WICKED CITY

Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Japan. 1987.

I had an anime phase. I’m not ashamed of it. It happens to everyone. Some of us outgrow it in our 20s. The rest spend their weekends crammed into convention centers dressed up like fetish objects for pedophiles. My anime phase hit me right out of high school and lasted about five years. Of course, I still watch the occasional anime film, but for the most part, the clichés and stereotypes I once enjoyed now give me such existential cringe that I can barely get through a single anime episode without blood shooting from my nose.

I watched all the popular series of the late 90s and early 2000s. Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo!, Berserk, Trigun, YuYu Hakusho, that kind of stuff. Some of it I still enjoy. Every other year, I watch all of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hell, I’d happily watch Serial Experiments Lain any time of the day. I consider Katsuhiro Ôtomo, Satoshi Kon, Hayao Miyazaki, and Mamoru Oshii to be among the finest directors of all time. I even went to some of those conventions, though I didn’t dress up like a freak. I was there to shop for Sega Saturn imports and Godzilla toys.

Yes, sir, for a good five years, I liked anime and anime liked me. These days, I’d rather pull my teeth out than watch Attack on Titan or whatever the kids are into. My tolerance level has long since plummeted. But I couldn’t think of anything better to watch tonight, so I figured, hey, why not revisit a movie I remember liking as an anime-infatuated 20-year-old. How bad could it be?

A peace pact between the world of men and the world of demons is coming up for renewal. An electronics salesman/elite combat operative named Taki and a demon hottie from the Shadow Realm named Makie (somehow those names don’t rhyme) are tasked with making sure the deal goes through. The key to that plan is the safety of Mayart, a 200-year-old pervert mystic who is currently the top target of a group of otherworldly terrorists known as the Radicals. If he dies, the chances of a renewal are all but nil.

Before the job starts, Taki finally hooks up with a chick he’s been pursuing for months, unaware that she’s really a demon in disguise. The girl he fancies is actually lying unconscious in the bathroom of a bar. They head back to her place, where they quickly get down to business. After getting their rocks off, she begins to change into a long-limbed spider-thing with a sharp-toothed mouth where her vagina should be. You just know this is someone’s fetish. I was braced for a fight, but no. She scuttles outside and disappears into the night. Unlike Taki, I get stuck with a case of blue balls.

The rate of demon infiltration is increasing, making ratification all the more important. I’m not sure why the signing of a non-aggression treaty matters to terrorists, but as I just watched a spider woman suck off a dude, I’ll let it slide. Best not dwell on the details. I should note that I watched the dubbed version of this film because it’s all I could find. Maybe the original Japanese dub would iron out some plot weirdness, but I don’t care to find out. I doubt it would turn this cornball ‘film noir meets THE THING’ romp into fucking Shakespeare. At least it’s not full-on hentai. If this were an Italian movie, I’d be able to find a hardcore cut full of explicit spider-fucking and demon humping. Not sure if that would help or hurt, but as I don’t suffer from the brain disease that causes fully grown adults to find cartoons ‘hot’, I’m not that bothered.

Taki (drawn to look a bit like Bruce Lee) fights a couple of demon assassins at the airport. Because this is an anime, he can jump seven feet in the air and punch with enough force to penetrate torsos. The assassins mutate into Thing-like things from THE THING, right down to a disembodied head walking on spider legs. The body horror on display here is 99% of the reason why I enjoyed this shit in a past life. Now that the bad guys are all tentacles and fangs, Makie makes her first appearance. She quickly takes down the assassins, leaving us to enjoy some wooden flirting between the two leads. Let the countdown to semi-explicit cross-species erotica begin. These two are gonna bone.

Mayart’s plane explodes mid-flight, the result of a Radicals attack. “Is the life of one person worth so much that you have to kill so many?” Taki opines. “It’s so cruel,” Makie replies. Even demons hate terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, Mayart wasn’t on the plane. No, that disgusting little creature booked an earlier flight. He’s drawn like a malformed toad and introduced with silly music, so you know this will be the typical obnoxious, lecherous old man anime stereotype. Within seconds of his on-screen arrival, he’s grabbing Makie’s ass. Now I remember why I stopped watching this shit.

Mayart is intolerable, but I fought the urge to skip every single scene this fucking mutant is in, even when he spent several minutes talking about what demon pussy tastes like. I’m not sure who the hell characters like this appeal to, but it ain’t me. If it were, I’d hang myself on principle. He’s written like a younger brother character in an 80s teen sex comedy, an endlessly annoying cringe lord suffering from excessive verbal diarrhea. No matter what WICKED CITY offers up over the next 62 minutes of its running time, it is ruined because of this outrageously repugnant and obnoxious buffoon.

Everyone takes shelter for the night in a hotel protected by psychic resistance barriers. I hope whoever bought those barriers kept the receipt, as they don’t work at all. A demon easily breaks in. This demon doesn’t turn into a spider or have flailing tentacles where his junk should be. No, he only screams really loud. So loud, in fact, that he makes a man’s arm fall off. The attacker knocks Taki unconscious and heads upstairs, finding Makie alone in Mayart’s room.

Turns out, Makie knows the attacker. He chastises her for choosing to help the humans. They used to be friends, maybe more. It doesn’t stop Makie from attacking him with her extremely long fingernails. The attacker overcomes her, throws her on the bed, and - you guessed it - sexually assaults her. This is an 80s anime, after all. Taki shoots him dead. When they look for Mayart, they discover he’s run off to a brothel for some extremely gross, irritating sex. At least that unpleasantness pays off in a gruesome bit of Cronenberg-style body horror.

Our leads need to rush the disgusting prick to a scientific research facility to have his life force recharged or some nonsense. Unfortunately, the demonic forces find them and capture them in a disruption of the time continuity. I don’t even know what that means. Mayart vomits up a parasite which then infests Makie. Does it sexually assault her? What do you think? Energy starts pouring from her exposed breasts, breaking the time continuity trap. Why? Who knows? I’m sure some fatso loser with a bowl cut has written a dissertation on this movie explaining in detail the cartoon science and metaphysics behind tit energy and time traps. I’d spend time thinking about it, but I refuse to stoop to that level.

Taki is forced to watch Makie being gang raped in demon limbo, motivating him to save her. He meets the leader of the Radicals and his hypnotist arm candy. Her abdomen turns into a spurting vagina. Taki considers diving right in, but blows her away instead. He shoots a handful of guards for good measure. The Radical leader absorbs the bodies, changing into an even more imposing monster, this time resilient to bullets. A mysterious electrical force saves our leads from sure death. They hole up in an empty church and await the final battle. I’m just hoping there’s no more gang rape.

The final act of WICKED CITY contains a grand narrative reversal, revealing our leads as more than just protectors of a helpless old man. They’re progenitors of a new mixed race, one that will lead the two worlds to everlasting peace. They were pawns in a scheme far bigger than either of them. Oddly enough, they’re perfectly fine with this deception. I’m a bit less thrilled. It’s meant to give the story emotional heft. The problem is that it’s a far better story development than this film deserved. There’s way too much gang rape and subhuman toilet humor for a story about the spiritual reconciliation between two races that have harbored nothing but hatred for one another for millennia. It’s like someone stuck the ending to Crime and Punishment onto PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Did you think we forgot about all the sexual assault and pussy jokes?

I think I’m good to go for another five years now. I’m all anime’d out. To the film’s credit, the visual style here is on point, with some truly gnarly creature designs and gorgeous backdrops. I’ll admit that I laughed way too hard at the sight of a spider-woman catching a fatal dose of lightning to the crotch. It was a nice moment of levity amidst all the gang rape. And that right there is why I won’t be returning to this movie ever again. It’s just gross and juvenile. That kind of try-hard edginess stopped appealing to me ages ago. I should have been wide-eyed and invested in this film. Instead, I just found myself shaking my head like a disapproving mother. This film needs therapy.