The people who complain about how Japan stole American ideas, improved them, and then sold them back to us now have more to whine about. The Japanese jumped on animated cartoons and took them way over the top while American animation houses were still hammering out the intricacies of Deputy Dawg and Mighty Mouse.
Straight out of the violence-and-libido-heavy world of manga (comic books), Japanese animation sets the not-necessarily-psychologically-healthy standard when it comes to slamming eye-popping images and undigested sexual fantasies up on the screen.
The plot of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend is basic, a simple engine to move the characters around: Every 3,000 years the Overfiend tries to unite the three cosmic dimensions: Humans, Man Beasts, and Demons. Now the Overfiend wants to destroy them, bringing the entire universe to an end. The only one who can stop him is a half-human, half-magical teenager who looks like a cross between an alley cat and a high school football team towel boy. Got that?
Like much Japanese adult animation, Urotsukidoji is a party mix of images and ideas lifted from science fiction, fantasy, horror movies, and soft- core porn. The fix you get in this video is not the story, but the way the story is told: through the eyes of desperately horny teeny-boppers and super beings. The film is full of skyscraper-sized demons (brandishing their genitals like Tomahawk missiles), bizarre landscapes, and transdimensional beasts bursting from the skins of alluring humans. A half-hour of Urotsukioji would have Freud on the carpet, gibbering like an electroshocked baboon. For the truly damaged, note that Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend is an English-language-dubbed, 90-minute version of a more elaborate telling of the Overfiend story that is more than six hours long (also available from Central Park Media). It uses subtitles and is not dubbed. It is also uncut, so all the most gruesome violence and sexual details are left moistly intact.
Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend: US$39.95. Central Park Media: (800) 626 4277, +1(212) 977 7456.
STREET CRED
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