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by Cheryl Klein |
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Synopsis
It's 2089 and humans have finally regained relative control of the Earth after eons of enslavement by a race of
Demons. A few of the creatures - derivative of the Incredible Hulk augmented by a rather dainty unicorn horn - still
lurk in one particularly blighted part of the city. But battling satanic minions for the planet is far from
Shizuka's mind as Agee, her dashing boyfriend, proposes to her in their posh apartment. No sooner has he slipped the
ring into a glass of pink champagne, however, than he morphs into a growling, slobbering demon.
Shizuka is not the only one interested in Agee - a nightclub owner/demon lackey named Kudo and his evil-being boss
Takamiya kidnap the demonic Agee and lock him up. Bringing a touch of modernity to the ancient battle, a
pharmaceutical company also has a stake, testing a pill that temporarily transforms those who swallow it into
super-strong demons. Copiously ingested, though, the drug causes more permanent effects (the usual headache and dry
mouth suddenly doesn't sound like such a bad disclaimer).
Shizuka's fight to save her fiancé becomes a fight for the human race as well as her sanity, which slips away in
light of her despair - she roams stylized streetscapes in a dreamlike, freeze-frame trance. Luckily she has help in
the form of a goofy-looking art dealer and his blond, Goth friend Tsunami Shijo, a Guardian - Good's answer to Evil's
Demons. The Guardians represent humanity's only chance to escape enslavement.
It's not long before the requisite mecha-aided battle ensues, though the cool, delicate Shijo - who dons nary a
suit of magic armor - is a rather pacifistic hero. But the slithery ghost of his former lover, who encourages him to
fight and then reveals herself to be a demonic apparition, haunts him. The plot resurrects a complicated past and
crams it into an hour-long video, creating a murkiness from which Shijo's conclusion- "Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself" - is not exempt.
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Steeped in mythologies ranging from "Beauty and the Beast" to "King Kong," "Twilight's" dreamy noir style makes
up for some of what its good vs. evil premise lacks in originality. Whether intentional or not, allusions to other
works of sci-fi and horror abound. But in "Twilight" they somehow serve to strengthen believability rather than
appear derivative- the anime works because it utilizes an accepted, cultural vocabulary of noir and pulp images. For
example, the Demon army pounding through the foggy "X-Files"-esque forest in search of Agee wears Storm Trooper white
plastic. More interestingly, the notion of a post-apocalyptic barrio glowing with toxic waste and crawling with
outcasts in the midst of a bustling metropolis leaps straight from the pages of Ryu Murakami's "Coin Locker Babies,"
Japan's answer to the magic realist novel.
Shijo bares striking similarity to graphic novelist Neil Gaiman's Sandman, a sort of feminine rebel who seems
either very bad in his goodness or very good in his badness. Indeed, the film's haziness regarding these types of
opposing forces provides much of its intrigue, though even the most mainstream of American action films now equip
their clean-cut, muscle-bound heroes with a healthy dose of angst.
This dynamic of dark beauty manifests in nearly every frame making it easy to get lost in character
designer/animation director Hisashi Abe's exquisite moments: Shizuka's knee-high black boots hoofing through a
puddle; a couple of Kudo's dominatrix-y employees licking Shijo's wounds with their long tongues. The film's slick
S&M aesthetic combined with an earthier, more archaic tone distract from Shizuka's rather flighty, ineffectual
nature. In fact, the sadness, frustration and ambition so prominent in most of the characters' eyes never completely
find validation in the spotty script. Though carefully drawn physically, they are hastily drawn figuratively.
Ultimately, director Akiyuki Shimbo conveys "Twilight's" story - a battle for humans waged by supernatural
beings whose neediness, ironically, makes them very human - with precise lines and dark shadows; and this perhaps
allows the work to dazzle artistically rather than narratively.
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