Psycho Diver: Mashou Bosatsu

I was very surprised when I purchased this after only watching the trailer. Usually, it's been about 50/50 when I do this, but this one is very hard to find in eng dub. I thought it was very good. Older anime style from 90's with good, original story. Pretty gorey violence that was typical of the Akira, Ninja Scroll type. Short 50 minute OVA, but worth watching. The main character dives into people's brains and tries to stop them from commiting crimes or to get info. It has nothing to do with deep sea diving. It's sorta like a cop drama, almost like Jonny Mneumonic ... (keanu reeves). Check it out if you like cyberpunk too. I would not call it a cyberpunk anime, but similiar in animation.

Overview:

My quest to watch the obscure and the weird continues with Psycho Diver! This 45 minute, standalone OVA is one of the most skull fucking insane anime I've ever witnessed. It has some really good ideas that were pretty damn creative for the time, but the execution is all over the place.

Background history:

This wasn't based on a manga. It wasn't based on a light novel, video game, or anything else. Anime industry veteran Mamoru Kanbe just went to Studio Madhouse with a script and pitched this as a 45 minute OVA. Madhouse accepted and we got this blessing of insanity. In America, it was ... licensed by Urban Vision, who saw themselves as the "mature" dub studio. Urban liked to exclusively license the darkest, grittiest anime they could get their hands on. Psycho Diver is a psychological horror that certainly fits in the Urban Vision catalog.

Plot:

A tough, film noir detective named Busujima uses a device to dive into his clients' subconscious and solve their psychological issues. This came out a full 10 years before Paprika and almost 15 years before Inception! A young singer named Yuki has lost her ability to perform after joining a shady cult. Her talent agency hires a psycho diver to solve her issues, but it turns out the cult has given Yuki dark powers. The psycho diver's head explodes and the agency realizes they need the best psycho diver in the business, Busujima! At first he refuses, but the talent agency kill his dog in a scene reminiscent of the horse head scene from the Godfather. Busujima gets the message and agrees if they pay handsomely.

Busujima dives in, but nearly gets himself killed after witnessing some End of Evangelion nightmare imagery. He announces he will need better equipment and says he will try again in a few days. It turns out the cult isn't happy about the talent agents hiring Busujima and send some assassins to kill him. Busujima escapes and hooks up with a lady talent agent. It turns out she was against the whole dog thing and sincerely just wants to help Yuki, whom she considers a dear friend. Some cult assassins manage to brutally murder Busujima's new lady friend and he decides its time to go deal with the cult. On the way, he runs into the asshole talent agent who is insinuated to have been the dog killer. This sunglasses wearing asshole is actually an agent of the Japanese intelligence bureau and was working as a triple agent to infiltrate both the cult and talent agency! Sunglasses drops some narrative exposition that the cult leader is actually Yuki's mother and wishes to transfer her psychokinetic powers so Yuki can be the next cult leader. Yuki's stage manager is her father, who has decided to betray his wife and gain Yuki's power for himself.

Now it's time for the final act and things get weird! Busujima and Sunglasses arrive at the cult building and engage in an all out brawl with the cult members, including some minion with a retractable shoe knife. Yuki's father arrives and murders her mother with a surprise gun shot. Daddy explains that he only hired the psycho diver as a distraction to confuse the cult leader mom and distract from his true intentions. Yuki unleashes her full power and kills her evil father along with totally destroying the cult building. The only survivors are Yuki, Busujima, and Sunglasses. Busujima now decides that Yuki is losing control of her powers and he needs to fix her with a psycho dive. Her first layer of subconscious is the guilt she feels for still loving her mother despite knowing the cult is evil. Our hero dives 1 layer deeper and discovers that Yuki killed a childhood friend with her powers because she was upset after losing a board game. Seriously! All of Yuki's inner evil manifests itself into a dark Yuki and attacks Busujima. He loses a lot of blood, but finishes Dark Yuki off by pummeling her with a chair until she explodes into sand! The anime flat out turns into Professional Wrestling to deliver one of the greatest WTF moments I've seen in anime. You would think that's the end, but NOPE! The Shoe Knife minion is still alive and kills some lab techs with ninja needle projectiles. Sunglasses shoots the minion right before he can kill Busujima and FINALLY we reach the end. Yuki is now cured from her inner darkness and can sing again. She dedicates her next album to Busujima and his fallen lady friend, along with wishing him to find happiness.

Art:

Studio Madhouse rightfully deserves its glowing reputation, but 90s Madhouse was a bit more hit and miss. This anime looks a little rough at times, but is ok overall. This clearly wasn't a big project and was probably made because somebody lost a bet or owed Mamoru Kanbe a favor.

Sound:

I highly recommend the hilarious Urban Vision dub. They want to make it like a hard boiled detective movie from the 1940s and it's glorious! These guys were like America's version of Manga UK.

Overall:

God bless Mamoru Kanbe. He may not hit a home run every time, but he directed my favorite anime and he NEVER makes something boring. I'll once again say that this had potential and a number of great ideas, but was clearly condensed and under a strained budget. It's a very flawed work, but a deeply enjoyable piece of WTF vintage old anime!

Psycho Diver is an anime original 1997 Madhouse OVA that runs only about 50 minutes long, and I feel kind of bad giving this such a low rating, but it really is the sloppy rush-job you'd expect from a short OVA without any source material.

It's styled like an old-fashioned noir: a somewhat ugly main character who looks like Golgo 13, the phoned-in "love interest," deep shadows and grimy imagery, a bunch of tough guys and assassins; and a crime plot involving two intertwined subplots that probably would have been better served as separate scripts with such a short running time. We have a weird ... psychic cult that remains pretty ambiguous, as well as another subplot involving a pop star who is experiencing "psychic disturbances." You could probably liken it to Exorcist with the possession scenes, but it's not as colorful. There's a massive amount of plot cramming, but it never culminates into anything rewarding or worthwhile.

The really interesting aspect of this OVA is why I think almost everyone is drawn to it, which is hinted at in the name: Psycho Diver. The dark gritty noir stylings merge well with the mild psychological horror elements embedded into the script. Characters can dive into the psyche to correct psychological distress or other disturbances. We don't have a baseline example of how this works—we only have Yuki Kano, who is such a unique case that the previous Psycho Diver was actually KILLED by diving inside of her mind. He basically exploded because of the amount of trauma his nervous system experienced from the event XD. Any decent production would give you an example of a more normative case to actually understand the process. What we're given looks like a random nightmare. Filled with stabbings, imagery as you can see on the cover, dim interior shots, and Hans Bellmer-esque ball-jointed dolls. The main only even psycho dives twice in the short running length—the rest is focused on gumshoeing and action sequences. Although his dream-self becomes a voodoo pincushion, the final psycho diving scene is anti-climatic and limp-wristed. Better would be if these diving incidents weren't so high octane, and they were more explorative and atmospheric. We're never even given any surprises, where the main character loses his sense of reality, as you'd expect with most good productions on this subject.

I've always been intrigued by this sci-fi concept, but thus far, it hasn't been pulled off with great success, at least not in most instances I can recall for visual mediums. ID: Invaded does a decent job, despite its flaws. Paprika, is another adequate alternative, even if not one of Satoshi Kon's best. For films, The Cell and Inception both explore this subject matter; the former has interesting visuals as you might expect from Tarsem Singh, and the latter is overrated pap, though worth watching for the effects and the exploration of diving into the mind—it's just hollow as art. Frankly, I would say none of these listed are strongly above average, unfortunately.

In terms of production values, this is okay, but this was obviously a small-time, low-budget project for Madhouse. Some of the noirish cinematography and lighting are pretty good, there is fairly creative direction, and a nice dark atmosphere. Animation is passable—fair at times, but never overwhelmingly good or anything you'd expect to see on a sakuga video. While the opening music video is a fair effort, the english dub is exceptionally cringe when it comes to the opening song. The dub is probably more fun overall, but I couldn't tolerate it just because of the song.

In summary, Psycho Diver is a quirky combination of sci-fi/horror/noir with a cool concept, but it's just too rushed to be truly worthwhile.