Makai Toshi Shinjuku

NOTE: This review was originally posted on 12/29/2020. I plan to post all of my Letterboxd anime reviews on MAL.

It's been a while since I have seen Demon City Shinjuku and I recently bought the Discotek Blu-Ray from Right Stuf's Holiday Sale. Seeing that the year is almost over, I wanted to revisit this film soon. I have a lot of nostalgia for this anime because I used to watch anime on the Sci-Fi channel when I was a little kid. I was watching anime from a younger age than most Millennials around my age group did (People born in the late 80s and early ... 90s). I remember watching anime such as Demon City Shinjuku, My Neighbor Totoro (The Fox Home Video release), Venus Wars, Dominion Tank Police, etc before I even saw any of the Dragon Ball shows or anyone I knew talked about anime. Anyways, Demon City Shinjuku is not as good as the other anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri in my opinion. However, it's still a fun movie nevertheless.

I owned many editions of Demon City Shinjuku and other anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri over the years. The Blu-Ray is a great upgrade and it makes the movie look 100X better in my opinion. I always love Yoshiaki Kawajiri's art direction because he draws really cool characters and creates colorful backgrounds. The attention to detail in the surroundings and character designs is astounding. You get plenty of cool-looking monster designs that feel inspired by the demons from Go Nagai's work and Dungeons & Dragons. The film has a fantastic dark atmosphere and the spooky tone helps creates a feeling of death around the corner. You can sense that demons and other evil spirits are lurking in Shinjuku just waiting for the perfect time to strike.

The music in this film is super catchy and it always reminds me of music that you would find in a movie from Lucio Fulci or any other Italian grindhouse movie. The action sequences are a lot of fun and you get plenty of fight scenes that are very nicely animated. The weakest thing about Demon CIty Shinjuku is the writing. The story does have some plot holes that are very noticeable. The main characters could have better character development and the romance is pretty weak. However, I do like how Demon City Shinjuku does not take itself too seriously by keeping the plot nice and simple. Watching Demon City Shinjuku is almost like playing a video game on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). The protagonist sets out on a journey to save a girl from an evil demon wizard. I could easily see this film getting a Legend of Zelda style clone on the NES back in the day. The English dubbing for this film is bad due to poor dialogue and translation issues. If you decide to see this film, I suggest seeing it in subtitled form.

Overall, Demon City Shinjuku is a flawed movie and I still recommend checking it out if you've got time to spare. Rating: 7.5/10

Demon City Shinjuku was in that era of anime where dubbed ruled, profanity was everywhere, and anime was making its appearance.

I loved drawing style of Yoshitaki Amano. He was the character designer for Vampire Hunter D (1985) and Hellsing (2001). Both series which favor this dark and gritty design with cyberpunk aesthetics which are also similar to Akira.

The dubbed version of this was horrible. If you watch to closely you'll notice that there were multiple scenes where Chibi will be speaking but there will not be a English dub to voice his words. The waitress that appears at around the 5 minute mark sounded like ... a country lady from Mississippi or Kentucky.

The plot itself was simple and easy to follow. The battle scenes and the settings of the Demon City were adequate. They didn't reveal much of the city itself so you can actually submerge yourself into the actual ruin of Shinjuku.

The animation was great in my opinion and I noticed that were not too many still frames in this OVA. The fight scenes were enjoyable but depressingly short. The ending/final battle was anti-climatic and rushed. I wish they put more effort into capitalizing on the final battle and making the animation aspect of that particular scene more enjoyable. It was over in minutes.

The idea and mysteriousness of the Demon City kept the plot very entertaining. The fact that we don't necessarily know why or how this happening and also the fact that we are thrown into the middle of a plot begs you to ask questions. This is the good and bad of this OVA.

I didn't like Wicked City because it was nothing more than sleazy porn, a visual representation of someone's weird rape fetish, which had no point except to fulfill people's disgusting inner fantasies (hey, it's not harmful unless it hurts anyone). It had great visuals, creature designs, and decent action, but the over-the-top sexual exploitation of our main heroine did not gel well with me. Kawajiri would do it again in his more famous work Ninja Scroll, but that one at least seemed to be making a point out of it rather than simply trying to give people boners.

Demon City, fortunately, does not have that ... "special" hentai element that the weebs love, but, unfortunately, that's not the only thing it lacks. Kawajiri, intentionally or unintentionally, failed with the most basic element of filmmaking, the story. Demon City does not have one. It has template characters, the strong, brash, and grey yet overconfident main guy; his beautiful and caring love interest; the cool, mysterious, and overpowered side guy; the generic, evil, and one-note villain; and the McGuffin thing or person that the party has to save (the Jesus figure, father of our heroine, in this case). And if it were funny, witty, or smart it would've worked great as a satire, but again, it's none of those things except dreadfully boring.

They had edgy monster designs and concepts of fight scenes, but everything else around those, the characters and the plot, were rushed or made to act as mere carriers for those setpieces. It backfires, as not only does this lack of focus on those crucial aspects make the film dull, but it also deprives the viewers of superior engagement with those setpieces (more investment in characters = more stacks). This film feels like the skeleton for future Kawajiri works, it's nice to observe this stepping stone, but it's not fun to play with it.