Wicked City

with Yûsaku Yara, Toshiko Fujita, Ichirô Nagai
Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi, Yoshiaki Kawajiri 
(Urban Vision)
by Eric Johnson

Wicked City is animated, hard-boiled, detective science fiction jam-packed with enough grotesque sexual imagery to make you think it was penned by an army of disgruntled ex-Catholic school students. Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi, the author of Vampire Hunter D, Wicked City manages to be a far better film despite the fact that the plot makes even less sense than its pseudo-Gothic predecessor. Apparently, there’s another universe/dimension/world that lies just to the side of this one called the Black World, and it’s populated by powerful, multi-tentacled beings with exceptional powers including the ability to change form at will. A peace treaty, in place for centuries, and ensuring the mutually beneficial co-existence of the two worlds, is up for renewal, and a band of rebellious Black World beings wants to ruin the whole party. The narrator, deadpan black agent Renzabury Taki, is assigned to protect one of the Earth representatives with the help of a Black World woman until the treaty signing can take place. Animated with a moderately limited palate of blue, purple, black and red, the near future Tokyo depicted in this film crawls with a sanitized urban isolation occasionally invaded by exceptionally violent confrontations with powerful Black World rebels.

There is a concerted effort to stick to the detective fiction genre, with the lonesome hero who hangs out in a bar with a giant revolver and speaks in a deadpan monotone, always ready to let his mouth get him into trouble. Sticking to this formula is commendable and, in the end, successful, because it gives the film a story structure where fantastic elements can come into play without deviating too much from the basic storyline. It’s unique because Japanese animation too often plays from the perspective of the omnipotent, troubled, unique individual; it’s nice to see them play with the easily recognizeable private eye archetype.

Although nowhere near as sexually violent as the completely overboard Urotsukidoji, this film contains some isolated but violent sexual interactions including a disturbingly sensual Black Worlder rape scene and erotic encounters with alien women that’d ensure young boys never again exhibit curiosity as to what lies under a pretty lady’s skirt. For the most part, the action keeps progressing, and Wicked City has the decency to keep a sense of humor about how absurd the whole scenario is. I’m not saying it’s a fantastic film, but the combination of good animation, well-paced action, and the exploitation of the hard-boiled detective fiction concept make it worth the rental if you’re prepared for the brutal sexual imagery.