Wicked City (1987)

Wicked City (1987)

7/10

Starring the voices of

Yūsaku Yara

Toshiko Fujita

Ichirō Nagai

Takeshi Aono

Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Are you down for some neo-noir feel flick with some dark fantasy? Well, everything about this movie just boils the spirit in those genre. The art with its plot is somewhat deep at the start, but midway it gave way to some unneeded erotica. The anime is about a world where humans and demons exist together another sad thing about this flick is the ending, it is sort of lame and anticlimactic.

What you will love in this anime movie is the pellets of suspense it leaves behind as you watch. It is like the movie wants you to have a notepad to note down things or have in mind to give the film a re-watch. So you can catch where the pellets of suspense are, where they are pointed and to be sure you did not miss anything. The anime is written in a linear manner which makes it easy to follow and those suspense pellets soon add up.

There is but to note, the movie has a lot of erotica. It seems to have a misogynistic theme which is not subtle. Even though the lead's partner is supposed to be a bad-ass, she is not free of this sort of abuse, which to me were parts in the movie I felt it did not need.

The movie starts with the lead Taki kind of telling us a story, then the anime moves from him telling us a story to him explaining things as we watch. He does not get to talk often so don’t worry. Taki is a secret agent here in this world where the demon world and the human world has made a treaty. They will both live without fighting or causing harm to one another. Taki’s job is to keep the rogue demons under strong watch, which mostly include fighting and killing them.

The treaty that was signed was running out and needed to be resigned, Taki was told that a certain man is needed for the resigning and he is to guard the man. He was to get a partner a demon girl named Makie. The old man they were supposed to guard turns out to be a pervert, and the two had their job cut out for them as the demons were ready to do anything to kill the three of them.

In the end, I still say this is a good animation mostly because of the linear way the plot is set. Even though I liked this flick, I did not fancy the constant misogyny and believe this movie would have been better received if it wasn't present. So much unnecessary erotica that did not add up to anything.