Last night we formed a Google Hangout to watch Gyo, an anime “based” (cough) on Junji Ito’s Gyo. I hadn’t read the original since maybe 2008, so the details of the story aren’t so fresh. Still, I did feel the persistent, sneaking suspicion—as did my fellow Ito fans—that certain liberties had been taken with the source material. Ito’s original was a dark, plodding work of Lovecraftian horror with surreal nightmare-logic; it has been really sexed-up. And then all the explosions! It is a really bombastic, absurd adaptation. It totally aberrates from prescription.
But all the three-ways, upskirt angles, and tentacle penetration aside, we objectively had to applaud the heroine’s new agency, as well as the movie’s handling of the material’s final third, which was appropriately psychedelic. I have really complicated feelings about this movie! I am not recommending it, but I will probably watch it more than once!
We all landed a few zingers, even though we were also trying to take the movie just as seriously as we could. At one point there are mass riots in the street (I think there’s a lot of purposeful #ows imagery? Do they know about #ows in Japan, even?), and two bros are fighting, and then a shark with legs runs up and chomps one of them. It was so Zombi, I could not even.
“Landshark wins every argument!” I hooted into my netbook’s camera.
“Brb making meme,” Kris typed.
And then she did!
Thanks, you guys, for letting me very slowly eat a single Lean Pocket straight through the movie.
