SPOTLIGHT: Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

It could be that Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (人狼, 1999) is one of the most underrated anime offerings of all – a situation no one into the more adult leanings of the medium should ascribe to since there’s tons of action and sizable armaments involved.

Kiddie stuff this most certainly is not, and with equally big gun anime production houses Production I.G and Bandai Visual working together here (along with one Mamoru Oshii), there was never any real doubt about the grown-up nature of this material or the quality of the animation.

Down in Australia there’s a very nice edition available through the cool cats at Madman Entertainment.

Add to the guns and action a tall, dark, silent-type protagonist, a mysterious terrorist organization femme fatale, government-condoned death squads, post-modern German WW2 helmets, gasmasks, full-on body armour, and – hidden amidst all this – some overt references to the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale.

Penned by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost In The Shell, Sky Crawlers), as part of his Kerberos saga, the alternate reality late ‘50s story underpins Oshii’s earlier live-action film Stray Dog (1991) – a movie which starred actor Yoshikatsu Fujiki, and who here returns to voice our hero Kazuki Fuse.

Fujiki also starred in Oshii’s more recent live-action movie Assault Girls (2009), and his presence is all the more reason that you should watch the movie in the original Japanese dub (with English subtitles) rather than opting for the easy-listening local lingo.


The depth of talent involved in the production is something guaranteed to rock the socks off any anime admirer.

Kenji Kamiyama (later the director of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) worked as sequence/animation director, the character designs (based on director Hiroyuki Okiura’s originals) were embellished on by Tetsuya Nishio (a key animator on Millennium Actress and FLCL) and the superb music is composed by Hajime Mizoguchi – one of Japan’s leading musicians in the ‘80s, and Yoko Kanno’s ex-hubbie; Kanno herself moonlights as the pianist here.

Many people are still waiting for the director, Okiura, to helm his next movie.

He was just 33 when Jin-Roh was released, yet while he’s also worked on key animation and character designs for Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Blood: The Last Vampire, Patlabor 2, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and Magnetic Rose, the shame is that the man hasn’t offered up another movie in over a decade.

When that does happen I probably won't be the first to report on it – there are rumours afoot – but in the meantime back-tracking to his 1999 singular classic is well worth the ride.

“Jin-Roh is one of the most stunning movies I’ve ever experienced, period,” says independent film-maker Toshiaki Yamashite. “Each time I watch it I walk away with more. It’s a work of genius.”

Amidst all the angst and bullets it’s a typical Oshii-style yarn: mind-boggling and ultimately mind-blowing stuff, with Fuse himself striking a note as anime’s most elusive male lead.




Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
© 1999 Mamoru Oshii / BANDAI VISUAL / Production I.G All Rights Reserved

SPOTLIGHT: Ghost in the Shell / Innocence

What other nation in the world annihilates its own capital as much as Japan tends to?

Think of all the times Tokyo's been trashed, caned, victimized and atomized - from the big bang at the beginning of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1988) to nearly every single Godzilla flick etched out by Japan's workhorse production house Toho Co.

Both the manga and the first anime interpretation of Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊, Kokaku Kidotai) continued this trend, setting the scene some time after World War 5.

The twist here was that Tokyo was a city that had revived itself and embraced a slick, somewhat violent sci-fi futurism. Yet while the manga pages drawn by Masamune Shirow were also quirky, a good chuckle and occasionally hentai (perverted), the first anime movie of Ghost in the Shell, released in 1995, was darker, a tad more cerebral and the most innovative post-cyberpunk anime since Akira.

Some, like me, say it’s even better.


Ostensibly the story of a public security anti-terrorist squad (Section 9) coming to grips with an unknown force who is "ghost-hacking" into cyborgs' brains and souls, Ghost in the Shell drifted into a philosophical treatise on the nature of humanity and its relationship with technology.

If any one movie was responsible for impacting upon the latent psyches of the Warchowski brothers before they produced The Matrix, this was it.

The movie may have been drafted by manga-ka Shirow and co-scripted by Kazunori Ito, but the director here was one Mamoru Oshii.


While Hayao Miyazaki (of Spirited Away, Ponyo and The Castle of Cagoliostro notoriety) juxtaposes concerns with the environment over a strange blend of whimsy, humour, adversity and triumph of the spirit, Oshii's films are often dark, bleak and caustic with a resounding reliance upon technology; even so there is humour here if you look closely enough.

“I've always liked humorous movies and gags,” Oshii told me in 2006 for an interview in the Daily Yoimiuri after he unveiled the zany Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters.


“But in Japan it seems that the audience prefers serious movies. I'd love to make a big budget comedy movie, but the current Japanese film industry would hardly allow such a project.”

What Oshii and Miyazaki do share is a predilection for tales in which there is no specifically "bad" character – even the perceived villains often struggle for something they think is right.

But whereas in Miyazaki's realm this means good intentions, in Oshii's it's a need to know the unknown, to succeed at any costs, and often inspired by baser qualities.

In Ghost in the Shell and its equally powerful sequel Innocence (2004) Oshii is at the height of these subversive, mind-bending powers. They’re as as visually stunning as they are philosophically bewildering. After all, characters in Oshii’s movies have a hankering for citing Jean-Paul Sartre as much as they proffer up obscure references from the Old Testament.


“I think that Innocence will remain a movie understood by a very limited number of people,” Oshii said back in 2004 when I interviewed him about the sequel.

Even so he had the benefit of two superb scores by Kenji Kawai for both movies.

“I haven't thought about using any other composer but Kenji," Oshii confided in a tone that was somewhat reverential.

“I like the Ghost in the Shell movies basically because I like sci-fi animation,” says DJ/producer Ko Kimura. “The story behind Ghost in the Shell is really intriguing and the graphics are gorgeous – if you see it a second or third time, you'll find new facets within the two movies again and again. For its graphics I’d say Innocence is one of the best anime movies made in Japan.”

Renowned fellow Japanese DJs Tatsuya Oe (aka Captain Funk) and Jin Hiyama agree.

“The first Ghost in the Shell may be an old movie, but this is our future, our world. Innocence took it further: we taste life but have no choices,” Hiyama muses. “I think this has always been my own theme too.”


“Ghost in the Shell is the magnum opus of my master Mamoru Oshii,” anime director Kenji Kamiyama quipped in deferential fashion when I asked him for his favourite movies a couple of years back.

Kamiyama is no slouch himself, having directed the spin-off TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, along with another essential Production I.G series, Eden of the East. He was also an animation and sequence director on Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998) and wrote the script for Blood: The Last Vampire (2000).

“The first Ghost in the Shell movie is the movie that depicted the big bang of that new infrastructure that we now know as the Internet, from an almost prophetic standpoint,” Kamiyama explains, “and for this reason it should be regarded as a monument in the whole sci-fi genre.”



Ghost In The Shell
© 2006 Shirow Masamune / Production I.G / KODANSHA

Mamoru Oshii's 'Assault Girls'

So, I can breathe a little easier as 2009 begins wrapping itself up in neat little patterns. For one thing I finally got to see Asaruto Gâruzu after waiting a few months then missing the Tokyo media screening several weeks back 'cos I had to work my actual day job (doh!). So it kind of rocks that, for Christmas today, I received the DVD-R in the mail and just finished viewing the movie a few minutes back.

I guess I already knew some of what to expect.

If you hadn't twigged already in the course of this rambling blog (if anyone indeed bothers to read it), I'm a huge Mamoru Oshii fan, from right back when I first glimpsed Kōkaku Kidōtai (Ghost in the Shell, 1995) in an obscure Chinatown cinema in Melbourne over a decade ago; I've since watched a couple of fistfuls of his other flicks and have had the opportunity to do two interviews with the man since 2004.

I'm also a bit of an admirer of the four actors here, namely the female leads - Meisa Kuroki (Crow's Zero), Rinko Kikuchi (Babel, and the upcoming film version of Haruka Murakami's Norwegian Wood), and Hinako Saeki (Tachiguishi-Retsuden) - and especially the only male actor, Yoshikatsu Fujiki.

He's been a recurring element in some of Oshii's movies, much like the director's own Basset hound (who unfortunately doesn't appear here).

Fujiki featured in Oshii's early live-action Kerberos saga movie Stray Dog (1991) and was the seiyu (voice actor) who played Kazuki Fuse in the Oshii-written anime Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998).

On top of this background fodder, I also was asked by Francesco Prandoni from Production I.G (god knows why, but I was incredibly chuffed!) to work with him on the English translation rewrite of the lengthy five minute lead-in narration intro to Assault Girls - so I'd been privy to the fact that this was, in some respects, a sequel to Avalon, one of my favourite Oshii movies.

What's the rushed verdict?

Moments both sublime and hilarious; other poignant and, on the flip-side, a little awkward. Funnily enough I'm not sure I was so enamoured with the intro narration I helped negotiate, but once the action kicked into gear (and especially in the moments that the actors used their native Japanese), it kicked serious arse.

Over all I believe I loved the experience Oshii conjured up here, but as I said I just finished watching and I'm probably biased. Give me time to stew on it - and definitely investigate this baby yourself in 2010, if you haven't already.

Hats off to all concerned for something completely different.

Mamoru Oshii's next flick

Have been awaiting this baby for some time now, with whispers circulating round the traps - Mamoru Oshii's first feature-length live-action movie since the brilliant Avalon (2001).

It's called Assault Girls, and will be released in Japan in December.

Until that happens, here's a quality taster from the director of the Ghost in the Shell movies.