The Wolf Brigade

It is a Japanese animated movie but it is one of those movies where the film makers chose to reject the constraints and expectations of the genre. The art style is very realistic and the characters look very distinctly Asian instead of the normal anime abstractions. The line quality is hyper detailed but the paint style is flat with no secondary colors to the fills giving a posterized look to the movie.

Jin-Roh is a modern example of world cinema because despite it's 1998 Japanese origin it had heavy infusions of Neo Film Noir and melancholy European dramas.

The film is set in an alternative history Japan of the early 1960s where Nazi Germany was the only super power after World War 2. It is just a setting and is not important to the story. The plot is not about international politics but the Nazi fascist influences pepper the art direction and help create a sense of emotional displacement and looming military oppression. The police have Gestapo looking uniforms and carry Lugers while the streets of Tokyo are full of VW Beetles.

The country is full of violence, protest, and rebellion and an underground revolutionary group is trying to violently overthrow the Japanese government.

Jin-Roh Red Riding Hood with bombConstable Fuse ( pronounced Foo Seh ) is a member of the federal police force called the Capital Police or the Keboros. The Capital Police are clad in their protective armor that makes them look menacing and non-human but at the same time it is logically designed and functional

During a counter attack in a riot he encounters a teen age female terrorist (a little red riding hood ) who has been delivering bombs to terrorist cells. He hesitates in shooting her and she freaks out and detonates her bomb almost killing Fuse.

He is not badly harmed due to luck and his protective armor and he is sent back to the training academy due to his choking under the gun. He socially withdraws from everyone in his lack of coping with the post traumatic stress of the suicide bombing.

At a visit to her grave he encounters her "older sister" who is an uncanny resemblance to the original girl. She gives Fuse a copy of the Russian folk tail Little Red Riding Hood (the grim bloody version). The rest of the movie is a tale of betrayal, double crosses, counter espionage and police politics and the two police organizations fighting a secret war for domain and power.

The tale of Little Red Riding hood is narrated and edited in to Fuse's day dreams in a montage worthy of Sam Spade. It is both brilliant and chilling.

The DVD is in WideScreen format as it should be. The English version is surprisingly well acted and I actually prefer it to the original Japanese.

The violence in the gun battles is horrific. They just don't get shot and slump over but the automatic weapons fire turns their bodies into meat sauce. Not really for the kiddies but I was surprised to see that Wal- Mart once carried this DVD.

I first saw this film when I was fighting a fever and it took several more viewings before I could fully comprehend the brilliance of this movie. The plot is not impossible to follow but artisticly it works on multiple levels. It is brilliant but it was not the feel good movie of 1998 Japan

For more information for this anime you can visit:

Movie : 700M , Coding Div3

Link:

Eng HBo

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