Wicked City (Yoshiaki Kawajiri, 1987)
This is a review of Manga UK’s Wicked City and Demon City Shinjuku ‘Limited Edition Box Set + 60-page Booklet’ [Blu-ray]
Don’t you just hate it when you’ve just made love to a beautiful woman, then her vagina grows teeth, she grows spider legs, then jumps out of your window and crawls away down the side of the building? Frustrating in many, many ways…
Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s rather notorious 1987 effort certainly falls under the Anime Hentai moniker, due to it’s sexualised demonic cock-like images and depiction of rape. It’s nowhere near Legend of the Overfiend in it’s explicitness, but Wicked City really is indeed a daft affair to behold. It lies somewhere between David Cronenberg sexualised body horror and John Carpenter. Especially John Carpenter, clearly The Thing has been a huge influence on the creators, as is Blade Runner.
The story concerns humans and demons living in peace on Earth, but now that peace could be shattered unless a peace treaty is renewed. The man responsible for the signing of the treaty is a 200-year old pervert called Giuseppe Mayart, who’s only goal whilst in Tokyo is to get laid. Two elite ’black guards’ are assigned to protect this perverted little man; Makie (a beautiful Demon guard in human form) and Taki (a male human who also happens to be sex-obsessed!) The demons of the underworld want to stop the treaty from getting signed, so go after our 3 perverted heroes in the name of sabotage! Cue demonic cock monsters, rape, exploding demons and the afore-mentioned teeth/vagina spider demon woman.
Wicked City is bonkers at times, yet it never fails to entertain. It’s perverse and silly, and looks great in HD. I can’t begin to explain what a huge upgrade in quality this is over my old Australian DVD, it’s huge!
The subtitles are decent, and there are some extras, which sadly does not include the legacy interview with Kawajiri that was on the old DVD. The included art cards & 60-page booklet don’t offer anything memorable, so I don’t think this version is worth the extra tenner it costs over the disc-only release.
Kudos to Manga entertainment for releasing this in such decent quality!
Demon City Shinjuku (Yoshiaki Kawajiri, 1988)
Originally released in the UK as Monster City, Demon City Shinjuku was a speedily released Wicked City spin-off that went straight-to-video. It’s not a straight sequel to Wicked City, it’s definitely lighter in tone, presumably to capture the attention of a younger audience. The filth from Wicked City has almost completely disappeared, which actually makes Demon City Shinjuku a much more pedestrian Anime affair.
The story here though is a bit more like John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. Except it’s Demons who have taken over the Shinjuku district, and turned it in to a seedy demonic underworld!
Definitely Akira-Inspired, Demon City Shinjuku actually looks slightly better that Wicked City, although the characterisations here are weaker. Demon City Shinjuku concerns itself more with teen angst than cock-flying tentacled rape monsters, which is why I think it’s more flaccid than it's predecessor. Still worth a watch though!
It also looks brilliant in HD, though, and Demon City Shinjuku is a worthy addition to Manga’s release! Bravo!
