Yami no Shihosha Judge

I wanted to watch more Ova's from the 80s and found this one thinking it was from the 80s. But then I noticed it was from the 90s which kinda surprised me because it looks like an anime from the 80s. The concept of the story was good but the execution was kinda bad and the characters lacked real emotion.
The animation looks like it is from the 80s but it has a charm to it I enjoyed the art of this anime but it is still far from being the best animation I have seen.
The voice acting sounded weird to me I'm not sure ... if it was the version I watched or what but it sounded bad or maybe it was because this anime was made on a budget.

I do not think this is a bad anime but it is far from perfect that is why I give it a 6 I think this is probably the highest I would rate it.

I watched a hard dubbed version.

I like supernatural and occult themes, and you have a lot of modern day superstition in the japanese that runs through media like this (or even stuff like Tetsuo Body Hammer) The setting is quite decent setup for a story. The title 'judge' is a bit of a misnomer as the main protagonist isn't a judge.... he is more like a prosecutor for the wrongfully deceased/ but also seems to be an investigator as well.... "Spirit Lawyer against the darkness" is a better title for this movie. (it's actually a bit like mashup of phoneix wright ace attorney meets shin ... megami tensei) the anime doesnt explain a lot of things and plenty is confusing...

setting was cool but its a very short run time for a lot of lofty conceptualizations, to make it worse something as abstract as this and condense down to a smaller run time is made a bit obscure by what i'm going to assume is a poor translation (not sure how many versions of this are out there) This is a shame it could have been really intersting and been a heck of a good mystery too. Still the setting alone is interesting enough to make up for the inconsistencies and lack of story. However these factors combined really limit the payout of a proper setting and what could have been a really good story, what we are left with is other aspects which aren't that strong...

The characters are not so fleshed out or even consistent. I'd say that they are terrible characters due to the way they are poorly presented through the setting of this story. Not too often in anything where the protagonist is this inconsistent and low key. This doesnt really have villains but they are far more memorable.

the music/sound is very average. nothing stood out.

animation and drawing is okay, it's consistent and all but i didnt find any aspect of it notable. My experience/taste in this dept is generally low but it pretty much looks like a good deal of things made in same era as this. The film does explore some strange and garish looking video sequences when the weird gets wierder and this flows nicely with the story, I could only hope to makea bit more sense of it. I found nothing unsightly to look at, lazy or grainy (and there is a lot of old stuff that is)

However, the movie has a great opening intro leading into the central plot and features another alternate setting that looked cool visually and had some flavor. I would say that the best bit is easily the first 5 minutes. IF you like old anime (or just like intros) from 89-94 the first five mins might be worth a peek but aside from that this ultimately was pretty half cooked, and not really meant to be digested by a western audience... Stuff is abstract to begin with, inconsistent, doesnt translate right and then to top it all off there is a bit of cultural barrier to interpreting what Judge offers in such a short run time... even if you like the supernatural/mysteryhorror type genre. theres just not quite enough meat on these bones and whats there tastes a bit bland.

I would be curious to read the manga of this one and check out what else the creator did as there's some nice creative and vision element here (the strong points) but it doesnt properly express itself here in this form.

Yami no Shihosha Judge or simply as "Judge" in the english dub, is a supernatural-horror story about a salary man by day that moonlights as a drag queen by night in order to torture and punish criminals who have escaped justice. The main character of this story is Hoichiro Oma who is a blend of the Peter Parker/ Clark Kent archetype of the picked on nerd in the office who seemingly acts as the obedient flunky to his superiors, but in reality is the last remaining heir of an ancient bloodline that practices cross dressing and supernatural law as the "Judge of Darkness" (aka ... the Prosecuting Attorney of Darkness, the english dub "simplifies" this by calling him a judge but also makes his naming scheme not make sense); who harasses, tortures, kills, and then drags to hell the souls of criminals who managed to get away with their crimes while dressed as a transexual.
The program opens up with a book being opened and slowly turning pages for an unnecessary amount of time. Finally a transition occurs and the program brings us to a jungle where a wounded man wanders up a river before being murdered by an unnamed mercenary. The show then cuts to the title before beginning at a skyscraper where we are introduced to Oma and the majority of the supporting cast for the episode: the blue haired Nanase who is Oma's girlfriend characterized by her constant nagging for Oma to nut up in general, the literal corpse skin colored bug-man Koji Kawamata who is Oma's boss, office hotshot Ryuichi Murakami who often physically bullies and verbally belittles Oma , and Yamamoto an account and Murakami's lover. Kawamata and Murakami have secretly been embezzling at the company; Murakami had been getting Yamamoto to help him with the embezzlement under the pretext that they would run away together like lovers.
Oma bangs his girlfriend while Murakami and Kawamata have a business meeting where Kawamata pressures Murakami to make sure that the crime can not be linked back to them because the accounts they embezzled from are coming under investigation the following day. Murakami in turn pressures Yamamoto to disappear and take the money out for him. Following this sequence we are introduced to Oma's evil looking parrot that embarrasses Nanase by repeating her sex cries while they eat breakfast. At the office there's a general sense of chaos as the police investigate the embezzlement and the sudden disappearance of Yamamoto. Feeling scared she calls Oma, begging him to pass along a message to Murakami that she did what he asked, that she loved him and got rid of all the evidence linking him to the crime. However when Oma relays this to Murakami he is instead rebuffed and beaten by an indignant Murakami, who takes the message as a blackmail attempt from Oma. They are interrupted by a security guard who informs Murakami that Yamamoto had apparently committed suicide; but a brief evil flash from Murakami implies he had a direct hand in her death. Oma agrees to keep the embezzlement a secret, but then transitions into his drag outfit at night to stalk and hunt down Murakami, who for some inadvertent reason is confessing to staging Yamamoto's suicide in a spoken monologue to ham-fistedly drive home the point that he's an evil murderer. Oma as the Judge of Darkness attacks Murakami with a flock of birds who break his windshield and then peck at him before he begins to hallucinate a grotesque version of his own world. Murakami is then confronted by the Judge of Darkness, who explains his powers, his judgement book's texture (it's human skin) and history in a needless exposition to his victim so the audience can get some understanding of why Oma chooses to dress like a drag queen in order to hunt down criminals. After failing to bargin for his life, Murakami is then told his crimes that he is being punished for by the parrot which sends futilely Murakami running for his life. From the pages a demon is summoned who grabs onto Murakami, before transforming into a literal fucking blanket that makes him fall to his death. Oma/Judge of Darkness lords over Murakami's corpse from the cliff while the blanket is revealed to actually have been the American flag. I guess it's symbolic for capitalism being bad or something, the social commentary felt really out of place and out of no where and is not really followed up on.
The rest of the anime centers around the aftermath of the murder from the beginning of the program, who turns out to have been the vice president of the company Yamanobe. While at the funeral, Oma notices Kawamata acting strange and is saddened when he see's Yamanobe's son grieve for his loss. Using his judgment book he divines how Yamanobe died in the beginning of the program, and his powers deduce that the mercenary was hired by none other than Yamanobe's best friend, business partner, and Oma's boss Kawamata. The program then introduces our final main character, who is only known as "the Defense Attorney of Darkness", a nasally voiced catholic priest like figure who acts ad a public defender to oppose the Judge (who is really the prosecutor of darkness) and not allow him free reign. The program takes a serious nosedive at this point (as if it was good in the first place though lol) with the introduction of this character, mostly because his functions don't make sense. The Defense Attorney knows his clients are guilty, yet he is portrayed as a type of "lawful evil" character who charges exorbitant fees in the name of god to keep these criminals alive, all while withholding information that could be critical for their client's survival. Despite appearances the Defense Attorney isn't trying to grift and lead his clients to his deaths, however that ends up occurring because of his negligence in explaining anything to his clients about the spiritual world. Additionally when Oma as the Judge of Darkness first meets him, he has no knowledge of him at all despite the fact that Oma claimed to have studied and known all the ancient history of his clan and their judgment, so it makes the Defense Attorney feel really forced and tacked on while undermining Oma as ignorant about the workings of his own powers. While I understand it was necessary for the plot to have some kind of character to directly oppose Oma so the story wouldn't be repetitive, the writers should have put more thought into making a character that works.
Kawamata ends up agreeing to the fees of the Defense Attorney after barely managing to survive an encounter with Oma, only thanks to a charm the Defense Attorney had given him minutes before. Together the pair lure Oma out into the open while camping out in snowy mountains, leading to a literal spoken word legal battle between the Judge and Defense Attorney like they were in a magical girl anime. Oma gets his ass beaten and has to get saved by his parrot before falling off a cliff and seemingly dying. Satisfied with his victory, the Defense Attorney and Kawamata go home. However Oma is not done yet so he sends his parrot to attack Kawamata, marking him with a summons to a superior court of darkness. Using the last trick up his sleeve, Oma sends his spirit to his girlfriend Nanase in order to posses her and send her to act as a medium in order to transport Kawamata and the Defense Attorney of Darkness into going to superior court. Kawamata and the Defense Attorney then face the 10 judges and Yamanobe's spirit in order to settle the dispute between the judge (Prosecutor) and the Defense Attorney of darkness over Kawamata's involvement in Yamanobe's murder.
The final court case's deliberation is the most ridiculous segment of the program. The Judge of Darkness fails to prove that Kawamata is guilty, but he still ends up getting him punished because of the most absurd turn of events. Yamanobe gives a positive character witness of Kawamata which leads to Kawamata developing a guilty conscience and wanting to escape the room, only to touch a magic mirror which literally confesses your sins. Kawamata refuses to admit what his mirror self confessed, and was strangled to death by his reflection. The Defense Attorney only shakes his head disdainfully admonishing his client for touching the mirror even though Kawamata had no knowledge of the mirror or what it would do to him. Also the existence of the mirror begs the question of the point of the entire court system or need for judges, why even have them when you can just have the defendant touch the mirror and find out if he's guilty or not. The program ends with Oma having dinner with his girlfriend at a restaurant and encountering the Defense Attorney of Darkness once again, and they both psychically communicate and vow to uphold the laws of darkness leaving room for a possible sequel (thankfully it didn't happen).
Overall Judge is a mostly goofy foray with interesting concepts and horrible execution. The idea of punishing criminals who escaped the normal means of justice is an interesting concept, but the reality of a drag queen summoning blankets to toss people off cliffs isn't as appealing.