Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

17th Kill

I think I have a real affinity for that old school anime style - the sort of stuff which looks a little jerky in comparison to the really high end stuff from the last 20 years or so, the Hayao Miyazakis and Satoshi Kons and so on. I don't think it's the art style so much as the story vibes - this stuff feels a little edgier somehow. I'm inexperienced enough in watching this sort of stuff that as I fire up one of these little beauties, I don't feel like I can rule anything out. It feels like absolutely fucking anything might happen, and some sort of crazy batshittery duly does.

It's so weird how hard I have to concentrate to follow these storylines. The plot of Maryuu Senki is not particularly complicated, but I had to back up more than once to get my head around what was going on. Eventually, despite some of the strange non sequitur moments that always pop up in this sort of thing, the basic plot started to coalesce (and the Letterboxd synopsis is basically unrecognisable from the film, I should mention that).

I will be making mistakes here, but this is basically a sort of timeless, ever-repeating cycle of a group of superhuman-ish wizard types (wizard feels wrong - I mean whatever the sort of Buddhist version of a wizard is - a mystic?) going up against each other. We have one Big Bad and a bunch of other good guys who try to take him out every couple of hundred years or so. This time, the Big Bad dude has abducted some girl (who I think might be the reincarnation of one of these powerful mystics) and is going to marry her, and that's going to make him unstoppable forevermore so he must be stopped by our ragtag heroes. One of whom is in love with her. And although it felt nothing like this film in tone or content, I realised at some point that this fundamental storyline is incredibly similar to Big Trouble in Little China - even down to the heroes being led by a crusty old dude (although this guy kicks ass with a little more physicality than Egg Shen), but minus a Jack Burton character - because this is for a Japanese audience and they don't need no audience surrogate (although I clearly could have done with one).

I really dug this quite a bit. It's chock full of martial arts action and body horror gruesomeness, not to mention ninjas in monster masks fighting sword-wielding monks on motorbikes. There's even a sort of werewolf demon with horns on his shoulders - why is this the first time I've ever encountered shoulder-horns??? - kind of a cool creature design. Additionally, there's an awesome synthy-rock score which makes it sound like Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" is perpetually about to kick in, but it never does. I don't know how much substance underlies the narrative here, and I really couldn't give two hoots.

Shoutout to Tears_in_Rain for wording me me up on this one. Thanks mate!

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

So many dismemberments, so much dripping blood and arms getting severed and characters looking seriously bummed about it. Best kill is the girl who gets unfortunately possessed by some sort of evil entity who our muscly hero has to take down by ripping her head off. The best part is a dialogue scene after the decapitation, where she asks for help and the old wizard reassures her that they will conduct the appropriate ceremonies to safeguard her immortal soul - it's a strange and grotesque moment of pathos.