The hardcore bondage anime Dark Love nicely lives up to its title (well, at least the Dark part. I’m not sure forced enemas, sex slavery, and initiation rite gang bangs square with the Love concept, at least by the Christian, Romantic, Ancient Platonic or Aristotelian definitions, but why quibble with questions of taste or history? For that matter, S + M has been around forever, codified by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) and raised (or lowered) to a populist level by the Japanese with their often wildly imaginative hentai cartoons and animations. Dark Love, a one-hour, two chaptered extreme porno from the Studio Zitsu and director/character + storyboard designer Teruaki Marakami, is just one instance among gazillions of such offerings.

Being new to the hentai genre as of this week, I’m submitting this for the Anime Outsiders Write-Off hosted by one of our esteemed anime insiders, ssjakira1. This Write-Off solicits reviews from those relatively new to Japanese animation, or anime (note: I’ve just simplified an actually complex and somewhat contested definition of anime). Since Dark Love is unquestionably of an erotic nature, this review doubles as an entry to the Erotic Movie Write-Off hosted by ChrisJarmick. Indeed, what would either of these Write-Offs be without at least a nod to the extremely popular subgenre of erotic hentai?

Erotic Context
I’ve seen quite of lot of films from the brilliant Studio Ghibli and its greatest master, Hayao Miyazaki, but have seen very little in the way of Japanese animation, no matter what the rating. That said, I do know a considerable amount about Japanese culture (above all its literary and pictorial arts), I’m fairly conversant in the language, and have studied its philosophies, myths, folklore and religions. After a short while in the company of Dark Love, I realized immediately that this film, and hentai in general, are in complete continuity with a centuries’ old tradition in Japan of shunga or imaginative, erotic painting. A scene in Chapter Two with a demon man sprouting tentacles and penetrating every possible orifice of three women simultaneously, compares to Hokusai’s 1820 ukiyo-e woodcut painting, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife depicting a woman having sex with two octopi (including one going down on her), their tentacles covering her enraptured naked body. All that is to say, there is nothing new under the sun: no matter how depraved or perverted hentai may look, they reveal a strain of libidinous, forbidden and primal desire found in erotic iconography of the last two millennia, from Greece and Rome to China (upon a time), India, Japan, as well as the West. In the case of the hentai subgenre of modern Tentacle Sex (apparently invented by Toshio Maeda), the idea of using tentacles (or similar phallic objects) for penetration is a clever way of getting around Japanese censorship, where penile penetration is forbidden. Except, in Dark Love, as I understand in many other hentai as well, the animators now flout the censors altogether, showing hardcore sex and, worse yet for the censors, pubic hair, along with the intrusion of alien, non-human phalli.

Also depicted in this film are scenes of nawa shibari, or rope bondage, a tradition stretching back at least to the Edo period in Japanese erotic art, and perhaps finding its coffee table book “high art” legitimization in the photography of Nobuyoshi Araki. All of which is to say, while the average viewer may see in such films nothing but explicit, and to our Western eyes, often bizarre sexual play, most such scenes have a long historical context, suggesting 1) such scenes are but a minor step in the evolution of erotic art, and 2) the capacity for human experimentation, depiction, and delectation of such imagery is trans-epochal and inexhaustible.


Storyline (??!)
Released in 2004, Dark Love has a fantastical, and completely male-fantasy-oriented story centering on a man by the name of Tetsuya and a magic potion stored in buckets. The potion, guarded by an underground society of exceedingly buxom women, is a gift of life from a god, and transforms Tetsuya gradually into a crazed demon (see aforementioned tentacles that sprout from his body). Thus, we’ve got a bit of Jekyll and Hyde situation, as the gentler Tetsuya seems unaware of the monster he is gradually becoming. Women of varying degrees of innocence and experience succumb to the demon’s inexorable mojo (think James Bond to the power of 100), and find a primal and supreme partner in this purely voracious satyr.

Fetish Checklist (courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices)
For anyone keeping count, we’ve got:
Algophilia (arousal from experiencing pain)
Bakunyuu, a.k.a. mastofact (large breast fetish)
Bukkake (please don’t ask me to translate)
Coitus a Mammilla (take a wild guess)
Irrumation (a.k.a. fellatio)
Klismaphilia (arousal from enemas)
Maiesiophilia (arousal caused by pregnant women)
Martymachlia (group sex)
Masturbation (self- and mutual-)
Nawa shibari (rope bondage)
Paraphallus (use of dildos)
Proctophallism (anal sex)
Tentacle sex
and last but not least…
Urolagnia (again, please don’t make me spell it out!)

Summation: the story is nothing genius or all that original, the emotions completely unbelievable (particularly for the women throwing themselves on Tetsuya’s every throbbing prong), but then the story is probably not this film’s strongpoint.


Animation and Music
If the story is standard, albeit off the beaten hardcore path, what is it that makes Dark Love Special? I would say the combination of high quality animation (decent subjects and some superb backgrounds, almost rivaling those in Studio Ghibli) with absolutely pitch perfect sound track makes this an overall high-class piece of trash. The music (credited to “Clock Up” (?) and Toru Yukawa) is a powerful blend of Baroque and Gothic mood-painting (complete with interesting use of piano, organ, and harpsichord sounds), Impressionism, and what I might (surely out of pure ignorance) simply dub “soft metal” (a lighter, streamlined version of heavy metal). Combined with impossible “camera angles” (e.g. from the POV of a penis) and fast-paced editing, the music seems a perfect fit for every high-energy tableau. Yes, the “story” ends rather incomprehensibly (whether in the original Japanese or English dubbed versions supplied), but somehow that rather seems beside the point.

A comparison to two other rented hentai films— too idiotic and lame to even elaborate upon— suggests that within the context of others in this subgenre, Dark Love is in a relatively high league of aesthetic packaging. Being an anime outsider, a quick tour of other online reviews confirmed my sense that, even to fans of the genre, the film represents a cut above the rest. Will I myself return to the genre? Not anytime soon, I think, but this was an interesting glimpse at a proud tradition of Japanese erotica at its cutting edge.


The DVD
The only extras are some previews to four other hentai films. Otherwise, there are the standard Scene Selections and Language Set-Up. I sampled the English-language version but found it annoying, as the acting seemed totally unconvincing.

Incidentally, for a true masterpiece of Japanese erotic cinema, I highly recommend Nagisa Oshima’s Ai no corrida (In the Realm of the Senses), released in 1976. Now there is a true work of art, erotic and otherwise.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age