"Only in the stories of humans is there a hunter who will save everybody" (Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (DVD))

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (DVD)
Date:	28/05/09 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Grim, melancholy, thoughtful, and unforgiving

Disadvantages: Grim, melancholy, thoughtful, and unforgiving

In a parallel 1950's Japan, the world since the end of World War II has descended into turmoil with terrorist organisations heatedly opposing the government's driving forward of aggressive economical politics that has created mass unemployment and made crime rampant on the streets. This has only been made more threatening as organised terrorism sects have been getting stronger, endangering the well-fare of a recovering nation. Facing a situation where the police could no longer control the crime organisations, the government set up a paramilitary force called the Capital Police Organization, that would not impede on the new constitution. The heavily armed task force soon expanded its jurisdiction beyond simply working under the national security commission in the capital area, thusly becoming the enforcers of general order with merciless efficiency. However, the anti-government factions, that had been forced underground, joined forces to wage war against the CPO, making the streets of Tokyo an urban war zone. This, however, only made regular people more agitated and taking up protesting against the reigning state of affairs, these often exploding into violent confrontations. During one of these incidents, a CPO unit is deployed to disperse a group of terrorists taking refuge in the sewer system. In the ensuing massacre, a young girl (a courier dubbed as a "Red Riding Hood") blows herself up in front of Kazuki Fuse, a soldier of the CPO, who for a moment hesitated in pulling the trigger. Fuse is left mentally scarred by the incident, questioning his belonging in the CPO and wondering his own humanity, while he starts to slowly fall in love with the older sister of the terrorist girl and getting pulled into a scheme by the other police organizations aiming to have the so-called Wolf Brigade disbanded by using him as a scapegoat.

Jin-Roh is a bleak and almost consistently melancholy story written by Mamoru Oshii, famous for his anime adaptations of Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell manga. It is the third part in Oshii's Kerberos Saga he began in 1987, a series of films that never really were particularly successful, and is the only one that is animated much due to production difficulties. Directed by Hiroyuki Okiura, Jin-Roh is one of those efforts where the watcher is required to descend to a state of mind of a slow-burning character drama. Past a couple of more action-oriented and violent scenes, the film is rather one of thoughtful depression and lingering doubts of a world of violence and rebuilding. It is a world that intangibly hangs at the breaking point between the past and the future, where the war-torn country is starting to clean up the remnants of its corroding leftovers in favour of something a lot more promising of economical growth, though not necessarily of a preferable world. In many ways, the film is highly allegorical in more ways than just one. For one, the political atmosphere adherent in the story is highly reminiscent of the political turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s in Japan, and it is in this alternate reality of German takeover and the fears of the return of fascism that provides a lot of the turbulent backdrop to the society the film is depicting, and how Oshii remembers things having been during this breaking point between the world of yesterday and the world of today. As such, a lot of what is seen is a slightly more exaggerated depiction of the political situation as it was during this time, and also acts as a criticism on the current conformist society of Japan that precludes change even if it is welcomed, as seen in Fuse's inability to break free of the group he is a part of.

On the more story specific allegory, the film is heavily influenced by the early versions of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytales before its more sanitised versions took the edge of the story's more grimmer aspects to present more child-friendly versions in its later incarnations. This tale is recited throughout the film's love story aspect, drawing parallels between the terrorist and anti-terrorist factions, and more specifically that of the "wolf in human's clothing" parallel, impeding the extent of the film's thoughtful repose, giving it a decidedly doomed and malevolent feeling. And just as the old French fairytale's depiction of Red Riding Hood (or Rotkäppchen) visiting her by then slain mother, then eating her flesh, drinking her blood, and ending up getting graphically eaten by the wolf posing as her mother, so is Jin-Roh a path of tangible tragedy in which the shades of good and evil are clouded within the spheres of its two main protagonists of Fuse and his love Kei. Yet, regardless of their supposedly clear roles, this is never made as apparent as it may seem at first glance, where the beast may well actually be the Red Riding Hood, while the wolf is but a victim struggling with his humanity and decency, but which is overridden by the sense of not knowing where one belongs to. As it is said, beasts are not meant to co-exist with humans, and it is this conflict that Fuse has to fight throughout the film; a crisis of identity between serving as the unemotional beast doing his job without thinking on the act itself, or to break free to find the possible happiness found from being human.

The art style of the film is of very high quality as befit's a Production IG feature film made in 1999. None of those unmoving background still shots here lower budget anime usually is plagued with. Everything is rendered in great detail, with a very subtle usage of CGI that never clashes with the cell animation, perfectly evoking the time of the 1950s and its surroundings. The character designs of Tetsuya Nishio are also more realistic in the style of something like Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, making the film seem a lot more realistic in the process as its predecessors were live-action films. And only adding to the darkness of the film's setting is Hajime Mizoguchi's unobtrusive and lugubrious score, which only accentuates the heavily shaded and shattered world of insecurity in which even love is not a given, while the end credits song is certainly one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. The voice acting is on par with a lot of Japanese anime, with Sumi Mutoh and Yoshikatsu Fujiki in the lead roles doing a good job at delivering the style of voices perfectly suitable for the characters. Even the English dub is decent, if somewhat lacking in depth, mostly the reason of a lack of reverb in certain scenes. But in terms of voice acting in both, the results are not bad (though this thinness and less potent style of delivery in the English dub makes me favour the original Japanese a lot more).

Ultimately, Jin-Roh is a film that is complex and which requires one to pay attention to the proceedings, yet it is not a film that tries to be overly complex either. The love story aspect, which was something Okiura wanted to do in exchange for taking the mandatory directing reigns from Oshii, is never over-stated and remains in the same style of gloomy melancholia. For the action junkies this most likely isn't the most recommendable film as, even if the few action moments that can be found are extremely intense and tightly strung, the majority is very reflective. Yet this doesn't mean there is no gore associated with the film, for there are still some very graphic and violent scenes that may shock some, both in the form of straight-out shooting of people with heavy-duty machine guns, or then through images conjured up by Fuse's troubled mind, one of these for instance featuring a pack of wolves attacking Kei in the sewers and then ripping her into pieces as an adjacent reflection of his own fears of his true nature, perfectly reflected in the image of him sitting in a snowstorm surrounded by the wolves - his pack of comrades stripped from the masks of humanity they wear. And even if this is part of a trilogy of films, it isn't really necessary to know the preceding live-action entries as Jin-Roh is a prequel to those films, thus making exact knowledge on the others not really necessary. The political scapegoatism, the doomed love, the world ready to either tear itself apart or move on, and the psychological breaking down of the people within this type of society, perfectly contrasts with each other while going hand-in-hand at the same time. The whole of it results in a truly haunting experience that is merciless and sweeps one along to an at times harrowing journey of thorns and loss of oneself. "And then the Wolf ate up Little Red Riding Hood."

© berlioz, 2009

Summary: Little Red Riding Hood 5.1