Darkside Blues

If you are a fan of 90s anime, then I'd recommend taking a look at Darkside Blues. If you haven't seen many anime from this time period, then this is a fairly good example of the visual styles of the 90s. However, most people will probably find the story somewhat mediocre and maybe even confusing.

Darkside Blues is a nice little gem from the 90s based on a manga by Hideyuki Kikucho who is one of the most respected horror writers in Japan. Often called the Stephen King of Japan, many of Hideyuki's novels have been adapted to anime such as Vampire Hunter D, Wicked City, ... and Demon City Shinjuku.

Animation - 8
I'll go ahead and draw attention to the elephant in the room: this is an old anime. The art and animation styles likewise reflect the 90s. Whether you enjoy 90s style or not is your choice, but compared to other works of the time, Darkside Blues fares very well. The art and animation themselves are slightly above average, but I don't think many people can deny the style this show brings to the table. While there's nothing too progressive as far as the direction or choreography at work here, I still can't help but be impressed at how easy everything seems. By this I mean that it seems the style just flows off the screen naturally and can be seen in the fluid movements of the characters in many scenes. While there are many action sequences, they aren't so much edge-of-your seat and jaw dropping as they are seamless and fluid which is very pleasing to the eye.

Sound - 9
While maybe a handful of people out there won't like the music here, I think the sound is perfectly done. The melancholy music does a great job setting the mood and enhances the feel of Kabuki-cho as a city.

The Japanese voice actors do a good job and are obviously cast well for their roles. Natsuki Sakan is a great fit as Darkside and this is one of those times when a female voice actor really does seem more appropriate for a male character.

Story - 8
Set sometime in the future, Darkside Blues depicts a world almost completely owned by the Persona Corporation. One of the few free areas is the slums of Kabuki-cho, often called the dark side of Tokyo. There are various 'enhanced' humans running around who boast supernatural powers, though it's never explained whether this is actually magic or achieved with technology. Taking place in the future, there is quite a bit of technology around in the form of watches that fire lasers, robotic attack drones, and even a massive quantum cannon.

Something interesting I noticed was how similar this movie is to the Clint Eastwood movie Pale Rider (which was in turn a retelling of the classic western Shane). The reason I say they are similar is that, just like Pale Rider, Darkside Blues follows a small group of people (Messiah) whom are resisting oppression at the hands of a wealthy group (Persona Corporation) and then inserts a mysterious stranger (Darkside) who has a score to settle. While Darkside may seem to be the main character, the movie really seems to focus more on the effect his presence has on the members of Messiah.

Unfortunately, the movie seems like a small part of a whole that the viewer is never fully aware of and some things are left unexplained. Despite that, the sub-plot involving the escape of an Anti-Persona resistance fighter is covered well. The main confusion involves the backstories of many characters.

Character - 7
There are a lot of good things here, unfortunately most of the characters are undeveloped with only hints given regarding their past. The only characters really explored are the resistance fighter Tatsuya and Selia, an acquaintance of the Messiah members.

Darkside himself is almost a walking cheat code as time and time again various Persona assassins run across him only to find their attacks have no effect. Darkside only bothers to take his hands from his pockets on a couple of occasions and really he never seems worried no matter what attacks are being thrown at him. Darkside's past is only ambiguously explained, but really his character is in the movie to bring about change in others.

Through a process he calls 'renewal', he enables various characters to overcome hurdles formed when they were emotionally scarred in the past. Though for some people, this renewal simply brings about their death.

Enjoyment - 9
I personally love 90s anime and Darkside Blues is a great one. This show walks a fine line of psychological and action so there is substance to chew on mentally, or if you just wanna sit back then there's plenty of action as well. While I wouldn't call this an action anime, I don't think more than 5 minutes ever go by before the next altercation starts.

Darkside Blues is a product of the late 1980s to mid-1990s anime period, where seemingly half of all OVAs or series would simply tease the audience and never become a finished product. This movie follows that trend, its 80-minute running length leaving us with many unanswered questions, though it stands alone decently as an aesthetic actioner, with an expected sequel—it never came. The manga-is-better-crowd doesn't even win here, because the manga is just as unfinished—abandoned after the first two volumes were published by Vampire Hunter D writer Hideyuki Kikuchi and artist Yuuho Ashibe.

This series is tagged with words like vague, ambiguous, obtuse, etc, but ... the really important one is INCOMPLETE; it's not easy to tell if something will remain vague until the work is complete. but it's true that few ideas are adequately explored or explained. Furthermore, both Kikuchi and Ashibe are in their 70s and there doesn't seem to be any plans to continue, and it's questionable whether or not they would care to return to something they dropped in the early 90s.

The work, indeed, bears some similarity to VHD: an enigmatic and asocial main character who is meant to be an overpowered badass; lots of quirky antagonists with unique powers; supernatural elements; elegant or gothic imagery; style over substance, though this time there's a bit more of an arty or pseudo-philosophical veneer that accompanies the flashy animation. I'd say this occupies territory somewhere in-between the two VHD films. It doesn't have the budget to compete with Kawajiri's souped-up visual spectacle, but it's far more polished than the mess that is the original VHD.

There is a strong synchronicity of sound design and visuals to create a compelling atmosphere, as well as the entertaining pulp of its well-animated action and set-pieces. Even if the ideas and storyline are a little half-baked, it's certainly more compelling than your average action sci-fi romp, and its clear that a completed work with the same level of production quality and more fleshed-out and, most importantly, COMPLETE script could easily be an excellent work of art with a great deal of potential. The ambiguity, the strange illusory nature of Darkside's tenement building, and the dream aspect are especially intriguing.

Of course, it has its flaws other than being unfinished. Some of the events seem pointless, and there are too many characters to have very in-depth characterization and development in the span of just 80 minutes, so there really isn't much there. It can definitely seem a little cheesy or b-movieish, and this definitely isn't a cinematic masterpiece. Many of the events don't flow together so well or can be a bit jarring.

The story seems alright—it's a kind of dystopic/cyberpunk sci-fi with a dark, somber atmosphere, sometimes leading some to lump it into the horror genre. Themes of globalization and new world order are explicit in the Persona Century Corporation (PCC), which owns pretty much the entire world. There are the expected groups of rebels who oppose them.

Where everything becomes a bit more speculative is with the character Darkside. He acts as a catalyst for many of the events that will come, reminding me of the mysterious man in Texhnolyze who creates chaos in the underground city to "further human evolution."

For those who are interested, I'll provide some details that I gleaned from both the manga and the anime. Most of the remaining portion of this review will summarize or clear up a few events and make comparisons between the manga and anime:

There's a device called the Mirror of Arbis, which seems to be a portal to another dimension. For some reason, Darkside was placed in this dimension by PCC when he was 3 years old, and he developed rapidly into a full-grown man with incredible psychic powers. At the very beginning, he rides out of a wormhole from the fourth dimension on a flying horse and buggy. Why he was sealed away, the nature of the dimension, and what allowed him to leave is a complete mystery.

Darkside assists our protagonists against PCC numerous times, and he specializes in some sort of dream therapy that allows people to be "renewed." This is all very unclear, and while we can't known what the creators intended for this renewal process and its importance to the plot, it can be seen as a sort of psychotherapy, but much more direct, allowing him to enter into the subject's mind and dramatically reenact his or her memories; he even uses what appears to be the same process against Enji, so it was probably going to be used to "renew" both commoners, heroes, and villains alike.

The source material consists of a 380-400 page condensed manga, and if you read this with hopes of finding out more... spoiler warning, you won't find much else. The anime is a pretty faithful adaptation, with a few scenes cut, added or reworked. There is a sort of elegance to much of Ashibe's art, with some of the more elaborate scenes reminding me of artists like Suehiro Maruo; however, the backgrounds are often rather simple, other than establishing shots and more stylized sequences; unlike, say, an adaptation like Berserk, where the anime is inadequate at adapting the technical precision of Miura's art, Darkside Blues is an adaptation that is mostly superior. The imagery is improved, and it benefits greatly from sound and animation. Most of the changes in the anime were actually for the better.

The ending is about the same in the manga, but the man with the mask (who I think may be a distinct character from Guren in the manga) is revealed to be Guren at the end of the anime and there's a confrontation between him and Mai, which partially develops/resolves a subplot... kind of. This isn't in the manga, but it makes the anime feel more well-rounded. The nature of the dialogue between Selia and Tatsuya about peace and tyranny is pretty much the same, but possibly expanded a little bit in the manga. Near the end of the anime Enji is ordered to kill Darkside, beginning an interesting sequence where a whole city block is turned to stone, although Enji's fate is... left open to interpretation; this never happens in the manga either, and may have possibly been more of an invention by the adaptation team to give the appearance of more closure and to shoehorn a nice fight scene in at the end.

Another difference is a very strange one: during the scene where Tamaki tortures the rebel, she is holding a replica of what appears to be the fake control center that the rebels bombed while thinking it was the real one, and a scene is shown between two workers, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, and when the girl's body is turning into gold, Tamaki rams the replica into one of her wounds. It's very weird and may have been seen as too graphic for the adaptation.

Other than that, Katari is changed up a little bit and actually has a few short lines of dialogue in the anime, compared to his effeminate and mute character in the manga. The little sphere he holds isn't in the manga, but it's a good symbol to represent Darkside's opposition to the current order.

The evil Persona corporation dominates most of the earth with their iron fist, excepting small resistance movements, one of which is located in the free town of Kabuki-cho, also known as “The Dark Side of Tokyo”. Here a group of juvenile delinquents known as Messiah dwell. For a fee, they shelter and assist a terrorist who opposes Persona.

I really wanted to like this movie because it was based on a manga by Hideyuki Kikucho who also wrote Vampire Hunter D. You can see the similarities in the animation (which is superb for its time,) supernatural themes and mysterious, romanticized character of ... Darkside. Unfortunately, the movie did not live up to the D.

Call me dense, but I never did understand Darkside's power or why he was at odds with the Persona corporation. Had he not been a part of the movie, the story would have been complete--an oppressed society rising up against its oppressor. In fact, the most explored characters are the terrorist and the Kabuki-cho resident that nurses and shelters him.

Where the anime does excel is the music. In the opening sequence, a street musician breaks out in a blues number during a struggle against Persona. The blues music portrays the heavy air of oppression in Kabuki-cho.

There is thought provoking dialogue regarding peace and whether peace achieved through force is actually peace. Had the movie followed these themes without the supernatural element, it would have been a success.