EIGHT MAN AFTER (1993)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

From what I've been able to learn, EIGHT MAN AFTER was created by a different production team than the previous year's EIGHT MAN.EIGHT MAN. But even though AFTER was an animated project, consisting of four OVA episodes later compiled into a feature, the creators seem to have decided to stick with the somewhat noirish feel of the live-action movie, grounding the hero's adventures in the mean streets of the city, instead of having him fight exotic supervillains.

The anime's story rings in a change in the status quo. At some point in the past, Sachiko-- former girlfriend of the slain man whose intelligence infused the robot body of Eight Man-- finds out that Azuma, the P.I. for whom she's provided secretarial duties, was the speedy superhero. Eight Man, for unclear reasons, simply runs off, and remains absent for years.

During that time, the criminal underworld begins dealing in cyborg-tech that can enhance ordinary humans, be they rogue punks or players in professional sports. Whatever their profession, the users have to also employ drugs to make the enhancements function, and the drugs tend to make people go batshit crazy.

Eight Man appears on the scene, but he seems a much more brutal figure. He shows up when a gang, including an augmented member, are harassing citizens, and the super-fast robot not only takes down the thugs, he rips the artificial arm off the one gangbanger. It turns out that there's a reason, albeit convoluted, for this bizarre behavior, because some nebulous thing happened to the artificial man in his absence. Someone deleted the personality of Detective Azuma, and thus that of the cop Yokoda as well. In the place of this persona, a new persona, a second detective named Hazama, has usurped the guiding intelligence of Eight Man.

The script introduces this major twist and then fails to follow through with any revelations that might have made it meaningful. There's some nugatory subplot in which the underworld killed the original Hazama's sister, and maybe that contributes to his rage problems as a "hero." But the villains are just bargain-basement a-holes, so they don't evoke a great desire for rough justice. It almost feels as if the writers wanted to come up with the greatest amount of emotional torment for Sachiko, the only legacy character from the original series. Perhaps she's a stand-in for the writers' rejection of the original light-hearted heroics. It's almost as if the scribes thought they were the Japanese equivalents of Alan Moore, out to tarnish old idols in the name of realism.

In any event, though there's more super-action here, the film's depressing and ugly, and not worth a second screening.