Demon City Shinjuku

Demon City Shinjuku is an old school anime film animated by studio Madhouse & Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri of Ninja Scroll & Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust fame. This is actually gonna be a 2 (potentially 3) part review series of Demon City, Wicked City, & if I’m up for it, Ninja Scroll. Aside from Kawajiri directing Wicked & Demon City, along with both of them being novel’s originally, they aren’t related to my knowledge. Lets go

Story: 4/10

The story in Demon City is kinda bad. The plot itself on paper isn’t too bad. It’s merely about this guy trying to save the world from being consumed by Rah, who’s power grows from human suffering. Not too bad, but the problems arrive from how bare bones the plot it. This plot is underdeveloped. Rah’s motivations are stated but not elaborated upon. What made him want to become more powerful? For example. Stuff like that isn’t explained or elaborated upon in the movie. The way Kyoya decides to go fight Rah is pretty forced. He meets Sayaka randomly as he’s biking home, & once she runs off to save her dad he just decides ‘damnit..” & goes off to Demon City to help her. The plot barely happens through most of the movie. It’s largely a backdrop just for the setting, which I’ll get to later. Overall, the story in Demon City is bad, but not awful.

Characters: 4/10

The characters are uninteresting. They only have 1 personality trait & nothing else. Kyoya is the hero of the story. He starts off refusing to go to Demon City, which might make him a somewhat interesting character, but this is for naught, as he just becomes the hero of the story once he meets Sayaka anyway. Sayaka is the girl, the useless girl that is. To be fair, Sayaka does do 2 things that somewhat progress the plot. One of which stopping a demon child, the other being giving the ring to “Kid” (yes that’s his name) so that her & Kyoya can sleep in a certain room/progress past him. Other than that she’s absolutely useless & is basically dead weight throughout the entire movie. Right on cue, we have Kid, a brat. Nothing more, just a brat. Then we have Rah, evil for evils sake with lackadaisical motivations & a non-existent personality. As I’ve beaten into the ground by now. The characters all suffer from being 1 dimensional & lacking a personality.

Art: 9/10

Demon City is beautiful. The setting of Demon City is lush & creepy. The colors & atmosphere really seel the creepy & evil vibe of the city. The animation is fluid & flows seamlessly. Rather they be action scenes or smaller scenes with not as action-packed movement. The action sequences contain this same flow & are really well directed, staged, structured, they’re not as good as the action scenes in something like Wicked City, but they’re still pretty damn good. Character designs are also pretty solid even if Rah looks like a generic evil villain. The designs sell these characters pretty well & they look great against the backdrops. The art is definitely the strongest part about Demon City Shinjuku without a doubt in my mind.

Sound: 7/10

The sound in this movie was good. The voice acting is nothing special but it’s pretty solid. Some decent line delivery, good acting, It’s all there. The sound mixing for the voice acting is pretty quiet on the other hand, which is rather unfortunate. The sound design is also pretty solid, the ambience helps to sell the creepy vibe & visuals of the city. Explosions also have that nice crunch to them on top of looking really good to begin with. The music is also pretty kick ass (whenever the odd tune does play anyway). It’s got a nice 80s rock with some elements of metal & disco (albeit minor elements of disco) thrown in there for good measure.

Overall: 6/10

Demon City isn’t a good movie. But I liked it for the aesthetics and atmosphere. The story is pretty bad with lackadaisical progression, barely being there in the first place, & underdeveloped in several areas. The characters are also completely uninteresting & lacking in personality. But, the setting & atmosphere of this movie are really good. The visuals & atmosphere are the sole reason I’m giving this one a 6/10. I’ll be honest, I value aesthetics quite a lot of the the anime I watch. I love it when the visuals themselves can sell me on a setting, & I think Demon City does a pretty good job at doing that. The atmosphere & vibe is also really good, as the ambiguity in the sound design helps to sell the creepy nature of a destroyed city overran by demons. All in all, unless you’re an aesthetic nut/want to see some really good visuals, decent action sequences, & here some pretty good music (every once in awhile at least) then I wouldn’t recommend this movie due to the bad plot & lackadaisical characters. As a history lesson It’s okay & worth the watch, for anything else aside from aesthetics, this movie isn’t it, & I would recommend you steer clear from this one.