#its so bizarre to look back at my childhood and consider my poetic body of work to be something largely behind me

[millennialdemon]

Coming off of true trainwrecks the likes of Mars of Destruction and Skelter Heaven, I actually came out of Dark Cat with a sense of respect and gratitude for its competence. 

For the uninitiated, Dark Cat is a notoriously bad OVA from 1991 that you will see listed in many Worst Anime Ever countdowns. It follows 2 brothers, “dark cats” Hyoi and Rui, who investigate supernatural happenings and purify evil with their somewhat undefined powers of shapeshifting and increased strength/agility. The majority of the story in the OVA is about a school girl named Aimi, who is pining after her childhood friend Koizumi, who since the rejection and sudden death of his crush, has been suffering a depressive episode and ignoring her. Hyoi and Rui sense dark forces are manifesting at the school, and they keep an eye on Aimi while fighting off the increasingly brazen appearances of demonic enemies.

A monstrous ex-dark cat named Jukokubo is revealed to be manipulating Aimi with his dark powers, and Hyoi and Rui fight him, but not before Aimi succumbs to the evil magic -- as well as her own violent jealousy and overprotectiveness of Koizumi -- and transforms into a horrific tentacle monster that kills seemingly everyone in the school.

In the end, Koizumi realizes that Aimi was in love with him the entire time, and doesn’t fight her when she engulfs him completely. Apparently this act of selfless love was enough to purify them both, and although they do indeed die, their souls are “light” and able to ascend. This throws a wrench in Jukokubo’s plan to prove that humans are The Worst, so he turns tail and leaves his boss fight against Hyoi, threatening to return again. In the epilogue, Hyoi and Rui reflect on the mission and wax poetic about the nature of humanity while crossing a busy street.

… Ehm… happy ending, yes?

Now then: there are actually quite a few things I enjoyed about Dark Cat, and they are all very simple things that I had come to miss after days of watching other entries from the Bottom of the Barrel.

It had a narrative, and was -- mostly -- comprehensible in its storytelling, as rushed as it may have been. There was an undeniable presence of an art director, something I’m not convinced was present in a few of the other similarly rated titles I have seen. Some of the shots were noticeably well composed and even clever, and required an artistic vision and some decent effort to create. The animation wasn’t awful, the designs ranged from serviceable to genuinely charming (I like the subtlety of Hyoi and Rui’s cat-like features!), and I liked that the characters actually emoted. It wasn’t as generic as I expected and took some risks, even if they didn’t pay off and left it with a reputation of being “too grotesque to be enjoyable”.

I can understand the common criticisms of the gore and body horror being poorly animated, but I won’t decry it for existing and “being ugly”... of course it’s ugly, it’s body horror reminiscent of The Thing from The Thing. (Now would be a good time to warn people not to look this OVA up, unless they are sure they are okay with body horror and gore of this calibre. Tentacles with teeth and spines rip out of people’s skin from the inside and deform their hosts, it is quite awful! I would also include a warning for trypophobia -- there are shots where the mutations form clusters of holes on the skin.) The body horror in Dark Cat being disgusting and making my skin crawl isn’t a fault -- I think it’s the intended purpose. Though I will concede that:

The phallic imagery of the horrific flesh mutations, particularly that of the teacher who attacked Rui, was… bizarre, considering that otherwise the OVA isn’t particularly dark in tone or otherwise sexually graphic.

Perhaps having grotesque body horror is completely unexpected in a story about two bishounen teens (?) who can turn into cats and fight ghosts. 

Yes, Dark Cat, the OVA put on Worst Anime Ever lists for being a grotesque spectacle, is just as commonly placed on those lists for being a dumb anime about guys that can transform into house cats and who fight supernatural entities with not so amazing powers. This is a gripe I’ve seen in a few popular reviews, but there was no point during my watching experience that I thought, “Man, these teens are pansies, they don’t even turn into big scary lions or anything! What’s the point, it’s practically a power-down! cinemasins ding” because I don’t go into anime expecting every single male character I see to be Big & Strong & Cool, because I uh… don’t have brain worms I guess? I don’t know what to say about this criticism really, other than people who watch a lot of shounen have very strange hang ups about super powers. 

Otherwise, it seems the biggest reason Dark Cat is lauded as One of the Worst -- perhaps even ahead of the silly concept and nauseating gore -- is actually because of the abysmal english dub. It’s my honour to say that I didn’t watch the dub, so it doesn’t factor in at all into my impressions! 

So in the end, perhaps my only true gripes with Dark Cat are:

Despite having no particular issue with body horror and gore existing, the extent of destruction and graphic death gave the OVA a bit of a snuff film vibe.

The conclusion to the story was quite bad. 

It could be surmised by the brief plot outline I wrote earlier that Dark Cat isn’t a very complicated story. Demons and ghosts exist and wreak havoc on emotionally vulnerable humans, and supernatural soldiers try to mediate between the realms by purifying tortured ghosts and saving those dragged into darkness by evil entities. These beats are common in the supernatural genre of anime, but Dark Cat’s handling of its tragic morality tale left me more confused than anything.

Koizumi didn’t do anything wrong -- he shouldn’t have had to die for the sin of not reciprocating Aimi’s feelings, nor for developing depression after the rejection and death of his classmate and crush. Aimi… did things wrong, but was nevertheless the most compelling character in the OVA. Throughout Aimi was kind, patient, and forgiving when it came to being treated badly by Koizumi. In the finale however, it is revealed that Aimi was the one responsible for Koizumi’s crush’s death, assumedly having murdered her out of jealousy or out of revenge on Koizumi’s behalf for hurting his feelings. Prior to this, the first students to be killed by the tentacle monsters just happened to be the ones that had bullied Koizumi in class earlier that day -- implying that Aimi was getting revenge on them, as well.

It was with these revelations that I started to wonder: Why not just let the flesh monster manifest as a direct result of Aimi’s negative feelings? Aimi confessed to murdering Koizumi’s crush before the events of the OVA -- would she have done so if she wasn’t being influenced by the malignant force set on her by Jukokubo? I feel that her arc would have been much more interesting without the introduction of a non-compelling and badly designed villain like Jukokubo, because then we would know it was all her. Even if she was influenced by forces exacerbating her pre-existing jealousy and rage, that is a more satisfying option than having a big dumb green cat of a villain to trace everything back to so neatly. 

And really, what did Jukokubo do in the story beyond take the spotlight, and the blame, from Aimi? He had some previous relation to Hyoi and Rui, but it’s not developed at all, and his ideological rivalry with Hyoi was trivial. Hyoi could have come to the same conclusions about holding out hope for humanity without Jukokubo there to insist he be a guest to debate on his political podcast.  

The lack of accountability regarding Aimi is a part of why the resolution to her conflict with Koizumi feels so wrong -- he succumbs to her feelings because he realizes the evil was born from her suffering, and he feels that he has to sacrifice himself to make up for unknowingly hurting her so much that she turned into a monster from hell. In the end she is absolved via being purified and getting to die with her spirit entwined with Koizumi’s, and he apologizes for having not recognized how he was hurting her. 

Aimi kills his crush, kills his bullies, and ends up -- inadvertently, at least -- killing almost all of their classmates, because she was tilted about her childhood friend not realizing she had romantic feelings for him. And when Koizumi learns all of this, he apologizes and dies with her, and this is proof of humanity’s goodness? The dark clouds part and the rain stops and Aimi and Koizumi ascend in a heavenly ray of light, because he decided, while she was devouring him, that he was wrong to ignore his murderous best friend’s love for him?

I guess it’s fine -- it was probably mostly Jukokubo’s fault anyway, and everyone was just an unfortunate victim of his meddling… 😒

Other than the bad writing, the string of deaths that happen in the finale when the monster lets loose in the school are quite uncomfortable to behold. Deformed student bodies are splayed and strewn around classrooms, and the bullies are rendered into unrecognizable mounds of pulsating flesh in their homes. The violence of a fight against a monster like this, I can handle, but the graphic images of helpless death were difficult to stomach. And in this OVA, there is no miraculous reversal of the demon’s damage once it is purified -- there is no implication whatsoever that everyone who died isn’t still just as dead as Aimi and Koizumi in the end. 

The main thing I was actually worried about when I watched Dark Cat was that there would be sexual assault, thanks to reviewers griping it for “generic hentai tentacles”. I am relieved to say that there is none, at least not insofar as deserving a comparison to actual porn. There is sexual content scattered throughout the horror scenes: The occasionally phallic appearance of the tentacles, shots of the tentacles coming down from under skirts, and there is one shot of nudity when Aimi’s shirt is ripped open as she transforms, though I would say it’s too horrific and ugly to be sexualized or otherwise considered “fanservice”.

What is the point of the hits of sex imagery in Dark Cat? I have no idea. This isn’t Alien, it isn’t about the horror of sexual assault or the violence of creation -- though the main horror of the scene where Rui is ambushed by the teacher seems to be that she uses magic to seduce him, only to reveal a very phallic tentacle from her mouth that she means to kill (or infect…?) him with, which can have multiple, potentially offensive readings… it is a one off, however -- and there doesn’t seem to be any moral posturing about it as is often seen in slashers. I couldn’t parse any sort of consistent STI allegory regarding the plague of tentacles upon the student body, despite how many summaries I have read that describe the tentacles as that, a “plague”. 

… I realize I am probably the only person on earth to give any aspect of Dark Cat’s production this much thought. To sum up: It seems to just exist for the shock value. Considering the extent of disgusting imagery already present a la The Gore and Deformation of Human Bodies, I don’t think this OVA benefitted from featuring some explicit looking tendrils, beyond cementing its abhorrent reputation.

Is this all to say that I think Dark Cat is a good OVA? No, of course not. It’s tone deaf, and tasteless, and has awkward pacing and bad writing. But compared to the utterly soulless and artistically devoid works the likes of Skelter Heaven and Mars of Destruction, I would say the fact I was able to write this much about Dark Cat is testament to that fact that it at the very least, contains content -- and some of that content was like, decent! Skelter+Heaven was such a mess it was all I could do to understand the sequence of events, and Mars of Destruction was so bland I literally have no posts about it on the blog despite watching it more than once. Psychic Wars was a snoozefest I barely finished that similarly has no mention on the blog, and Hanoka’s production gimmick couldn’t save it from being a totally forgettable romance story. 

Therefore, Dark Cat is the best worst title I have seen thus far, by virtue of being executed with an average amount of competency for an OVA from the early 90s, and for having a balance of good and bad elements that gave me something to hold onto and mull over after viewing. 

3/10.

Oh, and I loved the bad 80s insert songs.  

#:Dark Cat #dark cat #2138 words later the verdict is. It was ok

[noplanlife]

Gratitude

Summary: Home is where Karamatsu’s exceedingly painful heart is.  

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This is the eighth chapter of a multichapter fic!  Please find the rest here! 

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Merpeople who are NEETs, or MerNEETs, as you’ve come to call them, come into existence when a particularly unfortunate pair of parents have no idea how to get rid of their good for nothing sextuplets.  That concept was baffling enough in and of itself. Meanwhile, you’re still trying to wrap your head around the idea of someone having to raise Karamatsu, let alone five other children. Up until now, you’d more or less assumed Karamatsu had just sprung out of the ether one day.  You’d imagined there had been a lot of glitter involved in that magical process, rather than the unfortunate labors of one very beleaguered mother.

Now, however, standing before the door of one modest looking, underwater house, you are forced to confront the knowledge that Karamatsu is indeed, all natural, and the product of one very unique childhood.

“We’re home!” Jyushimatsu shouts as he throws open the front door.  There are a few loud crashing sounds and lots of shouting coming from inside of the house.  You decide that, perhaps, for your own safety, it may be wise to let Karamatsu enter first. Conveniently, he seems rather taken with the idea that you appear to want him to protect you.  Sunglasses in place, he flashes you a dazzling smirk and a reassuring thumb’s up as he says,

“Fear not, my beloved.  There is no force in heaven or hell that will keep me from protecting you.  No beast, no matter how foul, can tear you from my arms! No man, no matter how powerful, can cut the bonds of fate that bind us!  No force, no matter how-”

An unseen force plows into Karamatsu and sends him careening down the nondescript street in front of his house.  

“You glittery bastard!  How dare you give your soul to someone first!  That was supposed to be me!”

You turn, preparing to find out just what had collided with your would-be protector, only to feel the force of a great rush of water at your back.  Angry voices curse a name you’ve come to know well (and maybe, internally, curse every now and again yourself). You stumble forward with a shout as several bodies swim past your side, and by the time you manage to look up, it is to see that a veritable rainbow of tails has dog-piled Karamatsu.  You only know he’s at the bottom of the heap because you recognize the desperate flailing of his blue tail under all of the others.

“Excuse me?” you call out with some uncertainty.  You aren’t sure where you’re supposed to cut in, or whose attention you’re supposed to be trying to get.  That is a lot of merpeople.

What had been a dogpile abruptly devolves into a full on brawl, and you find yourself reminded of what happens among sharks when there’s blood in the water.  With an exasperated groan, you advance on the spat before reaching in and snagging your hand around a random wrist and tugging with all of your might. One merman pops free, and while the face is largely the same as the one you’re familiar with, the color of the tail is not.  This merman has a green tail. He blinks back at you in stunned silence for a brief second before his face colors pink and he starts to stammer something at you.

“Nope,” you declare, and shove him back into the fray.  You attempt this four more times, with similar results, before you manage to finally wrench Karamatsu free from his brothers and behind the safety of your back.  He clings to you with his arms locked around your middle like a vice. Hands on your hips, you repeat yourself more sternly, “Excuse me!”

The remaining mermen quickly form a line where you can see all of them, and then proceed to each descend into a deep bow.

“Sorry,” they all say back at you, in perfect unison.  Apparently, all you needed to do was be a bit more aggressive, and they went from belligerent to acquiescent in a snap.  You wait for them to right themselves before you say,

“Look.  I came all the way here to meet Karamatsu’s family, even though I could be back home right now and not dealing with all of this...craziness.  So why don’t you try being good hosts, and show me around?”

You flash the lot of them the best glare you can muster under such bizarre circumstances.  Luckily, they all seem cowed enough by your efforts that they immediately begin heading for the front door and gesturing for you to follow.  That is, until one of them notices your lower half.

“Legs!  They have legs!” the red-tailed merman shouts, pointing down at your distinct lack of a tail.  All of the siblings, even Karamatsu, reel away from you in shock and horror. Indignant, you wheel around and seize Karamatsu by an ear-fin.  

“You knew I had legs from the beginning!  Don’t act surprised! And you guys!” You turn to face the five others.  “How in the world did it take you this long to notice?! Are you guys stupid or something?!”

“Yes,” the purple-tailed merman says back at you in a dull tone, without a moment’s hesitation.  You find yourself unable to respond to such a blunt answer, so you just stare at the group of them with a unique mix of bafflement and annoyance.  Fortunately, the silence left in your wake lasts not but a moment before the pink-tailed merman muses forlornly,

“I can’t believe it.  All that time he spent near the surface actually amounted to something.  I thought he was just trying to get out of helping with chores.”

The green-tailed merman folds his arms across his chest and nods, as if trying to look particularly lost in thought as he adds,

“And when he mentioned that someone on the surface saved him after getting beached like an idiot, I thought he was just having a hallucination due to a lack of water to the gills…”

All of the brothers, save Karamatsu, nod their heads in perfect unison.  You squint, disbelieving, at the group of them as they all turn away from you and Karamatsu to begin heading back into the house.  With a shout, you lurch forward and grab the red-tailed merman by one of his ear-fins so as to stop him from advancing any further.  He lets out a loud, startled yell as he’s pulled back towards you. Now stuck in your grasp, he gives a visible jolt, as if some realization has just struck him.

“You’re real!  You’re really real!  I was hoping this was all just some horrible dream where Karamatsu got a date first, but it’s real!”

Hearing that, you proceed to drop your captive with a scoff.  Having effectively prevented any of Karamatsu’s brothers from ditching you, you beg,

“Would you all please just show me your house!”

The five brothers return to their fleeting state of respect for your authority, and guide you inside of their home.  

The house is simple and cozy.  So much so that you can’t help but be somewhat surprised.  Perhaps you’re judging the house unfairly. After all, the last place Karamatsu had showed you was his little cave, and that had a disco ball in it.  Just because this house had Karamatsu living in it didn’t mean all of its residents would adhere to his questionable taste in decor. One of the mermen pulls aside a sliding door to what you assume is a living room.  For some reason, there is a chair shaped like a hand in the corner. You amend your previous statement, and assume Karamatsu’s presence is as cloying to live with as it is when you spend your time with him.

“Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine being able to show my other half the house I grew up in!” Karamatsu muses, sighing gustily by your ear as he drapes his arms over your shoulders.  Having accepted that Karamatsu is just an innately affectionate creature, you don’t make any effort to remove him from your person as you correct him,

“Because you didn’t intend on showing me it in the first place?”

Karamatsu scoffs, and a burst of bubbles tickles your ear as he continues on doggedly despite your interjection,

“Please, think not of this solely as a house, but a home!  For a home is where a man’s soul is! Where he can lay his weary fins to rest at the end of a long day fighting the unceasing battle against life’s vagaries!”  

You aren’t sure what vagaries Karamatsu has experienced in his life, considering that he’s apparently a merNEET, but you deem it wiser to let him wax poetic than interrupt him further.  That is, of course, a mistake, which you find out when Karamatsu abruptly wheels you around to face him. Before you can even shoot him your very finely honed deadpan expression, Karamatsu has tucked two fingers under your chin so that you find yourself forced to look into his glittering, dark eyes.

“Now that I’ve found you, my other half, this house will be only that--a house!  No longer can it remain a treasured home for me! For part of my soul is always with you.  When your fins, er, feet, fail to stand upon this threshold, the place where I became the man you know and love holds so much less meaning!”

“Then leave,” the purple-tailed merman, Ichimatsu, intones while waving a hand dismissively in Karamatsu’s direction.  Karamatsu pays his brother no mind. Instead, he releases you so that he can throw a hand over his eyes while also tossing himself bodily into the wall at your side.  You watch, blankly, as he begins slowly letting himself slide down the wall the longer he speaks,

“The agony I’ve come to know whenever you leave my side has torn a wound through my heart that only you can heal!  I am a weary traveler, dying of thirst in the desert of romance! I am the captain of a capsized vessel, floating adrift on the tumultuous tides of ardor!  And you, my shimmering divinity--!!!”

“--Actually agreed to put up with this?  Are you crazy?” The red-tailed merman, Osomatsu, cuts in to ask you.  When you glance his way, it is to see him staring at you with a cocked brow and a lopsided smirk on his lips.  You can read disbelief plainly in his eyes, and when you look to the other brothers, most of their faces indicate a similar sort of sentiment.  Your brows furrowed, you meet their question only after casting a quick glance over your shoulder back at Karamatsu. He’s stopped his prose laden rant for the time being, instead waiting for your answer with a wide, encouraging smile.  He’s either so enamored with the cassanova image he’s crafted for himself, he can’t comprehend you not staying by his side, or he trusts in your affections for him so assuredly that rejection hasn’t even crossed his mind.

The hope that plainly colors his entire expression leaves you feeling warm from head to toe.      

“Yeah.  So?” you finally say, and immediately regret it.  Not because you fear how Karamatsu will inevitably overreact, but because the answer you give is so simple.  Karamatsu is so grandiose in how he verbally expresses his fondness for you, you can’t help but feel such a short answer leaves you seeming significantly less enthusiastic.  Admittedly, you don’t think you’ve fallen as hard or as fast as Karamatsu has for you, but you recognize that you certainly feel something tender for him. You open your mouth, maybe to add something to your answer, but you aren’t given the opportunity.  Osomatsu cuts you off when he leans his cheek against one of his fists and grouses,

“Man, you didn’t even hesitate.  Most people would at least think about dealing with someone like that.”   

Despite his tone, Osomatsu still has that lopsided smirk on his face, and somehow you feel as if you’ve managed to gain some degree of approval.  Jyushimatsu leans forward, across the table he’s sitting at and beams a smile at you as bright as sunshine.

“Good for you!  You two look good together!”  

A series of congratulations float yours and Karamatsu’s way, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  You can hear Karamatsu sniffling from where he’s still situated behind you. The unexpected warmth of the moment leaves you flustered, up until Osomatsu asks the two of you,

“So, how are you two gonna do it?”

For a second, you aren’t sure what he’s talking about until Choromatsu’s eyes nearly bug out of their sockets and Todomatsu lets out an enraged scream.  You open your mouth, close your mouth, and then open it again. Your interrogator continues on blithely, seemingly oblivious to the fact that two of his siblings are trying to strangle him,

“Like, you have legs, and Karamatsu doesn’t.  Where’s your junk? Who’s gonna have to stick what where?  Down here, human-merperson porn is suuuuuper hard to come by, so you’re gonna have to explain to me how that’s supposed to go down,” Osomatsu smiles at you without any trace of shame.  Suddenly, his eyes go wide, his voice lowers, and he asks you in a grave, low tone, “Do you think you guys won’t even be able to? How painful!  I’d totally want to die!”

You feel one of your eyelids give a twitch, and you flex your fingers in yet unvented anger.  Perhaps fortunately for the image Karamatsu’s brothers had of you, you have no chance to mete out justice.  Instead, Karamatsu launches himself across the room and begins trying to beat his brother over the head with the coffee table.  

“Mind your own business, shitty eldest!  Don’t take a man’s dreams away from him! Love always finds a way!”

Whatever warm, soft feelings had been flowering within you for Karamatsu as of the last hour vanish into dust.  You watch, wordlessly, as Karamatsu begins trying to cram his older brother’s head into an impressively large conch shell.  No one tries to stop him.

#osomatsu san #karamatsu #karamatsu x reader #garbage fic for garbage boys #there are simply too many matsus to handle