Furie's Full Review: Urotsukidoji #1: Legend of the Overfiend
Anime has always praised as cartoons for adults, an interesting medium used to present either thought provoking ideas or just an interesting story. So what happens when anime is taken to the adult extreme? Legend of the Overfiend gives us an interesting glimpse.
Legend has it that every 3,000 or so years, this being called the Chojin, a.k.a. the Overfiend, is born in the human world. His job is to fix everything and bring harmony to the three worlds, the human world, the land of the Jujin-kai beastmen, and the land of the demonic Makai. Amano Jaku, our happy go lucky Jujin-kai powerhouse is part of the search for the Chojin. His sister bets that the sweet little high school pervert is the one. Could this weakling be the Chojin?
Of course, if he wasn't this film would be fairly dull. Instead, it is two hours of inventive violence and brutal demonic rape. Unfortunately, this film creates a purely masculine mythos where women are there only to serve as demonic semen receptacles. In an early scene, a high school girl is graphically raped by a demon posing as her teacher, whose dozen or so serpentine penises fire phosphorescent goo across the room.
Perhaps in conjunction with the blatant misogyny, this movie has an enormous cock fetish. Besides the above scene, the Chojin turns out to be a 40-story tall monster whose quarter-mile-long penises lay waste to the city with their semen. And to gain power, a teenager trades his God-given johnson for a super-powerful Makai member. Perhaps our repressed Japanese screenwriter has something he'd like to tell us all?
With that out of the way, Legend of the Overfiend is actually a very entertaining movie. The numerous demons, each more hideous and perverse than the previous one, showcase amazing creativity in their design and abilities. All characters have wildly powerful supernatural abilities, able to conjure elemental dragons and regenerate limbs. It's a wonderful visual spectacle, if you can get past the leering adolescent power fantasies that the story includes.
To be truthful, though, part of the reason I enjoyed showing off this movie was the sheer offensiveness and audacity it has in its presentation. I loved watching people's eyes bulge and their jaws drop when they saw the opening scene of demons being suitably naughty. And, of course, the brutal gore managed to shine them on nicely, as well.
Speaking of gore, we've got a multiple demons ripped asunder, one guy dissolving under pressure, and a girl exploding from the force of the Chojin's big O. For animation, it's anatomically correct.
If you can get past the thought of the demon rape scenes, then check this movie out. It's a pretty entertaining story executed with some amount of visual flair, and constructs a credible mythos that comes to a solid, though-provoking (though somewhat trite) conclusion.
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