Infernal Affairs

It is rare for an American remake of a film to be remotely as good as the foreign film it’s based on, let alone be better. Let Me In is one of the only ones I can think of off the top of my head and it still isn’t the instant classic that Let the Right One In has become in my mind. Usually, American remakes dial down any sexual or disturbing content (barring violence) that made the original stand out, and because they almost never improve upon the original piece in any way, they are simply redundant at best and bastardizations at worst. With that said, am I a terrible person for thinking that The Departed is vastly superior to Infernal Affairs, the 2004 Hong Kong film it is based on?

I watched Infernal Affairs for my film studies class (where we’re watching nothing but gangster movies) and we’ll be watching The Departed next week (although I watched that film last semester during that several month hiatus where I wasn’t reviewing movies to work on my screenplays). And other than the film’s ending (no, I won’t spoil it for anyone. don’t worry), I’m not sure if I can name a single area where Martin Scorsese’s remake isn’t simply a much better product than this film. From the script, to the characters, to the direction, to the editing, to the cinematography, Infernal Affairs has now become in my mind the go to example of how a good story can become a great film when given to the right hands.

I will give the film credit for coming up with the clever story that is at both the heart of it and The Departed (although the latter so greatly expands on the themes and the characters that this film almost just seems like a sketch in comparison). Two different men are chosen to go deep undercover into the organizations of their boss’s biggest enemies. Lau Kin Ming (Andy Lau) is hired by the Triad to infiltrated the Hong Kong Police Department while police cadet Chan Wing Yan (Tony Leung) infiltrates the Triad. And as each goes deeper and higher into their undercover ops, their job becomes to find out who the mole is in their ranks.

And that’s really it. I’m going to keep on bleating on about how much better The Departed is than this film, but I’ve always thought of The Departed as one of Scorsese’s slightest films. It’s one of his films that relies the most on style over substance, but if The Departed is slight, Infernal Affairs is just anorexic. Although the film is a terrific example of non-stop intelligent pacing (the film really manages to ratchet the tension up and never let up right out of the gates), the characters are paper-thin, and you are given absolutely no reason to care about anyone involved. And when characters die or are betrayed or reveal shocking allegiances, none of it matters because you don’t feel any emotional attachment to the individuals involved.

The direction and editing of the film though are what lead me to think of this film as being so amateurish (although I suppose any movie would pale in comparison to something Martin Scorsese touched). The opening sequences of the film are an endless stream of cross-cuts which lend no sense of direction or meaning to the story and it took me far too long to even realize what was happening and who was good and who was bad. And the film employs so many cheesy scene transitions and unnecessary expository flashbacks (not to unseen events in the film but things that have already happened once already) that you begin to feel like the director doesn’t trust the audience’s ability to keep up with the action on scren.

I’m going to keep this review short and sweet. I enjoyed Infernal Affairs, and maybe, if I hadn’t seen The Departed first, I would have liked it a lot more. As it stands, Infernal Affairs is a good movie with a great concept, and it took a more talented creative team to really bring fruit to the story. If you like foreign cinema, it’s certainly a must see, and if you’re a big fan of its American successor, it’s interesting to see just how many of the scenes were lifted straight from this film. But ultimately, it’s just a serviceable action thriller.

Final Score: B

 

Napoleon Dynamite

A lot of really talented directors/writers have a hard time finding a balance between endearingly quirky and artificially eccentric. As much as I love Wes Anderson films, it often feels like Anderson is trying too hard to make his characters seem original by making them insufferably and unrealistically off-beat. Sometimes it works, Rushmore; sometimes it doesn’t, Moonrise Kingdom (though that film has its brilliant moments as well). Juno suffered from the same problem because as realistic as Juno’s problems are, there are no actual teenage girls that talked like her. At least, there weren’t until that film came out and inspired girls to speak like Ellen Page. Jared Hess’s breakout directorial debut, Napoleon Dynamite, has become a bit of a modern cult classic, but I have always found it to be so bad that it’s nearly unwatchable and that Hess’s characters are almost all artificially eccentric and not in the slightest endearingly quirky.

Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is a mouth-breathing, chronic-lying nerd with a penchant for drawing pencil doodles of fictional creatures. He lives at home with his grandmother and his 32-year old, effeminate brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). Kip spends his day chatting on line with his internet girlfriend Lafanda, whose reality is a legitimate question for most of the film. Napoleon gets bullied at school and his only two friends are transfer student Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and shy Deb (Big Love‘s Tina Majorino). When Napoleon’s grandmother is in a dune buggy accident, his creepy uncle Rico (Jon Gries) is sent to look after him and Kip. Rico longs for his glory days on the football field in high school (although the film implies that he was only a backup quarterback), and his endless schemes to make money and glory only serve to nearly ruin Napoleon’s life at every turn.

Jon Heder gives arguably one of the worst lead performances thus far for this blog. I could go back and look at every single movie I’ve reviewed (I probably won’t), but I imagine I would be hard-pressed to find a more unbelievable and grating performance than his. Anyone who’s seen Gentleman Broncos knows that subtlety isn’t the strong suit of any part of any Jared Hess film, and he was unable to coax a life-like performance from the wooden and slack-jawed Jon Heder. No one on this actual planet talks like Napoleon. You consistently feel like you’re watching a performance in a student film where they’re trying to give an example of how to be as awful as humanly possible in a performance. And the actors playing Kip and Pedro are not remotely any better.

The only two performances in the film that make the acting in the movie bearable are Tina Majorino as Deb and Jon Gries as Uncle Rico. I remember when I first watched this film that I thought Tina Majorino gave the worst performance of the whole movie. Now, I can easily say it was the best. Whereas Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, and Aaron Ruell turn awkwardness into camp and stiff artificiality, Tina Majorino makes Deb seem like the shy but sensitive girl we all knew in high school. She just dives right into the part and doesn’t hold back. In fact, had the film been about Deb, it might have actually been a decent film. And Jon Gries becomes one of the only consistent sources of humor in the film as Uncle Rico. He’s the only actor with a real sense of comic timing, and he finds the creepiness and despair that both lie at the heart of Rico.

I’ll keep this review short because I simply don’t like this movie, and nothing I can say about it will persuade its legions of fans that it’s unwatchable drivel. Let me then close with this. Some films are so bad that they’re brilliant. Rocky Horror Picture Show is objectively an awful movie, but the fun and camp at it’s heart makes it a bizarre classic. Jared Hess tries to make a film that is so bad it’s great with Napoleon Dynamite, but instead, the movie remains almost entirely so bad that it’s a trainwreck. The film has its moments that made me laugh but I could count them on one hand, and the one truly great sequence (Napoleon’s final dance number) isn’t enough to make up for an hour and a half of a film that is too painfully awkward to watch and not in that good Freaks and Geeks type of way.

Final Score: C-

Song of the Day #146: “Spaceship” by Kanye West feat. GLC and Consequence

Before he was the biggest name in hip-hop (and the best thing to happen to the genre since Outkast), Kanye was just a kid from Chi-Town whose production skills were legendary (one need only look at his contributions to The Blueprint to see that) but whose mic prowess was unknown. But Yeezy had a thing or two to teach the world, and I’m not sure if there’s ever been a better breakthrough album in hip-hop than The College Dropout. It’s not perfect. The front half is, but the second half is spotty at best. But, with that album, Kanye West would begin his journey that would ultimately change hip-hop forever. You may not like the man but his genre-blurring ambitions and refusal to just be another rapper has radically changed the hip-hop landscape this decade. “Spaceship” isn’t my favorite Kanye West song. That’s probably “Lost in the World” or “Runaway,” but this is the best song off his first record (possibly his first four records although I do love “Love Lockdown” and “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”). As someone who wiles away his day in retail hell, I can relate to a lot of this track (although obviously not the parts about being black). Enjoy.

 

Song of the Day #106: “Reptilia” by The Strokes

Is there a better garage rock band than the Strokes? The White Stripes maybe but since their music is apples and oranges, it’s understandable why some people may be confused when they’re lumped together into the same genre. I know I promised everyone a real movie review today before I did my song of the day post, but I went out drinking last night with some friends (instead of staying in, home and by myself to review a movie) and I worked today so I never really had a chance to get around to righting that wrong. I’m sorry. Since I work again tomorrow, there’s a decent chance that we’ll go another day without a movie review. We shall see. I hope not. Anyways, my boss from New York City (as opposed to my boss at the mall here in WV) and I were talking about the Strokes today and how Julian Casablancas writes all of his music on the piano before the band turns it into fuzzed out/reverbed craziness. I started gushing about how much I love “Reptilia” and it was a simple choice for my song of the day. Enjoy.

 

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

I’m not a big Will Ferrell fan. His time on SNL is probably the textbook definition of how to do sketch comedy well, but his movies are hit or miss at best. Stranger than Fiction is the only really good film Will Ferrell has made in about a decade. I enjoy some of his sophomoric Adam McKay-directed, Jud Apatow produced comedies (Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory), but mostly even with the ones I enjoy, I know that they are broadly written collections of cheap laughs. The worst of the films (Talledega Nights, Step Brothers) are borderline unwatchable except for having a rare funny or quotable moment here or there. He basically took his Frank the Tank character from Old School and found minor permutations and ways to change it to essentially play the same character for a decade strong now. It’s time to vary up your career with more challenging roles Mr. Ferrell. Still, even the cynical, angry curmudgeon in me must admit that the leading man role that got Will Ferrell his big break in Hollywood is the definition of a modern cult classic. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy remains eight years later one of the most quotable films of the aughts (along with The Hangover although not quite as consistently funny asThe Hangover). It’s not the most intellectual comedy ever written but it’s complete embrace of the absurd and surrealism means its still able to make me laugh my ass off all of these years later.

Set in the 1970s, Anchorman is the story of a fictional TV news program in San Diego just when feminism in the workplace was on the rise. Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is the chauvinistic, womanizing, moron that is lead anchor for the Channel 4 news program which is the number one show in the San Diego area. Along with his co-reporters including the mentally disabled weatherman Brick (Steve Carrell), the possibly homosexual sports broadcaster Champ (David Koechner), and the rakish field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Ron is the cock of the walk in San Diego, worshiped by his legion of viewers and the women he parties with. But when ambitious and sexy hard-nosed reporter Veronica (Christina Applegate) shows up in the news room, things get shaken up very quickly. Despite Veronica’s better judgement, a romantic relationship blooms between Veronica and Ron but his sexism and her quick rise in the offices threatens to destroy their relationship as well as Ron’s entire career.

This is easily Will Ferrel’s most iconic role. It was the part that shot him to stardom and made everyone realize he could be a leading man rather than just a supporting sidekick or foil (though honestly, on film, I think that’s where he should go back to being because his solo work is less than impressive). If you were to ask the average Joe to name a Will Ferrell role off the top of their head, you have to think that Ron Burgundy or Frank the Tank would be the first answer given. And honestly, while there are definitely traces in this role of virtually every other Will Ferrell part from the last 8 years, he still manages to be very funny in this film. While his hyperactive, full-blown crazy side manages to elicit more laughs than it has in the intervening years, its his ability to dial the intensity down in this film and deliver the occasional deadpan joke that makes Ron Burgundy his most memorable celluloid creation. It doesn’t hurt that nearly everything that Ron Burgundy says is completely quotable but this is one of the rare Will Ferrell roles where he finds a balance between the two extreme sides of his acting persona. Christina Applegate isn’t especially funny in her role but as the “straight man” of the cast, she wasn’t meant to be. This film also turned out to be a break-out role (or one of several break out roles) for both Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell. Steve Carrell brings nearly as many classic Anchorman moments to the table as Will Ferrell does.

Trying to put my finger on the pulse of why this film is so endlessly quotable and enjoyable but Ferrell’s other films (which are structurally and stylistically similar) aren’t is difficult. Obviously, the film’s quotability plays a heavy part. The only reason I wound up watching this movie was because my sister hadn’t seen it, and throughout the entire film I was supplying the end to every punchline or non-sequitur (of which there are a lot). Anchorman is without question one of those films that grows on you with every viewing. I probably enjoyed it the first time I saw it but didn’t love it. Now, watching Anchorman is an exercise in getting to all of the great gags and set pieces. Speaking of set pieces, more than any of the other Adam McKay films, Anchorman has a serious bent to the surreal and absurd. Whether it’s the anchorman gang fight (where Brick stabs a man in the heart with a trident and Luke Wilson loses an arm), the jazz flute scene, or the part where Ron ends up in a zoo pit with bears, Anchorman tries to be as intentionally outrageous as possible. That’s part of the film’s charm. It crosses the line so many times (punting a dog off of a bridge for example) that you know not to try and take the movie seriously whatsoever. But it earns this comedic goodwill unlike the rest of Adam McKay’s ouevre (if you use the word ouevre in reference to Adam McKay, you probably aren’t his target audience).

The obvious payoff here is that in the face of all of the film’s truly hilarious moments, the moments where the jokes fall flat seem even more trite, boring, and lazy particularly in the face of the collected output of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay for the last ten years. Simply because this film laid the blocks in place for the rest of his movies, it robs the film of some of the freshness it had when first released. Still, even with those reservations, I haven’t stopped enjoying Anchorman after all of this time (it’s been several years since I’ve actually sat down and watched it), and it’s one of those films with lines that have entered my working, every day vocabulary. It’s not a perfect film, and it’s not Will Ferrell’s best movie. That’s certainly Stranger than Fiction. But as far as comedies that you can enjoy without having to put your thinking cap on, Anchorman might be the cat’s pajamas.

Final Score: B+

Song of the Day #29: “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane

At work today, we ran the interview that I did with British piano-rock band Keane which you can read here if you’re a fan. Anyways, it was an awesome moment because they’re the second biggest band I’ve interviewed (behind the Fray), and unlike the Fray, I actually enjoy Keane’s music quite a bit. I’m not normally into this whole post-Britpop thing that Coldplay is the leader of, but Keane have always stood out to me. Part of that may be because of how simply beautiful and memorable their hit single “Somewhere Only We Know” is. I’m embarrassed to admit that I learned about this song when beat boxer Blake Lewis sang this during one of the first elimination (by votes anyways) rounds of his season of American Idol, but the second I heard the song I fell in love with it. And I’ve owned the original Keane version ever since. It’s just a gorgeous ballad and one of my favorite love songs. I think this song has wound up on so many different mixtapes that I’ve made for girls over the years. Enjoy.

 

If you want to listen to the May Song of the Day playlist, you can find it here on Spotify. If you’re interested in the entire 2012 playlist so far, you can find a more comprehensive playlist here.

Elfen Lied: Vol. 9

A couple of volumes back, I decided to start taking critical notes during my reviews of Bleach mostly so I could leave specific bookmarks on what I thought were great pages from the book to use as pictures in these posts. The opportunity to remark on things that immediately struck me as intriguing also helped the posts become a little more focused, but a quick read through of my notes from say the last volume of Bleach reveals me mostly reveling in whatever feat of bad-assery that Ichigo had just accomplished or trying to keep track of the endless supply of new characters that Tite Kubo was introducing to the series. I decided to start taking notes on Elfen Lied as well, and a read through of those notes are a “little” different. Some variation of “what the fuck” or “holy fuck” or any other expletive seems to be the most common phrase because Elfen Lied continues to reveal new depths of twisted and depraved cruelty in its villains. Like, seriously, Elfen Lied requires a special kind of immunity to disturbing material to even attempt to read it and I’m really depressed about the fact that I’m apparently so desensitized that I can make it through this story (even though it leaves me battered and bruised when I’m done).

When Bando managed to scare away the Unknown Man last volume, the peace at the Maple Inn was shattered the second that Yuka, Kohta, and Nyu showed up at the house. Without hesitation, Bando tried to shoot Nyu which caused her self-preservation mechanisms to kick in and she became Lucy again for the first time in months. Out of respect for Kohta from Lucy and for Mayu from Bando, Bando and Lucy decide to take their fight to the beach (where the Unknown Man fled). We finally know why Bando’s been cleaning the beach all of these months. It’s so there’s nothing that Lucy’s vectors could throw at him. However, despite all of his traps and planning, his pistol still isn’t strong enough to pierce Lucy’s vectors outside of her kill range. The Unknown Man tries to stop Bando from killing Lucy but Lucy just rips his head off for his trouble. Despite her strength, Bando is able to get the drop on Lucy but Mayu shows up to stop him from killing her. Lucy tries to kill Mayu and Bando throws her out of the way and sacrifices his life to save Mayu’s (and shoots and wounds Lucy in the process). Lucy flees to the woods to heal, and Nana vows that she’ll kill Lucy now even if she’s just Nyu the next time she sees her. When Lucy reverts to being Nyu in the forest, she stumbles across Mayu and Nana at the temple/gazebo thing where Nana finally tells Mayu the truth about Lucy. A heartbroken and confused Nyu wanders around the woods trying to make sense of her existence when she finally returns to Nana to confront her. Nana nearly kills Nyu but because Nana is the most innocent of all of the Diclonius she can’t bring herself to harm the defenseless Nyu. Things aren’t safe though because A) Nyu heard the evil diclonius inner voice that Lucy heard as a child and also B ) the volume ends with the government busting into the Maple Inn with four clones of Lucy that are under their complete control.

It finally struck me how similar the government agency in this series is supposed to be the Nazis, specifically with regards to both the Holocaust and their horrific medical experimentation. Just, my god. In order to craft the four clones of Lucy (that can be ordered to stab themselves in the heart and mutilate themselves however their masters see fit just to prove that they are controllable), Director Kakuzawa and a new scientist named Nousou (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Lucy) have been breeding Diclonius with the sole intention of harvesting their spinal cords (which of course we’re forced to see an assembly line with spines on them. *shudder*). So not only are their Diclonius whose entire pitiful existence is one miserable experiment after another (i.e. shooting lead balls at them to chart the growth of their vectors or being forced to live in eternal agony just to serve as a living Diclonius radar), their are Diclonius who are only born to be grown to be harvested like cattle. It’s some fucked up shit. And I really don’t know (or at this point want to know) where Lynn Okamoto is getting his inspiration for this series. On that note though, the scene where Bando is dying and reflecting on what he did to save Mayu’s life was heartbreaking and almost brought a tear to my eye.

I’m going to keep this review short just because I have to review the last disc of Season 2 of Mad Men (have I ever mentioned how much I hate Betty Draper), and then at some point today, I would like to watch Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 which is the next movie in my instant queue from Netflix. After that I want to finally get around to starting the first season of Angel for review on this blog (it’s been ages since I finished Buffy). I am so excited to be watching Angel. I know a ton of people who think it’s a far superior program to Buffy, and since I know that it’s a darker and more mature counterpart to Whedon’s breakthrough program, I’ll likely be prone to agreeing. Anyways, there are only three volumes of Elfen Lied left (which equates to something like 25 chapters). I can’t believe I’m so close to the finish line but it’s nice to know that I’m close to the end of the horrifying and scarring journey that has been Elfen Lied. I’ll probably be back in WV by the time I’m done and I don’t know whether I’ll pick up another manga to read when I’m done with this or go back to normal books since I’ll actually have access to my library of books again.

Final Score: B+

 

Head-On (2004)

Two German films in a row? That’s slightly unusual, but when they’re both excellent movies, I’m not going to complain. I just finished the emotional roller-coaster that was 2004′s Head-On, an unconventional love story in every sense of the word, and if it failed to match the magic and power of Wings of Desire, it should take comfort in the fact that Wings of Desire was a genuine masterwork of a film. Tomorrow (provided I get around to it), I should be watching Fellini’s 8 1/2 so apparently, it’s just a foreign film type of weekend, and aren’t those the best kinds of weekends? Perhaps it’s appropriate that the lead female of the film portrays Shae on HBO’s Game of Thrones because this was the German answer to the Sid and Nancy “mutual destruction” subgenre of the romantic drama field. Head-On is not for the faint of heart, but if you want a bloody and subversive romance, Head-On is what would happen if you took most (but not all) of the graphic violence out of True Romance and replaced it with social commentary about the Turkish immigrant experience in Germany as well as fundamental religious beliefs.

Lonely, alcoholic, and rage-fueled Turkish widower Cahit Tomruk (Birol Unel) decides to end his miserable existence collecting empty bottles at a Berlin concert hall by crashing his car full-speed into a brick wall. When he survives his suicide attempt, he’s committed to a clinic where he meets the beautiful but equally broken Sibel Guner (Game of Thrones‘ Sibel Kekilli), a young Turkish woman who also tried to kill herself to escape her life under the thumb of her strictly fundamentalist family. Almost immediately upon meeting Cahit, Sibel asks him to marry him as a way to get out of her father’s house (where her brother broke her nose as a child just for holding hands with a boy). She doesn’t love him or want to be loved. She just wants an excuse to escape and be on her own so she can finally live her own life. Cahit initially rejects her offer but when Sibel slices her wrist open in a crowded bar to prove how seriously damaged her home life is, Cahit finally gives in. Sibel wasn’t kidding when she said she wanted to live her own life though, and although she and Cahit share a home, they both have sex with other people, and even when they finally begin developing feelings for one another, it only spirals them further into inevitable tragedy.

If there’s one word that I would use to describe this film, it’s “intense.” Sweet lord. Based on its premise, you think it’s going to be an “odd couple” romantic drama where an initially incompatible couple learn to love each other by living together. They certainly become attracted to one another over the course of the film, but it only leads to tragedy and heartbreak. There’s a dark sexuality dripping in every frame of the film and Birol Unel brings a Brando-esque machismo and intensity to the role. He reminded me of a more sympathetic (but equally violent) version of Ray Winstone’s character in Gary Oldman’s Nil by Mouth. He is a force of almost pure destructive energy, and when he’s drawn into the uncontrollable hedonism of Sibel’s life, explosions are practically guaranteed. I’ve never seen Birol Unel in a film before and he immediately made an impression as a foreign talent to watch. However, the real star was Sibel Kekilli. Her performance recalls (but actually predates) both Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It was the type of raw, naked performance that makes a star and since she won several European industry awards for her performance, others obviously agreed. Her transformation over the course of the film is simply an astounding feat both in the way she physically presents herself but also the subtleties of her emotion and performance. I wish she was this engaging as Shae on Game of Thrones.

While I think this was one of the ugliest shot films that I’ve watched in a while (shaky, unprofessional hand-held footage that did little to immerse me more in the world which is the entire point of shooting a movie handheld), I’m able to forgive it’s technical shortcomings because of how brutal its story was. The movie’s pacing could feel slightly sluggish at time but there were lots of great moments where the film compelled you to keep watching even when you desperately wanted to turn away. There might not have been a single moment which etched itself into my brain quite as deeply as Ray Winstone nearly beating his wife to death in Nil by Mouth (for some reason that was the film that kept springing to mind during Head-On), but there were a ton of moments that came close. Whether it was Sibel’s multiple suicide attempts, a scene in a bar which continually ups the sense of dread and impending apocalypse til the terrible, tragic moment finally arrives, or the small moments of Cahit alone exploding against a world that has done him so much harm, the film paints a tale of violence, lust, and tragic love. The way that it explores how sexual repression by religious families leads to acting out and potentially catastrophic rebellion only hammers home this film’s mission to subvert traditional notions of romance and the traditional romantic film.

If you’re sick and tired of Hollywood fairy-tale romances, Head-On will punch you in the gut and leave you asking for it do it one more time. With a premise that consistently struck me as the building blocks of a Shakespearean tragedy (without the Bard’s subtlety or humor), Head-On‘s wonderful story which more often subverts romantic cliches and tropes than plays them straight is a modern romance for the modern cynic. It’s heavy material and unflinching eye for the brutality of its subjects may turn some off but if you can sit through the most masochistic moments of our “heroes,” you’ll be reward with a stark look at love gone terribly wrong. In a world where schlock like The Lucky One makes reams of money in the box office, you need films like Head-On to remind you that not every story is stale, and that we don’t always need to have a happy ending.

Final Score: B+

Elfen Lied: Vol. 8

Why am I reading this series? I’m essentially volunteering to need massive amounts of brain bleach before I’m finished with Elfen Lied. Yet, after every detour I make into the far more family-friendly (and significantly less fucked-up) Bleach (didn’t even realize the joke I accidentally set up there), I always return to Elfen Lied like a woman suffering from battered-wife syndrome. The story at the heart of Elfen Lied is fantastic but there’s something wrong with me for voluntarily reading a story that I know is going to wind up as fucked up as this one, and in ways that I didn’t even think were possible, this particular volume of Elfen Lied really upped the “fucked up” quotient. I mean, Jesus H. Christ! Lynn Okamoto, what the hell is wrong with you? What is wrong with me since I’m still reading this whole damn thing? I’ve been reading this series since April 3 (when I first reviewed Vol. 1) which makes it a month now that I keep returning to the dark and depraved and horrifying universe that Okamoto has crafted. Still, it’s one of the most engaging (if not necessarily enjoyable) manga series that I’ve ever read so I’m in til the end.

Six months have passed since the beginning of Vol. 8 and the end of the Vol. 7. Women are becoming pregnant with horned babies en masse thanks to Kakuzawa releasing the Vector Virus over Tokyo, and it will only be a matter of months before waves of Diclonius are born into an unprepared populace. Back at the Maple Inn, our group has settled into a normal return and in the wake of Lucy losing her horns, Nyu hasn’t experienced a personality shift since. In fact, she has completely learned to speak like a normal human being and has forgotten most of her actions when she first arrived in Kohta and Yuka’s life (even though she still has an occasional uncontrollabe urge to grab someone’s breast). At the government facility, Director Kakuzawa has been biding his time since the explosion to try and find Lucy so his plan for world domination can come to fruition. It turns out that the “God” of Diclonius beneath the pond is actually his daughter, Anna, who he’s turned into a mutant with a brain 100 times the size of that of a normal person. However, she’s now forced to live in the amniotic sac of the pond for the rest of her existence. Her heightened brain power gives her the ability to (mostly) accurately predict the future based on patterns and human nature. Based on her information, Kakuzawa truly believes that he can uproot humanity in less than a year as long as he can get his hands on Lucy, a task he assigns to Professor Kakuzawa’s (his son) female assistant, Arakawa, and an unknown man in a cowboy hat who can easily be described as possibly the most monstrous person in this series yet.

In their own ways, both Arakawa and the Unknown Man stumble upon the Kaede nakama. Arakawa is the one who actually runs into Lucy (as Nyu) with Yuka and Kohta at the university though they are able to escape before Arakawa can capture Lucy. There is little damage done (so far) there as they get away and Arakawa doesn’t know who they are (though she puts bad ideas in Nyu’s head about what all Diclonius are like). However, shit really hits the fan when the Unknown Man uses a Diclonius (#28) that he’s placed in perpetual agony (and it’s implied he raped her) to locate any Diclonius in the Kamakura area. Of course, you can’t find Nyu with it because she doesn’t have her powers any more (though there are signs that her horns are growing back). But, it can still find Nana, and the Unknown Man shows up at the Maple Inn when just Nana and Mayu are home. He shoots Nana (twice!) with a crossbow gun that shoots spiked balls that secrete an unimaginably painful neurotoxin to disable Nana’s vectors and then he proceeds to attempt to rape Mayu. Mayu is able to fight him off long enough to call Bando who shows up fights the Unknown Man away (though he escapes). However, at that moment, Bando’s mortal enemy, Lucy, walks in the front door with Kohta and Yuka.

I thought the show had really explored the depths of despicable villains (even when it turned some of them like Bando and Karuma into both villains and heroes [or at least considerably less evil people than the main big bads]). I was wrong. For a dude that doesn’t even have a name at the moment (I’m calling him the Unknown Man for lack of a better name), the Unknown Man is the most effective and bat-shit crazy/evil villain yet. Sadism is the name of the game, and he doesn’t even have the excuse that the Diclonius have (which is that all of the people around them are torturing them and trying to kill them). This guy just seems to take a sick delight in causing as much pain and suffering as he possibly can. The scene where he’s trying to rape Mayu and she’s running away was some of the harshest material of the whole series. I nearly couldn’t finish it because I knew there was a serious probability that he’d succeed in his f***ed up plans. I love the way that the series plays ping-pong with who the villains are because even though Bando just saved Mayu’s life, there’s a serious probability that he’s now going to try and kill her and everyone else in the Maple Inn to get a shot at Lucy.

I could write more but for some reason, my heart really isn’t in my writing right now. I’m returning to WV in two weeks from tomorrow, and I’m not looking forward to it. I’ve just got this empty feeling in my chest that I associate with when I came back to WV after I spent the summer in Italy. I’ve actually got something to work towards in life now so hopefully it will keep me from falling into the same dark depths of depression I landed in when I returned from Florence, but I know it’s still a possibility. Anyways, I just need to do something not mentally exhausting today because I’m just feeling sad. I’m really not ready to go back home.

Final Score: A-

Elfen Lied: Vol. 7

I’m starting to conclude that Lynn Okamoto is like the Japanese George R. R. Martin. He’s just the kind of person that can take an almost sadistic pleasure in torturing the hell out of the characters in his works. It makes for an expertly crafted story because at any given moment, you don’t know what could possibly go wrong for the heroes. No catastrophe is off the table (as the manga certainly proved this volume). However, much like Martin, it almost makes me want to not get attached to any of the characters because even if they aren’t killed off in brutal ways, he’s liable to make them do something so reprehensible that you could never feel anything positive for them ever again. This particular volume finds us hurtling into the home stretch of the series (only 37 chapters left) and a major cataclysm has struck the universe of the franchise. I have no clue what Okamoto can do now to up the dramatic tension of the series other than instigate a full blown apocalypse (which he laid the seeds for this volume). Still, Elfen Lied continues to prove to me once again that it is is the most disturbing and almost inherently “wrong” series I’ve ever read. And that’s why I love it.

The last volume ended with Kurama revealing to Nana that he was Mariko’s father and the cruel twist of fate that led to Mariko’s birth as a Diclonius as well as the inhumane things Kurama had allowed to be done to her since she was born. We discover that Kurama tried to kill Mariko as soon as she was born but his dying wife in her last moments begged him to let her live. So he sent her off to the institution. I’m guessing the wife would have preferred Mariko to die if she had known the fate she’d have for the next five years. While Kurama and Nana face off against a truly genocidal Mariko (who is deflecting artillery shells like they’re flies), Director Kakuzawa reveals his plans to Shirakawa to release the vector virus over all of Tokyo to slowly begin infecting the entire world. Shirakawa had tried to stop him but much like with Ozymandias in Watchmen, the plan has already been implemented before he reveals his grand scheme. During the fight against Mariko, you see the rocket carrying the virus explode over Tokyo. Eventually Lucy shows up as Nyu. Kurama and Mariko put aside their differences momentarily to stop Lucy. Kurama shoots Nyu which awakens Lucy. She begins to destroy Mariko. However, Mariko uses the bombs inside her body to take out Lucy. Lucy decapitates Mariko but the bombs explode and Lucy’s horns are destroyed which is supposed to permanently leave her in the state as Nyu.

Despite Kurama having the original run as the series’ Big Bad, that most assuredly goes to Director Kakuzawa now (who believes that he has the god-like power to control whatever birthed the lebensborn in the first place). We learned a lot more about Kurama this volume from what led him down the villainous path he’s currently on (along side things we learned last volume), and just why he was able to form such a tight bond with Nana but he could never love his own daughter. The scenes where Kurama kept trying to kill his own daughter (kind of/sort of for her own good) even while he was trying to reconcile with her were just heartbreaking. Even at the end though, having seen what a monster he can occasionally be, Nana has gone from having daughterly affection for Kurama to wanting to be his wife. I’m kind of hoping that was a mistranslation of the manga because otherwise this series managed to top itself yet again in the fucked up department (since she’s like 12). I don’t think Kurama really reciprocates though. I was honestly shocked that he let Nana take care of the de-horned Lucy. He wanted to kill Nyu but Nana convinced him not to so maybe even Kurama is beginning to soften. The scene where Director Kakuzawa molested Shirakawa was always incredibly disturbing. This series doesn’t hold back whatsoever.

I’ll keep this one short because I didn’t get to do the three movies last night that I wanted to (only one, Cyrano de Bergerac) because my French roommate has family in this weekend. They’re sleeping in his room and he’s sleeping in the living room. My TV is in the living room and I wasn’t able to watch any TV. I just wound up watching Bonnaroo videos from last year on Youtube the rest of the evening after my roommate came back home and took control of the living room. So my next film which I’ll start as soon as I’m done with this is The Butcher Boy. Plus, I’ll still be doing my Song of the Day post. Plus, I only have one episode left of the second disc of the second season of Mad Men as well as one episode left of the first season of Community. So, possibly I could end up doing four more posts for the blog today. I’m perfectly okay with that scenario. I just wish I could watch Game of Thrones tonight. I won’t get to watch it tomorrow because I’m seeing the Shins at Terminal 5! Tomorrow is going to be awesome. So, forget that last complaint about Game of Thrones.

Final Score: B+