I showed the trailer of Guilstein to two of my friends, and both of their reactions were the same - a glued grimace and a shake of the head. To call an OVA like this an ‘acquired taste’ would be an understatement, and even to those it’s tasteful to, it’s far from the greatest thing in the world. But, oh boy, was Guilstein one hell of a meal. I found this in the depths of AniList one night whilst I was foraging through unseen OVAs, sorted from least popular to most, time period earliest 1990, time period latest, 2002, along with an assortment of many other tags I can’t care enough to recall. It was then that Guilstein first fell into my lap, and right away, I knew it was something special. Good? Most certainly not, but Special? Most certainly. Only one person I follow had watched it and slapped a hefty ‘2/10’ on its face, which is fair - it has one only a mother could love. Look at that poster!
Holy God.
Braggadociously plastering the ‘3DCG’ label like a badge of honor, Guilstein immediately presents you with its greatest problem, shown off to you barehanded, like a child showing you their mud pie. A pile of shit. A pile of shit with charm. And its premise isn’t much better. Guilstein prides itself on being “full digital (3-D)” when it’s not’s “full digital (3-D)" whatsoever! In fact, it’s a blend of 3D graphics and 2D animation, which is much more intriguing! So right off the bat we have something lost in translation, or at the very least, something lost in interpretation from either a) a stunned viewer or b) someone who’s never seen the film. The “characters designed by” portion is an interesting tidbit, though, denoting a Nirasawa “WELL ACCLAIMED” for his “creature action figures”, and a brief mention of a probably-coked-up Monkey Punch looking to cash in a paycheck for supervising a script.
“Set in the year 2088, it depicts a dark future in which humans have been transformed into the "Guilstein," creatures with no human souls in them...”
That is all left to be said from Guilstein’s premise. That’s all I had to go off of, but yet…There was something behind that guise, behind that “full digital (3-D)” mask that I just had to catch a glimpse of! I had to tear it off, Scooby Doo-style, and see what this beast was really about. So down the rabbit hole I went. Three days ago, I fired up Guilstein at around midnight. This is what I saw.
Right off the bat, we’re greeted with the theme of the movie - “BIO BLOOD SOCIETY” - slapped over some footage of an unknown girl confronting a dangerous monster. And oh boy, does this monster look dangerous. Dangerous to the eyes, that is. You know how the tests for Toy Story caused it to become an entirely different story altogether? So take that innovative ingenuity and dash it against the rocks, because we’re just trying to make a kick-ass OVA, here. This is now. We get our first glimpse of our very first “creature action figure” of the film.
“Why? Tell me why? What the hell is going on?!”- Nicotine, BIO BLOOD SOCIETY
This is a Guilstein. The creature on the poster is ALSO a Guilstein. To Be Explained Later (TBEL). But this Guilstein is an evil Guilstein, a monster with no soul. You can tell because it screams instead of talking and contemplating and crouching on the ground all sad. I’m getting ahead of myself. This Guilstein is evil. It chases our titular protagonist into the depths below, and before she knows it, she’s met with a second, somehow more abrasive-looking Guilstein than before, with an even more imposing figure. He takes the bullets like a champ before collapsing into a heap, much to the dismay of a group of survivors, who soon close in on the girl and start dogpiling her for shooting a creature very similar to the one exploding cars on the surface just minutes ago.
The Underworlders (just kidding they don’t have a name I made this shit up) are a group of people surviving the threat of the Guilsteins by exploiting the boundaries of the corporation’s jurisdiction. Apparently, as long as you stay outside their zones of operation, they can’t hunt you down like dogs. Even though these guys are probably less than five miles away from the border of this jurisdiction, they’re safe..for now? It’s never explained. The Underworlders also have another layer of protection, and it goes by the name of Chaos - a human turned Guilstein that now fights for these rebel forces in hopes of gaining his human body back. He’s depressed. He sulks about his sad backstory. The girl also sulks over her sad backstory. They bond, I think, or at least, as much as packaging tape bonds to a piece of cardboard.
We briefly flash back to Chaos’ life as a non-Guilstein, a bright-eyed white boy scientist with a girlfriend a boyfriend and great promise in his industry. That is, until his girlfriend makes an awful discovery. The experiment they’ve been working on has gone to shit, and turns people’s insides out, covering them with heaps of metal upon metal! Chaos’ girlfriend sobs and sobs with some corny dialogue which nearly matches that of Spy Kids 2’s quality.
Anyways, her and Chaos both agree that this needs to be taken to the public, and as Chaos tells his best friend about this, his best friend eyes him suspiciously. It’s in that moment that even the non-attentive know he’s a goddamn snitch. In this Orwellian society, you can’t even trust your homeboy. So, Chaos gets his door busted down like an absolute chump (that’s what you get for trusting your friend in 1984!), and is forcefully experimented on, making him into the Chaos gremlin we know and love today - The Guilstein.
It’s here where Guilstein loses all of its guile and delves into more of its ‘stein’ side - becoming more of a monstrous amalgamate rather than a mix of potentially interesting high concepts. Guilstein falls into the poor, lower half of B-movies past, taking itself too seriously, to the point of unseriousness and entire boredom. After the flashback stated previously (Guilstein Part 1), Guilstein & Co. resolve to stand against the ultimate authority of the science company previous to stop the Orwellian future from continuing further.
It’s here where you feel the effects of the bubble burst, too. See, Japan had its heyday in the 80’s, much as the nostalgia of modern day America would have it believe you to believe that it was in its past, except Japan was producing optimistic shit upon optimistic shit. From the bubblegum genre of city pop bursting through the mainstream’s consciousness to the excess of media production, they were really hitting it big, and those productions showed. So when the bubble burst in the 1990’s, and production companies weren’t able to spend as much on random direct-to-video OVAs, the entertainment industry tanked. In fact, everything tanked. And Guilstein is a pathetic representation of what was left - an overly ambitious, under-produced product released to the public in spite of its unfinished state. Harrowing, the state of Guilstein is - a half-baked, idea-full, head-empty sci-fi debut reaching for something more than what it could accomplish. Accomplished writer Brandon Sanderson said that most short films aspire to be more than what they are - short films. They’re short films that aspire to be more than their short lengths, and that’s their problem, that they aren’t reveling in their shorter form of storytelling, and there’s some truth to that. Sure, we all want to hit it big when it comes to the Hollywood screen, but aspiring to be more than what you are leaves something empty on screen…And it’s this ‘something empty’ that plagues Guilstein to its core. It wants to be a short OVA of its 80’s hey-days so bad, but was made just twenty years too late. But, goddammit, it tries anyways!
The last half of Guilstein’s irreverent runtime chips away at a plot-less monotony of political nonsense, none of which was hinted at becoming before. Guilstein’s eponymous protagonist wishes himself to become human again, then does, then willingly becomes a Guilstein to topple the ultimate revenge. But the fact that he’s able to turn himself back halfway through the film ruins all sense of dramatic tension - if our protagonist is able to turn himself back, what else are we fighting for? The justice of mankind? Our protagonist was never that just; He just wanted to get back to his partner! And who can blame him? She was absolutely gorgeous? But then, after he switches, she dies, then we lose her, we lose our motivation, and we gain the motivation of revenge. Guilstein feels like the first half to a series we never get to see the rest of - a vengeful spirit lashing his angst out against a world who can never understand him, and whom never wishes to understand him.
We should’ve started John Wick-style, in the middle of the plot, speedrunning past the nonsense, and biting right into the meat of it all - the gorey, petty revenge against forces insurmountable but Deus Ex Machina’d against. Do we focus on the revenge, or do we focus on becoming the monster? Humans are multi-faceted, but characters are not. We needed to focus on one. Just like Guilstein’s animation, it’s much too focused on trying to do too much that it loses sight of doing each individual aspect well.
Guilstein is interesting in that its a microcosm of its time - overambitious, underbudgeted, and overestimated. Everything had to be a smash hit in this time period, everything had to be a Terminator, a Matrix, a Fast & Furious. And, dammit, Guilstein tried! But it just couldn’t follow through on any single shot it threw. Yet, at the same time, that’s what made it so goddamned interesting to follow! Despite being the most middle-of-the-road video animation I’ve seen in a WHILE, Guilstein will stand strong in my mind as one of those series that needed a little bit of funding and a lot more editing. But I’m so glad it exists! I would love to talk to these guys on staff and ask them about their time on Guillstein, if they even remember it. It's shitty project like this that drastically enhance my love for the medium. I love this, and I love these guys!! Even if it didn't turn out the best.
Agent Orange - Living In Darkness
When you’re three Monacos in, and want to replicate that feeling of being in a bar, while not having the devout fear of having your laptop ruined with a couple splashes of Budweiser, here comes Agent Orange! This punk sound ruptures your eardrums in just the right ways that’ll make you want to set high scores of Ms. Pac-Man and try Donkey Kong again before you give up.
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