Left 4 Dead Ovagames
Basemat Doolen
I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.
This is more the sort of thing I was hoping to discover: an overall so-so yet still somehow fascinating multimedia blitz that included a live-action sci-fi movie, a subsequent anime OVA prequel series, and then a video game based on that prequel. Japan at its most Hollywood. 1994's Iria: Zeiram the Animation, based on 1991's Zeiram (the Not-Animation), follows the adventures of the eponymous scrappy young bounty hunter as she goes on her first solo mission prior to the events of the live-action movie it follows in which she's a little more seasoned and cautious. The animation also retcons a major plot point of the movie, but I'll get into all that in the next section.
Zeiram was directed by Keita Amemiya, who often worked on tokusatsu shows (particularly Kamen Rider) but also dabbled quite a bit in character designs for video games, including Final Fantasy XIV, Shin Megami Tensei IV, two Onimushas, Clock Tower 3, and Rudra no Hihou. The dude clearly loves his bizarre monsters, creating an unpredictable nemesis in Zeiram who frequently shifts forms as a defensive tactic. The movie stars Yuko Moriyama as its lead, Iria, and Kunihiro Ida and Yukijiro Hotaru as the two hapless Earthling electricians drawn into the conflict between Iria and Zeiram. Zeiram himself is played by mo-cap performer Mizuho Yoshida, who later went on to perform as both Solid Snake and Naked Snake (far as I can tell Zeiram does not know the basics of CQC). Even before we get into the Zeiram video game tie-in, it feels like this franchise is already deeply connected to that medium. As well as the anime prequel from 1994, there was another live-action movie released that same year: Zeiram 2.
In the wordless intro, Zeiram is introduced as something between Darth Vader, the Yojimbo summon from Final Fantasy X, and an ominous yurei from a J-Horror as he (she? it?) cleaves through a hallway filled with disposable space-goons in EVA suits. It's shot in monochrome - a trick to avoid a harsher rating, perhaps, since those Amogus dudes got real messed up - and you occasionally get glimpses of what looks like one of those ancient Japanese nobles with the white faces and black teeth, which turns out to be Zeiram's "main head." There's a bunch of ominous religious chanting throughout the whole scene, juxtaposed with the gunfire and the viscera gloops created when the spacemen bought it. It was trippy as hell overall. Spoilers for the rest of the movie but this chanting follows Zeiram everywhere at all times, along with some heavy stomping of what are clearly rubber feet.
It then suddenly transitions to modern day (for 1991) Tokyo with the aforementioned couple of human idiots complaining about their day jobs, and already I'm wondering if this movie had a budget at all and how much of it was spent solely on the monster suit. We also spot Iria here: she's buying groceries and then putting the groceries away in her next scene, so we're knee-deep in the realm of out-there science-fantasy. However, it's this scene with her AI companion Bob that the other shoe drops: the movie's pulling a Suburban Commando on us, and Iria's on a stake-out on some backwater planet (ours) in order to launch an ambush on a passing Zeiram. Getting back to that budget, there's some real fun 1991 computer displays as Iria and Bob set up some kind of virtual trap "zone" in which to ensnare Zeiram as they argue about the bounty, and then we're hit with the late title card.
Afterwards, the two electricians barge into Iria's hideout because it's presumably using god-knows how much juice to power up all those off-world IBMs running the latest Windows 3.0 screensavers and all three of them get sucked into the same digital arena that Zeiram is trapped in, leading to a cat-and mouse chase through a virtual zone that looks suspiciously like the Japanese suburbs after it's become dark enough out that everyone's already gone home. I swear I've seen something just like this on Home Movies. I just need Coach McGuirk to show up and tell Iria about the time he bought all those swords from the shopping channel. The rest of the movie is just Iria and Zeiram getting the drop on one another with increasingly improbable new guns and new monster forms (respectively) while the comic relief humans do their darnedest to stay alive.
All jokes aside, Zeiram's actually kinda imposing once you get past the costume. Beyond the ever-present ominous chanting soundtrack he's near indestructible, has a whole bunch of innate biological weaponry and alternative forms, and is capable of spawning and controlling strange gooey goblins that look like something out of a Critters knock-off. Each of these minions is based on the DNA of organic material Zeiram has recently eaten: at some point that includes a fleshy chunk out of one of the humans which becomes a half-formed "gooman" in one of the movie's more disturbing scenes. Also, that little face of his can launch itself out via a tentacle and bite through solid steel; it's some seriously creepy xenomorph shit. The movie itself is slow as hell and not particularly engaging beyond its atmosphere, creature effects, and infrequent combat scenes - many of which feel right out of a Super Sentai show, befitting the director's background - but it does a fine enough job setting up the spooky, Terminator-esque implacable menace of Zeiram and the cocky brusqueness of Iria. Let's see if the anime can improve on it.
Iria: Zeiram the Animation is a six-episode OVA from Ashi Productions - a studio that made, among many others, the F-Zero and Mega Man anime adaptations (they also worked on the US animated Mega Man show, which - Peter Lorre Cutman aside - did more for the Blue Bomber than Captain N ever did). It's set several years before Zeiram, though breaks continuity a little by having Zeiram also show up in this anime: it's implied in the movie that Zeiram was just some bounty Iria was chasing that proved to be almost more than she could handle. If the events of the cartoon are to be believed she would've been way more wary about chasing the thing (as should Bob, for reasons I'll get into). Like last time, I'm making sure to remember to post the OP: it's pretty good.
The anime definitely has a Perfect Dark Zero vibe right off the bat: rather than the self-assured solo hunter we saw in the movie, this untested rookie (though still overconfident) Iria relies on her family unit of mercs a bit more and in particular her highly-competent brother Gren/Glen, the local jerkass rival Fujikura, and their mission handler Bob. That is to say, Bob the human, who kinda resembles Yang from Final Fantasy IV here. I anticipated that she'd tragically lose these companions upon meeting Zeiram at some point late in the OVA, but they take care of most of that in the very first episode: Iria, Glen, and Bob fly off to a hijacked freighter to discover the hijacker is our ol' buddy Zeiram, who was taken off his homeworld as a would-be biological superweapon (some more shades of Alien) but got himself free and has managed to take over the ship's computer with his shapeshifting abilities while brutally butchering most of the crew. In rescuing the few survivors, Bob takes a near-fatal gnawing to the gut by Zeiram's creepy head-tentacle and Glen stays behind to set the self-destruct to ensure Zeiram's annihilation. So much for gradually developing Iria's tragic backstory, but I guess in a way it's smart to get the known quantities out the way with and spend the rest of the time building up Iria as a newly solo bounty hunter.
From that point on, Iria: Zeiram the Animation slips into an almost episodic structure where Iria is left to take on missions herself and bounces from one adventure to the next, though usually with some connective tissue from the previous episodes. One of those being, of course, Zeiram's constant revivals because, well, you know how it is with unstoppable bio-weapons harboring vindictive streaks (did the Resident Evil devs watch this anime a lot?).My dude will just randomly pop into an episode at any moment like Kramer shoving Jerry's door open. The second episode has Iria crash-land in the slums section of a resort planet after her transport was sent flying from the freighter's self-destruct, and mucks around with some local criminal urchins until Zeiram also lands nearby in a beaten state and the rest of the episode has them duking it out across some space-favellas. We also find out that Glen's alive, or possibly not: a cryptic garbled transmission is all we hear from him.
The third episode has Iria make it back to her home planet of Myce, but runs afoul of the earlier-established political scene: members of the "Tedan Tippedai," apparently the local government, had plans to cover up their culpability in the Zeiram weaponization business after deleting all record of it and quietly disposing of all involved. Iria's the only loose end after they've eliminated the survivors and poor old Bob, but a returning Fujikuro helps her stay one ahead of the assassins. Naturally he's only in it for the money, and his client is none other than the computerized Bob that all of us long-time fans of the movie are familiar with. Bob directs Iria through the Tedan Tippedai building - which looks like a giant mushroom, kinda neat - to unveil those responsible for the cover-up as well as rescue him from his isolated system.
The fourth episode sees Iria finally get her official hunter license (I guess blowing up half the government HQ wasn't a disqualifier) and then go to work rescuing one Dr. Touka, who conveniently happens to be the only official Zeiram researcher still around, from a bunch of kidnappers. The twist here is that the kidnappers are already dead - they got ate by you-know-who - and finally the show brings out one of Zeiram's more impressive abilities from the movie: creating mutant doppelgangers from samples of living organic matter. One of those doppelgangers happens to be Glen, or something that looks like him, leading to a bit of internal strife on Iria's part. Something else that causes internal strife is the big ol' sword Iria uses to run him through, though I suspect this won't be the last Glen clone we see or the last time Iria's shaken by his sudden reappearance.
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