“YOU’RE too late, Amano Jyaku”, cries evil Munnihausen. And from below him blast a succession of atomic missiles heading straight for Osaka. On the command of Caesar, a leader kept only in power by his brutality, Osaka (a city in Japan) is to be completely obliterated. For dwelling within a castle there sleeps the Chojin, a God above all Gods with the power to overthrow him. This dramatic sequence was the closure of the previous episode in the RETURN OF THE OVERFIEND saga. Can the flying half-man, half-beast ‘hero’ Amano overcome his mixed motives of what to do for the best in time to prevent absolutely everything in Osaka from being desecrated?

The action, and standard of animation, is quite promising as battle commences. Amano and Munnihausen are to lock horns once again, now fighting it out in the skies against a backdrop of purely fantastical imagery. More demons, a three headed dragon, balls of power, a spider-woman and the ever present threat of the nuclear warheads coming into contact with any matter whatsoever zip frantically
around your screen with bizarrely colourful properties. Simultaneously, the Overfiend summons Amano’s sister Megumi to a sexual ritual where she is to be taken every which way by a mutant creature to finally harness and unleash her ‘magic powers’. As usual, the series is not pulling its punches and this scene is another high-quality ride with a literally screamingly orgasmic finale.

Yet there are two biggie irks about EPISODE 3 of the RETURN OF THE OVERFIEND. Although the first irk this reviewer is drawing attention to follows his approval of Amamo’s mega-violence and Megumi’s ultra-explicit demon sex scene, I hope you will not think me callous in complaining about the atrocious amount of bad language the viewer is subjected to. The translation team evidently got completely carried away with this release and practically every sentence is “f***ing” this and that. I’m certainly not offended by sexual swear words and indeed have happily sat through films overloading the viewer with verbal abuse (For example ROBOCOP, PULP FICTION and GOODFELLAS) but I feel that here there is little justification for just pathetically repeating the f-word over and over again. When translated literally, the original Japanese language version has very few epithets; this ‘addition’ is purely the result of the dubbing team. After ten minutes or so, it really grates. The characters are not hardened gangsters and the script becomes what the dramatists call “swearing for swearing’s sake”, put in to attract attention but being so ridiculous in that it has the opposite effect.

The second is an overlong gang-rape committed upon Alecto, Caesar’s young daughter pictured on the cover artwork. In an atmosphere of high tension as Caesar sees his whole reign nearing an end and his palace under attack, all the drama suddenly gives way in favour of subjecting her (and you, the viewer) to almost ten minutes of misogyny of the vilest nature, disturbingly dramatised with stirring music. After already being raped by Buju in EPISODE 1 and sodomised by her own father in EPISODE 2, it’s just too much, too long and too painful to watch. Notably, it is much shortened for the film version; for me, proving that the torture (disguised as foreplay) which the girl is subjected to is really unnecessary. As always, you find most of the episode’s budget has gone into making this scene flawlessly animated. Despite usually taking the line that UROTSUKIDOJI wouldn’t have the cult following it does without such sequences, it could have been better employed in this case.

However, a thunderous ending sequence and a superior dub by the Kiseki team, bad language aside of course, make this episode the most watchable of all the four in the third compendium. The quality of animation does suffer occasionally from poor patches or one-frame mouth-open, one-frame mouth-closed conversations but amongst its anarchy and pornography, it manages to massage them well. To digress, the rape of the Alecto module is actually cut from the UK version (near enough slicing the running time of the episode in two). As the packaging is covered with warnings regarding the sexually explicit content, I can’t agree with such a cut on principle but from a purely ‘continuity’ basis, it is no bad thing here as the rape fragments the episode. In fact, the missing scene has built up a cult following all of its own in the UK with internet sites specialising in offering it alone for download.

There’s a lot going on in UROTSUKIDOJI III EPISODE 3 and it takes several sittings to get to grips with it all. However, it is worth seeing and is certainly one of the more erotic and exciting Japanimation jaunts. The saga comes to its conclusion with EPISODE 4 so the ending is suitably cliffhanging for a final showdown. As I’ve noted in other reviews though, the high-class anime generally works better “as it was meant to be seen and heard” (i.e. with subtitles). The dub is by no means poor but the foul-mouthed translation has hindered its presentation, not helped it.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age