Directed by: ?
Produced by: Media Suits
Shoroishi is a disturbed teenager with troubles at school and a bizarre home life. His brother is a bratty tell tale, his mother and father are sexual deviants and spend most of the night rocking the floorboards above Shoroishi’s room. On top of all this he’s also the centre of attention for bullies in school and even those who seem to be his friends are secretly out to double cross him. Naturally this leads to some mild psychological trouble, wait scrap that some devastating psychological trauma. Shoroishi becomes what the Japanese would call a “hentai” in English, a pervert and a spectacular pervert at that it seems that Shoroishi can only arouse himself by committing acts of violence against others be it fellow classmates, rabbits, a rundown cat or even his parents because of all these violent crimes Shoroishi is locked up in a juvenile detention centre only to be taken into care to be used as an assassin.
That gives you an idea of what this animated prequel to one of the most controversial films of all time is about. It’s short and sick. Unfortunately there’s not much more to be said about Ichi The Killer. Flawed in terms of dialogue, designs and animation this OVA will leave nothing but a bad taste in your mouth. This may seem harsh but it’s what it deserves. Ichi falls into the category of the cheapest of cheap cash-ins and will remind you of series like Virtua Fighter and Samurai Spirits. I mentioned the flawed designs earlier and how flawed they are – every character looks as though they were created by a ten year old with a permanent marker. Add to this a poor colour palette that is reminiscent of scenes from the first Urotsukidoji movie and you’ve got some painful anime on your hands, painful animation on the eyes too. If you’re going to cut corners do it well for god’s sake. The amount of times the same bit of animation is looped with different dialogue is almost countless but just in case you’re wondering it’s 13. If you take thirteen looped animations that last about 10-15 seconds each you’ve got about 3 minutes worth of repeated footage that’s one 15th of this entire OVA. One 15th that could’ve been used to flesh out characters instead the director felt fit to waste our time, that’s just not acceptable.
The music and voice acting are also of a diabolical standard. Fancy some techno music fused with sounds of Japanese teenagers screaming, anyone? Thought not. The voice actors are positively wooden and put no teal emotion into their acting whatsoever. This gives Ichi The Killer a very mundane feeling and there’ll be times when you wish the OVA would reach its gruesome ending. Then you’ll see the gruesome ending and you’ll take it all back
I’ve seen a lot of crazy crap in my time but none as shocking as the end of Ichi The Killer after dispatching three hoodlums in a fit of rage Ichi decides to tame his hard on by masturbating over their corpses. This seemed a bit OTT to me this is not supposed to be a hentai movie and I didn’t expect something as graphic as this to happen (mind you I didn’t expect a girl to get beaten during a sex scene either) while I can usually tolerate this kind of thing in live action movies I found it slightly more disturbing in anime. If this can be credited as a good thing, then by all means add a mark and if you want to see the prequel to one of the most controversial movies of all time, then by all means see Ichi The Killer: but don’t expect it to do anything special or anything above average because at the end of the day it doesn’t.
Three out of Ten