RE:Animation - Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (part two)

Mamoru Oshii had originally wanted to make Jin-Roh a live-action movie.  

On the one hand, it’s unsurprising because Oshii directed both of the previous Kerberos films.  These were live-action so it follows that he would wish to complete his trilogy in live-action.

On the other hand, it is surprising because Mamoru Oshii is one of the legends of anime.  He started out on the Urusei Yasura TV series in the early 1980s.  Given its budget and time constraints, there wasn’t much he could accomplish there but he did well enough that he got the reigns of Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer. A film that stayed true to its roots but was also lyrically grand, impressionistic, and surprisingly complex it almost had no business being a Lum movie. Nobody was expecting something like that from a UY movie. 

He started his own production company and created the now criminally neglected Patlabor series of OAVs, movies, and TV shows. You can recognize the voice actors from Urusei Yatsura that he dragged along into this new project.

It was about this time that he made the first two Kerberos movies as live-action.  He was about to move on to Jin-Roh but had to put it on the backburner due to the surprising complexity of the anime project he was already committed to.  A little flick called, Ghost in the Shell. 

As I said he’d wanted to make Jin-Roh live-action but the great Asian Economic Meltdown of the late 1990s tanked every economy on the Pacific rim.  Oshii couldn’t get funding for a live-action but given his status, he had no trouble finding funding for an animated Jin-Roh.  And if he hadn’t swallowed that pill Jin-Roh would be as well known today as The Red Spectacles and Stray Dog.

Although, some aspects of Oshii’s frustration with being unable to make Jin-Roh live-action are in self-evidence. 

Exhibit one: This film while animated is not anime.  The sapience-deadening lighting fast epilepsy bait that all too often defines anime, is almost completely absent in Jin-Roh. This film is the slow burn of a wet fuse. It makes its way along, lazily, with only a few bright and loud pops. The people you see are people, not anime characters at all. They look completely Japanese. 

Exhibit Two: The technical authenticity was excruciatingly accurate.  The most common cars in this 1950s Japan were not the Toyota Toyopet Crown, (so popular in Godzilla movies), but Volkswagon beetles. Unless you were important then you were driving or rather being driven in a Mercedes-Benz. The combat rifles were StG 44s, the pistols were kind of a mixed bag, more Lugars and Mausers than there should have been but arguably these would have been German castoffs. The attention to detail was absolutely painstaking. 

Exhibit Three:  Oshii was painting on a huge canvas and perhaps more of a one than his budget allowed for.  There is no getting around it, the animation is herky-jerky in spots. Strongly indicating post-Asian Economic Meltdown budget cuts were being made where they would cause the least damage.

Fuse was the Special Unit member that refused to fire on the satchel bomber at the start of the movie.

The bombing created a serious problem for Kerberos.  It was a very public screwup at a time when they were looking vulnerable. Public sentiment was starting to matter in that alternate history Japan* and Kerberos’ heavy-handed methods were never popular to begin with.

Fuse is assigned back to training while Kerberos tries to decide if he’s to be reassigned given his abilities are off the chart, or if he’s simply too PTSD riddled to be of any further use.  Fuse for his part, appears to be obsessed with the Red Riding Hood who killed herself in front of him.  A friend in the metro police lets him know what the regular cops knew about her, including her name.  He goes to the columbarium she’s interred in and is shocked to see her there.

But’s not her. The woman tells him, “My sister is dead and the Organization can have no further use for her, just leave us alone.”  Fuse corrects her mistake and she introduces herself as Kei Amemiya. And they start talking.

He admits his part in her sisters death and she takes it perhaps a little too well.

This part of the film is very slow burn. While Jin-Roh does have action scenes this film is mostly quite thoughtful. Kei finds an old copy of Little Red Riding Hood that her “sister” had and gives it to Fuse.  

All of the Kerberos stories have had a strong canine motif, this one is no exception.  This version of the Red Riding Hood story is used as a framing device for the rest of the film.  It’s quite a bit grizzlier than even the Brothers Grimm version. In this iteration the Wolf who betrays by pretending to be someone who is loved and trusted tricks Little Red Riding Hood into eating her mother’s flesh and drinking her blood.

Kei and Fuse develop a very tight relationship.  Since this was a Kerberos story some impressionism was a requirement.  Fuse has a dream where he is walking with a wolf pack.  He tries to protect Kei from them but they tear her to pieces and devour her.

Fuse appears to be losing himself as the plot to eliminate the Special Unit is hatched by various factions of the civian police and government.  Kerberos is to be dismantled and its functions and personnel divided up. The authorites just need another public scandal to make this happen.  There is some concern, however.  A secret group of fanatics within the Special Unit called Jin-Roh is known to exist.

Regardless, they have a scandal warmed up in the batter’s box ready to go.  Kei was not her sister.  Kei was a Red Riding Hood with an extensive terrorist resume.  They set her up to meet Fuse in his already vulnerable state. They have several pictures of her with what looks like another bomb satchel and was photographed handing it to Fuse.  The love affair between Fuse and Kei, combined with what looks like a bomb should be scandal enough to destroy Kerberos. 

The Tokyo Police take Kei into custody and seclude her.  Fuse breaks in and rescues her. He takes her into the sewers, to the exact spot where the fighting took place at the start of the movie.  You could tell by the detailed bullet pockmarks on the wall.  Kei tells him everything and begs him to run away with her.

Now comes all the important twist in a Kishōtenketsu story structure. 

Jin-Roh agents arrive at their location. Kei is terrified but Fuse rises and they start strapping him into a suit of Protect Gear.  The leader of Jin-Roh explains things to Kei while Fuse armors up. 

They knew about the Tokyo police’s plot from the start and their scandal is about to be turned around and played back on them.  Fuse never had instructions and never needed them. Whatever personal problems he had a wolf always protects the pack.   The leader of Jin-Roh tells, Kei, “Now you can see the real Fuse.” As Fuse puts on his gas mask the eyes turn red, offering no window to his soul and no source of mercy. 

And with the ripping metal sound of an MG-42, Fuse hunts, runs down, and kills the policemen that had come to arrest them as any wolf should.

They are later in a secluded spot and the chief tells Fuse the Kei has to be killed.  She’s far more of a threat to them alive than she is dead.  Kei hugs Fuse and starts crying out the last lines of the Red Riding Hood story.  “What red eyes you have! What sharp teeth you have!”  Our protagonist is in the same place he started out in.  He’s been ordered to kill a known terrorist. Fuse screams but pulls the trigger anyway.  He has rejected the man and is now the wolf.

The movie is over.

The word “Jin-Roh” is constantly being mistranslated as “werewolf.”  

AI has propagated this error at light speed. The Japanese don’t actually have a lycanthropy myth. There are some Yokai that take the form of a wolf but that’s as close as they get.  Jin-Roh translates more accurately as Wolf-Man and it’s clearly meant to refer to the protagonist Kazuki Fuse.

Wolfs while extinct, are still revered in Japan. They were viewed from times of ancient past as protectors more than predators.  In a world where crops were often balanced on a knife’s edge between survival and starvation, a wolf stalking off with a rabbit in its bloody jaws was a welcome sight indeed. And if a wolf occasionally made off with a peddler’s child was that not its right? Was that not its lawful tax collected?  

They were terrifying if you met them but it was a necessary terror to be endured if society was to survive.

In 1999 a world of terrorism and what a society will tolerate from those that will do terrible things to inflict an atrocious peace was a, “what if”  Now we ask those questions every day.

In looking over this review, I honestly know I haven’t done justice to it.  There is simply too many veins that need to be mined and I was panning for gold. It has its flaws but they are easily papered over.

While now a quarter of a century old this motion picture holds up in terms of relevance as few films from the 1990s can.

The Dark Herald Recommends with Enthusiasm (4.7 / 5)

*Kerberos back story/history.  I went over it only briefly in the last installment and frankly got some key events wrong.   Japan did NOT ally with the United States.  In that world, the USA was iron clad isolationist in both world wars. Japan allied with the British in WWI and stayed that way. With no real threat of invasion from Britain being possible Germany focused on Russia and had some technical breakthroughs with their powered armor called Protect Gears, which allows them to win the Battle of Stalingrad.  Although, nuclear weapons probably helped a lot more. Nagasaki and Hiroshimi get turned into glass in this timeline too.  However, the Staufenberg Plot succeeds. Hitler is killed and the Weirmacht completely purges the Nazis. Japan is occupied by the new Wiemar government.