Wicked City

Special Edition

Urban Vision

R1 DVD

Web: http://www.urban-vision.com

Wicked City is an adult Anime title from the director of Ninja Scrolls. Wicked City is an impressive and exhilarating Japanese animation experience, but certainly one for adults ! It is the sort of film which has triggered so much interest in Anime, it is graphic in content, both with strong sex and violence and yet includes an intelligent and challenging plot and good character development and interesting twists and turns which keeps you thinking until the end.

It is based on the novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi and explores the interaction between two worlds, our physical world and another one, the Black World, which is a parallel dimension or reality which has much in common with the astral plane or spirit world. This other world has a range of denizens, many of which are powerful shape-changers possessing supernatural powers and abilities, while there are psychics and magicians in our world, they cannot easily match those of the Black World.

A pact has existed between the two worlds to keep them from destroying each other, however, a militant group of Black Worlders are trying to destroy the pact and treat mankind as slaves. As the time for making a new pact is arriving, Taki, a member of the Black Guard in our world and Makie of the Black World are tasked to guard Guiseppe Mayart, an old sorcerer who is believed to be essential to signing a new pact which will last 500 years, or at least that is what it seems. Exactly what the real nature of this pact is or what is so important about Guiseppe Mayart does not really become clear until late in the film and this offers a nice twist in the story.

Wicked City is an enjoyable if not outrageous Anime film; it not only has lots of sex and violence but a wicked sense of humor. Guiseppe Mayart is a superb character, a sort of dirty minded Yoda and the whole film is saturated with wit and humour which adds a further dimension to the unusual plot and bizarre sex, violence and action sequences.

The video quality on Wicked City is the best available, the colours are solid but there is some specks and scratches noticeable, primarily early within the film. The audio is available in Japanese stereo with sub-titles or an English 5.1 dub. The dubbing is very professional and offers a good surround experience which primarily comes into effect in the action sequences.

There are some great extras including character biographies, an interview with the director, trailers and the Urban Vision website with extra content.

Wicked City is a great example of what good Anime can be - entertaining, amusing, challenging and superbly animated.