I remember when my big sister, Bukky, rushed through the
door with a VHS tape of a “manga” everyone at school had been going crazy about.
It was Wicked City, I was 8, I shouldn't have been watching Wicked City, but I
did and it was great.
.
That was the day my sordid affair with Anime began. At that
point had no idea cartoons could be like that; so violent, so sexy and so well
drawn. The thing about wicked city, coming from that pre HD era is that the
lighting has this warmth that, at the time, I thought could only come out of a film camera. The action was out of this world. Remember this was the early 90’s,
there was no Matrix and western movies had not embraced the over-the-top style
of eastern action yet.
If you watch Wicked City now, it has all of the ridiculous
and cynical pandering to a western crowd that a lot of Manga Entertainment dubs
had back then; the superfluous swearing, the horrible sentence and speaking
cadence problems in the audio dub. It’s a mess. And let’s not get into the
Urutsukidoji levels of Japanese creepiness that the movie kerb-crawls past
every now and then. But that does not detract from how well it sets a place, how gorgeous
the art is and just how ground breaking this film was.
So if you haven’t seen it, go watch it now. It is HELL OF
dated in some ways, but also reminds me of why I like Anime. The story is crazy,
but it’s that old school grimy, gothic, cyberpunk aesthetic that was all the
rage in anime back then, and an aesthetic I think is sadly missing in anime
today.
Here is the full movie… so no excuses.
There is a list of titles I am going to write about and why
I loves em! So look forward to my two cents on the Patlabor series, WHICH I
FUCKING LOVE!
Stay tuned oh ethereal eyes of the internet as we will be
back with mo ish, for that ass!
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