Movie Review: Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

I don't get to watch a lot of movies in the theaters (mainly because that sh*t is expensive, but you know that already), and when I do, I watch superhero movies with my friend Will and Dacarllo.  When I'm not with them, I use the Internet.  Now, I'm not out there torrenting like the rest of y'all.  I use other forms to get my movies--all of them legal.  Which brings me to my movie review subject: Tokyo Gore Police.

I watched it and I can truly say this movie lives up to its title, as all movies should.  The film (used loosely) is set in a futuristic Tokyo, some time after the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have been privatized and merged into the former.  Apparently, all Japan is now Tokyo...or not, I am unsure.  Also new to the mix are "Engineers"--a new type of life-form that causes mayhem in the streets and turns ordinary criminals into super-powered villains.
Enter Ruka (played by Eihi Shina of Audition fame), an expert "Engineer Hunter" with the Tokyo Metro Police, who hunts using only a samurai sword.  True to Japanese fantasy tropes, she weighs 90 pounds soaking wet and no family lineage is tied to the weapon to explain its unnatural ability to remain undamaged throughout the film as she fights hulking monsters.  She does her best and is celebrated in the ranks of the police department...but off-duty, she is a sad young woman who laments the loss of her policeman father years ago and makes cuts on her left arm for catharsis.  Only with the arrival of a particular Engineer monster does the story begin to evolve from a simple hack-and-slash videogame parody into something resembling a murder mystery.

- ATOMIC BOMB REFERENCE LOL -

There are a lot of counter-culture elements, sexual elements, dark humor (i.e., cutesy wrist-cutting devices that "make the blood sweeter"), and alternative lifestyle choices on display, which pale in comparison to the main event the movie puts forth.  When a person talks about themselves as an expert and says that "[Insert field of expertise here] is my middle name", they want you to believe that they were born with an intense knowledge of the field.  The same holds true for Tokyo Gore Police.  GORE is its middle name.

There were a lot of moments when I had to stop watching--not because I was gonna throw up, but...  Y'know what?  I'm lying.  Lying, and lying so hard.  I was gonna throw up so many times while watching, because I had just eaten dinner and there was so much gore for the sake of it.  Characters who could have just hit their opponents in the head with a bottle and stopped there, chose to jam the broken bottle into their opponent's face and use it to cookie-cut the flesh and bone from his skull.  What does that do? He dead!

The worst part of the movie for me was when I was watching it, I began to get used to the simulated carnage--the watery blood, the churned-up whatever they were using to simulate destroyed flesh, the ever-increasing attempts at body horror, etc.  Each special effect kept taking me out of the story.  At the end of it all, I was more concerned with the story than the poor tries to keep my attention with special effects.

Normally, I give Japanese films a pass when their story surpasses their special effects (STACY, Mechanical Violator HAKAIDER), but this movie is on its way to becoming the next Death Trance.  What's Death Trance, you ask?  Exactly--you probably don't know.  That's how bad it sucked.  I truly wish more time was spent developing the characterizations of Ruka and the bar owner--ESPECIALLY the bar owner.  Instead, we have a fine revenge story and a great fantasy world that is undercut by its own special effects.  For shame, Japan. For shame.

Cordoba Chronicles I: A Forward

This bit is to let you all know that the novella "Cordoba Chronicles IV: the Necromancer's Fury" was not written in a vacuum, and not without prior setup.

I created the fantasy world of Cordoba from 1994 to 1997 while attending high school at Design and Architecture Senior High, a magnet art school in Miami, FL.  It was in response to a lack of cool fantasy stories accessible to the mainstream audience.  I made a point to make something I wanted to see, and I figured that the big thing missing from the stories I liked and knew were the fact that there were no popular leading Black or dark-skinned characters.  They had popular Black supporting characters (sidekicks, rivals, mentors, love interests, etc.) but none that the average viewer would want to emulate, due to the lack of a leading role. These Black characters are not the center of a universe, and no story is told or experienced through their eyes. I decided to change that.

The story has a great number of influences. Cartoons, comics, science fiction, video games and action films were a big portion of my life prior to writing the Cordoba Chronicles, so a great deal of influence comes from them.

The short list reads like this:

• The graphic novels TITANS: Scissors, Paper, Stone, Ninja High School and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Book II
• the DC comic book Legionnaires (formerly Legion of Superheroes, rebooted after Zero Hour in 1994)
• CAPCOM's "Mega Man 2" and "Street Fighter 2010: the Final Fight"
• "Black Magic: M-66", "Bubblegum Crisis", "Appleseed", "AKIRA", and other Japanese animation films
• the American cartoons "Galaxy High School", "Beverly Hills Teens", "Jem", "Centurions: Power X-Treme", "Thundercats", Silverhawks", "Tigersharks", "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe", "Bravestarr", "Bionic Six", "Shirt Tales", "Dinosaucers", "The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers",
• the British cartoon "DangerMouse",
• the French cartoons "Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea" (AKA "Les Mondes Engloutis") and "Ulysses 31"
• Live action shows like "Ultraman", "Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future", and of course "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers"
• the Universal Pictures' "Action Pack" movie "Hercules and the Circle of Fire" starring Kevin Sorbo and the follow-up TV series "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys"
• the "Star Trek" TV series (TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager) and the original "Star Wars" trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi)
• the movie "Conan the Destroyer"
• the 1980 movie "Flash Gordon"
• the movie "Passenger 57"
• the Japanese animation imports "Voltron: Defender of the Universe", "Transformers", "Robotech", "Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs", and "Mysterious Cities of Gold"

It goes without saying that I have a long-standing flirtation with Dungeons & Dragons (both the game and the cartoon), regardless of what people say.  I think I've said enough; I hope you enjoy Cordoba Chronicles I. Enjoy!

-swatson

Video Game Review - Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993 - Sega Genesis)

Ahh, ninjas. Ninjas are a grand breed of battler and nowhere is this more evident than in the world of video games. Why? Because someone overestimated their fighting skills a very long time ago, during the feudal eras of medieval Japan. With that placed, let's review the fourth installment of the Shinobi series, Shinobi III: Revenge of the Ninja Master.
Shinobi 3 is the fourth part in the saga because its predecessor, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi, is truly the third installment. It's a much inferior game compared against Shinobi 3, due largely to the fact that you can be killed by getting shot IN THE FOOT. Well, at least you got a dog. Then again, I don't think you got any ninja magic. Oh yeah, and you can get shot in the foot and DIE. Needless to say, Shinobi 3 improves on all of that.

After the end of Shadow Dancer, it's implied that our ninja hero killed the crime lord Zeed. Like most good villains, Zeed didn't stay dead and reincarnated himself as a cyborg crime lord called Neo Zeed. He's got a bunch of people under his command in is quest to rule the world. Almost everyone is powerless in the face of Neo Zeed. Emphasis on almost.

Enter Joe Musashi, the hero in the Shinobi storyline. He's got plenty of improvements over his predecessors while retaining all of their good moves. Chief among those moves is his Diving Kick; a move so useful that you can fight a boss using this move alone and still not touch the ground for an obscene amount of time. Joe's a ninja you can like and well worth the time you play. The music is all goodness and light, a masterful use of whatever instrument was used to make it. And then there's the stages.

The stages are awesome. Many are generic, some are challenging, and many are just plain fun. Some stages require you to use a different mode of transportation. Hence, the second stage makes use of your ninja horse and its Diving Stomp. Yes, I did say NINJA HORSE. The fourth or fifth stage requires you to ride a jet-powered ninja surfboard. A little overboard, but it's necessary: the other choice was a ninja dolphin. I always catch myself uttering one of Tone Loc's lines from Surf Ninjas when I reach that stage: "Black men don't surf!"
When all is said and done, it's the final stage that makes you work for that win. Well, the win after you fight a boss that absolutely, positively wants you dead.

When it comes to the game as a whole, I believe it has a lot going for it. A much respected video game franchise, this time is one of the gems in Sega's crown. I have to say that this game doesn't get its rating, but deserves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

RATING: 8/10

Video Game Review - Crimson Tears (2004 - Sony Playstation2)

I am a big fan of the stuff that CAPCOM puts out. They have captured my attention since the days of Mega Man and Street Fighter 2010. I love their ideas and while I know that they only tolerate new ideas from the general poulace when making a new Mega Man villain, I'd still like to give them an idea or two. Here's my idea: make an action game in the vein of SEGA's Phantasy Star Online, but without the online part or the create-a-character part. It'd generally be a dungeon crawl, but without the crappiness of PK or online fees! It'd be brilliant!
Oh wait, they did that already? Crimson Tears? Never heard of it. Got to play it, and here's the review.

Set in futuristic cyberpunk Tokyo, three battle androids have escaped from a high-security facility because they stumbled on to some strange plot concocted by the evil corporation called ARMA. ARMA makes bio-weapons for the military, but something is amiss. The three rogue androids are out to put a stop to it, but they need to be stronger to do so. They set up camp in the city and traverse many levels to fight insane bosses to free not only themselves, but the entire city.
The three previously mentioned androids are Amber the ninja, Kadie the heavy blader and Tokio the gun master. Amber has dual melee weapon skills with swords and knives, but has poor hand-to-hand skills. Tokio can only use a few melee weapons, but he can use two guns at once a la Chow Yun-Fat. Despite Kadie's petite frame, she's the only one who can wield a buster sword. Their weapons, skills and combos can be upgraded to higher and higher levels and, in the case of weaponry, imbued with status effects or elemental effects. All of this is great and everything, but to give you just that would make the game far too easy to play. That's why the game designers decided to introduce the Heat Gauge.
The Heat Gauge measures how hot your android gets as it progresses through the game. When the gauge reaches maximum, the screen turns red and several things happen to your android. Your android can do max damage with every strike and runs twice as fast. While suffering from the status of being overheated(much different from the status effect "Overheat", which can be cured with "Overheat Cure" but not with "Coolant", which lowers your Heat Gauge and stops overheating), you take twice as much damage and your energy dwindles down to very little. If you're not careful, overheating can kill you. if you happen to survive a bout of overheating, your Heat Gauge will rest, but your HP meter will dwindle to 10% of max. It can be a bitch to keep your Heat Gauge down and your HP up and STILL have enough to deal with the enemies throughout the stages.

The enemies are where Crimson Tears really shines for me. I never thought that I would play a game where I'd fight not just ninjas and zombies, but zombie ninjas on top of that! Additionally, the enemies also level up along with you as the levels progress and eventually begin to use the same weapons you do. So, that scrubby soldier or robot you fought on stage 1 will be waiting for you on stage 4 and it'll have the strength to exact payback. And if you think that's tough, wait until you fight the Agent Smith-like "techno vampires" and the infamous "Mr. Black".
Bosses are strange and varied, and that's a good thing. From liquid ninjas to time-warping grim reapers, to the prerequisite evil characters with Biblical names [ex.: Abel and Eden] that are so common in Japanese sci-fi action, they all rock. That and they'll also mop the floor with you.
While quite entertaining when the enemy gets the drop on you, to the chore of getting every last item needed to create your ultimate weapon, Crimson Tears is not a game for the Madden and NBA Street set. Oddly, it CAN work for the Tekken set. Button-typing combos abound from this game, totally unrelated to the Konami game Crimson Sea or the Cliffhanger Comics title Crimson, but indirectly related to both Phantasy Star Online and the Ehrgeiz mini-game "The Forsaken Dungeon."


RATING: 8/10

Video Game Review - PaRappa the Rapper (1997 - Sony Playstation)

 *INTRODUCTION*

Once upon a time, there was a thing called hip-hop. Hip-hop was good, because it did not infringe upon the world at large with sappy pop hooks or massive metal guitar riffs. It was also good due to the fact that it appealed to the ethnic inner-city massives who took it as their own thing, not to be mistaken for pop music. And then the world began to incorrectly link hip-hop with not only people of color, but inner city crime as well. With a triad of trouble afoot, the Man sought a way to squash hip-hop. Through the interference of record companies, hip-hop was spliced into the parent and its offspring Rap. 

 

Rap didn't heed the word of the elder Hip-hop and began to talk about that which needed no conscious mouthpiece: the commission of crime. Thus began the rift between what was Hip-hop and what was Rap.

Things went from bad (meaning bad, not bad meaning good) to worse in the coming years, with the 1992 Los Angeles Riots highlighting the need for a stronger, pointed message than the words of the forefathers. Enter "Gangsta Rap", a form of Rap that's like a cigarette without the filter. It was misogynistic, homophobic, materialistic and ill-planned as a way to discourage violence and crime through overexposure. All the hatred spit out in rhyming prose to a sweet baseline from the days of our grandfathers was aimed in the general direction of their perceived enemy of White America. The sad thing is that Gangsta Rap behaved like the gangsta's attack of choice, the drive-by shooting: it had a habit of hitting unintended targets. The unintended targets: the children of White America.

It's unknown whether the children of White America were being used as pawns against their parents or if it was a mistake in getting through to them instead of the parents. While some members of the Rap community would take steps to have their life imitate their art, White America was listening and was more than happy to make it a part of their daily newscast. And suddenly, Rap became cool for everyone... but for all the wrong reasons. The gates to what makes Rap tick were opened and now there's other offensive strings of Rap (see: Nerdcore, Rap-Rock.) Who could have known that Rap would grow into the abomination we hear and praise so often? Only Hip-hop did, and it tried to come back and claim its moral grounds. Unfortunately Rap had a stranglehold on beats and rhymes in their origin country of the United states, forcing Hip-hop to find greener pastures in foreign lands.

Hip-hop has flourished in other countries like Germany, France, the United Kingdom and has done especially well in places like Canada and even the Arab country of Yemen (where the only acceptable music is drumbeats and the word is king). Of these countries, Japan stands out because it has the wackiness to inject humor into a socially conscious medium without degrading it. Rap and Hip-hop are fighting over control of the Land of the Rising Sun, the details of which can be read in the

game context of the PlayStation game, PaRappa the Rapper.

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In the game PaRappa the Rapper, you play the titular character PaRappa. He's a hip-hop dog who's in love with the local beauty named Sunny. She's a sunflower. In his effort to raise a band and impress the girl, he becomes involved in scenarios to reach his goal. While many of the activities in the scenarios are physically oriented, PaRappa's forte' is rappin' to the beat. Thus, the only way to complete the scenarios presented to the gamer is to rap to the preset beat markers in a timely manner. Failure to do so results in a poor rating, by which a satisfactory rating is rewquired to pass all scenarios. An added bonus to the scenarios is the freestyle option when your rappin' rating goes beyond "U Rappin' GREAT!" So long as you rap to the beat, you can rap what you feel for bonus points.

PaRappa the Rapper is an animated video game tale created by Rodney Alan Greenblatt, an American expatriate living in Japan. He is responsible for the artwork in PaRappa the Rapper, as well as the PaRappa spin-off game, Un-Jammer Lammy (a story about a ewe who dreams of rock-stardom). His ideas of merging music and story into an interactive experience has been duplicated in the more recent incarnation of the PS2 titles Gitaroo Man and Mad Maestro.

The feel of PaRappa the Rapper is a silly one, due to PaRappa's adventures involving an onion-headed Kung-Fu master (called Master Chop Chop), a chicken chef with her own TV show, a moose that works at the DMV and a materialistic Rastafarian frog (my personal favorite). All of these characters have their own flavor to them, making this game a distinctive if not singular experience. The extensive advertising behind PaRappa the Rapper was grand and it was featured on a PlayStation demo disc, as well as in several commercials featuring the characters spouting lines from scenarios: The Rastafarian frog says "In the rain or in the snow/Got the got the funky flow" and PaRappa's exclaim of faith in his rappin' abilities is "I Gotta Believe!" Despite the want from both quotes to be THE line from PaRappa the Rapper remembered, only Master Chop Chop's line of "Kick Punch/It's all in the mind" stands the test of fleeting interest.

The limited graphics and processing power of the PlayStation are the only limits to the original PaRappa the Rapper reaching the maximum score allowable, so this game gets a rating of 9.

RATING: 9/10

Movie Review - Mechanical Violator HAKAIDER (1995)

I love movie previews. They are a great money-saving medium when considering what movies you should see. More often than not, they'll tell you whether a movie is worth seeing or not. In many cases, I don't listen to myself and NOT go see a bad movie, because I know I'll have a good time nonetheless. That was the case with Underworld (2003) and Waterworld, but a grave misstep in the case of the recent Uwe Boll film House of the Dead. What's important about this nex example is that the preview I saw led to another preview, which led to another movie. All three Asian movies and their traliers are videos released by TOKYO SHOCK!, a division of Media Blasters.
I first became acquained with TOKYO SHOCK! through Craig Kilborn's "5 Questions" clip of someone getting their head crushed. That is a clip from the film Riki-Oh: the Story of Ricky. I went out and bought it and it still is an entertaining romp to this day, especially when I saw a preview or another TOKYO SHOCK! video release: Keita Amemiya's Moon Over Tao. I watched that film and saw the trailer for another Amemiya film called Mechanical Violator Hakaider.

Hakaider is the name of the villain in the manga/anime/live action show "Kikaider". He's more cyborg that robot because his brain is easily seen from the transparent glass over it. While Kikaider would be the normal choice for a movie character in the United States ('cuz he's the hero), Amemiya decided to turn Hakaider into an anti-hero. Channeling Schwartzenegger in Terminator 2 (complete with Winchester shotgun in motorcycle holster) for the entrance to our setting of Jesus Town, he's all kinds of bad-ass; a major point in the story.
The story is about rebels fighting against the misguided, angelic King Girjev (Yasuyaki Honda) and his utopian dream where people no longer have freewill via a simple lobotomy. The rebels aren't shining examples of goodness either; stealing and counterfeiting money as they see fit. One member, the young love interest Kaoru (Mai Hosho), seems alone in her dream for a good world where people can be free. While dreaming of freedom for the people, she is also plagued by nightmares where she's menaced by an evil white angel and the only one who comes to save her is a black knight astride an ebony steed...

Enter Hakaider in a battle for his life. He barely makes a getaway from Girjev's troops with the help of the rebels. With most of the engaging troops destroyed, the survivors must face an even greater threat: Girjev's trusted robot lieutenant, Mikhail (voiced by Kazuhiko Inoue). The presence of Mikhail can only mean one thing in a movie like this: ROBOT SHOWDOWN. And what a showdown it is. Will Jesus Town be free of Girjev's mad dream? Will Kaoru's dream of a world that's filled with good and love be realized? Will Kikaider make a cameo?

Mechanical Violator Hakaider has the most interesting tagline that I've heard in a while:

    "IF THIS PEACE IS FICTICIOUS... I WILL DESTROY IT!"

Sounds like "Engrish" to the untrained movie watcher, but if you actually see the movie and have a small understanding of how the native Japanese sci-fi fan thinks, you'll understand. You'll still laugh at it when it's in the trailer.
The movie itself is very cheap-looking in the street throng scenes, achieving the look of a dystopian future. The street battles are awesome. He may have blown up many a mannequin, but Hakaider's off the hook! There was an atristic idea that was placed in this movie that wows me to this day: when Hakaider and Mikhail fight in Girjev's chambers, they damage the pristine white walls and reveal bright red insulation. It's almost as if Girjev's chamber is made of flesh and blood. A similar effect is achieved when Hakaider damages Mikhail, showing Mikhail's interiors of red piping and wiring. The battle between them slowly begins to turn the pristine world Girjev puts forth into a bloody-like representation of its true form. This is further cemented through
Kikaider's cameo (it's very brief and you'd have to know he was there to see it.)