Jin-Roh
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Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (Japanese: 人狼) (1998) is an anime feature film directed by Hiroyuki Okiura and based on a manga written by Mamoru Oshii called Kerberos Panzer Corps. The main character, Kazuki Fuse, is a member of the elite Panzer Corps, an antiterror outfit with heavy personal armor, Stahlhelms with masks containing breathing and night-vision gear, and heavy machine guns. Fuse suffers from a loss of faith in his mission when he fails to shoot a young, female terrorist; the girl detonates a bomb in front of him, killing herself. He strikes up an ill-fated romance with the terrorist's sister, Kei, who he meets as she mourns her death.
Story
The movie opens with scenes of evening public protests interspersed with a girl walking alone. The girl is revealed as a terrorist courier - called Little Red Riding Hoods by the terrorists (a.k.a. the Sect) - helping to deliver bombs in satchels and she makes her way to a delivery of one of the bombs to a protester. The protest slowly turns into a riot, and a terrorist flings the satchel bomb into the police lines, with the result that the police move to break up the riot.
The courier makes her way next to pick up another satchel to deliver, and then goes through the drain system to her next delivery. On the way, she spots heavily armed troopers - the Panzer Corps - making their way toward her fellow terrorists. She runs away. The band of terrorists moving equipment towards their next point is caught at a ladder up to the surface and they are slaughtered by the Panzer Corps when one opens fire.
The girl runs on for a while, until she is confronted by a Panzer Corps trooper. Out of fear, she decides to blow up the explosive satchel she is carrying, but the trooper strangely doesn't shoot. The girl is blown up and the trooper only survives because another trooper rushed up from behind and pulled him down to the ground. The trooper takes off his mask as a result of the explosion, and thus we are introduced to the main character, Fuse Kazuki. Meanwhile, above ground, the metropolitan police lose control of the riots after the lights go out - the power supply was cut by the explosion.
With Kerberos embarrassed by Fuse's mistake, a trial is held to determine why he didn't fire. As a result, he is seen as the scapegoat and is sent back into training, where he exhibits his prowess. One day as he goes to visit the ashes of the dead girl he didn't shoot, he meets a girl, Kei, who is apparently the sister of the dead Riding Hood. They develop a casual relationship and spend time with each other. Along the way, Fuse has nightmares about the incident in the sewers where he didn't shoot - seeing the girl morph into Kei and being caught and devoured by a pack of wolves. Kei is eventually revealed to be a honey trap acting on behalf of the Metropolitan Police, although a rather unwilling one.
A trap is set up where Kei calls Fuse one night to say that strange men are following her. It was in fact a trap by the Metropolitan police - and one of Fuse's friends, an ex-Panzer called Henmi - to discredit the Panzer Corps, showing a Red Riding Hood passing a satchel bomb to a Panzer Corps trooper. Fuse sneaks in, grabs Kei without the police knowing, and gets out of the place with the police in pursuit. Eventually they throw off the police and settle down for a while in a closed amusement park to wait. There it's shown that the relationship between Kei and Fuse is more than just friendship after all.
They make their way to the sewers once more, where other men make their way to pass Fuse a full set of Panzer Corps armor and weaponry, before getting out of the way with Kei in tow. One of the men is Hachiro Tohbe, the head of Panzer training, who takes an electronic tracking device from Kei's satchel.
After following the tracking device, Henmi and a number of heavily armed police make their way to the sewers and attempt to find Fuse, without realising that they are heading into a trap. Aided by the men who appeared in the sewers, Fuse, with armor and MG42, slaughters them all, with Henmi killed last.
Eventually, they end up at a junkyard. Fuse is revealed to be a member of the semi-mythical Wolf Brigade, a small group within the Panzer Corps proper that seeks to maintain the existence of the Corps, and Fuse is told to kill Kei - it was safer to have her dead because then she couldn't be found by the police, and at the same time it would threaten the police with the implications of Kei revealing her entire story - including the police-organized setup - to the press. Torn between his "human" feelings for Kei and his membership of the Wolf Brigade, Fuse has to choose between the two. As Kei hugs him tearfully, Fuse shoots her, choosing to be wolf instead of man. Hachiro Tohbe, who is revealed to be the head of the Wolf Brigade, watches the scene nearby and says "and the wolf ate her up", a line from the original "Little Red Riding Hood".
Production
The movie features a musical score by Hajime Mizoguchi.
There was a rumor running around that Mamoru Oshii wanted to do re-make of Iroman 28 (Gigantor). He provided most of photographs of Tokyo in 60's for the film, prompting fans to consider the rumor to be true (the original Ironman #28 took place around that time).
Director Oshii wanted to do this film several years prior, and was about to propose the project to Bandai Visual at a meeting. However, they offered him to a job he could not turn down, so the project was put on back burner. The film he ended up making instead was Ghost in the Shell.
In the end though, the condition set by Bandai Visual to produce the film was for Mamoru Oshii NOT to direct it, considering two live version of the series Red Spectacles and did not sell that well. So he offered the job to Mr.Okiura, the animation supervisor who gave the director a hell for accuracy in the stage setting (the museum in Ghost in the Shell)
The only thing Mamoru Oshii did after writing the script was to write up additional agitation speech for the opening protest scene, just before the dubbing. He happened to be in the same building for re-mastering of Patlabor 2.
Interpretation
Jin-Roh borrows heavily and overtly from the tale of Little Red Riding Hood - the older, darker version that existed even before the Brothers Grimm and certainly before it was Bowdlerized and "cleaned up". The female terrorists who carry bombs for the Sect are known as "Red Riding Hoods," and Kei reads a bloody version of the tale to Fuse throughout the film.
The film itself, in fact, can be read as a modernized version of the old children's tale: Fuse appears to be at heart a wolf in human clothing - as evidenced by the scene where after practising storming a building (and failing), Fuse is left as the only one among the cadets who is calm. The scene alternates with another scene where Tohbe (still in Panzer armor as the sole enemy during the exercise) is talking with Henmi. One of the topics is about how some people find comfort in reacting to the tough training like animals (here animal can be understood more as wolf than as mindless berserker). Plus, when asked by Kei as to why he joined the Panzer Corps, Fuse can only reply that it was because it was as though "I finally found a place where I belonged."
Kei is the real little red riding hood - though she is revealed to be an ex-terrorist courier herself, she is shown as being fundamentally youthful and human. She and Fuse are in love, but in the end has to kill her against his will, since it was part of the plan that the Wolf Brigade devised to turn the trap for the Panzer Corps that was laid by the police. Fundamentally it shows that as in Little Red Riding Hood, humans and animals don't mix well together.
Aspects of Little Red Riding Hood may be seen in Fuse, as well. Initially, it is Fuse who is seduced by a stranger (Kei, taking the role of the wolf) and led into a trap. Fuse also removes his jacket for Kei's benefit, whereas Kei never symbolically sheds her clothing. In his hallucinations, it is Fuse who is helpless and scared as Little Red Riding Hood is torn to shreds, and echoes of this can be seen in the film's climax, in which Fuse exhibits remarkably unwolfish pain and shock when he kills Kei, as though he were simultaneously killing his own human aspect. This interpretation is strengthened by an excerpt from the film's version of Little Red Riding Hood, in which "Her mother had dressed her in armor, and told her: 'When this armor has been well worn, come see me'".
In this interpretation, the grandmother is absent, although it is also possible to argue that the "grandmother" of this tale is also Fuse - or rather, who Kei thinks Fuse to be, not realizing that he is in fact the wolf of the story. However, since Fuse himself has had a troubled nightmare involving - besides Kei's death through a pack of wolves and Fuse in Panzer armor (minus helmet) shooting Kei - a scene where Fuse is sitting on a log, in a landscape filled with trees and snow, among other wolves. Thus, this also calls into doubt Fuse's essential character. The entire dream essentially is a premonition, forcasting the events to come.
The film is revealed to be a tragedy in the modern sense, where "the ground for the execution of tragedy" is moved "from the hubris of the individual tragic hero to the institutions, discourses and policies that shape the course of a character's life. The fate decreed from the gods of classical Greek tragedy is replaced by the will of institutions that shape the fate of the individual through policies and practices." (Wikipedia article, Post-19th-century tragedy)
Political Background
Jin-Roh features many references to the political situation in Japan during the 1960s and early 1970s. During this time there were massive student protests from the left-wing centered around (but not exclusive to) the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (the ANPO Hantai movement). Mamoru Oshii along with Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata were part of this political movement.
The references, in ‘’Jin-Roh’’, to Nazis taking over Japan parallels the political fears of the time, where many left-wing political factions thought that the Fascists were returning to power. These fears were exacerbated by the assassination of the head of the Japan Socialist Party, Inejiro Asanuma while addressing the Diet on live television. Fears were further exacerbated by the current head of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Nobusuke Kishi who was a convicted war criminal. This general sense of turbulence is featured throughout the film.
The CAPO troops are an exaggeration of the special police forces that were setup in response to Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan, which forbade any military force, and political pressure from The United States to be prepared to fight the Communists. By the 1960s Japan had setup a virtual military under the title of a police force to circumvent this law. This form of military is exaggerated through the CAPO troops in Jin-Roh. The protestors are all in reference to the Anti-ANPO student groups of the 1960s, who not only demanded a repeal of the security treaty but also fought for improved labor conditions and changes in economic and social policy. Eventually these groups fell apart due to infighting and a system of compromises between the government bureaucracy, labor, keiretsu, and the LDP).
Jin-Roh looks at this political situation as an allegory to the current state of Japan which is still ruled by the LDP with very little political opposition. This lack of opposition is shown by the Fuse's inability to break from the "pack" in which he belongs, thus criticizing Japan as an overly conformist society unwilling to accept change even when times warrant it.
Trivia
- Many of the weapons, vehicles, and equipment used are from the World War II period, mainly of German design. Some weapons include a modified version of the MG42 machine gun (Used by the Special Unit), the MP44 assault rifle, the FG42 rifle, a Panzerfaust launcher, several British Sten guns, and the Mauser 9mm handgun wielded by Fuse's superior officer at the end. World War II German period vehicles, such as the Kubelwagen and Volkswagen, are also present.
- In 1997, Fuji Film announced the plan to discontinue its line of high quality cels — and imports are not transparent enough to be stacked more than ten sheets, which does happen in anime. Most of the productions were forced to switch over to digital animation as a consequence. Studio IG's idea was to make Jin-Roh to be the studio's last hand drawn cel anime.
- The casting and script adaptation for the English dub was supervised by Hiroyuki Okiura. Originally, the producers were intending to give the lead role to Paul Dobson, but Okiura rejected him as sounding "too handsome" and went with his brother Michael Dobson instead.
- Mamoru Oshii was very pleased how the dub turned out, stating that "Michael Dobson's extreme talent provided a complex and powerful performance as our lead character Kazuki Fuse". [link]
- Viz Communications released the movie dubbed in English to theaters, while Bandai Entertainment produced the home video release.
- The film was submitted to the Oscars for best animated feature in 2001, but the film was disqualified due to it being theatrically released in France before the cutoff date.
- In the game Killzone, the Helghasts are inspired by the CAPO troops' armor.
References
- Gustav Horn, Carl (2002). "Frontiers of Total Filmmaking: Mamoru Oshii Creator of Jin-Roh." Pamphlet from DVD. Jin-Roh: the Wolf Brigade Special Edition.
See also
- Kerberos Panzer Cops
- Red Spectacles (1987)
- (1991)
External links
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