I don’t identify as an anime fan. Not because I’d be ashamed to, but because I don’t want to steal that valor. Real anime fans contain volumes of cultural knowledge that I lack. I don’t think I’m a tourist, but maybe a vacationer. At most a dabbler, a casual partaker, an occasional appreciator. But I love the artform of animation, so some of that stuff hits the spot.
Recently I made the connection that a bunch of the ones I’d enjoyed were directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri: WICKED CITY, NINJA SCROLL, VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST, THE ANIMATRIX and HIGHLANDER: THE SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE. (I also reviewed AZUMI 2: DEATH OR LOVE, a live action movie he wrote.) I like his outlandish characters, his wildly exaggerated violence, and his general approach of style and energy taking precedence over all else. So I remembered the name when I came across a blu-ray called GOKU MIDNIGHT EYE. It’s directed by Kawajiri and written by/based on a manga by Buichi Terasawa, who created another one I really dug called SPACE ADVENTURE COBRA. I’m glad I paid attention, because this is a really good one.
It’s actually not a feature film, but two 45 minute OVAs (“original video animation”s – the anime term for DTV) called GOKU MIDNIGHT EYE and GOKU MIDNIGHT EYE II, originally released separately in 1989. I think that’s a great format for this. These are detective stories that don’t need to get overcomplicated or scaled to fill feature length, but this is better than a TV show because it’s feature quality animation.
It’s an action-packed anime take on that old BLADE RUNNER idea of combining noir/detective story tropes with what we would now call a cyberpunk future (specifically the futuristic year of 2014). Goku is a private eye, formerly a cop but pushed off the force because he “never knew when to back off,” according to the chief (who looks like Roy Scheider with quilted shoulder pads). Goku lives in Tokyo City, “a selfish city built by selfish people” that resembles the sprawling Neo-Tokyo megalopolis of AKIRA. His cases all seem to involve powerful figures with deadly cyborg henchmen. He wears a suit with a skinny New Wave tie, wristbands or gauntlets, and no shirt. He enjoys liquor and cigarettes and gets hit on and sometimes falls for the beautiful women whose cases he takes. So there’s alot of old fashioned sexiness and sexism. But in the future. Also he finds himself plugged into cyberspace.
In the first story Goku’s old partner Tamiya pulls out a gun and blows off his own head during a stakeout at a strip club. He’s only the latest in a line of mysterious deaths in the Special Investigation Unit, and Goku figures out they were all investigating Genji Hakuryu, a club and casino magnate who they know is an international arms dealer. He lives in a giant building shaped like two eggs.
We know what happened before Goku does: they all saw this naked woman who has peacock plumes with eyes on them that hypnotize them into committing suicide. Goku encounters her while driving – she’s standing totally upright, naked, on top of a truck! – then he pulls out a knife and stabs himself in the eyeball.
When he wakes up we find out he was actually saving himself, destroying his own eye to stop himself from seeing the feathers. And a voice explains to him that he’s been given a new eye (I guess this is the titular midnight eye) that can connect to all of the computers in the world. It works like Terminator vision, or like the advertising for Meta Ray-Bans, because it can bring up information on anything, from any database, it can x-ray people, see heat traces. Also he can control computer systems. It’s mentioned in both OVAs that if he wanted to he could turn all the world’s nuclear arsenals against each other and destroy the world. I’m glad he doesn’t want to!
That’s a cool part of the premise. He has what seems like the ultimate technological advantage, but he’s still an underdog and a good guy because in part I he’s up against an arms dealer war profiteer scumbag and in part II he faces the actual ministry of defense and one of their weapons programs. The guy who could blow up the world if he wanted to is instead on a quest against militarization. And he has an anti-establishment attitude. He hates those fuckers. He only works for himself and his clients, and during the course of these stories we never find out who the fuck gave him that eye, or why. Just some mysterious voice, motives unknown. I think it was the right choice to save that for later, even though later never came.
Another important thing I didn’t mention: Goku’s mysterious benefactors give him a new high tech metal baton that can extend to ridiculous length. It’s a very good weapon, it can shoot lasers or just punch through heads, but he mainly uses it for pole vaulting! He jumps out of a helicopter and it extends all the way to the ground so he can swing right into the window of a skyscraper. He does that sort of thing to fly around town, his version of webslinging or bat hooks. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I’ve also never seen anything like this particular henchwoman who’s just called “Red Haired Dancer” according to my research, but is such an obvious standout they put her on the painted cover, like a Bond girl. (Though they gave her pink hair so she looks like she’s from Jem and the Holograms.) First seen dancing in the club, she has motorcycle handlebars coming out of her spine, and she’s writhing around on a stage sexily revving her engine. I considered that it could be like FLASHDANCE where the dancers are artists who come up with very creative and elaborate theming, but later we see that she is in fact a cyborg with motorcycle parts. A little guy rides on her back!
And that’s not all. She crawls around on all fours, hisses like a cat and shoots energy beams out of her mouth. She doesn’t appear to be human, actually. Which is probly for the best, because Goku tears her head off and then uses it like a gun. (Spoilers.)
The most similar thing I’ve seen is actually in the live action Hong Kong version of WICKED CITY, when a shapeshifting demon lady turns into a half human, half motorcycle and gets driven around. But that was 1992, so there’s every reason to believe it was inspired by this.
Oh, there’s other weird stuff too. There are poisonous engineered (cyborg?) mosquitos that are attracted to the carbon dioxide from your breath. And there’s a part where Goku downs a giant thug who opens the top of his head and a swarm of them fly out. He had them inside his head! Goku has to hold his breath all the way downstairs on an elevator.
I should probly tell you more about how cool Goku is, since that’s one of the main attractions. This is a guy who has amazing romance sex with whisky (neat) by the fireplace, then the next morning as sunlight bleeds through the blinds he leans back in his leather recliner with his morning coffee and cigarette and in his mind he browses the world’s secret databases of experimental weapon blueprints to decide what to use to soup up his trademark white Corvette for battle. I’m not a car guy or a missile guy but when I’m watching this that kinda seems like the life right there.
Oh, and he has an end credits song called “Fighting in the Danger” by a singer named Yuki Katsuragi, whose voice sounds like Japan’s answer to Bonnie Tyler*.
In the second episode, after a great cold open where he fights an old music manager/sex trafficker who turns out to have cyborg rollerskate legs and a go-fast boat, Goku is hired by a client named Ryoko to find her missing brother. She’s being chased by flying “military hound” robots and special agents and says big brother Ryu fled from military experiments that turned him into a killing machine. If he doesn’t get his neutralizer injections he will complete his “beastification” process and become “a demon who will kill people indiscriminately.” Either that or “they’ll kill him to maintain military secrecy.” So they gotta find him.
I didn’t enjoy part II as much as part I, but it’s a fun extension of the idea, mostly designed to set up action sequences. Ryu is an excuse to draw veins, muscles and explosions. There are some crazy twists, Goku does some more pole vaulting, he gets smooshed against a wall by energy and coughs up blood, but his car fires a missile to save the day. At the end he says “Stay away from women. That’s my motto. Except I never can. And therein lies the problem,” which is an unfortunate note to end on, but they probly assumed there would be more adventures.
The blu-ray has a couple short, vintage interviews with the director and the writer, and it seems like either there had been criticism or they wanted to get ahead of it, because Kawajiri admits that women are “used kind of as accessories” in GOKU and Terasawa says “The image of girls comes from my wanting to show how cool Goku is. So, I may not have really considered the girls’ minds. It’s really a super male-dominated world.” It seems more like an admission than a defense, which I sort of respect. Personally I’m more bothered by the requisite sexual assault scenes – not that graphic, but not a trope I enjoy. That’s the bad guys, though, not Goku, and I don’t think he’s a lost cause. I hope he later met a woman who wasn’t a femme fatale or a motorcycle and really broadened his mind.
I can’t vouch for Mr. Terasawa outside of enjoying his colorful characters in animation, but I will say this about him: he looks not how I expected in my mind but how I wanted him to in my heart.
I don’t know how popular the GOKU MIDNIGHT EYE manga or OVAs are. They never made any continuations or re-adaptations as far as I can tell. I do think it’s a character, premise and world that would lend itself well to a live action movie, and it wouldn’t have the baggage and expectations of, say, the live action GHOST IN THE SHELL. It’s also one that wouldn’t have that problem of having to contend with costumes and hair that looks silly on real humans. Unless you consider a guy looking way more awesome than us to be silly.
It certainly would lack some of the expressive qualities of Kawajiri’s drawing, but it could expand on the OVA’s own live action influences and bask in that cyberpunk/tech-noir aesthetic that I personally can’t get enough of. On the other hand maybe the pole vaulting and the motorcycle lady would be harder to buy, and you don’t want to lose those, those are the two best parts.
Anyway, for my fellow dabblers I recommend GOKU MIDNIGHT EYE.
*I swear on the scroll of the ninjas that I typed that before I looked her up and found out she released a cover of “Holding Out for a Hero” in 1984!
