Spirit Warrior

jpn Kujaku-O, aka Peacock King. 1988–94. OAV. (5 X 50 min.) Occult thriller. org Makoto Ogino (manga). dir Rintaro, Katsuhito Akiyama, Ichiro Itano. scr Noboru Aikawa, others. des Hisashi Abe, others. -bc

A young Buddhist monk in modern Japan confronts the revived spirits of rogue figures from Japanese history in one of the most consistently imaginative and action-packed of occult anime series.

Kujaku is a young monk-in-training at a tantric Buddhist temple in modern Kyoto. His aptitude for exorcism has gained him renown in Buddhist circles and he is frequently called upon to use ancient spells to ward off spirits and demons. His master is the wise and elderly Jiku and his sidekick is a younger female student named Asura, who has hidden powers of her own. His sometime rival, sometime ally is Onimaru, a leather-clad biker who is described as a “warrior of forbidden curses” who employs “spell-ogres” to fight unwanted spirit influences. Another rival/ally is Kaiho Ko, who comes from a long line of Chinese occult warriors. Together they take on ancient spirits who have come back to life to wreak havoc on the modern world.

In “Festival of Ogres’ Revival,” Kujaku is assigned to retrieve a statue of Ashura, one of the Eight Guardians of Buddha. The statue had been stolen by Tatsuma, a student and amateur occultist seeking to unleash the spirit of the most powerful sorcerer in Japan’s history, Abe no Seimei, which had been sealed in the statue back in 1005. Once freed, Seimei seeks to return control of Japan to its sorcerers.

In “Castle of Illusion,” an archaeological team revives the spirit of Nobunaga Oda, a key figure from the Warring States period who slaughtered a thousand Buddhist monks on Mount Hiei. Nobu­naga resurrects Azuchi Castle from the depths of Lake Biwa and begins arrangements for the “Cherubim,” ancient serpent-like monsters, to be reborn and sent out to destroy Japan.

In “A Harvest of Cherry Blossoms,” Kujaku and his team accompany a TV producer and her crew to an island where onetime film star Setsuko Ohara lives as a recluse in a dark, foreboding mansion. There they find the vengeful spirit of Lady Yomi, who sets out to inflict madness on Japan in revenge for all the wrongs done her four hundred years earlier when she was betrayed by Ieyasu Tokugawa, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate.

“Revival of Evil” and “Regent of Darkness” tell a two-part story that takes the characters out of Japan, first to Germany, then to Tibet, for an all-out battle between ancient gods of light and darkness reincarnated in the forms of Kujaku and his long-lost sister, Tomoko. We see Kujaku’s origin story in flashbacks revealing that Tomoko had been abandoned as a child and then raised by Siegfried, a neo-Nazi leader seeking to use Tomoko’s power to channel the legendary Dragon Orb to establish a Fourth Reich. It all culminates in a showdown on a Tibetan plateau, with Kujaku and Tomoko on opposite sides.

The first three Spirit Warrior episodes draw heavily on Japanese history, in terms of the famous figures they invoke, and Japanese folklore, in terms of the demons depicted and Buddhist incantations used. It’s quite a heady mix as (barely) modern-day characters battle traditional monstrous oni (demons), complete with single horn and red skin, and an assortment of other creatures, while also confronting such formidable figures from Japan’s past as sorcerer Abe no Seimei and warlord Nobunaga Oda. For a series set in contemporary Japan, it offers a steady swirl of beautifully rendered images from traditional Japanese art and culture.

“Festival of Ogres’ Revival” uses picturesque settings of traditional cultural sites and sacred grounds around the ancient city of Kyoto and the far-flung mountainous region of Hokkaido. The backgrounds are all done in a painterly, traditional Japanese style, recalling classical charcoal paintings and woodblock prints. The artwork is simpler here and the design of the characters and contemporary settings slightly more realistic than in later episodes.

“Castle of Illusion” features background settings that include the landscape of Mount Koya, the temples of old Kyoto, and the resurrected Azuchi Castle arising from the center of Lake Biwa, all rendered with great beauty and striking color. The castle interiors, however, are meant to be distinctly nightmarish, drawn to resemble the innards of a giant misshapen creature. The “Cherubim” monsters seen in the climax are pink, fleshy creatures with gaping, devouring jaws, rows of sharp teeth, and long slimy necks protruding from their egg sacs.

“A Harvest of Cherry Blossoms” includes an opening sequence in downtown Tokyo but then moves to a sprawling old mansion on a remote island and adopts a look more closely associated with horror films and haunted house mysteries. Flashbacks to the postwar American occupation and to events from four hundred years earlier tie the episode to the series’ practice of calling up different historical eras.

The two later OAV volumes, directed by Rintaro, go farther afield than the earlier ones, with prominent settings including a German mountain fortress (complete with a dirigible marked Hindenburg), and a massive plateau in a remote mountainous region of Tibet. The backgrounds here are the most impeccably detailed in the series, with painstaking re-creations of temple architecture, Tibetan mandalas, and cloud-strewn overcast skies resembling oil paintings created as backdrops to the spectacular climactic supernatural battles. Some of the action takes place in other dimensions or in a long distant ancient past when the gods of light and darkness ruled. This one has the most abstract mystical imagery of any of the episodes.

The character design varies considerably in all the volumes, at least where Kujaku and Asura are concerned; they’re designed differently in each of the four versions, although they remain recognizable. The first and third volumes offer the simplest, most straightforward designs, while the second looks more deliberately like manga. The final two-parter offers the most detailed linework, but at the same time is the most stylized in terms of facial design. Kukjaku wears traditional garb throughout. The female characters tend to get stripped of their clothes at some point and, in some cases, stay that way throughout the episode. Onimaru looks pretty much the same in every episode; how many ways can you fashion a hulking, leather-clad biker with long hair and shades?

Katsuhito Akiyama (Armitage III: Dual-Matrix, Bubblegum Crisis) directed the first and third volumes, “Festival of Ogres’ Revival” and “A Harvest of Cherry Blossoms.” Ichiro Itano (Angel Cop, Megazone 23, Part II) directed the second volume, “Castle of Illusion.” Rintaro (Harmagedon, Dagger of Kamui) directed the fourth and fifth volumes, “Revival of Evil” and “Regent of Darkness.”

While many anime series have occult themes and modern-day exorcists battling ancient spirits and demonic possession, few of them boast the flair and excitement of the Spirit Warrior (Peacock King) series or such specific ties to figures from Japanese history. The first three volumes deal explicitly with unfinished business from Japan’s past and seem to imply that the lack of resolution has had grave consequences for Japan’s present. Of course, the sug­gested solution seems to require archaic tactics involving lots of spells and incantations. While this may ultimately prove impractical for contemporary decision makers, it does make for top-drawer anime spectacle as Kujaku and his allies adopt stances, arrange their fingers, and chant ancient Indian mantras with fierce determination, all to hurl beams of light and blasts of energy at numerous spirit entities seeking to make trouble for the average Japanese citizen. Ultimately, it’s all about the continuing battle between traditional beliefs and modernization, a perennial theme of anime, with tradition getting in some body blows before Kujaku, as traditional as a character can get in contemporary anime, stands up triumphantly for modern Japan, flaws and all.

The series is awash in thrilling occult images from Japanese lore, pumped up by imaginative new creations such as the dismembered corpses in the second volume which transform into skeletal scorpion-like monsters before attacking Hannoji Temple in Kyoto. The hard-edged action features ample bloodshed, gore, nudity, and occasional sexual activity, and, in the third volume, the startling sight of the female TV producer being stripped naked, slammed against a wall, and then violated, all by an invisible entity. Religious icons appear regularly, including the Christian cross, and in the second volume, Christian missionaries who were allies of Nobunaga Oda are among the revived spirits. A Catholic priest is a key character in the third volume and turns out to be the Japanese officer from forty years earlier who arranged a plot to kill the American commander who had taken Setsuko Ohara as his mistress (an act of self-sacrifice on her part, we are led to believe). In the two parts that make up the fourth and fifth volumes, the imagery expands to include cosmic figures from ancient history that go beyond individual religions, all played out against a backdrop of age-old cultures on a high plateau in Tibet.

The characters basically exist to stand in for the different strains of the occult tradition in modern life, and serve the action by standing up against the unrepentant spirits of the past. Kujaku and Asura are the innocents-in-training with dormant psychic powers ready to be unleashed in the face of a grave threat. There’s not much depth to them, but they are endearing and serve as suitable audience identification figures. Kaiho Ko, from a Chinese family, represents an even older occult tradition, one with its own agenda, although he, too, is more often useful than not. Onimaru is a modern-day occult warrior, complete with contemporary look and attitude, and derided as something of a sellout because of his willingness to serve the highest bidder, even though he invariably winds up on Kujaku’s side in a fight. He’s actually the most interesting and layered character in the series, and might make a suitable maverick occult warrior hero in his own series.

Both volumes 1 and 2 climax with Kujaku’s verbal and physical confrontations with living embodiments of figures from Japanese history, Abe no Seimei, a legendary sorcerer, in volume 1, and Nobunaga Oda, a warlord who was instrumental in the unification of Japan, in volume 2. In both sequences, Kujaku has to defend the current state of humanity (read: Japan) from accusations of weakness (Seimei) and insanity (Oda), both of which are used as excuses to try to destroy Japan. These are rare and powerful moments in anime where some kind of dialogue is attempted between voices from Japan’s turbulent past and representatives of its prosperous, but insecure present. Despite their utter nihilism, the figures from the past do have a point, and a poor young, socially awkward Buddhist monk has to try to prove his case that the present is ultimately better for Japan—and stronger.

Although a villain here, Abe no Seimei, a 10th-century onmyoji, or expert in divination, was the heroic subject of numerous TV, movie, and anime productions. He was the main character in two live-action Japanese movies, Onmyoji (2001) and Onmyoji 2 (2003), which were both released on DVD in the U.S.

The “Cherubim” monsters seen in the climax of “Castle of Illusion” were designed by Screaming Mad George, a Japanese special effects wizard who has worked mostly in the U.S. film industry (Bride of Re-Animator, Guyver).

Curiously, the name of the actress, Setsuko Ohara, in “Harvest of Cherry Blossoms,” is almost the same as that of famed Japanese actress Setsuko Hara (1920–), a postwar film star who worked for Japan’s greatest directors and was a favorite of both Akira Kurosawa (No Regrets for Our Youth) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story). In the anime, the character of Ohara is seen only in photos and flashbacks and resembles Setsuko Hara in one or two shots, but the character does not appear to have been based on the real actress, who retired in 1962. Setsuko Hara was later one of the inspirations for the lead character in Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress.

In 1989, there was a live-action film, Peacock King, coproduced by Hong Kong and Japan and starring Hong Kong kung fu star Yuen Biao. It was much more casually plotted and generally lighter-hearted in tone, with charm and humor on display along with a host of clever special effects, including stop-motion animated monsters.

violence Several bloody killings committed by demons and Nazis. Gruesome monsters attack the heroes at several points. A graphic sex scene in the first volume and the rape of a woman in the third. nudity Frequent female nudity throughout the series.