimately finds his soul and a Dracula-esque mysterious goth dude. There is also Aguni Rai an ancient mystic who periodically offers advice.
They come across several demons before ultimately fighting Rebi Ra. There is a crab-like creature with a human head and a giant mouth full of teeth in its torso and a sexy redhead with tentacle arms.
All of this is pretty good. I enjoyed it. But the dialogue is rotten. Generally speaking, I watch foreign language films in their original language. I much prefer hearing the original actors’ voices even if I don’t actually understand what they are saying. With animation, I am a little more lenient since there is a realization that all actors are dubbing in their lines (it helps that most of the foreign language animated films I’ve seen are dubbed by really good English-speaking actors).
I started watching this film in the original Japanese with English subtitles, but something was wrong with the audio causing none of the film’s score or non-verbal noises to be heard. So I had to switch to the English language dub. It was…not good. And strange at times. The male characters were all very horny and they dropped F-bombs on a regular basis. I’m not necessarily opposed to either of those things but they often seemed out of place in this film.
For example, one night Kyoya Izayoi and Sayaka Rama find themselves in the same bedroom for the night. After Syaka goes to sleep Kyoya begins to look at her longingly. The camera slowly pans down her body so clearly some of this is in the original script, but in English, he goes on and on about how he wants to sleep with her.
And his dialogue is loaded with F-bombs in the oddest of places. He’ll throw one in the middle of an otherwise innocuous sentence. So much of it felt like some American scriptwriter trying to make the script more edgy.
It was bad enough that I turned on the subtitles just to compare. Gone was the hard-core cursing, but also quite a bit of the dialogue was tweaked to give it different meanings. It wasn’t the case of just some minor word changes, but entire sentences would be different. I think the gist was still there but it was clear the dialogue was translated with some different intentions than the subtitles. I also noticed there were times when the character’s mouth wasn’t moving, the subtitles weren’t indicating anything was being said, but the voice actors were talking. At first, I thought it was an internal monologue but now I think it was just the English language track adding in additional dialogue. There is a scene at the end where our two heroes are looking at each other longingly and then they kiss. His mouth doesn’t move, and there is no subtitle, but the English track has him thinking something really cheesy about how beautiful she is.
That’s far too many paragraphs of me discussing this film’s audio track. I don’t know what it all means. I just found it weird and distracting.
So, I recommend the film, but definitely try and find the original Japanese audio.
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