(me to a friend while watching this film)
Coming this summer...!
From ufotable, the masterminds behind such classics as the incredibly boring "Coyote Ragtime Show", the awesome "Garden of Sinners"-films and a huge amount of adaptations of that one visual novel no one knows about (something about a chick called "Sword" or something, I don't recall, nobody watched that one anyway!) comes a very, VERY loose OVA-adaptation (that nobody likes), based on a manga (that nobody likes) by that dude who wrote that one manga about people turning into snails (which was also once adapted into a movie that nobody likes).
GYO - FARTING FISH ZOMBIES
Okay, let's get one thing out of the way (besides the obvious sarcasm): this is schlock. You wanna talk schlock? You wanna watch something that's so brain-meltingly bad it's good? Watch GYO - WHAT WHAT IN THE BUTT and be amazed at how much an anime can tell you about a certain stench that's in the air, whilst also being one nasty-ass stinker itself. Caution: there may be some shitty fish-puns in this review!
[PLOT/CHARACTERS - Kaori smells something fishy!]
GYO - THE MIDDLE OF THE FILM is about Kaori and her two OVA-exclusive "friends" (who can't stand neither her nor each other, which begs the question why they're friends in the first damn place) starting off a vacation in some Crystal Lake'ish cabin in Okinawa. One fine day when Friend A (the slutty one) tries to just have a nice gangbang upstairs, out of fucking nowhere an undead zombie shark on robo spider-legs (yup, I just wrote that) comes crashing through the window. After Kaori disposes of the shark by defenestrating the fuck out of it, she switches on the news and discovers that undead fish on robo spider-legs have invaded every major city in Japan. So she does the sensible thing in such a situation - leaving her two friends (who, again, HATE EACH OTHERS' GUTS) by themselves in the Crystal Lake-cabin and going after her husbando somewhere in Tokyo. What follows is an onslaught of really, really stupid shit. And the less said about the plot, the better - you need to experience this firsthand.
The plot is basically a VERY rushed version of the original plot, switching out the main characters (Kaori's husband was the main character in the manga and Kaori was the one who needed to be saved, basically) and adding a few more on top that don't really have any value at all despite getting killed off in hilarious fashion. Kaori herself is - despite her occasional moments of badassery - a weak main character without a lot of personality traits except killing a bunch of fish, crying about how much her husband is screwed, or talking about how badly it stinks (I dare you, take a shot of liquor every time she says "Eew, that stench!" or something along those lines - you'll be dead before the first crappy looking CGI-shark attacks the characters!).
The supporting cast doesn't fare better: there's a nosey-ass journalist following Kaori around who's kind of a truther-dude, there's Kaori's husband who has, like, two or three speaking lines and that's it for him, there's a hilariously cheesy evil doctor - and that's it, basically. What really grinded my gears, though - and that counts for the original as well as the shitty German dub - is how the characters treated this whole "Errmerrgerrd, nature strikes back with mustang gas-farting fish!"-situation as if it was a day at the office. I mean, what the hell Kaori, there's a goddamn shark chasing you through Tokyo and your face doesn't even move a muscle? The fuck's wrong wit' you, girl? Emote a little!
[ART - Fishing for compliments]
Y'know, for an obvious attempt at recreating the atmosphere of the surreal original, this anime doesn't look too bad. Sure, some of the animation is kind of choppy and the CGI does sometimes look like a GONZO-anime with way less budget, but I'm inclined to defend all that as the anime's chosen artstyle. And in that Uncanny Valley'ish context, it's definitely one of the OVA's strong suits. The weird-ass fish on robo spider-legs (can't seem to stop typing that) look more unsettling than they look threatening, the naturalistic approach at the human characters makes their, well, OTHER form later on in the film a lot more creepy, and there are some striking and downright beautiful images of carnage and gore peppered throughout the film (two words: plane crash). So, it's not ALL BAD, y'know.
And, yes, there's some unneccessary fanservice sprinkled throughout GYO - FISH OUT OF WATER (LITERALLY) and it's really fucking disturbing - but I kinda dug it. I mean we know it's trash, it knows it's trash (at least I hope so), so you better get some T&A up in this trash while you're at it. Also, I don't have standards when it comes to stuff like that - bring on the titties!
[SOUND - ... pause!]
The soundtrack is really decent. It's funny to hear bombastic orchestra-tracks as background music to the silliest natural disaster this side of NIGHT OF THE LEPUS - but, again, in the context of how surreal this whole ordeal is it works fine!
The seiyuu don't really give a shit as far as I'm concerned. The performances in the original dub are so damn wooden you can build a bridge out of them (glorious exception: the cheesy-ass mad scientist). But what takes the cake - while we're on the subject of shitty dubbing - is the German dub.
As someone who's always been very much a defendant of dubs - going so far as to say I'd rather watch anime dubbed than subbed most of the time (or at very least, both, for comparison's sake) -, this is one example that makes my "job" really fucking hard. You thought the original voice actors didn't give a shit? Well, screw yourself, here's a bunch of Animaze's recurring, bored-out-of-their-minds voice actors coming back to phone it in. You can play "Shitty Dub Bingo" with this anime in such a perfect way it's not even funny:
-> Awkward sentence structure with jarring grammar errors
-> Pronouncing Japanese words and names in such a wrong way that even people who don't know Japanese will facepalm in amazement
-> Long-ass................ pauses inbetween....... sentences so that the words they say match with the.......................................... lip movements.
-> Either delivering lines in such an emotionless way they come off as bored or hamming it the fuck up when it's inappropriate to do so.
-> and a lot more.
I mean, I know it's a trashy schlonz-OVA about fish walking the earth and eating people - but come on! This ain't 2002 anymore, guys! The dub, however, is just the icing on the shit cake that is this movie. I've laughed a lot because of the silly imagery and the dumb-as-a-brick plot, but the shitty dub just added a new level of awful to GYO - I HAVE A FISH WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A WISH.
[OVERALL]
GYO - TOKYO FISH ATTACK (the actual English release title of this turd) is one hell of an incoherent mess: the plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the characters are bland, the dubs (at least the ones I've heard) suck, the art is very much hit-or-miss and it's definitely not a movie for the faint of heart (or, you know, for people who like good anime).
But as an unapologetic trashfest, as a celebration of schlock, a fearless display of entertaining awfulness, GYO - NOT A PREQUEL TO BLUE SUB NO. 6 works fine! Sure, it can be a frustrating thought to know that the guy who made UZUMAKI - which still holds up as one of the creepiest things ever written in terms of J-Horror - penned this complete nonsense and that ufotable - a.k.a. the dudes responsible for freaking FATE/ZERO, one of the most beautifully animated TV-cartoons ever made - shat the bed quite hard if their intention was to make an actual horror movie - but nevermind that, enjoy the trainwreck instead!
[EPILOGUE]
If the upcoming GOD EATER should suck, this is the benchmark for how bad it needs to be to become a masterpiece nonetheless. Good luck, ufotable!
