This is one of the works I am so sickened by I give it a "Media Nasty" page as opposed to a proper review where I will shame it for the disgusting piece of shit it is.
While admittedly showing potential at the start, albeit with a few bits that really didn't sit well with me, such as Ginza's failed attempt at blackmail-for-sex being played as humor...
The protagonist, Saiga's reaction in a nutshell: "That rascal's at it again! -but I got the better of her! Ha!" It eventually pissed away whatever good could be salvaged in short order.
There is a revelation both horrifying and heartbreaking that Kagura,(basically the sweetest girl you'd ever meet) has been brainwashed and used as a sex slave for this underground club. Now, as gruesome as it was, it was treated respectfully. She was clearly shown to be traumatized when she finds out, even nearly drowning herself and her ordeal was never treated as anything but what it was.
Tragedy.
It had impact, it had meaning, it affected her, it showed you what kind of monsters the villains really were.(or at least, I thought it was trying to show that. How wrong I was...)
Tragedy.
It had impact, it had meaning, it affected her, it showed you what kind of monsters the villains really were.(or at least, I thought it was trying to show that. How wrong I was...)
The primary villain, Suitengu, effectively turned her into a wish-granting Goddess with the power to give select individuals powers of their own.
Saiga happens to be one of those people, and his own powers emerge after interrupting the ceremony being held. Partly to save her, partly to save himself, he runs off with her, to escape the clutches of the ones using her, which happens to include her own mother.
Things only get much, much worse from that point on, and I don't just mean story-wise.
The work itself rapidly turns to utter shit, and that's an understatement.
The first mistake is the bad guys. The freak-of-the-week types that is. Those of you who've seen Smallville or more recently, The Flash, will get the basic picture. Themed powers, psychotic, etc.
Unfortunately, instead of being elemental, or psychic, or animal-themed, these freaks have fetish-related powers.
There's an evil Plastic Man whose fetish is rubber, a Dentist version of Doc Ock who gets off to drilling people's jaws to bits, and- ...okay, they actually are pretty awesome, I admit, but the fact is, these over-the-top and downright silly Fetish Freaks(called Euphorians, in-universe) don't mesh with this horrible and realistic tragedy.
You can't have a young girl having a mental breakdown upon finding out her sexual nightmares were real in one scene and an evil Plastic Man in a gimp suit chewing the scenery in the next. It doesn't work, and that's not helped by the fact that it takes itself completely seriously at all times. Yes, even the aforementioned scene and all others like it are not supposed to be seen as silly.
For me, that was strike 1, but that was the least of the show's problems. It only got so much worse...
Strike 2 was Kagura's monster of a mother being treated with any degree of sympathy after everything she'd done.(the misplaced sympathy is show's biggest problem, by far.)
Her horrific list of crimes are:
* Starving her daughter, because she herself, while still gorgeous(early-to-mid-40's) hates that she's on the very long road to losing her looks while Kagura's just starting to mature.(15)
* Pimping her daughter to Suitengu to be used as a pleasure slave in his club.
* Proving her own lover is not safe from her. She pulls a "You Have Failed Me" on him, kneecaps him, and then tells him he can tend to his legs "after he's gone between hers" while dragging him into the pool with her. A scene, which, at the time, made me very uncomfortable, and thinking back on it, is basically a rape scene.
Even after all that, we're supposed to pity her when she gets what she actually deserves. Suitengu shoots her dead before revealing he basically has a part of her dead husband grafted onto him. A supposedly tragic scene, which I, while still despising Suitengu, couldn't help but find immensely satisfying.
Unfortunately, that was also the last of any positive feeling I took from this, for Strike 3 was looming just around the corner... Episode 11. That's where everything goes wrong in the worst ways it can.
Ginza starts to lose it completely, and already being a kill-happy rabid dog who blackmails for sex... it gets UGLY. She takes Kagura back to her abusive captors shortly before Kagura's mother is killed in exchange for "keeping" Saiga, after hitting him with her car.
I desperately tried to stay optimistic, trying not to excuse, but envision the blackmail as simply one piece in the mosaic of double standards in the world's culture.
Not that I hadn't tried my best to forget it ever happened.
Anyway, I was hoping that Saiga would get through to her, tell her about the horrors Kagura endured, and tell her if she ever had any feeling towards him, to help him get her back.
Not that I hadn't tried my best to forget it ever happened.
Anyway, I was hoping that Saiga would get through to her, tell her about the horrors Kagura endured, and tell her if she ever had any feeling towards him, to help him get her back.
...That making perfect sense and even being a little heartwarming meant my hopes were entirely in vain.
After that utterly tragic, tearjerking scene with Kagura's CUNT of a mother, we see what she meant by "keeping him". We come back to Ginza's apartment where she's raping him in his unconscious state, all while lamenting how she's "not good enough" and the viewer is apparently supposed to pity her. While she's committing rape.
So, the sick-in-the-head honcho has now gone from trying to make monsters seem sympathetic after their gruesome crimes to trying to make them sympathetic during them. Ugh...
-and that's not the end of it...
In the next scene, Kagura wakes up to a man fingering her while she's completely immobilized in a vat of liquid. The show, likewise seems to portray this sick fucking piece of shit sympathetically because he lets her out to get some fresh air.(her ploy to escape) After raping her.
These disgusting scenes are pretty much glossed over afterwards. Kagura never tells anyone about her latest violation and Saiga was unconscious. Naturally, the rapist cunt doesn't confess what she did, either. I admit to my shame I continued watching this disgusting series to see if, at the very least they got their just desserts in the end. I was disappointed once more.
The man's "punishment" was being threatened by Suitengu's hired guns, even though one of them had previously stomped a man's crotch into goo for rubbing her clothed butt. Said gun, by the way was able to tell by smelling it on him, so by all rights, he should've known.
As for Ginza... she was still portrayed as some poor, suffering soul until the very end, and later ends up with Saiga's nice doctor friend.
I didn't actually see the end, though. I read this on Wikipedia long after destroying my box set.
...I frankly find it disrepectful when people say things like "this movie made me feel raped" or "this douchebag raped my childhood" but in all honesty... watching this really did make me feel violated.
It felt so unbelievably wrong what happened in that episode.
The hero's getting used to his new powers, he's getting stronger, and more confident.
The damsel has a chance at a decent life, after escaping her captors.
They're both basically turning the tide and then... our hero gets knocked out and raped, the damsel goes through the same thing after already going through it hundreds of times and what's more, their rapists get off scot-free.
The damsel has a chance at a decent life, after escaping her captors.
They're both basically turning the tide and then... our hero gets knocked out and raped, the damsel goes through the same thing after already going through it hundreds of times and what's more, their rapists get off scot-free.
I swore after I saw this if I ever found another copy anywhere I would buy it if only it to destroy it.
If I could buy up every copy in the world and destroy them all, I would. Save for a couple to use as a shining example of how not to do tragedy.
The horrors in this piece of shit from hell would be, in a far, far better work said not to be done well enough to be called tragedy, this doesn't begin to do them right.
Tragedy has to be moving. It has to have something. If not meaning, then irony.
Ugliness. Needless ugliness is all it is.
The horrors in this piece of shit from hell would be, in a far, far better work said not to be done well enough to be called tragedy, this doesn't begin to do them right.
Tragedy has to be moving. It has to have something. If not meaning, then irony.
Ugliness. Needless ugliness is all it is.
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