Missed potential

FlorianLaur

I've seen all 3 episodes of "Violence Jack", starting with "Evil Town".
It starts out somewhat interesting, reminding you of post-apocalyptic movies like Mad Max or Omega Man. However, the set up seems a little too staged. We've 3 groups that seem to co-exist up until "Violence Jack" shows up (or is discovered). Soon violence erupts and we see a multitude of mostly rapes and people being either smashed or cut, a few shot.
For an anime that claims to be super gory and violent, I didn't think it was really terrifying or too shocking. Sure, rape scenes are always unpleasant to watch, but I've seen similar amounts of blood or gore in every second or third anime. Not that I mind, that wasn't really the reason why I watched it. But I'm sure it might be kind of a let-down for torture-porn fans. Unfortunately, there isn't too much story to go with either, so having everyone either die or eventually escape seems to be the logical conclusion of the near-hour run time.

The second one, "Harlem Bomber" was definitely the worst. It almost seems as if it was stuck together with pieces of another movie, seeing how we are told that after a meteor hit earth, the "Slum Lord" emerged and "Violence Jack" was there to stop him. We see them fight and...well, that's the last you see of the Slum Lord (until the 3rd movie). Instead, some women on a truck who were captured and are supposed to be sold as slaves can escape when the truck is attacked (by Violence Jack). The other women who were with them on the truck seem to disappear (or maybe I missed it, I was already kind of bored at that point), but are soon recaptured. They are shown the "future" that awaits them (basically becoming submissive sex slaves, literally being "whipped" into shape) and quasi-raped by a one-eyed lady with a whip, who seems to be the Harlem Bomber's right hand (who, himself, is the Slum Lord's right hand).

For some reason now, we see how Jack is in some hotel, but the owner betrays him. People show up, attack Jack, but he kills them all. More people are sent to find him, destroy the city and kill anyone who tries to escape (one wonders, why, what for? Aren't quasi-slaves near your headquarter more useful than dead civilians?). Again, Jack shows up, kills everyone.

In the meantime, some guy named Ken, who turns out to be the ex bf of one of the two girls that were shown their future sees his ex being raped by the Lesbian dominatrix. He crashes his gyro copter (it's amazing how those insane biker gangs and Yakuza all know how to fly helicopters) through the window, but doesn't kill the dominatrix upon his gf's request. I guess she doesn't want him to be "a murderer" (never mind that he threw his knife into a guys neck only seconds before).
The Harlem Bomber and his men find him though and give him a choice: If he kills Jack, the girl gets to live.

So Ken goes out, finds Jack, throws a knife in his eye and...well, that's about it. Jack just leaves and his eye soon seems to be fine anyway.

So Jack kills, kills (yawn), kills...finally, he reaches the big boss and they both fight. Ken tries to escape with his gf. Her best friend (who betrayed her) conveniently died (how?), so they don't have to take her. They try to fly from the top of the building while Jack and the HB fight next to them. The girl pleads to help him, but her bf denies it. But she won't listen, throws Jack a rope and he uses it to pull down the copter to smash the Harlem Bomber and kill Ken (wow, what a nice guy he is!). Then he stabs the Harlem Bomber and...turns into a Phoenix or something? Yeah, this is what happens and it's utter non-sense. You might as well skip this one.

Lastly, we have "Hell's Wind". It opens with a couple, trying to escape from an ambush by some bikers. They run over one(two?) of them, but eventually, the bikers manage to disable their jeep. They cut the guy in pieces with a chainsaw and (of course) rape the girl, but somehow leave her alive.

We then see some small shanty town, called "Hope Town". A pretty, young woman is teaching some kinds in the ruins of a building. A boy (that looks a bit like an adult in a kids body) tells her he did his homework and runs away. He runs home where his father runs a small store, but hides in a sort of bunker he built in the ruins to build a bow.
Not long after, a trembling sound. The biker gang "Hell's Wind" approaches. They find the citizens hiding and start wrecking buildings and amassing the town folk in the center of the city. There, they indulge in some torture and prepare to rape the aforementioned teacher. Just before they have her completely naked (like every woman in this anime, she has bouncy boobs), the woman from the introduction shows up. She has turned into some kind of amazon warrior and blows up a few bikes with explosive arrows.
The bikers decide to retreat for now, but on their way out of town, she attacks them again until they ambush her(she escapes though). On their way out of town, Violence Jack stands in the middle of the road, looking violent. He smashes 3 bikers who try to run him over, but otherwise just stands here, being shot until he keels over. Left for dead, the amazon warrior and the little bunker boy take him back to the city to play "Let's wrap you like a mummy" with him.

The amazon warrior lady asks the town folk where the bikers might reside and they say they probably live in a deserted army air base. She gets on her motorbike to go there to kill them all, like she swore herself to, despite Violence Jack's warnings.

None of the town folk want to help her (except the little boy and his friends), but when Violence Jack says who he is, they agree to take him to the base.

There, the bikers have strapped the teacher on a fighter jet and soon capture the amazon warrior lady. Just as they did the usual "cut off all clothes, short of undies" game, Violence Jack shows up and starts killing them. He kills, kills, kills...before he gets to the "boss", that guy sends someone to "get help from the boss". Then he kills the leader of the gang as well (kind of disappointing actually).
In the end, we see the messenger the biker boss sent dead in front of some vehicle (Think Mad Max 2) and a huge kind of armoured vehicle and some guys who look like Samurai are on their way through the desert. Inside, we see that Slum King...

Well, yeah, that's pretty much it.
I guess these 3 mini movies would have had some potential if they would have had some more depth and actual story. But basically, all you get to see here is rape, boobs, rape, more boobs, rape, murder, rape, torture...oh, and did I mention rape?

score 5/10

FlorianLaur 27 November 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5284498/