V

Vampire

1968. TV series. dir: Tsutomu Yamada, Tei Mabune. scr: Yasuhiro Yama-ura, Masaki Tsuji, Toshiro Fujinami, Tomohiro Ando, Shunichi Yukimuro, Yoshiyuki Fukuda. des: Osamu Tezuka. ani: Renzo Kinoshita. mus: Hikaru Hayashi. prd: Mushi Pro, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

Toppei Tachibana is an everyday worker at the Mushi Pro company, who is secretly one of the Clan of Night’s Weeping, a were-creature. Mr. Morimura, a reporter from the Daily Times researching vampires, discovers that Toppei transforms into a wolf whenever he sees a full moon and starts to chronicle both his activities and his secret feud with other clan members. A self-referential series from Tezuka, disastrously mixing animated supernatural creatures with live-action footage, shot in and around his own studios—the Astro Boy–creator would later do his best to edge Vampire out of his biography. Tezuka, Toppei’s boss in real life and onscreen, plays himself in the series, while behind the scenes are several staff borrowed from Ultraman’s Tsuburaya studios and respected art-house animator Renzo Kinoshita (see Wartime Anime). Compare to the later Born Free.

Vampire Hunter D *

1985. jpn: Vampire Hunter D. Movie. dir: Toyoo Ashida. scr: Yasushi Hirano. des: Yoshitaka Amano, Noriyasu Yamaura. ani: Hiromi Matsushita. mus: Tetsuya Komuro. prd: Ashi Pro. 80 mins., ca. 120 mins.

Ten thousand years in the future, humanity lives in a quasi-medieval society overrun by the vampires who keep them in a state of feudal subjugation and terror. When Count Lee claims Doris as his next bride, a mysterious cloaked stranger in a big hat, known only as “D,” rides into town on a huge horse and saves her. The townspeople want to give her up to pacify the count, but Doris has fallen in love with her vampire-hunter savior. “D” has to clean out the nest of vampires, but he’s not without problems of his own. His hand has an independent life and nags him mercilessly, and his own background as a half-vampire is the cause of much inner conflict.

The film is based on a long series of novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi, who also created Wind of Amnesia, Wicked City, and Darkside Blues. Despite the
Hammer-horror trappings, at heart VHD is more like a vampire Western. The character designs, based on Amano’s illustrations for the novels, may entice lovers of his smoky, elegant watercolors and baroque game characters, but they were radically simplified to cut animation costs, with only traces of the artist’s hand remaining, mostly in still frames.

Based on Kikuchi’s third novel, D: Demon Deathchase, and shown unfinished and unedited as a “work in progress” at the Fantasia 2000 festival, the new version, VHD Bloodlust, is directed and scripted by Ninja Scroll’s Yoshiaki Kawajiri. As with the original, the story is based on part of Kikuchi’s epic novel series but adds a greater emphasis on action. D, revealed as a half-vampire or “dhampir,” is one of several hunters hired to rescue Charlotte, the daughter of a wealthy family, who has been kidnapped by a vampire; but she has fallen in love with her captor. Does
he kill them both, or allow her to escape the misery of human life and flee to another planet with her lover? Characters are designed by Yutaka Minowa, monsters by Yasushi Nira-sawa, and animation is by Madhouse. NV

Vampire Princess Miyu *

1988. jpn: Kyuketsuki Miyu. aka: Vampire Miyu. Video, TV series. dir: Toshihiro Hirano. scr: Sho Aikawa, Yuji Hayami. des: Narumi Kakinouchi, Yasuhiro Moriki (v), Megumi Kadonosono, Kenji Teraoka (TV). ani: Narumi Kakinouchi, Masahiro Nishii. mus: Kenji Kawai. prd: AIC, Pony Canyon. 30 mins. x 4 eps. (v), 25 mins. x 26 eps. (TV).

Himiko is a cynical, charlatan “medium” faced with a real-life case of demonic possession in Japan’s former capital of Kyoto. There, amid sleepy, leafy lanes, she witnesses a battle between the Shinma, evil “demon-god” creatures from another dimension, and Earth’s only protector, a vampire princess called Miyu.

Like Claudia in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Miyu is a former human who bears a vampire curse, trapped forever in a world of teenage angst. Motivated sometimes less by a sense of justice than by her own raging hormones, she pushes a succubus away from a man she secretly wants herself, parades Lolita-fashion around her devoted servant (and former enemy) Larva, and slowly worms her way into Himiko’s life. Like Pet shop of Horrors, VPM features the ghostbusting odd-couple of a mundane person from our world and a flashy spellcaster from the next. The olde-worlde charm of Kyoto makes a nice change from the sprawling city of Tokyo, particularly when the animation has aged so well. But amid the long, long silences and dark, meaningful glances, VPM is a mass of contradictions. As Himiko points out in a rare moment of lucidity, Miyu walks around in daylight, licks up holy water, and can crush a crucifix in her bare hands—so for the peculiarly picky audience of vampire folklorists, VPM is little more convincing than the execrable Beast City. Furthermore, since she often seems only to be protecting people so she can chow down on their jugular veins, what exactly makes her any better than the creatures she is supposed to be fighting? Don’t expect any answers, because Miyu (and, it would seem, her creator Narumi Kakinouchi) would rather smile condescendingly and tell you that you could never understand rather than admit they don’t know either.

Sometimes this approach pays off, especially when the story reverses the roles of the sexes. It makes a change to see a predatory succubus chasing after a young male virgin, or indeed to see a vain pretty-boy selling his soul to the devil to keep his looks forever. There are some great ideas, such as the girl who loses her mind because she is kept alive by blood transfusions from her dying parents, or alien parasites that feed off people’s dreams. But such moments are few, making for an elegantly chilling and curiously watchable anime that constantly promises more than it delivers.

The video series is based on Kakinouchi’s 1988 manga and directed by her husband, one of Japan’s masters of horror and creator of Iczer-One. In 1997, it was snapped up for TV adaptation amid the post-Evangelion boom when so many old video shows were reborn as cheap but at least partly market-tested TV. The TV series, conceived by Kakinouchi, Hirano, and Yuji Hayanami, introduced new characters such as Miyu’s little bat-winged rabbit Shina, and another servant, Reiha, a snow demon who detests Miyu and also has the power to send Shinma back to the shadows. Reiha confides in her doll while chirpy human schoolgirl Chisato balances Miyu’s coldness and further enhances the disturbing links between magic and childhood. Megumi Kadonosono reworks the character designs without obvious disharmony, and Kenji Kawai’s music is just as evocative and elegant. Hirano (by this point using his real first name of Toshiki) disliked some of the changes required by Japanese TV censorship, including the removal of much of the projected second episode story line, and restored the deletions for the video release in 1998. Another Kakinouchi project, Vampire Princess Yui, the story of a girl whose mother was bitten by Miyu while pregnant, was published in manga form but not animated. V

Vampire Wars *

1990. Video. dir: Kazuhisa Takenouchi. scr: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama. des: Hideki Hamazu, Hiroyuki Kitazume. ani: Hideki Hamazu. mus: Kazz Toyama. prd: Toei. 50 mins.

Japanese agent Kosaburo Kuki (sort of) hides out in Paris in the company of dialogue-challenged whores and meets Lamia Vindaw, a girl who’s sort of chummy with “vampires,” who are really a galaxy-spanning alien race that have achieved immortality by storing life-giving energy in their bodies. Human blood provides a weak source of this energy, but Lamia’s altered body chemistry has a uniquely powerful version. It’s just what the aliens need to revive their king, trapped in a deep sleep in Transylvania ever since the visitors arrived five thousand years ago. Meanwhile, Monsieur Lassar of the French Secret Service thinks there is a connection between a terrorist attack on a NASA base in Arizona and the murder of a CIA man in Paris, and he hires Kuki to find out. Naturally, it’s Lamia that is the key, though the more interesting elements of the backstory are only revealed in the final moments of this awful anime, which is little more than an ad for the opening chapters of the best-selling Kiyoshi Kasai novel on which it is based. Most but not all anime novel adaptations suffer in the transition, mainly from being cut down to fit a 50-minute running time—barely enough to contain the average short story. However, such bastard children of the industry are often sold off at a bargain price to foreign companies (for obvious reasons), though any who pay for them discover at their cost that there is negligible pressure to rush out the next part—thus the interminable wait over the next episodes of Heroic Legend of Arslan.

The original Lamia of vampire legend was Queen of Libya and one of Zeus’s many lovers. She was transformed into a child-eating monster, giving her name to a race of ghoulish female demons with a craving for blood. This tired story does no credit to its ancient antecedents. LNV

Vampiyan Kids

2001. jpn: Nanchatte Vampiyan. aka: Vampire Vegetarians. TV series. dir: Masaaki Yuasa (pilot), Masatsugu Arakawa. scr: N/C. des: Suzuka Yoshida (pilot), Kayoko Nabeta (pilot), Miyako Yazu. ani: Hiroyuki Nishimura, Kanami Sekiguchi, Kayoko Nabeta, Masahiro Sato, Takayuki Hamana, Taketomo Ishikawa, Tsuyoshi Ichiki, Yuichiro Sueyoshi. mus: Ko Otani (pilot), Toshihiko Sahashi. prd: Fuji TV, Production IG, IKIF +, Ogura Workshop. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

A vampire family that survives on orange juice instead of blood can’t call itself “vampire”—hence the name vampiyan. The father can’t even scare humans and is sent into exile in the human world to scare 1,000 people before he is permitted to return home. But his daughter Sue falls in love with human boy Ko and doesn’t want to go back. The whole show appears to have undergone a transfusion between the pilot (screened at the 2004 Future Film Festival in Italy) and release—the main crew and cast members, except for Ko and Mama, were all replaced. Notably, the voice of “Papa” in the pilot was provided by Kenji Utsumi, who has voiced vampires on other occasions, such as the similarly comedic Don Dracula and the more traditional Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned.

Vandread *

2001. TV series. dir: Takeshi Mori, Hitoyuki Matsui. scr: Atsuhiro Tomi-oka, Natsuko Takahashi. des: Mahiro Maeda, Kazuya Kuroda, Tomohiro Kawahara. ani: Takahiro Fujii, Sato-
shi Kawano. mus: N/C. prd: Gonzo, Media Factory, WOWOW. 23 mins. x 12 eps. (TV1), 23 mins. x 12 eps. (TV2), 75 mins. (Integral), 75 mins. (Turbulence).

War has been raging for generations between the all-male planet Talac and the all-female planet Majel. Suspend disbelief as to how they keep this up, then imagine that they are invaded by a common enemy and forced to settle their differences for a united counter-attack. The first meeting of 16-year-old Talac engineer Hibiki Tokai and Majel babe Dirda is unplanned; he gets tired of his mundane job assembling robots and plots to steal one of his own. He stows away on a Talac immigration ship, but then the ship is attacked by a Majel pirate. But, despite their races’ history of separate development, Hibiki and Dirda will eventually work things out.

The script cleverly exploits the mutual attraction/repulsion of teenagers of opposite sexes, though the visuals resort to standard fan-service ogling of female charms. Vandread Integral (aka Vandread: Taidohen, 2001) was a feature-length edit of the first series broadcast as a TV movie to set the scene for part two. Vandread: Turbulence (aka Vandread: Gekitohen, 2003) was a similar recapitulation of the second season. Both included a minor amount of new footage.

Vanilla Series *

1997. Video. dir: Rion Kujo, Norihiko Nagahama, Teruaki Murakami, Mi-tsuhiro Kometa, Rokurota Makabe, Sotsuki Mitsumura, Kanzaburo Oda, Takayoshi Mizuno, Naomi Hayakawa, Hiroyuki Yanase. scr: Nikukyuu, Rokurota Makabe, Naruhito Sunaga. des: Raihiken (aka Ken Raika), Matsuri Ohana, Ryosuke Morimura. ani: Raihiken Tetsuya Ono, Meka Morishige, Takeshi Okamura, Shinichi Omata. mus: Yoshi. prd: YOUC, Digital Works. 30 mins. x 4 eps. (Love Doll), 2 eps. (Shoyonoid Makoto-chan), 1 ep. (Sleazy Angels), 3 eps. (A Heat for All Seasons), 4 eps. (Mei King), 2 eps. (Slave Sisters), 1 ep. (Office Affairs), 1 ep. (Sins of the Flesh), 2 eps. (Bondage Mansion), 1 ep. (Endless Serenade), 2 eps. (Girl Next Door), 2 eps. (Dark), 4 eps. (Nightmare Campus), 2 eps. (Campus), 2 eps. (Holy Virgins), 2 eps. (Private Sessions), 2 eps. (Punishment), 2 eps. (Sex Ward), 2 eps. (Slaves to Passion), 2 eps. (Stepmother’s Sin), 2 eps. (Hooligan), 2 eps. (I Love You), 2 eps. (Classroom of Atonement), 2 eps. (Spotlight), 2 eps. (Submission Central), 2 eps. (Story of Little Monica), 3 eps. (The Urotsuki/New Saga), 2 eps. (Debts of Desire), 2 eps. (Rxxx: Prescription for Pain), 2 eps. (Maid Service), 1 eps. (Ingoku Byouto), 2 eps. (Hardcore Hospital), 2 eps. (Voyeur’s Digest), 2 eps. (Perverse Investigations), 2 eps. (Xpress Train), 2 eps. (Wicked Lessons), 2 eps. (Private Sessions 2), 2 eps. (Hot For Teacher), 2 eps. (Chains of Lust), 2 eps. (Naughty Nurses), 2 eps. (Bondage 101), 2 eps. (Milk Money), 3 eps. (Angel Blade), 2 eps. (Anyone You Can Do), 2 eps. (Internal Medicine), 2 eps. (My Brother’s Wife), 2 eps. (Sextra Credit), 2 eps. (Duchess of Busty Mounds), 2 eps. (Invasion of the Boobie Snatchers), 2 eps. (Group Groper Train), 2 eps. (Incontinent Helena), 2 eps. (Mother Knows Breast), 2 eps. (Virgin Auction), 2 eps. (Invisible Man), 2 eps. (Stepsister).

The Vanilla Series is the Digital Work company’s umbrella title for numerous unrelated pornographic anime in the style of Cool Devices or the Discovery Series, largely based on lecherous computer games. With many unrelated one-shot or two-part titles, the Vanilla Series has been greatly overrepresented in the American market, since its titles have been separated, renamed, and sold as several dozen anime releases—many have their own entries in this book, but we have assembled this chronological umbrella entry in an attempt to make some sense of it. Most of the original games are erotic variants of the “dating simulation” engine, in which a protagonist’s choices in a role-playing environment lead him not to treasure or freedom, but to the perfect girl of his dreams. Consequently, plotlines often revolve around a roster of half a dozen female stereotypes, differentiated through hair color and non-threatening personality traits.

The first release from the production team was Love Doll in 1997, although its role as the inaugural title for the franchise was only really assigned retroactively. Similar membership to a Vanilla “line” would be assigned to the 1998 releases Shoyonoid Makoto-chan and Sleazy Angels.

The Sega Saturn-originated Heat for All Seasons (Kiss Yori, 1999) features Masato, an aspiring novelist who moves to a seaside town for a working vacation while looking for candidates for a summertime fling. Masato’s friend Oka finds his dream girl working at a restaurant, but Masato rekindles his love with his old high school sweetheart, Chisato, before juggling her with a succession of other girls in the style of an erotic Tenchi Muyo!. Released originally in three seasonally-themed chapters, the English-language version initially featured a title change to Summer Heat, Autumn Heat, and Winter Heat, before being repackaged as Heat for All Seasons.

Mei King (1999) is another outbreak of the Cream Lemon virus, as a man called Cane falls in love with the spirit of a woman trapped inside the body of a young girl called Charlotte. In Sins of the Flesh (Ikenie, aka Holy Sacrifice, 1999), talented artist Adolfo wants to enter the Church and live out his days painting angels, though temptations of the flesh present themselves in the form of the country girl Michaela, with predictable results. Slave Sisters and Office Affairs followed the same year, demonstrating Vanilla’s ongoing obsessions with both young girls and scenarios of bondage, coercion, and domination.

Bondage Mansion (Kinbaku no Yakata, 2000) featured extensive scenes of the same in a secluded forest hideaway, perpetrated by a father upon his daughters. A different variant on the incest theme was presented in the same year’s Endless Serenade, while Girl Next Door presented a vaguely consensual variant on the dating sim theme, whereas Dark (Daraku, aka Degeneration, 2000), featuring more coerced sex, didn’t.

In 2001, the Vanilla Series almost doubled its output, jumping on the erotic horror bandwagon with an adaptation of Toshio Maeda’s Nightmare Campus, classroom bondage in Private Sessions, Classroom of Atonement, Campus, and Punishment (Korashime). The “gentler” side of pornography continued with I Love You, while bondage and wife coveting continued in Slaves to Passion and Stepmother’s Sin. The year also saw a further concentration on fantasy in the literal sense, with Angel Blade and Hooligan: The Quest for the Seven Holy Dildos (released in Japan as just plain Hooligan), in which a botched “science experiment” transports a Japanese boy to another time and place where he must obtain a series of magical artifacts from the usual roster of stereotyped females—a more quest-oriented variant on the erotic dating sim. The same year saw the nursing craze in Japanese erotica reaching its peak—a line the authors suspect can be traced from the mainstream TV show Leave It to the Nurses (*DE), through to erotic rip-offs in the computer games world in 1999, and the subsequent success of Night Shift Nurses, the flagship title of the rival Discovery Series. Not to be outdone, the Vanilla Series retaliated with Sex Ward, and by mixing nurses and nuns in Holy Virgins.

The nursing themes continued into 2002, with the release of Vanilla’s Ingoku Byouto, and Hardcore Hospital. Erotic horror continued with the release of The Urotsuki, the newest incarnation of the Urotsukidoji franchise (released in America as Urotsukidoji: New Saga), while less violent fantasies appeared in The Story of Little Monica. Coercion and domination returned in Submission Central and Debts of Desire, while Spotlight mixed the not-quite-incest genre with a tale of a female singer seeking the big time. Maid Service (Maid no Yakata: Zetsubo-hen, aka Maid Mansion: Chapter of Despair, 2002) featured an orphan, Momoko, who must perform menial services for the rich youth Takaaki if she is to earn enough to pay for her college tuition.

By 2003, Vanilla appeared to be establishing an annual roster of sub-genres in those areas of anime erotica proven to work in the market. In Wicked Lessons (Gakuen no Shuryosha, aka Hunter of the Campus, 2002), an abusive youth forces his raped and orphaned stepsister to help him chase girls at a college, all “to get back at his father.” Meanwhile, school (or “college”) abuse and sex continued in Hot for Teacher, P.I.: Perverse Investigations, and Private Sessions 2. Hospitals continued to perform beyond the call of duty in Naughty Nurses, while Chains of Lust (Ryojoku no Rensa, 2003) featured two workers at an erotic video store who decide to make a porn movie without acquiring the consent of their female performers—the authors wonder if this is an erotic variant on the contemporary self-referential genre in the mainstream that also gave us Anime Shop-Keeper.

A similar spread of titles covered all of the Vanilla Series’ main bases in 2004, with school bondage in Sextra Credit and Bondage 101, and hospital abuses in Rxxx: Prescription for Pain. However, the year also saw a marked increase in the number of incest and not-quite-incest tales, particularly involving a fetish for lactating women. This is nothing new in erotic anime, and dates at least as far back as Professor Pain in 1998, but 2004 alone saw the Vanilla Series releasing Milk Money, Anyone You Can Do… I Can Do Better, and My Brother’s Wife (Aniyome, 2004).

The new direction, with its concentration on older, fuller-figured women (at least compared to the jailbait of earlier incarnations), continued with Duchess of Busty Mounds (Mama Haha, 2005), Invasion of the Boobie Snatchers, and Mother Knows Breast (Chibo, 2005, lit. Perverse Mother). The franchise also released Group Groper Train (Shudan Chikan Densha, 2005), Incontinent Helena, and Virgin Auction (Shojo Auction, 2005).

The year 2006 was presumably some cause for celebration for the Vanilla Series, having reached its 100th title. The vagaries of release schedules make it unclear exactly which DVD represented Vanilla’s attainment of three-figure smut, but by our unreliable calculations, it was probably Invisible Man (Tomei Ningen, 2006). Male characters in some erotic anime games have often been rendered invisible or translucent in the past, and some anime have found ways to remove the image of male participants from the action in order to show more female flesh (be it through tentacles at a distance in erotic horror, or transforming a character into a girl’s bathwater as in Rei Rei). Invisible Man takes the concept literally, often allowing for the anime to incorporate the genre of live-action pornography known as “POV” (point-of-view), in which the girls address and interact with the camera as if it is the male viewer himself. Invisible Man features an old man who takes supreme advantage after ingesting a drug that makes him disappear. A similar concept can be seen in the Japanese box art to Stepsister (2006, the characters say Gimai but the furigana alongside demands it be read as “Imoto,” or “Younger Sister”)—not to be confused with the Discovery Series title of the same name—which features a semi-naked girl about to perform a sexual act on her knees, smiling up at the viewer/buyer. However, the onscreen action itself is more traditional, both in terms of the way it is filmed and in the plotting the title suggests, which is old-school Vanilla Series not-quite-incest. N

Variable Geo *

1996. Video. dir: Toru Yoshida. scr: Yosuke Kuroda. des: Takahiro Kimura. ani: Takahiro Kimura. mus: Harukichi Yamamoto. prd: KSS. 30 mins. x
3 eps.

This ridiculously puerile anime was based on a video game that must have seemed like a really good idea at the time. Waitresses from rival restaurants meet in public fighting bouts in which they pound each other into submission (see Street Fighter II). The ultimate winner gets $10 million and some prime real estate in the city of her choice. The loser must strip off her clothes and humiliate herself in front of the audience (see Sexorcist). Meanwhile, a shadowy secret organization (see Toshinden) is planning to use the ultimate winner’s DNA to breed the ultimate warrior (see Tekken). Plucky heroine Yuka Takeuchi punches and kicks her way through a series of opponents from the game (see all of the above), in a succession of ludicrous set pieces that show off fighting catchphrases and special moves (ditto). Working conditions in the fighting-evil trade have obviously gone downhill—this never happened to the Knight Sabers. It lasts 90 minutes. Life’s too short, really. Trust us. NV

Venus Five *

1994. jpn: Sailor Senshi Venus Five. aka: Sailor Warriors Venus Five. Video. dir: Satoshi Inoue, Kan Fukumoto. scr: Wataru Amano. des: Rin Shin. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Daiei. 45 mins. x 2 eps.

Five beautiful teenage girls are destined to battle the evil Inma Empire led by the perverted Necros. The empire aims to revive the god Apollo from his ten-thousand-year slumber in order to gain his near-infinite power. And the only thing that will revive a god is . . . yes, you’ve guessed it, the sexual secretions of certain beautiful high school girls. Unfortunately for the bad guys, our heroines have been recruited by the Goddess of Love to ensure that the power of evil doesn’t triumph, and Aphrodite has even sent them a talking cat to help them. A shameless Sailor Moon parody based on a manga by Jin Ara, V5 is aimed straight at the fans who dream of seeing more than just a flash of thigh in those transformation sequences. The girls mimic the Sailor Scouts every way they can—fighting poses, speeches, costumes, all are so close to the original that they could be twins. There, however, all similarity ends, as the cat talks dirty, the tentacles multiply, and the smut takes over. This is for all those out there who snicker at a bad guy called Count Uranus, as well as connoisseurs of Immortal Dialogue like, “Let me entice you to the very summit of lust.” LNV

Venus Wars *

1989. jpn: Venus Senki. aka: Venus War Chronicle. Movie. dir: Yoshikazu Yasu-hiko. scr: Yuichi Sasamoto, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. des: Hiroyoshi Yokoyama, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Sachiko Kamimura, Hirotoshi Sano, Makoto Kobayashi, Shichiro Kobayashi. ani: Yoko Kamimura. mus: Joe Hisaishi. prd: Triangle Staff, Kuga­tsu-sha. 104 mins.

Young journalist Susan Sommers arrives on Venus to cover the war between its two nation-states just before the troops of Ishtar take the capital and overcome the armies of Aphrodia. She meets a group of young motorcycle punks, the Killer Commandos, led by Hiro. Previously engaged in racing other gangs around a makeshift circuit in scenes reminiscent of Rollerball, Hiro and some of his team fight a guerrilla action against the occupying forces of Ishtar, and Susan soon loses her journalistic objectivity as she is drawn into the struggle. Based on one of Yasuhiko’s own manga, and with music by the man who has given both Hayao Miyazaki and Beat Takeshi some unforgettable themes, this glossily produced and well-designed film ought to be a classic, but it just misses the mark. Sasamoto contributes an intelligent script in which our young hotheads learn that not all adults are brain-dead, not all organization is tyranny, and not all action is sensible. There’s plenty to interest the genre fan, including some good action sequences and fine mecha designs, yet the film lacks the emotional edge and perverse power of Yasuhiko’s earlier Arion. A similar Venusian Cold War standoff would appear in Black Magic.

Very Private Lesson *

1998. jpn: Kyokasho ni Nai!. aka: Not in the Textbook!. Video. dir: Hideaki Oba. scr: Hideaki Oba. des: Masahiko Yamada. ani: Etsuro Tokuda, Masahiko Yamada. mus: Ryuichi Katsumata. prd: AIC. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

High school teacher Oraku and his colleague Satsuki hope to marry one day. Meanwhile, one of his students has fallen in love with him. Aya is a beautiful and spoiled delinquent; her father, a very wealthy man, only wants his princess to be happy, so much so that he insists she moves in with the man she loves. So what’s the problem with having a beautiful teenager move in, with Daddy’s blessing? Aya is a Mob princess in the style of The Gokusen; her father’s money comes from organized crime, and while he’s happy for her to do whatever she wants, if she doesn’t stay a virgin he’ll kill whoever is responsible. So Oraku has to become Aya’s chaperone. Meanwhile, if anyone finds out he is living with one of his students, his career and his future marriage to Satsuki will both go down the drain. You may recall Homeroom Affairs, My Wife Is a High School Student, or Happy Lesson at this point. Based on a long-running manga by Kazuto Okada. LN

Vicious *

2001. Video dir: Sakura Harukawa. scr: N/C. des: N/C. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Five Ways. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

In what appears to be Victorian or Edwardian Britain at the turn of the 20th century, a household is still struggling to come to terms with the death of its much-loved mother in a fall down the stairs six months earlier. Daughter Angela feels that her father is cold-hearted and distant and despises him for seeking solace in the arms of the maid, Bridget. Perhaps out of spite, perhaps in an attempt to assuage her own loneliness, Angela decides that she will lose her virginity to John the butler. Although John is initially reluctant (he fears reprisals from his boss), he eventually succumbs to Angela’s charms. However, Angela’s mood changes when she learns that John and Bridget plan to leave her father’s employment, turning the latter half of this erotic anime into a tale of murder and revenge. LNV

Vicky the Viking *

1974. jpn: Chiisana Viking Vickie. aka: Vickie the Little Viking. TV series. dir: Hiroshi Saito, Noboru Ishiguro, Kiyoshi Harada. scr: Yuji Fusano, Hiroshi Kaneko, Akira Saiga, Takeshi Hidaka, Chikao Katsui. des: Shuichi Seki. ani: Shinichi Tsuji. mus: Seiichiro Uno. prd: Zuiyo, Taurus Film, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 77 eps.

Vicky is the son of Halvar, chief of a little Viking village. He’d rather play than learn to fight, but he is compelled to go on one of the village’s raiding expeditions where he manages to foil the plans of the enemy, Sven the Terrible, through his quick wits and courage. Adapted from a series of stories by Runer Jonsson, this German-Japanese coproduction holds the seeds of a great tradition—Zuiyo later became Nippon Animation, whose World Masterpiece Theater series was dedicated to bringing classic stories from the West to Japanese TV.

Victory Pitcher

1987. jpn: Shori Tosha. Video. dir: Hiroki Shibata. scr: Akane Nishiura. des: Noriko Umeda. ani: Katsumi Aodori. mus: Akihiko Matsumoto. prd: Toei. 72 mins.

Baseball coach Hoshiyama offers a chance to turn professional to Katsumi Kunimasa, a star member of the student squad that won the summer tournament. The young girl becomes a star pitcher for the Chunichi Dragons (conveniently, the team her father owns), and, after a year of triumphs, she leads them to victory in the national championships at legendary Koshien Stadium. Based on the manga by No-riko Umeda, this anime may be compared to the other girl-playing-baseball story Song of the Baseball Enthusiast. The Dragons team members are all based on the real-life team, though their opponents are fictional. At the time, the real-life Hoshiyama was a commentator, but fact was eventually true to fiction, and he became the manager for the real-life Dragons.

Video Girl Ai *

1992. jpn: Denno Shojo Ai. aka: Cyber Girl Ai; Electric Girl Ai. Video. dir: Mizuho Nishikubo. scr: Satoru Akahori. des: Takayuki Goto. ani: Takayuki Goto. mus: Nobuyuki Shimizu. prd: Production IG, Tatsunoko. 30 mins. x 6 eps.

Average-guy Yota loves girl-next-door Moemi. But Moemi has a crush on local hero Takashi, and to make it worse, Takashi is a nice guy and Yota’s best friend. Enter Ai, a disposable alien girl who escapes from a dating video and resolves to get Yota together with his true love. But before you can say “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Ai secretly longs for Yota, too. Ai is a “video girl,” designed to distract and amuse, programmed, like all video, with a definite time limit. When her relationship with Yota moves from being a disposable, casual entertainment into more dangerous territory, the “copyright authorities” step in. Yota, Moemi, Ai, and their friends move through the tortuous dance of teenage emotion and sexual longing, beautifully conveying the agonies of alienation and embarrassment inherent in growing up, and also learning that time will not always be on their side.

An unwelcome guest/magical girlfriend tale in the tradition of Urusei Yatsura and Oh My Goddess!, playing straight to the gallery with fan-service asides and a loving appreciation of the loser male psyche. Satoru Akahori’s script masterfully recreates a world of teenage desperation, far from the madcap comedies for which he is normally known. From the opening shot in which Ai addresses the audience directly, through the regular stuck-record repetition of Moemi’s declaration of love for the wrong man, Akahori demonstrates that there’s more to him than the slapstick of Sorcerer Hunters. But occasional moments of unnecessary physical comedy intrude on what could have been a great emotional farce, and sporadic outbreaks of Katsura’s trademark panty shots further undermine a show that, at heart, is all heart. After shoving the couple together, Ai immediately breaks them up—a schizophrenic characterization that is one of Ai’s biggest flaws. She fluctuates unevenly between bitchy best friend, infuriating tease, and doormat mother-substitute, while Moemi is part drippy little girl, part sassy schemer. Yota himself is half lovable dork, half annoying dork, his own wavering interest in his love objects often reduced to comparisons of breast size or cooking ability.

Director Nishikubo’s clever camerawork fades the entire world into the background so that only the self-obsessed leads get any screen time, overexposing shots of school life to turn every dingy corridor into a pathway of dreamy bright nostalgia. He puts similar thought into the opening credits, which feature a fully rendered Ai skipping through a world that’s often only half-formed, as if the camera itself has eyes only for her. Nishikubo’s pauses emphasize the secret language of women, lingering for long moments as Ai and Moemi alternate between friendship and rivalry. The series considerately ends before outstaying its welcome (see Tenchi Muyo!), and an excellent dub completes the package. A live-action movie, Video Girl Ai (1991), was directed by Ryu Kaneda from a script credited to both creator Katsura and scenarist Masahiro Yoshimoto.

Video Picture Book

1988. jpn: Video Anime E-Bon. Video. dir: Noriaki Kairo. scr: Noriaki Kairo, Shin Yukuba. des: N/C. ani: Shunji Saita. mus: Masahito Maekawa. prd: Mushi Pro. 12 mins. x 50 eps.

A vast library of classic tales animated in bite-sized chunks, including a number from Aesop’s Fables, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and the Arabian Nights. Some of the titles include Journey to the West, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, A Little Princess, The Wizard of Oz, Little Women, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, Heidi, Treasure Island, Peter Pan and Wendy, The Little Match Girl, Gulliver’s Travels, Daddy Long-Legs, Robin Hood, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Secret Garden, Frog Prince, Three Musketeers, Nobody’s Boy, Nobody’s Girl, and Adrift in the Pacific. A similar concept was on sale at the same time in Aubec’s 26-volume Video Anime Picture Book Theatre: World Masterpiece Children’s Stories.

Viewtiful Joe *

2004. TV series. dir: Takaaki Ishiyama. scr: GGB. des: Yukiko Ohashi, Nobuaki Nagano. ani: Masaki Kubomura. mus: N/C. prd: Capcom, Group Tac, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 51 eps.

Everyday slacker Joe has only two interests in life, and arguably, the screen hero Captain Blue takes precedence over Silvia, Joe’s often neglected girlfriend. But when villains from the Movieworld snatch Silvia from a cinema and drag her into an alternate dimension, Joe chases after her into the screen. He gets to be Viewtiful Joe, a superhero in training who tries to rescue his beloved, while learning tips on the superhero lifestyle from the aging, portly Captain Blue. Incorporating heavy doses of the underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle The Last Action Hero (1993), Viewtiful Joe dutifully recreates the look of the Capcom game that premiered the year before. It contains loving sideswipes at Japanese-style superheroes like Ultraman, but also a terrifying English dub, with slacker slang and wanna-be streetwise hip hop argot that already sounds self-conscious and dated—compare to Samurai Champloo.

Vifam

1983. jpn: Ginga Hyoryo Vifam. aka: Galactic Tales of Vifam; Galactic Wanderer Vifam; Round Vernian Vifam. TV series. dir: Takeyuki Kanda, Susumu Ishizaki, Tetsuro Amino, Osamu Sekita, Seiji Okuda, Junji Nishimura, Kazuo Yamazaki. scr: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, Yasushi Hirano, Tsunehisa Ito. des: To­yoo Ashida, Kunio Okawara, Shoji Sato. ani: Toyoo Ashida, Hiroshi Wata­nabe, Hideyuki Motohashi, Yasushi Nagaoka, Makoto Ito. mus: Toshiyuki Watanabe. prd: Sunrise, TBS. 25 mins. x 46 eps. (TV), 50 mins. x 4 eps. (v), 25 mins. x 12 eps. (TV2).

The Terran colony of Kreado is attacked by alien Kuktonian invaders, and when the adult crew of its orbiting space station are all killed, it is up to their 13 surviving children to fight back. Eventually, they reactivate the old starship Janus from dry dock and prepare to head for their homeworld—a trip fraught with perils both on the planets they pass and within the labyrinthine corridors of the Janus itself. It’s a sci-fi remake of Adrift in the Pacific, and Vifam’s ludicrously overpopulated cast returned in 1984 for video adventures V: News from Catcher (Catcher kara no Benri), V: Gathering of the Thirteen (Atsumatta Jusanbito), V: The 12 Fade Away (Kieta Junibito, also shown in theaters), and V: Kate’s Reflections (Kate no Kioku). The fact that the 4 video episodes follow on from the TV series, break down into eight 25-minute acts, and would have taken the series to a full year’s 52 episodes makes it likely that they were the final unbroadcast episodes of the series.

The series was remade by Toshifumi Kawase as Vifam 13 (1998), reuniting many of the old crew for a production that used previously unfilmed scripts as its basis. For the V13 story arc, the crew rescue baby Kukto twins from a derelict ship and are forced to juggle child-care with their continuing mission.

Villgust

1992. jpn: Kyoryu Densetsu Villgust. aka: Armored Dragon Legend Villgust. Video. dir: Katsuhiko Nishijima. scr: Satoru Akahori. des: Katsuhiko Nishijima. ani: Katsuhiko Nishijima. mus: Kohei Tanaka. prd: Animate Film. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Two separate groups of adventurers meet up in a faux-medieval European village in the alternate universe of Villgust. Wannabe paladins Kui, Yuta, and cute girls Kris and Fanna are full of high ambitions to protect the land and rid it from evil, while catgirl Ryugia, Marobo the dog-man, Bostof the elf, and cute little girl Lemi are more interested in finding something to eat. They’ve actually been sent by the presiding goddess of the land to rid Villgust of a dark, evil force that looks suspiciously like Jabba the Hutt. Gabadi is a wicked oppressor with a large band of thoroughly nasty disposable minions, but he’s devoted only to his pet frog, Antoinette. Gabadi succeeds in tricking Kui and company into fighting Ryugia (who has a penchant for bikini-style armor, an infantile food fetish, and a set of claws borrowed from X-Man Wolverine) and her friends—the very people intended by Heaven to be their allies! He wants them to destroy each other so that there is no opposition to his evil plans. More through luck than judgment, our heroes eventually start fighting his minions instead of each other, and they battle their way through a tornado, flying slabs of rock, snake-headed monsters, and tentacles to rid the land of his evil and bring peace back to Villgust.

Bandai originated the gachapon concept—small plastic toys enclosed in egg-shaped cases and sold for small change in street-corner vending machines. The name is said to be the sound of the egg-shaped cases falling from the machine. These sweet little creatures influenced video games, card games, and manga—Nintendo created the Villgust role-playing game based on them, and from that came this video series. So if anyone asks you which came first, it was definitely the egg.

Violence Jack *

1986. jpn: Violence Jack Harlem Bomber; Violence Jack Jigokugai; Violence Jack Hell’s Wind. aka: VJ Slum­king; VJ Hell Town [Evil Town]; VJ Hell’s Wind. Video. dir: Seiji Okuda, Ichiro Itano. scr: Sho Aikawa, Takuya Wada, Makio Matsushita. des: Takuya Wada, Moriyasu Taniguchi. ani: Takuya Wada, Moriyasu Taniguchi. mus: Hiroshi Ogasawara. prd: Ashi Pro, Studio 88, Dynamic Planning. 30 mins. x 2 eps. (Harlem/Slumking), 30 mins. x 2 eps. (Hell Town), 60 mins. (Hell’s Wind).

A comet strikes Earth and causes a chain reaction of other cataclysms. In Japan, the fault line gives way in the mother of all earthquakes, while the long-dormant volcano Mount Fuji erupts in a spectacular cloud of ash and lava. Survivors trapped in the Tokyo subway system turn into savage tunnel tribes. Gangs of motorcycle bandits roam the land in search of resources. And through the midst of it all walks Violence Jack, a mountain of a man with superhuman strength, inhuman fangs, and absolutely no scruples. Jack is an elemental force, wandering the desolate land like hell’s own lawman, coming to the rescue of the assaulted, raped, and injured survivors, but not before the camera has permitted us a long, lingering look at their torments. These include stabbings, shootings, eviscerations, chainsaw decapitation, and someone eating his dead lover.

Often thought to be an inferior remake of Fist of the North Star, VJ actually predates it, starting as a 1973 manga in Goraku magazine, as the sequel to Go Nagai’s Devilman. The video necessarily condensed much of the epic original (Nagai’s longest) into a broader, more basic, and much less shocking package, though it remains extremely violent and nasty even when censored—the U.K. running time is considerably shorter than the original. The lead character, with “the strength of a gorilla and teeth of a wolf, blood boiling with the fire of prehistory,” is named for the huge jackknife he carries, and the anime focuses on his volcanic nature rather than the tangle of subplots and reincarnations of the manga. The basic postapocalyptic plots of the video version (with knowing winks to Mad Max) were originally intended to have some internal coherence but were released in the wrong order outside Japan. The first episode, showing the comet hitting Earth and explaining that Jack is the personification of the Grim Reaper, born from a mound of skulls, is actually Slumking, which was inexplicably the last episode to be released in the English version. To be fair, the muddled running order hardly makes any difference. The then boss of U.K.’s Manga Entertainment, Mike Preece, coined the term “beer-and-curry movie” for those anime destined to be watched by a group of inebriated teenage boys in search of sex and violence, and VJ is exactly what he meant. Those with higher hopes for the anime industry find the show embarrassingly infantile, including the English-language voice cast, who all appear to be using pseudonyms. LNV

Violin of the Starry Sky

1995. jpn: Hoshizora no Violin. Movie. dir: Setsuo Nakayama. scr: Toshikai Imaizumi. des: Mitsuharu Miyamae. ani: Kazunori Tanabashi. mus: Kazuki Kuriyama. prd: Takahashi Studio. 90 mins.

Based on Noboru Wada’s true story of the life of the Shinshu violinmaker Kikuji Ozawa (1916–98), who pursued his dream to make and play violins even as the clouds gathered for World War II. Violin music is provided by soloist Mio Umezu.

Violinist of Hamelin, The

1996. jpn: Hamelun no Violin. aka: Violin of Hamelin. Movie, TV series. dir: Takashi Imanishi, Junji Nishimura, Hiroshi Morioka, Akira Kiyomizu. scr: Takashi Imanishi, Yasuhiro Imagawa. des: Toshimi Kato. ani: Toshimi Kato. mus: Kohei Tanaka. prd: Nippon Animation, Studio Deen, TV Tokyo. 50 mins. (m), 25 mins. x 25 eps. (TV).

Fifteen years ago, Queen Horn of Sforzando tried to shut evil out of the world of Staccato with a powerful spell, but not even the strongest spell lasts forever, and now Horn’s strength is failing. Evil Hell King Bass is trying to break through the barrier and release the “supreme leader” Great Chestra (in Japanese “Oh-kestra”), a dark being of unparalleled power who is trapped somewhere in Staccato. Horn’s estranged daughter, Flute, is the only person who can save Sforzando from the inrush of darkness. She’s been in hiding for 15 years, but now she is called by her mother to return to Sforzando. She sets out for the capital with her childhood friend and guardian, Hamel, but on the way they have many strange adventures and meet old and new friends. Hamel learns more about the mystery of his past and the strange horn on his head.

Based on a 1991 manga in Shonen GanGan by Michiaki Watanabe, VoH mixes tragedy and suspense with humor. On the way to becoming a moving picture the story developed a split personality. In 1996, it became a funny movie and was followed soon after by a much darker and more serious TV series—insofar as anything can be dark and serious when the protagonists’ main weapons, as well as their names, are musical instruments. The animation in the TV series is noticeably low-budget, too, which caused controversy when the director himself publicly complained about the limited materials he had to work with.

Viper GTS *

2002. Video. dir: Masami Obari. scr: P. Warrior, Kunitoshi Watanabe. des: Kenichi Hamazaki. ani: Kenichi Hamazaki, Kazuhiro Yamada. mus: Takehiro Kawabe. prd: Frontline, Moonrock, Studio G-1 Neo. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

Girl-demon Carrera and her partner Rati and self-appointed rival Mercedes form part of a demonic sales force, like Avon ladies but with spells. Their mission is to attract the attention of humans in need of magical aid, which they then grant in exchange for their victims’ immortal souls. Teenage wimp Ogawa summons Carrera looking for vengeance on everyone who’s ever picked on him. When she turns up to grant his wish, he takes one look at her oiled and wobbling endowments and decides to wish for something else instead. In a surprising plot twist, she discovers that he is massively well endowed and develops a crush on him. However, her contract fulfilled, she returns to whence she came, much to Ogawa’s disappointment. She is duly punished for overstaying her time, and Ogawa begins summoning other demons in an attempt to regain her company, resulting in Mercedes’ appearance, after which she also conceives a longing for him. But they aren’t his only fans—the angels also muscle in. It’s their duty to save Ogawa and the demonic duo, so they kidnap Carrera and Rati to Heaven, and despite being cute females, they sprout penises and anoint the sinners liberally with “holy water from God’s Tool.” Ogawa and Mercedes thereafter mount a rescue mission, to assault Heaven and save the victims from the fate of salvation-by-rape. Nobody can say Masami Obari lacks a sense of the ridiculous—although divine sperm has been done before in Masquerade—nor the ability to produce high quality animated pornography. Viper GTS, despite its simple plot, shines above the great majority of anime porn for its excellence in character design, art, and animation. Combining two geeky wet dreams in one (the characters are named after top-marque cars, Rati being Maserati, and the series is named for the $90K Dodge dream machine), he must be laughing himself silly all the way to the bank. Based on a computer game by Sogna, which was little more than an erotic, satanic take on Oh My Goddess!—if you accept naming elements after automobiles as originality, then Sogna’s claim to have created an “original story” won’t annoy you. LN

Virago in Dungeon

1991. jpn: Ozanari Dungeon. aka: Perfunctory Dungeon. Video. dir: Hiroshi Aoyama. scr: Hideki Sonoda. des: Minoru Maeda. ani: Yoshikazu Takiguchi, Yasuo Otsuka. mus: Kazz Toyama and Secret Plans. prd: Tokyo Movie Shinsha. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

Three adventurers are hired by King Gazelle to steal the Dragon Head relic from the Shrine of Fire. Mocha (sexy elf-babe warrior), Blueman (funny animal cat-thief), and Kilieman (dog-wizard) are startled out of their larcenous intentions when the relic introduces itself to them as Morrow and asks to be taken, not to Gazelle’s Tower of Fire, but to the Tower of Wind. Morrow is an organic program that can transform the Tower of Wind into an ultimate weapon called the Space Dragon. Gazelle, he says, is just a frontman for the real enemy, a mysterious being out to control the Space Dragon and destroy the world. Based on the 1987 Comic Nora manga by Motoo Koyama, who named the characters after the brands of coffee he was drinking while drawing the series–Mocha, Blue Mountain, and Kilimanjaro.

Virgin Fleet *

1991. jpn: Seishojo Kantai Virgin Fleet. aka: Holy Maiden Fleet Virgin Fleet. Video. dir: Masahiro Hosoda. scr:
Yasuhiro Imagawa. des: Hiroyuki Kitazume. ani: Hiroyuki Kitazume. mus: Masanobu Ito. prd: Beam Entertainment. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

In the 1930s, a group of teenage girls in a Japanese military academy train with a mysterious psychic energy that includes, among other things, weather control and telekinesis and can only be controlled by a few young female virgins. Many years before in WWI, a similar team called the 36 minstrels somehow succeeded in controlling this force and was able to put an end to the fighting. With the political situation growing ever more tense, Russia spying on its neighbors and trying to steal military secrets, and internal squabbling between the leaders of Japan, the nation desperately needs that power once more. A survivor of the Minstrel force is now highly placed in the military command and her daughter heads the academy—but she hasn’t inherited her mother’s power, which causes some friction between them. And out of the squabbling, shallow band of young ladies in her care, the one who emerges as able to release virgin energy is Shiokaze, who is engaged and whose boyfriend is pressuring her to leave the academy and marry him right away. Sadly, he’s not the only man in the story who takes sexism to comic levels—the local military leaders trot out all the clichés about a woman’s place in war without any sense of irony, though in the U.S. dub the director and actors substitute a level of overacting that approaches talent in itself.

VF is part of the subgenre that includes creator Hiroi Oji’s earlier Sakura Wars, in which 20th-century military history isn’t quite the way the West remembers it. In Oji’s cute, squeaky-clean universe, Japan only wants to unleash the massive destructive force of virgin energy to prevent more killing—compare to similarly far-fetched avoidances of history in Kishin Corps and Super Atragon. However, this anime remains curiously endearing, full, like Gunbuster, of the martial enthusiasm of an undefeated Japan (see Wartime Anime), with well-animated backgrounds, sepia-toned flashbacks, and intriguing neverwhen aircraft designs. The story has some interesting moments and makes a few pointed observations on the real thoughts and feelings of teenagers about jealousy, love, and sex, but like many video anime, it starts a whole raft of subplots that don’t go anywhere.

Virgin Touch *

2002. jpn: Flutter of Birds: Toritachi no Habataki. Video. dir: Yoshitaka Fujimoto. scr: Sumishi Aran, Rei Tachibana. des: Masaki Takei, Tatsuhito Kurashiki. ani: Tatsuhito Kurashiki. mus: N/C. prd: Pink Pineapple. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

After eight years away in the big city, Yusaku is invited to come back to his remote hometown and work for a while in his uncle’s clinic. He arrives back home to find that much has changed. Although he left as just another teenager, he returns as a respected authority figure, and his childhood friend Ibuki has grown into a pretty doctor herself. Yusaku is a heartthrob for the impressionable local nurses and some of the patients at the clinic. Not all the afflictions seem to be serious—some appear to be curable through the handy expedient of sexual intercourse, but it’s not as if viewers of this mildly erotic anime wouldn’t have been expecting that. Based on a computer game released the previous year by Silkies. N

Virtua Call 2 *

1997. Video. dir: Kaoru Tomioka. scr: Tetsuya Oseki. des: N/C. ani: Mitsuru Fujii. mus: N/C. prd: Fairy Dust. 45 mins. x 2 eps.

Virtuacall is the latest development in phone-sex clubs—a virtual meeting serv­ice that lets you see, hear, and even touch the man or woman of your dreams. Emily decides to use the service to help Hasegawa, a friend from her apartment building. She desires him, but he seems reluctant to make a move. She plans to assist in building his confidence and improving his chances of scoring by introducing him to Virtuacall for some online practice sessions. The anime is based on a Sega Saturn game; compare to similar cybersex in Secret Anima’s Dream Hazard. N

Virtua Fighter *

1995. TV series. dir: Hideki Tonokatsu. scr: Tsutomu Kamishiro, Kuniaki Kasai, Natsuko Chizumu. des: Ryo Tanaka, Hiroshi Ono. ani: Ryo Tanaka. mus: Kaori Ohori. prd: Tokyo Movie Shinsha, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 35 eps.

Based on Sega’s successful video game, the story hinges around young martial artist Akira Yuki and his travels in search of his inner self. This involves lots of fighting. Luckily he meets lots of other people who also want to find themselves through fighting. He teams up with Pai Chan, a Chinese girl who is fighting to find her fiancé, and Jacky, who is fighting to find his sister Sara, and they fight lots of people “for honor, love, and revenge.” The almost concurrent appearance of the Street Fighter II TV series obviously had nothing to do with it, and an artist like Ono, who did the ravishing backgrounds for Dog of Flanders, is wasted here. V

Virus

1997. jpn: Virus Buster Serge. TV series. dir: Masami Obari. scr: Masami Obari, Jiro Kaneko, et al. des: Masami Obari, Natsuki Mamiya. ani: Masami Obari, Kazuto Nakazawa. mus: Toshiyuki Omori. prd: JC Staff, Plum, TV Tokyo. 30 mins. x 12 eps.

In 2097 Hong Kong, virtuality is preferable to the real world. The Internet has a mind of its own. Cloning is outlawed. Vast supercomputers run on biological software, but the combination of genetics and cybernetics places human beings at the mercy of digital viruses, some of which are accidents, some of which are the work of the infamous “Incubator.” The STAND is an elite task force that terminates viruses with extreme prejudice. Serge is a brainwashed assassin, plotting the death of STAND captain Raven. But when Serge is “cured” of his desire for vengeance, he joins the team. Impossibly proportioned token female Erika is just dying to get to know him better. But Serge is less popular with the two gunslinging officers, Macus and Joichiro, who don’t want an ex-assassin for backup. The team must learn to work together and to exorcise the demons from their own past—the viruses feed on skeletons in the mental closet.

With its possessed human hosts, Virus shares themes with Ghost in the Shell and glossy horror moods out of Silent Möbius. It combines the angst of Evangelion and the superheroes of Sonic Soldier Borgman, artfully concealing a tiny budget and breakneck schedule with great splashes of special effects, clever uses of shadow, and superfast cuts. Its appeal to audiences is nicely, if perhaps cynically, manufactured; the makers assume that a male SF audience is already guaranteed, so they concentrate on the brooding, pouting, pretty-boys to drag in female fans. Fight scenes are carefully interwoven with character development; the end-of-episode cliffhanger is just as likely to be a terrifying revelation from the past as a physical threat. However, like the equally beautiful Darkside Blues, Virus has a frustrating tangle of subplots and relationships running into dead ends with no time to resolve them. For those who really can’t wait to get more of the high-tensile battle action and the darkly erotic aura of the male cast, the Sega Saturn game and later PlayStation spin-off Virus: The Battle Field use the original cast voices and design. The hip-hop group Dragon Ash had its big break with the anime’s opening theme, going on to record music for DT Eightron and Kinji Fukasaku’s live-action Battle Royale (2001). V

Visionary *

1995. aka: Vixens. Video. dir: Teruo Kigure, Taiichi Kitagawa. scr: Ryo Saga. des: Tomohiro Ando. ani: Tomohiro Ando. mus: Masahiko Kikuchi. prd: Knack, Beam Entertainment. 30 mins., 45 mins., 30 mins.

Ujita is a geeky high school boy who has no luck whatever with women and gets grief from the local bully, until he hits the wrong key on his computer by mistake. Up pops sexy Doreimon, back from the future to solve all his problems in a cheeky parody of Doraemon with no panties. Just like the hapless robot cat, she can answer all of Ujita’s prayers, but things don’t always work out as she plans or he hopes. Later episodes continue the short pornographic comedies in the style of creator U-Jin’s similar Tales Of . . . , with scenes including nymphomaniac vampires on a college campus and skydiving love. The series was later repackaged under the title Vixens. NV

Visitor

1998. TV series. dir: Atsushi Tokuda. scr: Kazunori Ito. des: Akemi Takada. ani: N/C. mus: Keiichi Matsuzaki. prd: COM NT, WOWOW. 50 mins. x 3 eps.

In the year 2099, one of NASA’s Apollo rocket capsules is found in the Mongolian desert, where it appears to have been for 65 million years. Meanwhile on Mars, a strange black artifact of unknown origins is eating one of the planet’s moons. Earth ship Davide is sent to investigate and is sucked into the vortex. Lila Mochizuki and her companions are suddenly a long, long way from home. Entirely computer-generated animation faintly reminiscent of Supermarionation is one of the earliest in a style of animation likely to dominate the medium in the 21st century—motion-capture against CG backgrounds fast becoming the only viable means of making anime in an age of atrophied artistic skills and cheap computer power. This anime was intended for video but premiered on the satellite channel WOWOW. Later repackaged as a feature-length movie-edit. Compare to A.Li.Ce and Aurora.

VOICE ACTING

Voice acting in the earliest of the Early Anime was not part of the finished work, since anime was in existence for a decade before the introduction of audio. Instead, anime would be screened to a musical accompaniment, although many would also employ a live benshi (narrator) to fill in dialogue and story elements in the style of similar performances in the Japanese puppet theater or magic lantern shows. Voice work in early anime was often of secondary concern, with “actors” pulled in from available staff. When casting the two combatants in Benkei vs. Ushiwaka (1939) animator Kenzo Masaoka chose Mrs. Masaoka to play the diminutive hero, and himself as the hulking brute Benkei.

Dialogue from several American films was stolen to add exotic foreign language scenes to Wartime Anime, including snatches from Popeye’s enemy Bluto, who appears as an Allied soldier in Momotaro’s Sea Eagles (1943). Sometimes the effect can be unintentionally surreal—in the middle of the battle sequence in Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (1945), an American voice can be heard hailing a taxi. The first genuine English-language voice actor in anime appears in the closing moments of the same film, as the tremulous and cowardly British soldier who attempts to renegotiate the terms of his surrender. The uncredited actor is clearly a native speaker, but with a strange delivery that seems either to be a calculated attempt to make his dialogue unusable, or perhaps, more chillingly, the sign of a man in genuine fear for his life.

In the 1950s, as Toei and Mushi began to make animated features in imitation of Disney, famous Japanese personalities were often chosen to appear in anime, although not always on account of their acting skills. Osamu Tezuka’s Arabian Nights (1969) and Cleopatra: Queen of Sex (1970) bizarrely include vocal performances from a number of famous Japanese authors, including Shusaku Endo, Yasutaka Tsutsui and Sakyo Komatsu.

The rise of television saw an exponential rise in the number of vocal performers in Japan, creating an entire voice acting industry in order to dub foreign television productions into Japanese. Anime voice acting often exploited this fact with casting decisions whose relevance is all but lost on a non-Japanese audience, hiring the Japanese “voices” of famous American screen stars to portray anime characters with similar profiles. Yasuo Yamada, who was until his death the voice of Lupin III, was also renowned for playing Clint Eastwood, while Lupin’s sidekick Jigen was played by Kiyoshi Komori, the Japanese voice of Lee Marvin. Similar casting “coincidences” continue to the present day, with numerous big name anime voice actors also playing big names from Hollywood, although it is less common for a Hollywood star to have one single Japanese actor play all their roles.

The popular anime voice actors of today include Akio Otsuka, best known as Batou in Ghost in the Shell, who is also the voice of Jonathan Frakes (Commander William Riker) in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yasunori Matsumoto played both V-daan in Beast Warriors and Brad Pitt in Se7en; Kappei Yamaguchi is the voice of Inu Yasha and Bugs Bunny; and the versatile Koichi Yamadera has voiced not only Cowboy Bebop’s Spike Spiegel, but also Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, and Tom Hanks. Many famous voice actors end up typecast—consistently given the same kind of role, be it as a juvenile lead, a maverick rebel, or a slow lunk. This can limit the audience’s perception of their abilities, but can also prove to be beneficial on fast schedules—an actor who has played three hot-headed heroes in the past week probably knows what he’s doing when given a fourth. Sometimes anime can exploit these associations in reverse—Evangelion famously cast several prominent voice actors against type, in a decision that generated superb performances. Anime voice actors are also liable to enjoy spin-off careers in radio and music, and many have their own radio shows or albums. Modern anime exploits this by using voice actors in radio dramas or games as an experiment to test the market for a later anime version.

Voice acting in Japan is usually recorded while the actors watch the animatics (in Japanese, the “Leica reel”)—a precisely timed video of storyboards that allows them a sense of how the finished product will look. Many voice recording facilities in Japan run around the clock in order to get the best returns from their investment in expensive machinery. This, along with union rules, has made child actors rare in anime voice work: they tend only to appear in movie productions, which require less studio time than a long-running series, and can also afford the higher prices of daytime booking. In the cheaper, longer-running worlds of video and TV, child parts are often played by adult women, notably Masako Nozawa, who is the Japanese voice of both talking pig Babe (1995) and Dragon Ball Z’s Goku, and Megumi Ogata, who has voiced male anime protagonists from Evangelion to Yugi-oh. Most Japanese voice actors are professionally trained as such, and hence know to monitor and preserve the talent that earns their living. In one notable choice, Akira Kamiya, the voice of Ken in Fist of the North Star, decided upon his trademark high-pitched attacks because falsetto yells would be easier to repeat and maintain over a long series than gruff growls. Such considerations can often elude less experienced actors abroad, some of whom have temporarily damaged their vocal chords, lost their voices, or been forced to drop out of long-running productions.

The concept of a voice acting fandom first arrived in Japan in the early 1980s, with newly founded magazines such as Newtype and Animage in search of fresh subjects for articles, and the rise in voice acting spin-offs occasioned by Mari Iijima’s role as the singer Lin Minmei in Macross. For the video-based anime industry, with a primarily male fan-base, a heavy concentration on voice actresses was inevitable, with some of the most popular stars including Megumi Hayashibara (the female Ranma 1⁄2, but also Audrey Tautou in Amélie), Kotono Mitsuishi (the lead in Sailor Moon, but also sometimes heard as Cameron Diaz and Natalie Portman), Aya Hisakawa (Sailor Mercury and Natalie Portman, again), and Chisa Yokoyama (Pretty Sammy in Tenchi Muyo!, but also Winona Ryder and Alicia Silverstone). Anime voice actors are also popular choices as columnists in magazines, and not merely those associated directly with the anime world. Fumi Hirano, who was once the voice of Lum in Urusei Yatsura, still writes a column on the world of fish for Big Comic. This is not quite as bizarre as it may first seem, since she left the acting business to marry a wealthy fish market entrepreneur. Although, on second thought, it is still pretty weird.

Voice acting in the Western world has developed similar personality cults, beginning with the realization that many American voice actors were often locally available, easy on the eye and good with crowds—all excellent reasons to invite them to conventions. Many American voice actors have become fixtures on the convention circuit, including stars from anime of yesteryear such as Corinne Orr (Speed Racer) and Amy Howard Wilson (Star Blazers). Voice actor attendance at conventions has grown exponentially during the 1990s and beyond, particularly since Japanese guests can be expensive to invite and may not speak English. It is not uncommon for American anime conventions to have many more American voice actors than Japanese guests.

Whereas video anime tend to use relative unknowns, often rendered all the more unknowable by the use of pseudonyms to preserve union status, anime movie releases in America regularly use “stunt-casting”—the use of actors famous elsewhere. Incidences date back to the use of Frankie Avalon in Alakazam the Great (1960, see Journey to the West), and have included cameo anime performances from Orson Welles and Leonard Nimoy (in the Transformers movie). This has even happened in Japan, where the producers of the Armitage III movie Polymatrix decided to make it extra exotic by hiring foreign actors and releasing the movie in English in Japan, with the voices of Kiefer Sutherland and Elizabeth Berkley.

American stunt-casting roles have become even more noticeable in recent years with the release of Studio Ghibli films in America, utilizing such talents as Lauren Bacall and Jean Simmons (Howl’s Moving Castle), or Kirsten Dunst and Debbie Reynolds (Kiki’s Delivery Service). Similar casting decisions have been made with regard to the voices in some modern porn anime, in which erotic stars such as Asia Carrera, Kobe Tai, and Alexa Rae are used to dub anime, in the presumed hope that fans of their live-action work will also pick up their porn voice-overs for the sake of completeness. This was also tried with some erotic anime in Japanese, such as the casting of adult video starlets in the original Japanese language track of Adventure Kid. Players of the actor game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” will be disappointed to hear that although he voiced the eponymous Balto (1995), he has not appeared in an anime. However, he did costar with Kiefer Sutherland in Flatliners (1990), which should help anyone playing a version that links to the anime world.

Voices of a Distant Star *

2002. jpn: Hoshi no Koe. aka: Voice of the Stars. Video. dir: Makoto Shinkai. scr: Makoto Shinkai. des: Makoto Shinkai. ani: Makoto Shinkai. mus: Tenmon. prd: CoMix Wave International, Mangazoo. 25 mins.

Noboru and Mikako are ordinary Japanese teenagers in love: they walk each other home from high school, hang out at the convenience store, and dream of a future together. When mysterious aliens attack a human colony on Mars, Mikako is accepted for a United Nations military program. She becomes a Tracer, piloting a giant robotic combat suit on a series of training missions, before circumstances force her mothership to take successively greater warp jumps away from home. Her would-be boyfriend waits back in Japan, hoping for his mobile phone to ring with a text message from his 15-year-old girlfriend. Every now and then, it does … but Mikako’s texts can only travel at the speed of light. Her now becomes his then, separated by days, then weeks, then months….

Such tales of robots and romance initially seem little removed from a hundred other anime since the groundbreaking Zambot 3, but Voices remains a touchstone of 21st-century anime not for its story, but for the means of its execution. This is a work so saturated with its creator’s sensibility and personality that watching it is like reading a private diary—its strongest literary influences are the phantom girlfriends in the works of novelist Haruki Murakami, separated from a narrator by obstacles both physical and metaphysical. Its brevity is a great virtue, forcing Shinkai to enhance the emotional charge. This is useful, too, since unforgiving critics might otherwise focus on its minor flaws, such as the “future” technology that simply slaps spaceships and robots onto the present day (the phones already look dated), or a closing song that often sounds like a cat in pain. However, Voices is truly one of the most beautiful and powerful anime of recent years and its creator has become a poster boy for the new generation of have-a-go amateur animators. Shinkai assembled much of it solo, using software packages liberated from his day job at a computer games company, and originally played the lead himself while conscripting his fiancée to play Mikako. In pushing for the fan-friendly audience, in his designs and plotting, in incidents, in scenes, and even in some shots, Shinkai’s debt to Gunbuster is so great that it verges on the actionable. But Shinkai’s constant reference to the 1988 classic is only one of several homages—look out, too, for passing train cars destined for the “U.N. Spacy” of the Macross saga.

As multimedia corporations fight over increasingly smaller TV ratings shares and pump out endless dross based on bad computer games, Voices shows what one man can achieve in his living room. Of course, Shinkai had a little help from the Mangazoo corporation, which eventually provided financial and logistic support (including revoicing the cast for the mass-market release), but Voices is essentially put together with a high-end personal computer and commercially available software. In that regard, it brings the medium full circle, to the homemade concoctions of Early Anime.

The DVD release includes both Japanese voice tracks, as well as Shinkai’s earlier short film She and Her Cat. Compare also to the same year’s Saikano, with which it shares several story elements and attitudes. Voices also enjoyed an extensive run at a small western Tokyo cinema, so is filed in some sources as a “movie.” Shinkai followed Voices with the feature-length The Place Promised in Our Early Days, which revisits many of the same themes.

Volley Boys

1996. Video. dir: Kunihiko Yuyama. scr: Hiroshi Koda. des: Hiroyuki Murata. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Toho. 50 mins. x 2 eps.

Sex-starved teenage boys at Kudo high school sign up for the girls’ volleyball team—hoping that if they build it, the girls will come, to a year that has no girls in it at all. This spin-off from Hiroyuki Murata’s 1988 manga in Young Magazine mixes Field of Dreams with Ping Pong Club.

Voltage Fighter Gowkaiser *

1996. jpn: Chojin Gakuen Gowkaiser. aka: Superhuman Academy Gowkaiser. Video. dir: Masami Obari. scr: Kengo Asai. des: Masami Obari. ani: Masahiro Yamane. mus: Airs. prd: JC Staff, GaGa. 45 mins. x 3 eps.

Isato Kaiza’s (Isato Goka’s) athletic skills have won him a place at the Belnar Institute, a school for those with some outstanding gift, and this being an Obari anime, all the female students have at least two. But the institute’s mysterious founder has a hidden agenda—he is using the arcane powers of his Caizer Stones to control his students by giving them superhuman fighting skills, while he is controlled by a beautiful, seemingly female but definitely inhuman entity. Isato’s friend Kash has given him a Caizer Stone and with it the power to transform into armored hero Gowkaizer; he learns that just about everyone else he knows has similar powers of transformation. Alas, the script doesn’t. It starts with some interesting ideas, but many never develop. A subplot about incest between a brother and sister at school is well developed, largely because it provides an excuse for more sex and fighting; another, about a teacher’s involvement in the government’s attempts to keep an eye on things at the institute, is more or less ignored because it doesn’t. The interesting relationship between the founder and his control remains unexplained. Perhaps the plan was to take all these ideas further if the video had spun off into a TV series, but it never happened. Based on a computer game (though it only uses some of the characters), with plenty of action and plenty of Obari’s trademark fan service, Gowkaizer remains just another beat-’em-up with fantasy tropes thrown in. The videos were also edited into a feature-length Gowkaiser “movie.” NV

Voltron *

1981. jpn: Hyakujuo Go-Lion, Kiko Kantai Dairugger XV. aka: Beast Centurion Go-Lion, Machine Platoon Dairugger XV; Lion Force Voltron. TV series. dir: Katsuhiko Taguchi, Kazuyuki Okaseko, Kazushi Nomura, Hiroshi Sasagawa. scr: Susumu Takaku, Ryo Nakahara, Masaaki Sakurai. des: Kazuo Nakamura. ani: Kazuo Nakamura, Moriyasu Taniguchi, Akira Saijo. mus: Masahisa Takeshi. prd: Toei, Tokyo 12 Channel. 25 mins. x 125 eps.

Reptile Emperor Dai Bazal of planet Garla (aka Zarkon of planet Doom in the American version) has built a galaxy-conquering army by transforming kidnapped enemies into fighting monsters. On a mission to Earth his forces kidnap some of its people, including our unsuspecting heroes Akira, Takashi, Tsuyoshi, Isamu, and Hiroshi. They are carried off to a conquered world for transformation. Stealing an enemy ship, they escape and manage to reach the palace of Princess Fara, where they learn that five ancient robot lions can combine to form one mighty robot. Impressed by their courage, the dead emperor (in hologram form) gives them the power to operate the machines, form the robot, and free the galaxy from the forces of evil in just 52 episodes.

In the U.S. version, Earth was the headquarters of the peace-loving planetary federation known as the Galaxy Alliance, and Sven, Keith, Lance, Pidge, and Hunk were Space Explorers sent on a mission to planet Arus, recently devastated by Zarkon. Their objective was the Lion Force, Arus’s five greatest weapons, which could merge to form the super-robot Voltron. They find that Princess Allura has survived the devastation of her world and is struggling to overthrow Zarkon’s evil rule, and they join her as the pilots of the five robot lions that combine to make up Voltron. In the original story Akira is killed in battle (Sven is merely wounded, since American heroes can’t die) and Fara/Allura takes his place on the team.

The Golion series was bought for U.S. syndication as Voltron: Defender of the Universe!, with scripts “written” by Jameson Brewer and Howard Albrecht. Presaging the later treatment of Robotech, it was combined with an unrelated show to bulk out the running time. Dairugger XV (1982) was a 56-episode show, also from Toei, renamed Vehicle Team Voltron in the U.S. In the original Japanese version, Earth is enjoying a period of unparalleled prosperity thanks to its alliances with the people of the planets Mila and Sara. The president of the Terran League initiates a mission to explore space beyond our galaxy, and the starship Rugger-Guard sets out on its mission. Attacked by a ship of the Galveston Empire, Rugger-Guard sends out its best line of defense—Dairugger XV, a giant robot made up of 15 different mecha, each with its own pilot. As with Gold Lightan and other shows of the period, there is a far-fetched origin—15 players on a team in rugby, a sport whose only other anime appearance is in Wartime Anime.

In the U.S. version, Voltron technology was brought back to Earth after the struggle with Zarkon in the earlier Lion Force Voltron segment of the series. The Galaxy Alliance used it to build their own, even larger Voltron made up of 15 smaller robots and sent it out of our galaxy on the spaceship Explorer to find habitable new planets. The Drule dictatorship, whose homeworld was dying of pollution, sent ships to tag along behind the Explorer and try to steal any habitable worlds for themselves. The 15 pilots of the Explorer had to do battle both with natural forces like volcanoes on the worlds they discovered and with the Drule. Eventually the Drule population revolted, the planet exploded, and the “good” Drule were rescued by Voltron and relocated to new homes.

The producers intended to refashion Lightspeed Electron Arbegas as the third part of the series, but the show was canceled. However, merchandising by U.S. toy distributors Matchbox further confused matters by including the “stackable” robot hero from Arbegas as “Voltron II.” The toy boxes show stills from all three anime, with Dairugger as “Voltron I” and GoLion as “Voltron III,” claiming that the Arbegas robot is part of the Voltron story line, though he never appears in the TV show. Riding on the momentum created by Star Wars and sales of space battle toys, Voltron was successfully rerun on U.S. cable TV in the early 1990s. World Events Productions ran a 90-minute special in 1983 then syndicated the series as a half-hour daily show, tied into the merchandising of toy weaponry. Lion Force did better than Vehicle Team Voltron with its new audience, to the extent that new episodes were commissioned from Japan specially for the American market—creating a total run for the combined Voltron series of 125 episodes. In one of these, the “recovered” Sven rejoined the team just in time to help defeat Zarkon. The sequel Voltron: The Third Dimension (1998, aka Voltron 3D) was an all-American 3-D CG motion-capture version made by Babylon 5’s effects company Netter Digital. In this version, the team is joined by Zarkon himself, who has seen the error of his ways, and fights to defeat Zarkon’s evil son Lotor—you can tell he’s evil because he has a scar.

Voltus *

1977. jpn: Cho Denji Machine Voltes V. aka: Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes 5. TV series. dir: Tadao Nagahama, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Yukihiro Takahashi. scr: Koichi Taguchi, Masaki Tsuji, Fuyunori Gobu. des: Akehiro Kaneyama, Nobuyoshi Sasakado. ani: Akehiro Kaneyama. mus: Hiroshi Tsu­tsui. prd: Sunrise, Toei, TV Asahi. 25 mins. x 40 eps.

The three Go brothers, Kenichi, Daijiro, and Hiyoshi, and their friends Ippei Mine and Megumi Oka pilot the giant robot Voltes V in the battle against the people of planet Bozan, who are trying to add Earth to their galactic empire. But the prince of Bozan, Hainel, claims to be the Go boys’ half-brother; he says their father was an alien, sent to Earth many years before. How can they fight their own flesh and blood, can Earth trust them, and might this point to a way forward for both peoples?

After Sunrise made Combattler V for Toei, it followed up with this repeat performance—the undisputed star of which is Hainel, the first baddie to be a real hit with the female audience, who wrote in demanding that he survive. Originally dubbed in Japan by William Ross for a U.S. theatrical release, the relatively faithful version was scrapped by new owners “New Hope Productions,” which replaced it with a soundtrack more like Star Wars and eventually sold it to the Christian Broadcast Network. The company similarly tried to capitalize on George Lucas’ success by refashioning Starbirds.

Voogie’s Angel *

1997. jpn: Denno Sentai Voogie’s Angel. aka: Cyber Battle Team Voogie’s Angel. Video. dir: Mamoru Takeuchi. scr: Mamoru Takeuchi. des: Masami Obari. ani: Masami Obari. mus: Satoshi Yuyama. prd: JC Staff, Beam Entertainment. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

A hundred years after Earth is invaded by aliens, the last remnants of the human race dwell in underwater “Aqua Bases.” A team of five cybernetically enhanced women is trained for the purpose of carrying out guerrilla attacks against the occupying forces. Earth’s last best hope for salvation is Voogie’s Angel. Playing like a warped version of Stingray, VA delivers some interesting moments. The cutesy-conventional girl cyborg team (good sort, tough girl, kid sister, nice Japanese girl) and their scientist father-figure go from the aliens-invade-earth scenario, via space battles and embarrassing “comic” scenes, to the extremely violent fight in the second episode in which our heroes are smashed almost to a pulp. Then there’s the black-and-white Gunbuster homage in episode three, which shows how each of the cyborgs died tragically and was then rebuilt in enhanced form. The fight for human freedom shows the cyborgs what it means to be truly human but doesn’t explain why cyber-enhanced women usually have gravity-defying breasts or why swimwear is the battle dress of preference in Obari-designed shows. A radio and CD drama in 1996 preceded the video release. Spin-offs include a manga in Comic Gamma and a “side story” Onward! Super Angels that features the characters in super-deformed (see Super-Deformed Double Feature) mode. The series was also released on DVD in the 70-minute feature-length “director’s cut” VA: Forever and Ever (1998), containing extra footage. V

VOTOMs *

1983. jpn: Sokokihei Votoms. aka: Armored Trooper Votoms; ScopeDog. TV series, video. dir: Ryosuke Takahashi, Haruka Miyako, Tatsuya Matsu­no, Toshifumi Takizawa, Hiroshi Yoshida, Yukihiro Takahashi, Masakazu Yasumura. scr: Fuyunori Gobu, Soji Yoshikawa, Jinzo Toriumi, Ryosuke Takahashi, Takashi Imanishi. des: Norio Shioyama, Ryosuke Takahashi, Kunio Okawara (TV, v), Yutaka Izubuchi (v94). ani: Norio Shioyama. mus: Hiroki Inui. prd: Sunrise, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 52 eps. (TV), 60 mins. x 3 eps. (v), 30 mins. x 4 (v94).

On a distant world, the Perfect Soldier is finally created after genetic manipulation and a breeding program lasting centuries, but by the time this happens, the war has almost ended. The politicians and scientists who bred him either want him dead or want to use him in other, more sinister ways. But Chirico Cuve isn’t a machine—he’s a human being, and he’s determined to find out who is responsible for all this. As the war ends he is separated from his unit, thrown into a series of desperate situations, enslaved, used as a gladiator in robot combat, enlisted as a mercenary, and meets the love of his life, only to discover that she too is a Perfect Soldier.

The first video, The Last Red Shoulder (1985), is a continuation of the story after the end of the TV series. Chirico leaves Udo City in search of his beloved Fiana. In Big Battle (1986), he finds her being held hostage by Bararant in an experimental facility near Koba City, and he and his comrades have to fight their way in to save her. 1987’s Red Shoulder Document: The Roots of Treachery is a prequel to the TV series and shows Chirico’s origins as part of a genetic experiment and recruitment into the Red Shoulder group. In 1994 Takahashi brought the same team together for a four-part video adventure set 32 years after the end of the TV series. Chirico and Fiana have been in cryo-sleep together for all that time, but now a new threat has arisen, and it’s time for them to fight again. An extra item on the first tape, Votoms Briefing, filled in the backstory for those who missed the series 11 years earlier.

The “real robot” concept was born out of a conviction that the weapons of the future would not be made of shiny metal in clean, bright primary colors. Designer Okawara wanted to create suits that looked as if they could be made in a 20th-century factory, designed so that the toys that would inevitably be spun off the series could be posed and moved exactly like their animated inspirations (unlike many of the suits he’d designed for Gundam) and smaller in scale than his designs for Dougram.

Robots, which started out in anime primarily as cool toys to even up the odds for the little guy (children, the human race, or the Japanese) against a big, hostile world (adults, alien invaders, or foreign competition), had been seen right from the first as having as much potential for destruction as for good. Gigantor could be used by evil men just as easily as by perky little Jimmy Sparks—the power lay in the hands of whoever held the remote control. Takahashi and his fellow writers and directors extended this idea into the whole range of future military technology (VOTOMs is an acronym for Vertical One-man Tank for Offensive Maneuvers), showing robots and scientifically enhanced superbeings as just another weapon in the arsenal of the politicians, and war as a vicious, dehumanizing process in which honor and courage came from the individual, rather than any religion or value system, and could be crushed as easily as an insect (see Grey: Digital Target). It also didn’t hurt that Votoms’ hero resembled Steve McQueen (lead character in the Western Junior Bonner, an early inspiration for the anime), whose laconic combination of little-boy charm and man’s-man toughness was hugely popular with Japanese audiences.

The concept and the appealingly gritty realism of Takahashi’s future war vision spun off another video series set in the same universe, as the title signals. Written by Takahashi but directed by Takeyuki Kanda, Armored Trooper Votoms: Armor Hunter Merowlink (1988, Kiko Ryohei Merowlink) is the story of a young rookie who is the sole survivor of a platoon cut down by bungling and treachery higher up the ranks. Framed for desertion and the deaths of his colleagues, he vows to avenge them; each of the twelve 25-minute episodes shows one act of vengeance on an individual betrayer. A brilliantly paced series richly meriting a Western release, it combines good character development and edge-of-the-seat tension. There are points when Merowlink doesn’t simply suspend disbelief but knocks it out cold, especially in the final episode with an escape sequence as silly on calm reflection as it is absolutely convincing while you watch. Sequences of extreme violence and deliberate cruelty are carefully calculated to enhance the effect of this stunning rite-of-passage tale. The series was a major inspiration for the Heavy Gear role-playing war- and video-game franchise, which now has its own CGI cartoon series. Note that Votoms has many recap episodes and fix-ups of preexisting videos, which are sometimes mistaken for original episodes. These recapitulations are ATV: Highlights, Stories of the ATV 2, Woodo, Kammen, Sansa, and Quant. LV

Voyage of the Tsushima

1982. jpn: Tsushima-maru: Sayonara Okinawa. aka: The Tsushima: Fare­well Okinawa. Movie. dir: Osamu Koba­yashi. scr: Shoichiro Okubo, Koji Senno. des: Osamu Kobayashi. ani: Tsu­­­tomu Shibayama, Hideo Kawauchi. mus: Haruya Sugita. prd: Asia-do. 70 mins.

On August 22, 1944, the Japanese freighter Tsushima Maru flees Okinawa for the mainland with a cargo consisting primarily of evacuees, the crew divided over whether to steer a zigzag course or simply to steam at full speed for safety. Her luck runs out off Akuseki Island, Kagoshima, when she is struck three times by torpedoes from an American submarine. The ship sinks with the loss of 1,484 lives, including 738 children. Based on a true story dramatized by Tatsuhiro Oshiro in book form in 1961, this movie ends with a roll call of those who did not survive. The wreck of the Tsushima Maru itself was not located until 1997.

Voyeur’s Digest *

2002. jpn: Bad End. Video. dir: Kanzaburo Oda. scr: Rokurota Makabe; Designer/s: Mario Yaguchi. ani: Mario Yaguchi. mus: Yoshi. prd: YOUC, Digital Works (Vanilla Series). 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Student Toshiki Mikimoto is the secret proprietor of an underground newspaper, which exposes trouble and corruption in his school. At least, that’s how he rationalizes it to himself; in fact, his newsletter is more of a scandalous gossip column, making slanderous accusations about certain coeds, in the hope that Toshiki’s fellow students will take it upon themselves to “punish” the alleged transgressors. When a group of students duly take the bait and rape one of their number, Toshiki is on hand to record everything for prosperity. In the second episode, he similarly stalks another voluptuous coed, in an erotic anime in the Vanilla Series, based on a computer game. The original title was presumably changed in the American release in order to prevent people like us making snide and unjustified remarks about the beginning and middle not being all that good either. Compare to Classroom of Atonement, which shares many plot elements. LNV