Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

62nd Kill

Disembodied spirit: Believe the power; but do not think yourself its master: It is greater than you. Be content to serve it; it is the power, the control, the chi of the universe in which all things are born. You must learn to understand that all.
Kyoya: Thanks, Dad!

I had to check I hadn't inadvertently started this film halfway in, because we are introduced to this story very much in media res, as our villain, Rebi Ra (we know he's a villain because he has hair like Spike from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and he looks angular and smug in the face) does mortal katana battle with a man whose sideburns are so big I thought for a moment he might be a werewolf. This dude is clearly a good guy, but given he is facing off against the big bad this early in the film, it's clear things aren't going to go well. He probably predicted his doom about the time Rebi Ra casually waved his hand and caused the entire district of Shinjuku to collapse into a semi-hell zone, complete with lots of pink magma giving off steamy shrieking ghosts. Welcome to Demon City Shinjuku! (Also called Monster City quite a lot, confusingly - definitely the same place).

I'm still rather unversed in the world of anime, but I had already marked out Yoshiaki Kawajiri as a guy whose filmography I will definitely be exploring further. I didn't quite find this as gobsmacking as Vampire Hunter D or Ninja Scroll, but it's a heck of a lot of fun. Notwithstanding all the extraneous (and glorious) extra detail you'd expect to get thrown at you in any Japanese anime film, the plot is pretty simple. Rebi Ra has turned the middle of Tokyo into a demonic no-man's land. A pretty and virtuous young lady (personally I thought the very chaste pink dress was a little much) needs to rescue her father (some kind of world leader) from Rebi Ra's clutches, and reluctant hero Kyoya (son of the hirsute hero of the opening scene) accepts the mission of going in and putting paid to this evil once and for all.

This kept reminding me of Stalker in its idea of a whole swathe of a country becoming a deadly no-man's-land - only this would be a version of Stalker where the first thing our characters see upon stepping over the threshold is a cat getting snared in multiple Lovecraftian tentacles and then noisily torn to pieces, as opposed to... nothing at all.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

Oh so close to getting a guernsey in my Gotta Split list - Rebi Ra finally gets transected lengthwise by Kyoya's sword but if you look closely, he only flirts with dissection before literally pulling himself together through sheer malevolence. Unfortunately for him, he then explodes in some kind of thermo-demonuclear blast, so his smugness is short-lived.