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An adult in age & size, Ichi resembles a six-year- old when he is
released from the mental ward of a prison into the care of a certain
doctorTanabe after a history of severe violence. In a flashback, this
story is revealed, as Ichi was bullied for most of his schoolyears,
until the violence holed up inside him broke free when he witnessed,
during the vivisection of a living frog, that he got an erection. His
equation of sex & violence was further augmented by seeing his
parents engage in SM-sex, finally causing him to kill his parents &
fellow students alike, which sent him to prisonm in the first place. Back
out again, he gets bullied again but refrains from fighting back, until,
in Karate-class, he meets Midori, whom he sees defending herself
successfully against a group of attackers, causing him getting an
erection. She feels flattered by that form of Approvement & invites
him to a hotel-room, where she reveals she is into SM-sex, with her at
the receiving end, & soon has herself violently beaten up. Later, in
a park, Ichi is bullied again, & all the violence once again holed
up inside him erupts, causing him to kill 3 assailants. Midori informsTanabe about all this, who was only interested in
getting a killing machine to do his bidding in the first place, Midori was his bait,
& Ichi will be his killer ... Another of these origin-episodes nobody needed. Although
Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer
was rather weak on characterizations, it did succeed in giving us a
vague but sufficient idea of Ichi's reasons for killing, this anime on
the other hand does not provide any new information other than a few
psychological commonplaces which are mostly so blunt it is embarrassing
(the kid seeing his parents have SM-sex, thus getting an erection
whenever seeing violence is not exactly what Iwould call subtle, is it).
This bluntness is also what pretty much ruins this anime as a
stand-alone movie, apart from the rather weak storytelling, with an
anding that is left a little too open for anyone who hasn't seen Miike's
live action movie. Likewise, in style or animation, the movie has little
to offer, instead relying on in-your-face gore & effects, all of
which have been seen better elsewhere. |