Reviews

I view this as a somewhat strange Pure land Buddhist fable about the awakening of what is, in everything but name, a Buddha into the modern world. Yep, there's tentacle rape and all of that, but there's not enough sex for it to work as porn. For me the sex simply makes sense if you're going to tell a story about the demon world trying to keep the birth of Chojin at bay. Demons are pure id; sex and violence are the norm within that mythical context.

The ending is something I cannot imagine coming out of a western movie. I won't go into details, but if you expect love to win you might disappointed. And yet I wouldn't call it nihilistic either, and that is what makes this movie so fascinating to me. I can't say ideologically/thematically I've seen anything quite like it.

I saw it around 1990 or so on a bootleg VHS that was called Wandering Kid. Later I had it on proper release but I haven't seen it for probably over 20 years. Needless to say most what I'm picking up on went well over my head back then. It's rare for something to age so well IMO.