Hello!
Today I’m reviewing this film!
Present day. The world-conquering secret organisation Pig’s Hoof tricks the electronics genius Dr. Obukuro and his assistant Angela Koume into building a terrifying computer virus. An agent of SML, the secret organisation on the side of justice, codename Sex Appeal, steals the case holding the password the machine needs and escapes into the sea off Odaiba. The pleasure boat she takes shelter on turns out to be carrying the teachers and children of Futaba Kindergarten, mid-party. From there it moves to a giant airship, where Sex Appeal and the Kasukabe Defence Force go to work protecting world peace, while Shinnosuke’s mum and dad set off with Himawari to rescue the kids. (C) Yoshito Usui / Futabasha, Shin-Ei, TV Asahi, ADK 1998
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B019A6NBY6
It’s just an animated film, isn’t it?
That reaction is fair enough. But being animation is exactly what lets it put in vehicles and weapons that could never be shot in live action, move its characters in ways live action can’t, and — with no location work needed — set the story anywhere it likes. Worth remembering.
The leader of the secret society “Pig’s Hoof.” A man with a shaved head and glasses, dressed plainly for the boss of a huge evil organisation.
From Wikipedia
Mouse is the enemy boss, scheming to rule the world through cyberterrorism.
One look and it’s obvious he’s modelled on Steve Jobs lol
“Sex Appeal” is a codename and her real name is unknown. A female SML agent whose outfit is nothing but a thin-fabric bodysuit. Early in the story she steals the disc holding the password that activates the secret weapon from Pig’s Hoof headquarters, and flees to the pleasure boat the kindergarten group are riding on. But soon after, the Pig’s Hoof airship pursuing her seizes the boat whole, and she is captured along with Shinnosuke and the others who were too slow to get away.
From Wikipedia
“Muscle” is a codename and his real name is unknown. An SML agent. A big, heavily built man. It starts with him turning up at Hiroshi and Misae’s place to get information about Shinnosuke out of them, and although he ends up swept along by Hiroshi and Misae’s scheming, he winds up working alongside them.
From Wikipedia
Dr. Obukuro is an elderly authority on electronics, a graduate of the University of Tokyo, MIT and the New York Institute of Technology. He is the creator of the computer virus “Buriburizaemon” — back when he lived in Kasukabe, he saw a doodle of Shinnosuke’s that Misae had thrown out of the window and devised the program from it. He was later held by “Pig’s Hoof” along with his assistant Angela Koume, but in fact he was cooperating with “Pig’s Hoof” of his own accord, out of a selfish wish to see his research completed. He believes slippers to be humanity’s greatest invention and wears them wherever he goes. He is a bottom fetishist, with no interest in any part of a woman’s body other than her backside.
Angela Koume is Dr. Obukuro’s assistant. A middle-aged man with a flamboyantly feminine manner, said to have first come to it at the age of 12. The outline of his face closely resembles Shinnosuke’s, something he himself remarks on in the film.
From Wikipedia
There are three enemy lieutenants besides them, specialists in guns, knives and hand-to-hand respectively, and they were strong too!
One of the villains being voiced by Koichi Yamadera is very cool as well.
This film has the staple gags — the recurring camp characters and so on — firmly covered.
And the villains are for real.
Guns, knives, heavy violence — they are seriously out to kill.
The way they set out to pull off a genuine act of cyberterrorism might make it a little like Die Hard 4.0.
And then that final stretch…
It moved me. I cried.
Realism is pursued in the gunfights and the fistfights, and the film is characterised by action scenes of real conviction. Every firearm that appears is a real one, and the model sheets used for the animation are researched and drawn down to details like how the muzzle flash comes off when a shot is fired and how many rounds each weapon holds. For the physical fighting, action films such as Police Story 3 (1992) were used as reference, and in an interview in the film’s programme Hara commented: “We aimed for a slightly old, nostalgic adventure-action film on the theme of fiery friendship.”
From Wikipedia
As that interview makes clear, the close-quarters fighting and the weapons in this film are drawn with real accuracy. Look closely at the animation and the movement of the guns as they fire is drawn to a standard that matches live action. Incredible.
Man, that’s something!!
That skill for deforming the human body just right and landing it inside the Crayon Shin-chan house style!
Without a proper grasp of skeletal structure the perspective falls apart, but there’s none of that here. Genuinely amazing. Rather like Kishimoto-sensei on Naruto!
The firearms that appear are as follows.
It came out in 1998, right around when Apple put out the first iMac!
Back in those early days of the information age, what taste it took to pick cyberterrorism as your theme!
These days the subject is worn out, but this was back then, and a Japanese animated film at that??
Isn’t that amazing?
And as I said earlier, the effort poured into the firearms and the close-quarters fighting is superb.
By the final act there’s a virtual world. VR, in other words, turns up as well!
Using AI to launch the cyberattack is forward-looking too!
Highly recommended! Personally I’d love Hollywood to do a live-action version lol