 Greetings, all. Doom here. Shad dropped me a line yesterday wondering if I could do some anime and music reviews for the site, and I was planning on getting around to that sometime soon anyway, so here’s my first anime review. I usually don’t watch too many anime series anymore, since I haven’t got the cash to buy them on DVD or the processor speed necessary to watch them in DivX, so I generally confine my anime habits to movies, with a few notable exceptions (Cowboy Bebop, Love Hina, Excel Saga). I picked one of my favorites for this review: the incomparable Jin-Roh.
Essentially a doomed lovers story set against an alternative-history background in which Germany won World War II and occupied Japan, Jin-Roh is a unique experience. To combat the growing threat of urban rioting, guerilla warfare (perpetrated by a group known as the Sect) and political unrest, Japan’s police have separated into two independent organizations – the Local Police and the Capital Police, who employ the heavily armed Special Unit. Constable Kazuki Fuse finds himself at the center of the escalating conflict between the two when he fails to fire upon a young Sect courier. Instead the girl detonates the bomb she’s carrying, and Fuse is sent back to the Academy for retraining under his former instructor, the chain-smoking Tobe.
 Matters are further complicated when Fuse, now well on his way to out-and-out batshit insanity due to having a bomb explode in his face, encounters a girl claiming to be the sister of the terrorist whose death still haunts him. A slow romance blooms between the two. Meanwhile Fuse’s old Academy buddy, backstabbing Local Police lapdog Henmi, is plotting to use Fuse and his new acquaintance, Kei, to hammer the last few nails into the Capital Police’s coffin. What Fuse doesn’t know is that Kei is party to Henmi’s plot. Fuse, however, may be five steps ahead of the game, and with the Wolf Brigade, a shadowy counter-intelligence organization, closing in on the conspirators, you can bet Henmi gets everything he deserves and more.
All anyone ever sees of Jin-Roh before actually watching the movie are the Special Unit’s formidable panzer suits, complete with Mike Mignola-style goggles and massive chainguns. In point of fact we only see the Special Unit in action twice, and briefly. Jin-Roh, contrary to all expectations, is not an action movie but a fairly thoughtful exploration of fascism and misuse of power – themes with which screenwriter Mamoru Oshii (director of Ghost in the Shell and the Patlabor movies), a survivor of Hiroshima, must be well acquainted indeed.
 Jin-Roh is ultra-realistic in its artistic style, the fluidity of its animation and its thoroughly convincing vision of a past that might have come to be. There is no catchy J-pop. There are no super-deformed antics or fan service. The entire film is, in fact, rather drab – all browns and grays. It works wonderfully. Jin-Roh is an unrelentingly bleak movie, and deadly serious. To borrow a phrase from Warren Ellis, it’s about lives being ground into shit. Not even DJ Restraining Order’s latest post in the guestbook could make me laugh after watching Jin-Roh. It’s also got something we don’t usually see in the movies these days. That’s right – VIOLENCE. Sure, anyone can slap a little gratuitous death and destruction on a movie and call it violence, but it hasn’t half the visceral effect of Fuse’s final armored rampage through the sewers in Jin-Roh. It’s certainly gut wrenching, but it’s not unnecessary.
If you’re in the mood for something serious and genuinely provocative, with a minimum of flashiness and conventional plot devices, it really doesn’t get any better than this. It’s a compelling film in its quiet moments as well as in its sparse but unflinching brutality, and a romance between characters we can actually give a damn about. In closing, I can’t recommend this movie enough. Emotionally, visually, conceptually – it is simply a fucking powerful film. |
