Summary: Dark, atmospheric, anime horror/thriller centers around a brave warrior's battle to even the odds against a powerful madman. Despite some striking art, the paper-thin plot/characters leaves horror fans skeptical.
Title Aka:	Demon City
Company/Distributors:	U.S. Manga Corps
Year:	1993
Length:	95 Minutes
Rating:
Genres:	Action, Horror, Fantasy
Format:	Feature Film
Content Level:	Violence: Moderate Sex: N/A Nudity: Mild Profanity: Mild
Comments:	N/A

Synopsis: The evil demonic ruler Levih Rah has been granted incredible powers by the demon world, a world ruled only by him. The demons are various evil creatures which appear in the shadows and darkness destroying everything in their path, which are controlled by Rah's will. Using his incredible destructive powers, he took control over the tokyo district of "Shinjuku"; a place which a skilled ninja tried to save long ago. Ending in a fierce battle with Rah, the brave warrior's death made way for revenge against Rah, by his own son Kyoya; who is also skilled in the deadly art of "ninpo". Nearly ten years after the destruction of Shinjuku, Rah kidnapps a luminary. His daughter Sayaka seeks the help of Kyoya in an attempt to bring her father back. But, Kyoya has intentions of his own. He must destroy Rah and all his evil and bring end to the demon world, freeing "Shinjuku" from a decade of evil rule and destruction. Review: Boy, did I really have to stretch that plot summary thin! Because let me tell you, that's literally what most of the story is about. "Demon City Shinjuku" contains all the basic plot hole elements, cliche overtone and all the convoluted-farfetched melodrama second-rate anime flicks will ever need to have. The story of this film is so basic, so worn and so utterly predictable; it's a shame we have to label certain titles as such, because they are anime (No, Really!?, how many times have we seen movies like this one before). The number of anime films, shows and OAVs have reached a point, when it's extremely difficult for writers to come up with an original storyline, because there have been so many familiar ones in anime before. The dubbing job for the film was terrible, if you want the better version of this I highly recommend the subtitled, however both are not very good at all. But, don't get the wrong impression, "DCS" is not of the worst I've seen in anime. Some aspects of the movie shine more than others, and the film does a considerable decent job in certain aspects. Probably most noticable is the quality of the animation, which is in fact surprizingly good. The battles are fluid, the animation is sharp and the effects are clever. Some of the action sequences in this thing rival many other great anime films. The characters are virtually undeveloped, very mismatched and are as steriotypical as you'll ever get in an anime. I have seen just about enough cliche characters and 2-dimentional personalities to last a lifetime, and I'm not about to be pleased to see it in this film; which actually had a considerable amount of potential. A film which should have been great, is in fact poor; due to the fact of an overlooked storyline and poorly written script. Demon City Shinjuku has no doubt, some rather interesting aspects about it. The entire concept of Rah and his evil powers could have been good, and the characters of Sayaka and Ryoya could have been interesting; but I'm afraid to say that they are not. This movie could have been looked at as a good sci-fi action flick, if they had just considered producing a half-decent storyline. This film probably proves once and for all, that animation isn't everything, and in this movie it really shows. I found this movie to be extremely impetuous, in a sense that nearly every single storyline aspect was greatly overlooked and unconvincing. Just when the viewer recieves an opportunity to better understand one of the characters, either they are absent from the story all together or are killed. This is usually followed by an action sequence of some sort, and though well-executed; by this time it's a bit more than uninteresting. Basically this movie does everything wrong, all at the wrong time. I say this with high regards, despite it's animation quality. This movie reminded me much of titles like "Wrath Of The Ninja". If you really want a good anime movie to watch, I wouldn't recommend picking up this title. Click Here to See Overview!

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