#47: Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

From https://dustyreels.files.wordpress.com/
2016/06/bellaofsadposter.jpg

Director: Eiichi Yamamoto

Screenplay: Eiichi Yamamoto and Yoshiyuki Fukuda

Based on the non -fiction book Satanism and Witchcraft by Jules Michelet

Voice Cast: Aiko Nagayama as Jeanne; Katsutaka Ito as Jean; Tatsuya Nakadai as The Devil; Masaya Takahashi as Milord; Shigaku Shimegi as Milady; Chinatsu Nakayama as Narrator; Masakane Yonekura as Catholic Priest

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: Set in Medieval France, a farmer's wife by the name of Jeanne is lead towards Satan, spurn to him when originally raped by the Lord of her village and furthered to  the Dark One when trying to survive within the context of a poverty stricken environment under said Lord's thumb. Further incidents - the growing suspicions against her attempts at a better life with her husband John, the pressure of war and the need to fund it taking its toll on the village, the jealousy of the Lord's wife when Jeanne does command power - eventually lead Jeanne to fully embracing the Devil, becoming a fully formed, nymph-like witch of great power.

Belladonna of Sadness is unique. Ditto, an obvious assessment dumb to repeat but it's worth mentioning because of how idiosyncratic it is next to what anime is today. Subtle influence does exist - Kunihiko Ikuhara, the director of Yurikama Arashi (2015) (reviewed as #41 on this blog) and Revolutionary Utena (1997) is a known admirer deeply influenced by the feature - but like experimental animation from Japan from the same period its utterly alien next to what anime stereotypically means in the West. It feels like a project that threw caution to the wind and was, the last film created by Mushi Productions before its death. Founded by manga god Osamu Tezuka, his studio would innovate in terms of animation, but before 1973 he'd already left the sinking ship to start creating some of his darkest, adult manga like Ode to Kirihito (1970-71) in response to the more adult manga others were creating, the likes of director/co-writer Eiichi Yamamoto back at Mushi deciding, rather than play it safe, to finish off what was a trilogy of erotic animated films with an openly experimental and politically minded work. It's even alien to what the trilogy originally started as, attestable having seen Cleopatra (1970), a frankly bizarre take on the Egyptian figure full of surreal tangents and flourishes that I love but understand led to it being a box office bomb, the kind that helped led to Mushi Productions sinking financially in the first place. With that in mind, it emphasises how radically different Belladonna still is within anime when its different next to already unconventional productions from Mushi.

From http://files.offi.fr/evenement/61158/images/600/
14bbb3181bd3f29623d937ddb99fe0e0.jpg

The result with Belladonna is a period set erotic drama which sensualises witchcraft and occultism but inherently from its source text is about a figure kicking back at the world that pushes her down. Plenty of softcore, live action films from Europe from this period did the same to varying qualities, but whilst it has the gender politics of its time on the surface, Belladonna of Sadness is still exceptional when considering the period it originates from. Japanese cinema by this period and before reflects a vast conflict in terms of gender depictions, flip-flopping between films about women and their place in the world, from Kenji Mizoguchi to this, to the more problematic erotic and dramatic exploitation films. Even if trigger warnings may be appropriate to bring in when discussing Belladonna, its pertinent that for every individual who views it as being dated there's yet as many male and female to praise Belladonna regardless of it being a seventies film made by men with very explicit sexual content. A lot of the issue is a modern conundrum where inherently the idea of sexuality is immediately bias towards objectifying of women, that nudity and sexuality equals a male gaze, when pro-sexuality feminism and female writers, commentators and academics are pushing back on this bias and emphasising the greater complexity with this view in terms of films like it and how women, as viewers and/or fans of these movies, digest them. Whilst there are plenty of moments in Belladonna which are extreme and purposely transgress, it's a significantly more complicated narrative which, between the sensuality, eventually leads to a figure becoming a dominant, powerful female figure, muddying a response one can have to its attitude.

Jeanne, as merely a drawing of womanly perfection given life by art director Kuni Fukai's obsessive detailed and Western influenced illustration, and voice actress Aiko Nagayama's emotional tenors, is a sexual figure, found in many states of undress but feeling far less a figure of objectification than a figure of purity slowing gaining individuality in a patriarchal and utterly unfair world. Even if it's by means of an openly phallic Devil who starts as a little phallus than turns into a giant mushroom shaft - voiced by one of the greatest actors of all Japanese cinema Tatsuya Nakadai for added startlement - its only because of the evil of the world around her and hierarchal power that Jeanne becomes a witch, not openly embracing her sensuality but becoming a literal forest entity who transformation, much to her initial surprise, isn't the vindictive croon she wished to become but the figure of beauty and love. Paradoxically her hatred is channelled into helping the villagers when the Black Death arrives, the cost for them merely to join her in the bliss of countryside Satanic orgies where everyone is happy and is transmogrified into enough blatant imagery to give Sigmund Freud an aneurism. In fact, for a slight spoiler, the only reason her tale is a downfall is because Jeanne refuses to play ball with the hierarchy and stubbornly refuses to bend to them.

From http://www.theoasg.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Belladonna.jpg

All of this is not something that can just be dismissed as merely erotic animated porn. Its openly sexual and willingly perverse, able to slide into utterly weird sequences of literal beast-human sexual organisms and conga-line coils of human sex trains that are strong images even in the current decade, but like the best of erotica (or porn, mincing terms) it's also utterly gorgeous and sticks a middle figure up to a lacksidasical ideal of this type of material being merely base or without meaning. It's too gorgeous, now restored when thought to be a mere obscurity, the weird uncle in erotic anime's closet, to view as anything but art; having known Belladonna when it was an obscurity covered on a podcast like Anime World Order as a mere fascinating dead-end in anime's history, only viewable on YouTube, seeing its resurrection by Cinelicious is utterly awe-inspiring because the artistry is so pronounced and successful. The story, while rich in meaning, is told (in the best decision) through its simple fairytale-like narrative that leads to tragedy, the focus instead in how to show its story onscreen.

Belladonna was a low budget production when Mushi Productions was on its last legs but used this context as its aesthetic template. The elegance of Fukai's work alongside the animators is helped by the fact most of Belladonna is actually still images, scrolls of illustration where time passes within the same canvas, bleeding through each other as the camera usually pans left or right along like a comic strip. When elaborate movement is done, legendary animator and director Gisaburō Sugii as the animation director for the production it's for the most subtle of facial or body language, or for the most extravagant and/or extreme moments. The willingness to push the form of the film goes as far as even breaking the historical context, suddenly breaking out a mad collage of modern sixties/seventies symbolism like cars and flairs suggesting Jeanne's full transformation into a witch allows one to see the enlightened pop art future centuries later. Keeping all of this sewn together is Masahiko Satoh's music, an academically trained jazz musician and musician who like many of his field willingly experimented into other genres, his here full scale acid rock that, far from feeling out of place as an anachronism, actually fits like many period genre films who flirted with this type of music because of its openly occult, hallucinogenic qualities appropriate for tales of classical mysticism and emotional melodrama you can synch up to wailing cosmic guitar solos.

From http://1125996089.rsc.cdn77.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/
12/BelladonnaofSadness_1973_belladona_hedder1.jpg

Altogether Belladonna of Sadness is an incredible film, one that I am grateful to see properly available and in restored form. Now what was for me a mysterious, vague film in the annuals of anime - like Angel's Egg (1985), a more well known but still difficult to access experimental anime from Mamoru Oshii, another person openly inspired by Belladonna of Sadness - is now available for more to see and had the kind of retrospective premieres and screenings one would find for legendary art house films. Having only known it as a weird cult oddity before, its lush artistry grows in 4k form as does its theme, a greater power in its finale where it suggests many women will become like Jeanne in the end, climaxing in a finale still image originally from a later cut of the film Cinelicious kept in, realising that as a finale, touching upon a legendary piece of French artistry, there was a sincere coda, a meaning, to the production that does strike the heartstrings. It may have taken decades to get to that point, barring its Berlin Film Festival premiere and its box office failure nailing the coffin for Mushi Productions, a least a DVD release in Japan and maybe Germany beforehand, but the wait was entirely worth it. 

From https://mattystanfield.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/use.jpg

#46. Crying Freeman (1988-1994)

http://www.allgoodthings.tv/files/BIG00.jpg.jpg

Directors: Daisuke Nishio and Shigeyasu Yamauchi

Screenplay: Higashi Shimizu and Ryunosuke Ono

Based on the manga by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami

Voice Cast: Chiharu Kataishi (as Emu Hino); Toshio Furukawa (as Yo Hinomura/Crying Freeman); Dump Matsumoto (as Báiyá Shàn); Gara Takashima (as Nina Heaven); Kōhei Miyauchi (as Bǎiba Lóng); Masako Katsuki (as Kimie Hanada); Yoshiko Sakakibara (as Bagnag)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: Artist Emu Hino crosses paths with an assassin codenamed Crying Freeman by accident during one of his killings. Real name Yo Hinomura, Freeman is a former potter turned brainwashed member of a secret Chinese society of paid assassins, Hino rightly concerned that her is soon to end before her thirtieth birthday because of her interaction with him. However due to the love that blossoms between them on the night of her supposed death, Freeman not only spares her but begins a rollercoaster that includes leading the assassins' guild together and having to face every underworld criminal, lust crazed leader of mercenaries, ancient bear cults, fellow assassin guilds and wrestlers that wants to take their territory.

For a disclaimer, the only actual Kazuo Koike manga I've read is Color of Rage (2008), one of his obscurer titles. Koike however has had a LOT of his work adapted to anime and live action cinema to the point that in terms of context in adaptations, a significant picture of his style is found within them all, one of the most successful manga creators of his kind whose influence spans arguably beyond manga and anime as well, more surprising knowing he only writes his stories, leaving the illustrations to a variety of different collaborators over the decades. His storytelling has visibly influenced pop culture, from Frank Miller being influence by the Lone Wolf and Cub (1970-76) manga for his comics to Quentin Tarantino being influenced by the live action adaptation of Lady Snowblood (1972-3). That's not even taking account that his Gekiga Sonjuku program, which taught manga writers/artists like Fist of the North Star creator Tetsuo Hara, Vampire Hunter D writer Hideyuki Kikuchi and the legendary Rumiko Takahashi, which is nothing to laugh about in terms of the effect he brought to the medium.

The issue with Koike as a storytelling though, to found with this adaptation with Crying Freeman by Toei Animation, alongside other examples like the 1990-2 anime adaptation of Mad Bull 34, is that he is arguably an originator of a very extreme style of gekiga manga; gekiga, a more serious or explicit form of storytelling for adults in theme and content, in his hands leads to a form, from the issues of challenging deadlines and having to constantly make sure readers stay with a series, which pushes the limit of logic and good taste to a delirious level. In fact it actually pushes both off a cliff, which makes even the adaptations of his work a challenge for viewers who may be put off by the extreme content within something like Crying Freeman, or a challenge in how it can become utterly nonsensical if an attempt to rationalise it all is tried. This will be impossible to ignore with this adaptation of Crying Freeman over its six episodes, as much an OVA series which you have to overcome the problematic gender representations, nonsensical plot points and tasteless decisions as you can appreciate its mad illogic even if some of the stranger moments from the manga were likely removed.

From http://www.geocities.ws/kyosan16/Images/freeii.JPG

Really the biggest issue in terms of good taste, where Crying Freeman does feel of its time, is in its portrayal of women, the one real issue I have with the series even in terms of an erotic crime narrative. It's because it leads to what is a frankly bland lead being the kind of figure whose only personality is how perfect he is and how any woman - daughter of a Triad leader, leader of an African assassination guild, even enemies - can fall in love with him and become part of what is affectively a harem in spite of only saying he loves main female character Hino. There's so much sex and nudity over six episodes that its actually possible for a viewer to feel numb if marathoned in how absurd it gets, female character designs objectified to the point either you find it distasteful or just absurd to an unintentional extent. Only the sexual violence the sets up the plot of episode 4, even if its slight in depiction, feels like the show steps too far, something that the episode is stuck with as its from the original source material. The rest, if disconnected from that one scene, feels like a mere bugbear or a farce in how hard it's trying to be; if you can get past the initial reaction to the gender politics, it does become comical, especially as there's no discrimination - between men and women of any age and size including a female character named Báiyá Shàn who is a enormously tall and large woman - suddenly taking their clothes off for sex, to fight or no rational reason in terms of plot in the slightest. In the same way, some of the more ridiculous moments are also too absurd to be offended by even when they're un-PC, the concept of full body blackface for one of the more bizarre examples coming off as less offensive but being so unexpected and something you'd thought to never see in an anime its silly as long as you bear in mind why it would be deemed in poor taste for other potential viewers, and that at the same time the same character than poses as a female golfer, the world of Koike more the result of being scatterbrained than deliberately provocative.

Crying Freeman is a cautious tightrope being stoic, serious action and being as dumb as a plank, and if there's a virtue in spite of its many flaws, it's that the OVA is at least unpredictable. The first episode, which was adapted into the entirety of Christophe Gans' 1995 live action film of the manga, is pretty conventional but from episode 2 on it starts waddling off in into the great absurd quickly, even in the first two sequel episodes being two short stories clipped together into one hour long one for added strangeness. Whilst the main character is the bland perfect hero, the real interest is all the strange plot machinations and characters around him, where the best form of revenge by a female lover of one of Freeman's targets is to dress in a skimpy, entirely metal corset that she can electrify people with upon contact. Where to take revenge on a wrestler who harms one of the women in his life, Freeman actually gets inside a wrestling ring in front of a crowd wearing a luchador mask, or that there's a female leader of a mercenary group called Nina Heaven who captures Freeman as her sex slave to dry hump when he refuses to cooperate with her obsession with him. Whilst Koike's more divisive work more feel too grimy and tasteless to approach, even in terms of the adaptations, there's as much this sense of utter randomness which negates the more tasteless material; it still needs to be brought to mind when experienced, but Crying Freeman the OVA as it goes along is so lost in its own train of logic, you give up the moral high ground or high ground of "quality" and attempt to survive at the end.

From http://i.imgur.com/0h2a5vl.png

It's actually not the strangest material Koike would produce just from the adaptations - the live action Hanzo the Razor films are as extremely poor taste in premise as you can get, even more problematic in gender politics, yet strangely compelling especially as they're still high quality, artistically minded Japanese pulp cinema, whilst Mad Bull 34 has everything from the lead police anti-hero smuggling grenades in his trousers tied to his pubic hair and a Predator-like serial killer in the finale episode roaming New York City. (Even one of the more serious and critically acclaimed adaptations, the Lone Wolf and Cub films, get stranger in later sequels, not in terms of poor taste but plotlines which meander with odd tangents and ideas to how events weave together, soldiers suddenly springing from the snow like anime henchmen or the maddening tangent in one such sequel where the protagonists can only get the entirety of a piece of information from multiple messengers). Where one finds entertainment in Crying Freeman is knowing full well how absurd it is, even offensive, but viewing it with as absurd, its hyper masculinity impossible to take seriously and instead the heightened events within its gritty world standing out as more as pure fantasy, where Freeman naturally has his own submarine early in the series and that's considerably normal next to everything else that happens.

Also ironically, whilst there are action anime with less nonsensical qualities, Crying Freeman does have one legitimate virtue in its style in spite of its low budget; when an anime like Black Lagoon (2006) (reviewed on this blog as number #45) should be superior to this in every way, it yet suffers from feeling homogenised in style and tone whilst this scuzzy, scrappy OVA does have it in buckets even if it's gone off and tastes a little rancid. Baring a transition in look that helps the later episodes, an increase of shading and black in details, Crying Freeman for all its moments of roughness and inexplicable creative decisions nonetheless possesses the aesthetic tone that I find myself attracted to, one shared in late eighties and nineties anime even when scraping the bottom of the barrel. A lot of it is to do with how drastic the changes between hand drawn and computer assisted anime are in appearance, but it's as much how even cost cutting techniques like narration over still images are still a technical design choice even if for cost cutting measures. As much of this is the material too, both the dank underworld environments of metropolises and criminal hideouts, but also in terms of the realistic character designs right down to the elaborate tattoos - dragons, tigers, phoenixes - that many characters have on their bodies. In many ways, whilst it could've been a lot better written and less pointlessly tasteless, even some of the tackier aspects of Crying Freeman in their perverse, janky flair could add a lot to modern anime if honed and done as a purposely aesthetic choice. If something like Black Lagoon, which just missed out greatness for a lack of excitement at the end and feeling too clean in presentation, could marry Crying Freeman's style with aspects far better done in its modern equivalents, then everyone would win.

From http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/_img/shows/banner_2133.jpg

#45: Black Lagoon [Season One and The Second Barrage] (2006)

From http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/_img/shows/banner_362.jpg

Dir. Sunao Katabuchi

Screenplay: Sunao Katabuchi

Based on the manga by Rei Hiroe

Voice Cast: Daisuke Namikawa (as Rock); Megumi Toyoguchi (as Revy); Hiroaki Hirata (as Benny); Mami Koyama (as Balalaika); Tsutomu Isobe (as Dutch); Jun Karasawa (as Sister Eda)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: When his company's boat is hijacked by a mercenary group named the Black Lagoon Company, salary man Rokuro Okajima becomes "Rock" when, after being kidnapped by them and having his ties to the company severed by upper management, he decides to join the Black Lagoon in a form of forced upon Stockholm Syndrome, joining leader Dutch, computer expert Benny, and gunwoman/living weapon Revy with nowhere else to go. Living on an island known as Roanapur, where all manner of mercenaries and criminals house themselves, they interact between the Russian mafia outfit Hotel Moscow, psychopaths, triad and yakuza, neo Nazis, and a maid with the combat ability of a Terminator in their various paid jobs.

For the first twelve episodes, what is technically called season one, Black Lagoon takes a successful stab at the American action genre in animated form, reinterpreting its tropes in a way that someone who isn't a fan of the genre like myself can still appreciate. Animation naturally has an advantage in terms of unlimited possibilities in terms of the stories and depending on the budget, their kineticism, alongside this TV series having the time to stretch out characterisation, one of the biggest disadvantages action cinema have. In terms of style, it attempts to have a more grounded realism next to the action fantasies of other anime, absurd to consider when one of the first major action scenes of the entire series is a boat being driven up a sea wreck as a ramp to fire a torpedo at a helicopter, but more prevalent in everything else. There's still the exaggerated characters in design and manner - stoned out getaway drivers, Gothic Lolita female Leatherface - and the visible John Woo influence so  blatant there's a Chow Yun-fat figure amongst the cast, but there's more moral greyness and real world politics on display that stands out greatly.

In terms of plot, the first twelve episodes, episodic narratives stretched over two to three actual episodes each, do much to establish the series both as a pulp action show but also in establishing a world full of anti-heroes, Roanapur a place entirely morally grey and off-radar whilst Black Lagoon themselves are willing cooperate with murderers, mafia and corrupt officials on either side of a conflict just for pay. Rock plays the stereotypical innocent outsider whose moral high ground clashes with Revy, the completely opposite whose give-less-of-a-fuck attitude clashes against his immediately, eventually becoming the trope of anime of the more brazen female character jarring against the more quiet or cautious male and building up a relationship as a result. The show manages to go further than even so American action films in touching on grim subject matter (Nazism, child slavery) which allows these moral conflicts to be brought out even while its enjoying its explosions related carnage.

From http://batrock.net/animeimages/bl01-01.JPG

It's for Black Lagoon one of its saving graces in the first half that it openly has a large cast of memorable characters who are outright villains but can be heroes compared to other worse figures than them. The few glimpse of Roanapur as a city let alone an island in the first season particularly gives the show a distinct character, a world with its own rules and various factors at play, from Hotel Moscow to the Triads led by the Chow Yun-fat stand-in, who are on friendly terms with each other, to places like the bar that gets constantly blown up by various events throughout both seasons. It's a rundown hellhole, where Heineken is the beer of choice (though with the letters in the name switched around for copyright reasons) and one has to rely of cars ready for the scrapheap to travel around in. It's an inherently fascinating location for this world to be mostly set, even allowing quiet moments of humour and introspection as a tropical environment before you get to the figures within it who'll change allegiances depending on the money involved.

One of the biggest virtues of the show is that a lot of these figures, and the strongest in most cases, are female. Colourful and exaggerated figures, but many women who are more dangerous and memorable than the male characters. Revy is obvious the poster woman of the series, but there's also Balalaika, leader of Hotel Moscow whose burnt face and body are matched by a back-story of fighting for the ex-Soviet Union in Afghanistan and becoming a ruthless, powerful figure in command of ex-soldiers who follow her devotedly. Other such memorable female characters include Sister Eda the nun, a member of a church on the island who are more for gun smuggling than religion, the aforementioned Roberta, the aforementioned maid with the tenacity of a T-800 who got a narrative for herself in a 2011 spin-off story, and various other distinct female characters who stand out even more than many male characters in the narratives.

Amazingly as well for a show about exhilarating action, it's actually subtle at points just in terms of the dialogue. Whether it's the translation of dialogue to English subtitles or Sunao Katabuchi's screenwriting work on display, for a period until by the end there's a considerable stab at giving characters not only their own idiosyncrasies but also distinctions between different characters they talk to. (I.e. Revy and a minor female character Shenhua, a Taiwanese knife user whose love-hate relationship, trading insults and Revy mocking her ability to speak English, becomes entirely different from how they speak to anyone else). That the series, even if voiced entirely in Japanese for its original language track, makes it clear the characters speak in different languages, and actresses like Megumi Toyoguchi as Revy and Mami Koyama as Balalaika have to speak in English many times in the show, gives Black Lagoon personality in tying these characters to distinct traits. Even the most sadistic figures feature usually have tragic back stories or even real life historical details woven into their origins - the most overtly, stereotypical anime characters, two Romanian twins who dress in period Victorian dress and are bloodthirsty monsters in spite of being children, are for example given origin in the real life anti-abortion policies of ex-Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and the effect of the resulting growth of the birth rate after his overthrow. The dialogue occasionally tries with difficulty to be even philosophical, but the attempts are all admirable.

From http://senpai-knows.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/06.jpg

The series for me however does falter within what was originally Season 2, The Second Barrage. The Second Barrage is only three actual narratives strung over twelve episodes. One involving the Romanian twins, which is good by itself, the second about a female counter fitter whose bounty, due to an ill advised decision by Sister Eda to milk the reward of protecting her, leads to the misfits and lunatics of Roanapur to hunt her down on mass. The problem really comes to head, sabotaging the two seasons, with the final six episodes, an entire narrative set in Japan with Hotel Moscow trying to take over the criminal underground against a yakuza clan. On one hand it's the perfect conclusion as Balalaika is shown to almost be entirely evil with Rock forced into a moral issue, challenged in his complacency, where a young girl Yukio Washimine has to take over her yakuza family's heritage against the military strategy and greater numbers of Hotel Moscow. However, it also means Dutch and Benny are merely cameos, squandering Black Lagoon as a team when the final narrative could've had them all stuck in a dangerous situation, and the character of Yukio and her loyal bodyguard are not interesting figures. The later is worse as the series falls victim of an issue with pulp storytelling where, in narratives where normalcy for main characters always returns by each chapter, the story specific characters who can be effected permanently however need to be as interesting as possible or the entire narrative's worthless.

As a result of the failure of these final episodes, half an entire season, it started to stain and reveal flaws in the previous episodes. For all the virtues, the strong female characters and fun dialogue, there was also repetition and less than inspired moments which are forced into the open due to how much the finale fails, marring the two series. This was especially when I compared it to another series from the same era, Baccano! (2007), another action series influenced by American pop culture that was a period fantasy-action story primarily set in early 1930s America, with strong female and male characters, memorable dialogue, and even more ridiculous action and gore, but also an imaginative puzzle box of a plot structure which jumps back and forth in time, and more lavish style in look and music. Against something like it, what started off perfectly in Black Lagoon didn't succeed further with its original virtues and came a disappointment. 

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YzHWChfudJI/VXellHmIAgI/
AAAAAAAABHY/kSvpbI1iYV4/s1600/original%255B1%255D.png