Cert

Shutendoji

Oh boy. Here we go again! It's another Go Nagai opus, and the blurb talks up about battles with darkness and demons and stuff. Sorry, but it's hardly inspiring stuff really...

A Go Nagai flick. It features a boy with a hidden past and powers, a girlfriend that gets caught in the middle, demons - this time Oni, with apologies to any Urusei Yatsura fans reading this - sexual displays and HOOTERS. If you've seen Devilman, then you've probably got a reasonable idea of the story, which starts when a couple of battling Oni finish up by a shrine where one bequeaths a baby to a couple praying there. This baby, Jiro, then grows up into a boy with a disturbing line in nightmares, a very offish way towards his girlfriend and an enemy who seems to be out to do him in.

As this progresses it begins to take some semblance of a plot, with many substories involved, but little originality. Space and time shifts, cronies for and against Shutendo, all have been seen before on other titles. Perhaps I am being a little hard on Go, especially as I am getting passingly interested in some of the plotlines (I write this after watching part 3) but I have seen nothing as yet to make me change my mind overall. Part four needs to be a real corker or else I may swear off Go Nagai permenantly!

I was watching this as an alternative to enduring another bout of TFI Friday while talking on IRCnet's #anime (hiya |Gaijin|, Inu_Yasha and anyone else who was there at the time!) and what I saw was typically Go Nagai. It has many similarities with Devilman, but its main attributes I've already mentioned. It's certainly not the most violent thing he's done, and it doesn't have the humour of Kekkou Kamen or Hanappe Bazooka, but the story is reasonable thus far. It certainly warrants its 18 cert though, especially when one Oni sticks his tongue out! A late night anime for filling time...

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