Wicked City (1987)
Wicked City is a Japanese adult anime neo noir horror movie that came out in 1987. Based on the book Black Guard by Hideyuki Kikuchi.
TL;DR In a world of darkness there exists a demonic alternate dimension that has a peace treaty with the human world. Some bad shit happens.
Like almost all movies on this blog, I went into this movie BLIND. It's a very trippy movie but it was definitely what I was looking for when I sought out a horror anime. Oh, it was horror alright. AND THEN SOME.
This movie is about Taki and is taken in for a shock when he finds out that the lovely woman that invited back him back to her place is apparently one of the Radicals from the alternate dimension known as the Black World. What a wacky intro...
Taki later gets tasked with a partner to protect Giuseppe Mayart who is a target for these Radicals due to his role in ratifying the aforementioned treaty and let's just say a lot of fuckery happens along the way. Doesn't help that Giuseppe is a major horndog that keeps hitting on Makie, Taki's partner, but he's a 200 year old mystic and plays a vital role so no one can really do shit to him.
A lot of stuff that I am not sure that needed to be in the movie. However, that's just personal preference. Then again, I'm sure if everything got condensed to only plot driven scenes, the whole movie would probably be like 20 minutes long lol
But whoever made this sure did love the colors purple and blue 👌 We got a lot of mind bending visuals for example there is this one part of the movie where one of the bad guys, Mr. Shadow, casts a projection to the human world to Taki as an evil taunt of Makie getting...unconsensual acts. I'm only talking about the display of colors NOT the weird ass tentacle rape dammit. They even make it look so artistic of just their car driving down the road when those Radicals were trying to trap them. There's an array of colors from the purple and pinks. Looks pretty tight.
There's sex. Like, an abundance of it. Uhhhh why? I honestly lost count of how many but in retrospect maybe it wasn't so much but the content of each scene was pretty shocking. One had tentacles (why am I not surprised?) However, I don't believe this is exactly a hentai it seems to stop just short of one. I could be wrong. Don't wanna look that up to confirm either.
Ok pseudo hentai stuff aside, I thought it was a real thought provoking plot about having humans cohabitate with this alternate dimension of these humanoid demons and then with this treaty as an extra layer? Pretty cool. The fact that this was made in the 80s with an already neon noir style to this movie which explains the generally dark tone to an already dark ass movie. It's a shame there wasn't more movies or even spinoffs in this fictional universe. I know there was a live action version but everywhere I read, they all hate it. Maybe one of these days I'll look it up and judge for myself. Anime seems to be the best when it comes to adaption since there's no limitations to the character creativity and dynamic that can be admittedly more difficult to do as a live adaptation.
I will say though, I do wish I saw some more of the bloodshed...wow I sound so disturbed but seriously I got so weirded out by how many anime titties I kept seeing like every 5 minutes. And all the moans and groans. I wanted some more action style fight scenes as the ones in the movie was already pretty kick ass. Just left me wanting to see more of it.
If this movie had a message, what would it be? All we need is love to solves problems.
Age demographics? Mature adults.
Disclaimers? I literally said most of it in my post but to be brief there's both consensual and unconsensual sex/gang rape, and in general overly sexual scenes. Bloody deaths. On the verge of body horror type of scenes as well.
That being said, what is my verdict here?
Aesthetically pleasing premise but a little too hardcore?
