Bright Lights, Dark City

Anime sucks.

That is said a lot these days, and much of the reason it is said is because of what otaku tend to post online that those adjacent to the scene see. Most passersby believe anime is little more than cute girls in suggestive poses, pathetic and decisive male main characters, and feshistic plots where nothing of substance happens throughout entire seasons. In other words, they see the moe and slice of life material since that is what otaku post the most and believe this is all anime is. It's hard to blame them, this image is overwhelming.

Of course, I'm not going to pretend this element doesn't exist. There is an industry in Japan that wants their fanatics to buy tons of merchandise, and what better way to sell it then by exploiting their loneliness. It's a fairly obvious thing to cash in on. So yes, this is a real problem that exists and I can understand why those unfamiliar with animation might think this is what the industry is. Hardcore fans are always going to get taken advantage of, even if it's with the most banal material possible. If the fanatics are going to buy it I can't blame the companies for making it.

The nature of being a fanatic in most things has changed from what it had once been. A long time ago being a hardcore fan meant someone who got into the deeper and more complex parts of a hobby or scene. It meant someone who cared enough to be choosy about what they were into. Now it means people who will consume anything their corporation of choice will put out without complaint. This is, again, a full 180 from the way things once were.

However, this does not represent the history of the anime industry, nor does it represent what actually sells in the medium today. Being hardcore and being a fanatic are no longer the same thing. In fact, being hardcore these days is closer to being casual than being a fanatic, at least in the anime sphere.

From Japan's Tsukuru May and June issue, these are the top ten series that sold the most copies between March 2019 and April 2020. This is based on the sales of only one volume.

1. One Piece [3.2 million]

2. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba [1.5 million]

3. Attack on Titan [1.43 million]

4. Kingdom [920,000]

5. Silver Spoon [750,000]

6. Detective Conan [710,000]

7. My Hero Academia [660,000]

8. One Punch Man [660,000]

9. The Promised Neverland [600,000]

10. Haikyu!! [600,000]

This is what casual anime fans read, as opposed to fanatics.

Every single one of the stories spans from action to historical epic to sports and to mystery. There is nothing here focused on loser main characters ogling girls that are too timid to talk to. Such series do exist, but they are not the highest sellers.

It should be reminded that the manga industry in Japan is bigger than the anime industry and most of its material is adapted from said manga. This is a fair representation as to what Japan actually likes as a whole. From this sample, casuals apparently like to read quite a bit of different things.

If you want to tell me how Dragon Maid is actually a hardcore series because only otaku buy it, and that Kingdom is casual because normies buy it, you're going to have to do a better job defining what a casual is. Because that term used to refer to when things were the other way around. At what point did hardcore fans start swimming in casual stuff? Well, it's a more recent turn. It was not like this at all during anime's creative peak.

So what was it like back then?

Well, let me take you all through a little trip into the past when OVAs were made for hardcore fans of the day. There you will see an entirely world than the one the medium is in now. It's a whole different era.

For those unaware, "OVA" refers to the term "Original Video Animation" (sometimes "OAV" or "Original Animated Video") and consists of the practice of production companies releasing full animated products straight into the home video market, surpassing television and cinema entirely. It was delivered directly to the buyer instead.

These might be extra episodes commissioned by the manga publisher or possibly be funded by outside players (who were lured into the production game by promises of a big cash-in), but either way these were only really bought by the most hardcore of customers. You had to go out of your way to buy them, and hardcores did. The practice still continues to this day but mainly consist solely of extra anime episodes bundled into manga volumes. It's not the same as it once was, and just about everyone gets them now since manga sells more than anime.

During the 1980s, Japan's burgeoning economic bubble allowed a lot of money to be funneled into this upcoming practice. There were a ton of OVAs. However, those in the scene back then were fairly ambitious with what they were given. Material of a far more hardcore bent (without the standards of television holding them back) allowed producers to tell stories they simply couldn't in the mainstream. What this led to was quite a boom in creativity unlike anything they had see before.

You had things such as Megazone 23, Bubblegum Crisis, Mad Bull 34, Kyou Kara Ore Wa!,  Appleseed, Babel II, Dominion Tank Police, Angel Cop, and many different series and one-offs of varying degrees of quality. Different genres, different lengths, different designs . . . you never knew what you would get with a new OVA. However, they were all much different than what could be found on television at the time and took far more risks as a result. Just looking back on it now it is hard to see it as anything other than a perfect storm of crazy circumstances.

One such OVA was the small three episode series known as Cyber City Oedo 808. It was put out between 1990 and 1991. This project was directed by one of the most unsung and richly talented anime directors Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, X/1999 TV, and many others) who has influenced much both in the east and the west. This series came and went, but it did manage to leave an impression on those who saw it.

In the future, high tech criminals are given a sentence of working high-risk cases for the police with an explosive collar around their neck. The more jobs they do, the lighter their sentence gets until eventually they can be let go. However, first they need to survive the job. And anyway, what's 8 years off a 300+ year sentence? It's a pretty bleak world, or so it seems.

In this world where crime runs amok and evil has its way, is there any hope? Evil has won, hasn't it? Believe it or not, in this grim cyberpunk world there are flashes of light to show that fighting for life and freedom actually does have worth beyond the material. Not to mention that our hardened criminal protagonists might not be the black hats forced to work against their will we might have first thought at the start. Sure they are forced against their will to do jobs and would much rather escape, but their reasons for choosing the crime that put them where they are become more obvious as each episode rolls on. There is a bit more under the surface to Cyber City Oedo 808 than you might first think.

As said before there are only three episodes of Cyber City Oedo 808, and each of the three stars a different one of the main character trio. This team consists of Sengoku, the front line muscle, Gogol, the hacker, and Benten, the espionage master. Seemingly just ruthless criminals, the more we spend time with them the more we learn that appearances can be deceiving, just as can a metal monolith of a cyber city can look gorgeous . . . until you see what lies underneath. The three mains all have different reasons for ending up in their predicament, and each episode explores what happens when they enter a situation far over their heads that point to underlying issues with the world they live in.

You see, while this series starts off with the, admittedly cool, premise of criminals forced to battle worse in a cyberpunk dystopia, it is actually a noir-inspired Gothic horror series in disguise. Each story starts as what appears to be normal tech crimes and slowly unfurl to be deeper problems that go to the root of why the cyber city is the way it is. This isn't referring to hidden histories or the like, but in how the sorts of people who built this world would have to be to let it reach the shambling state it is in. That's when the supernatural peeks in to reveal the root causes go deeper than just the pursuit of money or fame.

This is where spoilers come in, so if you are interested in seeing the series first before reading further I highly recommend doing that. I can't talk more about the themes without spoiling it, and I can't hold off further.

You were warned.

The first episode centers around Sengoku having to infiltrate an obscenely tall skyscraper that has been taken over by a master criminal hacker. Being the first episode we also get a glimpse of the world and the premise.

We are introduced to Sengoku as a rough guy who will do anything to complete the job (without getting extra years on his sentence, of course) who appears to be little more than a low class thug with a badge. He enters the tower and climbs his way up where we begin to learn that this skilled criminal actually does have limits both physically and otherwise. At the same time it is revealed that the hacker isn't even a human being--it is a ghost seeking revenge that has invaded the computer system and is wreaking havoc in order to strike back at his killer. At the same time the girl Sengoku likes, and who likes him, is trapped in the building and is perilously close to horrible end. The stakes are high on this mission.

In the end, Sengoku defeats the ghost by doing the opposite of what its calculations predicts he will do. The character using his strongest trait as force for good instead of evil. He sends the ghost to hell . . . but not before it gets revenge on the one who wronged him. Either way, the hacking is prevented and the spirit departs. The day is saved, but just barely.

We then learn that Sengoku didn't get time taken off his sentence because he refused to kill the man the ghost wanted dead, which would have satiated the spirit and ended the mission early. It is a conflict between the boss looking at the bigger picture and Sengoku who will only do what's needed. The episode then ends showing Sengoku sneaking around ledges in the city readying to extract vigilante justice on corrupt figures. By this point we get where Sengoku comes from and why he makes such a good criminal cop, even if a reluctant one. How did someone like this end up a prisoner? Now we know.

The second episode concerns hacker Gogol, who ends up saving a beautiful woman who is being chased. She has some incriminating info on a project that is as shady as it is grotesque. At the same time a seemingly super-powered murderer is taking out targets all over town. Through his research we learn Gogol was a sort of renegade hacker working against the corrupt who was caught and given the option of doing this job or dying. Guess what he chose. There seems to be a bit of a theme with our main characters.

The woman has a history with him, being one of his partners from long ago. She was paid money to betray him but refuses, then ends up dying trying to save him. The monster responsible is revealed to be a psychic experiment done with dead men and cybernetic parts who act on orders from a shady sector of the government. They use the dead to cover up their sins like a cleaner in the mob.

Our three heroes infiltrate, as does their boss who reveals himself to be more than the monster we thought in the first episode, but one who expects a lot out of those who work under him. It is no wonder he was put in charge of these special criminal cops. We see how he differs from those who would bend the rules to create their own justice, and puts trust in his men to finish the job.

Gogol uses his head to defeat the psychic corpse and the entire order is decimated. Things are put right again. The city is saved from itself once again. Though Gogol can't quite shake his past, he can use it to remind himself of the sort of thing he's fighting for. It isn't just his life he wants to save, but those who were used and thrown away for progress.

In the last episode, Benten, the David Bowie-esque crossdresser who is obsessed with beauty, finds himself up against what appears to be vampires. He is the quietest member of the group and we don't learn much about him until this episode. A woman is draining targets who appear to all be related to an old and forgotten experiment. It just seems to be typical revenge, at least at first. He follows the trail deep into the heart of the city, and even into a space elevator.

In turns out that the vampire is a woman who had an aging disease and was experimented on in order to find the key to eternal life. She had spent most of her life locked away because she couldn't live among normal people. Benten ends up getting closer to her as the plot progresses, ending with a showdown in a Gothic space castle against the master vampire who wishes to use her curse to gain eternal life. What is true immortality? The final confrontation will finally spell it out for us, and bring the series to a close.

This episode serves as the conclusion in that it does the most to show the viewer who each of the three main characters actually are under the facade of criminal scum. Sengoku actually does have friends and people he cares about and has a deep sense of justice, Gogol believes in love and redemption as the highest good, and Benten will do anything to save the innocent, the beautiful--even at the cost of his own life. Ironically, being forced to face death as they have these sides of them have become their dominant natures. They are far beyond the sorts of scum they are chasing down: they are bona fide lawmen. The ending doesn't conclude each of their individual stories--we are left to assume they will continue to fight crime until freedom or death, and that whatever they ultimately get they will have earned. It is a surprisingly hopeful take in a genre not known for it.

What you have here is a Cyberpunk Gothic Horror Noir series that certainly influenced much after it from Cowboy Bebop to The Big O. This is a hardcore anime from the medium's peak era, and it shows it at every given opportunity. The animation is on a whole other level from television animation. Kawajiri's direction is full of hard shadows, dynamic lighting, heavy fog, and hardcore action, with not a dull moment to be seen during any of these three episode. This is one of the best series of the OVA era, and it is a shame it is not currently available anywhere legally.

This sort of series is the reason so many are into anime, and why it became popular worldwide. You don't get material like this much, if ever, in western television of cinema. Especially not these days. This was a whole other era of animation.

The potential in the medium allows for visual storytelling of the like that make old noir movies and 1980s horror and action practical effects extravaganzas blush. No one can make a series like this in prose or live action without the visual cues, music stings, or the direction remaining so distinctly Japanese OVA or Kawajiri. It shows a potential in the medium you simply don't get with series about girls sitting around doing nothing, and is an example of what hardcore once was. Now this is closer to what is considered casual today.

Funny how times change.

So no, anime does not suck, despite the meme. There is anime that is terrible, but there is much potential in the medium and there have been many works that have taken advantage of it over the years. I know it is difficult to see when fanatics appear to be obsessed with the most casual series while normies are not, but it is the case. Cyber City Oedo 808 is anime at its best, and shows just what this medium is capable of. And it's not alone.

With the way the industry has been trying to turn itself around in recent years, there is a chance it can get back to the freewheeling days of the OVA again, when anything could happen. It isn't that anime sucks, it is that those in charge don't have as much ambition as they once did. But that will change, and is in fact already changing. The series on the list above show that normal people are far more ready for a series like this than hardcores are. It's bizarre, but those are the times we live in.

The present is odd, but it's not hopeless. In fact, the future is on the way, and it's not quite as bleak as you might think.

More Stories of Dark in the Light!