The Daily Telegraph October 17, 1992, Saturday SECTION: Pg. 117 LENGTH: 810 words HEADLINE: The Arts: Beyond Endurance? Tristan Davies sees the comic-book violence of Japan's animated films BYLINE: By TRISTAN DAVIES BODY: WHEN the winged riders of the apocalypse finally turn up, they'll presumably be riding big Japanese motorbikes; not tame two-wheeled Suzukis or Kawasakis, but mega-cc monobikes of the kind that scream across the screen in a sea of fire in Venue Wars (Manga Video, 15, £12.99). Big bikes and landscapes of violent post-apocalyptic chaos are regulars in the world of Manga, the latest Japanese export to gain a toehold in Europe. As eastern cultural phenomena go, Manga is somewhat removed from the elegance of the Japanese water garden recently created by expats at my local park in west London. It is much noisier, for a start; and it's now the subject of a festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Manga is Japanese for comic; and Japan's 122 million people, I gather, consume comics avidly. Even adults, when they're not mutilating dummies of their bosses or being shoehorned on to commuter trains, read Manga strips and watch Manga TV and films, a dozen or so of which will be screened at the festival. Many Japanese anime features, as they're known, are now available to buy in Britain from Manga Video, launched earlier this year by Island World Communications after the success of the astonishing futuristic nightmare, Akira (15, £12.99). Although titles so far released are similarly post-apocalyptic (Akira is set in bombed-out Neo-Tokyo in 2019), children's anime films are promised soon. But back to Venue Wars. In 2089 Suzan Sommers, a reporter from Earth, shuttles to Venus to cover the war between the provinces of Ishtal and Aphrodia, whose capital Io has been overrun. The camera lingers on her stocking tops as she slowly crosses and uncrosses her miniskirted legs, revealing a good deal about Manga writer-director Yushikazo Yasuhiko's interests: voyeurism and a sexually predatory camera and art direction are common here. Violence is common, too, Aphrodia's salvation lying in the hands of the Killer Commandos, a grotty guerrilla bike gang adept at the Venusian sport of roller-biking. "You get points for wasting the opposition's bikes and riders", Sommers is told. Although dubbed by American actors and with few characters looking remotely Japanese, Venue Wars would appear to be vintage Manga. Forget 2D Tom and Jerry: the viewer is drawn into a mesmerising 3D cityscape where one's eyes and ears are battered by exploding hardware and software. One may not like the style or some of the content, but one can't deny its visual oomph. Odin (15, £12.99), also released this month, is more sedate as Akira Tsukaba, a space cadet, leads a mutiny on the Starlight to go off in search of the mythological civilisation of Odin. This is pure Star Trek hokum with a dash of cyberpunk. The story - of youth v experience, and comradeship - matters little: what count are the dazzling visuals, narcotics for the eyes. They are equally impressive in Project A-ko (15, £12.99), a comic book parody which combines a story about schoolgirl crushes with visitations from outer space. Again one cannot help but marvel at the pace and art direction: Graviton, a fictional Earth city, sits, eye-smackingly, amid a humungous meteor crater. But what of Dominion Tank Police Acts I & II (15, £12.99), about a girl, Leona, who with her tank does battle with a pair of bio-engineered sex-kitten terrorists called Annapuna and Unipuma? Make of the plot what you will: teamed with Buaka, a hideous half-human cyborg, the kittens are sent to steal uncontaminated urine from a hospital. When they are caught, they do a slow striptease that distracts the dim captors and aids their escape. Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend is seriously disturbing, however: a kind of bestial sex war between creatures who live in three worlds on planet Earth - the worlds of humans and demons, and the world for a combination of the two. By director Hideki Takayama, this is a visual phantasmagoria, the accent on the word "gorier". The video is currently with the British Board of Film Classification, pencilled for release on November 2 (18, £12.99). But the board, I imagine, will be busy with its scissors to extract even an 18 certificate: this is a riot of sci-fi horror, mutilation and destruction. The original uncut version I saw (which will be shown at the ICA) was peppered with many hyper-graphic scenes of which bestial rape is the only mentionable one. Anyone who saw the sadistic Japanese game show Endurance featured by Clive James on his round-up of world television (a kind of Krypton Factor which allowed the live torture of contestants) will know the Japanese to have some rum tastes. But what the warped sadism of Takayama's Overfiend reveals of the national character, I shall meditate on when next in their water garden. 'Manga! Manga! Manga!' opens at the ICA, The Mall, London SW1, next Friday. Box office: 071 930 3647.