Cyber City Oedo 808

This is a 1990 OVA (Original Video Animation) I viewed on Arrow's streaming site: 

Viewing an OVA during Spooky Season is new to me; heck, I’d never seen an OVA period until last night. Adult anime is still a blind spot for me, despite viewing such work as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, Vampire Hunter D, and Wicked City. Recently, Arrow’s streaming site added some anime, including OVA’s. Note that they’re the original Japanese versions and NOT any dubs. Other reviews inform me that the English dub for Oedo was incredibly vulgar-the original language thankfully isn’t.

A Google search told me this was likely up my alley—and it was. Of course, I laugh that the setting of its universe is 2808 Tokyo… excuse me, “Oedo” yet the vehicles and tech are futuristic versions of 1980’s products. But that’s part of the tech noir charm it has. Yes, tech noir is a generally accepted term for films like Blade Runner. That and the cyberpunk vibes are strong w/ Cyber City.

Through three episodes, we see a trio of criminals become anti-heroes as they are freed from prison to work for law enforcement… w/ explosive collars around their necks. No, I don’t know if Suicide Squad stole that idea from here or it’s the other way around. They catch criminals & solve crimes to reduce their sentences. As each are jailed for hundreds of years—they might as well be Sisyphus. However, it’s more fun than prison in space. Songoku is a standard cool 80’s dude in a red leather jacket, Gogul looks from the neck-up like Vernon Wells in The Road Warrior, and Benten resembles an 80’s rocker chick… albeit androgynous.

There are three episodes, each a little more than 40 minutes in length-one character is spotlighted per episode. While the first and more so the third have horror plot points rather than have a strong focus on the genre, I was happy to have viewed an OVA w/ awesome animation (the various hues of blues representing Oedo at night alone was stunning), a quality 80’s score, the vibes, the AI and other tech that assist our antiheroes, the aesthetic, the City Pop songs… viewing anime more often might not ever become a thing for me, but those I do seek out, I prefer to be like this. It is a disappointment that there weren’t further adventures of this wild trio, at least not on screen.

Concerning director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, I enjoyed both this and Wicked City. In October the plan is to see at least one horror anime-more specifically, one from Kawajiri.