GyoAKA: "The Fish" (Literal title)
Reviewed by Kadath. J.B.
Directed by Takayuki Hirao
Produced & Animated by Ufotable Studio
Based upon the manga of the same name, by Junji Ito
Release: February 15th, 2012
Length: 75 minutes
Viewed: At home, rental disc
Content Rating: Unrated (Presumed R: Contains graphic gore, some nudity, and gruesome/disturbing imagery.)
Score: (Out of 4):
CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS!
I am not someone you would call the worlds greatest graphic novel/manga/comic/whatever-you-want-to-call-it fan, but needless to say - there are exceptions. Arguably one of the greatest exceptions is Junji Ito, a Japanese horror author. Ito has a style all his own, often creating surrealistic and unnerving supernatural tales with heavy body horror themes that start off small and simple but build to a grand, practically mythological scale. Arguably my favourite work of his is Uzumaki, but if there had to be a second place it would be
Gyo. While I prefer Uzumaki's story, I will admit that Gyo succeeds on a higher level as horror. Gyo is much more disturbing and delves deeper into grotesque and foul body horror than most of his work. When I heard that Gyo was being adapted, I was simultaneously stoked... and worried.
See, Ito has translated into film with mostly negative results. Arguably the biggest failure, and stain on his legacy, was the god awful adaptation of
Tomie, which somehow managed to gain a ridiculous number of sequels despite them all being fucking awful (Though admittedly, the first one was the worst so I guess that makes the sequel... better?) and the adaptation of Kakashi, one of his few dramatic works, was a snooze fest. The only Ito adaptation thus far that has managed to entertain me was Uzumaki -
previously reviewed on this site; and even it did not truly do the manga justice, but it was fun enough and at least retained the unique visual style while creating a cool atmosphere of its own. So... how does the recent animated adaptation of
Gyo fare?
*sigh* Not well. While it doesn't fail as hard as Tomie or its sequels, it maddened me. It is a shame because there was effort put into this flick, the animation and artwork is actually not half bad and admittedly when Ito's monstrosities find their way on screen, they look just as terrifying and foul as they did in the manga.
Admittedly, at least they got these right. These things are still fucking scary, especially in motion. The main problem with the film is that while it *does* retain a decent facsimile of the mangas story, it takes so many strange detours and alterations that cheapen what made the manga so great and only ends up becoming frustrating for fans of the source material and the disappointment only becomes stronger when witnessing the fact that genuine effort was at least put into the production.
Gyo tells the tale of a young woman named Kaori, and begins as she and her school friends Erika and Aki (One of the first baffling changes, more on why in a bit.) are heading out to a cabin for a bit of post-grad R&R. Something is immediately amiss, as a horrid stench - described as the stench of death - fills the cabin, and they soon discover the source to be a fish.. walking on spidery legs. After "killing" the fish, things get stranger when the next day they are attacked by a shark that too, has legs. The rest of the story plays out with Kaori attempting to reach Tokyo and rescue her husband Tadashi, as the strange walking fish run rampant across Japan; killing many in stampedes and filling the air with the stench of death, and even stranger people soon find themselves becoming infected and bloated with a mysterious gas.
For fans of memes, here you go. Yep, this is where the door busting shark comes from. As mentioned before, the main problem with the film are the many frustrating alterations to the manga. I expected the film to be different, and I was open to them changing some things - but the
way they changed them were often poor, poor mistakes. One of the first discrepencies I had was with the "characters" of Aki and Erika, as well as the separation of Kaori and Tadashi. In the manga, Kaori & Tadashi were going on their honeymoon, and Erika & Aki did not exist. The manga created an arch for both Tadashi & Kaori, and the bond between them was used to later manipulate the reader into feeling sadness and disgust when the mysterious gas infects Kaori, and Tadashi tries to save his dying wife and discovers the dark truth behind the walking fish, the death stench, and the infectious gas. Kaori is an okay enough protagonist for this film, but separating her from Tadashi means that you gain little time to care about what happens to him; and it is of note that the roles have been somewhat reversed, as it is Tadashi who becomes infected rather than Kaori - which is a change that could have been tolerable, had they still been together for the story.
Erika and Aki are not given much character, here is the short version of who they are: Erika - A slut and the fan-service character. Aki - Stereotypical introverted girl who is as such because she is slightly less attractive/popular. The writers of this adaptation seem to think that you will grow to like Erika simply because she is "hot," and this fact is *painfully* drawn out in a scene where an infected Erika sees herself in a mirror, sheds a tear, and we get flashes of her tits and photos of her being fucked. Oh, how sad - a characterless slut is no longer pretty. Big whoop. And again, this is a strange change from the manga - a scene borrowed from when the infected Kaori sees her infection, and sheds a tear seeing how horribly disfigured it has made her - and leads to a rather surreal suicide attempt, of which the films atmosphere may have benefited of.
Because
THIS is what Gyo needed to work as a movie. FFS.
However, let's stop whining for a few moments and focus on some of the
positive aspects, as it isn't all bad. As stated above, the animation is actually not half bad - and is above average for an OVA made by a studio usually working on television animation. I'm not the worlds biggest fan of the common "anime" art style, and while Ito's slightly more realistic human designs are not emulated, but the artists did find their own way of creating more realistic humans - which does help provide a nice contrast between the surrealistic monster designs and horrific images that dominate the films latter half, a strong point in most of Ito's manga. The latter half also does show the films highest promise, the atmosphere is executed well and the more disturbing monsters, the walking machines carrying human infected, are visualized perfectly and are still an unpleasant and grisly sight.
Scenes like this are actually pretty creepy. There's also some pretty good gore, to keep you gore hounds happy. There is also admittedly a pretty cool scene involving a plane, and a
looot of the weirdass walking fish.
Lulz ensue. But the story still drops the ball here, with some stupid plot holes and points. Two that I simply cannot ignore, both seem to imply that the writers do not understand how recorded and live footage works. In one scene, Kaori and a reporter character (I forgot his name, sorry. That's how memorable he was.) are watching a video that the
reporter himself recorded from a hospital, and when a patient being wheeled in shows signs of infection - the reporter looks as shocked and horrified as Kaori and asks what the hell was going on, despite the fact
he recorded the footage himself, by hand and saw the event. Later, in the laboratory of Tadashi's Uncle, Dr. Koyanagi Kaori and Mr. Reporter guy discover an exposition dump in a quick time file, you see the quick time logo and everything. However, at the end of the video something bad happens - and Kaori and Mr. Reporter guy rush to the basement, and discover that the quick time file that was stated to be pre-recorded
and a fucking quick time file was live footage from Koyanagi's basement. Wut.
So... that's Gyo. The first animated adaptation of a Junji Ito manga, and it fails. Hard. Not miserably - but hard. I wanted to like this, but even some of the moody and atmospheric moments in the films second half cannot save this hackneyed adaptation. I recommend that anyone interested in this read the manga instead, it is easily one of the greatest horror comics - regardless of its origin and style. Only watch this if you are too lazy to read, there are at least a
couple good moments.
One of the few images added that genuinely freaked the fuck out of me. Sweet dreams.