Biohunter (1995)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Theatrical Trailer Storyboards Trailer-Madman Propaganda (8)
Rating
Year Of Production	1995
Running Time	57:51 (Case: 60)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Yuzo Sato
Studio Distributor	Urban Vision Madman Entertainment	Starring	Toshihiko Seki Kazuhiko Inoue Yûko Minaguchi Tarô Ishida
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Masamichi Amano

    This anime movie is set in a world not overly dissimilar to our own, but a world afflicted with an unpleasant plague called the Demon Virus. Victims of this virus sprout demonic faces on parts of their bodies, and get taken over by those demons. This is explained using a pile of pseudo-science that refers to retro-viruses and punctuated equilibrium evolutionary theory — don't try to understand it, because it's fairly silly.

    The only defence against this virus is a pair of molecular-biologists / geneticists, Koshigaya and Komada, who style themselves Biohunters. Koshigaya is brave and clever, but has no special advantage other than his knowledge. Komada, on the other hand, is already infected with the virus, giving him extraordinary powers, as long as he can control the virus within.

    This is a rather gruesome little tale, with some elements one might expect to see in hentai, but not going to extremes — the content is less sexual and more monster, so I wouldn't categorise it as ecchi. I'm a little surprised that it only received an M rating (I'd have expected R, because of the sexual images and some of the gore).

    There's a nice strand of political intrigue threaded through this horror story, lifting it out of the ordinary. I wouldn't call this the best piece of anime I've ever seen, but it's passable. If you liked Wicked City, then you might like this.

Video

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. As far as I can tell, that's the original aspect ratio, because this was made as an OAV in 1995.

    The image is reasonably sharp, about as sharp as we can expect for 1995 anime. There is no film grain. There is no significant low-level noise (and there's plenty of black that would show any noise).

    Colour is reasonably well-rendered, but this show doesn't use a whole lot of bright colour — about the only bright colour is red (mostly blood). There are no significant colour-related artefacts.

    There are few film artefacts, and they are small.

    There is quite a lot of aliasing (especially on a non-progressive system), and it does get distracting at times. There is no moiré. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There is just one set of subtitles, in English. I watched these while listening to the Japanese soundtrack, and they seemed fine and easy to read.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered. The one layer is ample for such a short feature with relatively few extras.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two soundtracks on this disc. The English soundtrack is Dolby Digital 5.1; the Japanese soundtrack is provided as Dolby Digital 2.0. I listened to both. We have not been short-changed on the Japanese sound: that is the original soundtrack — Urban Vision decided to make their dub 5.1, even though the original was only 2.0.

    The English dialogue is mostly clear and easy to understand. The Japanese dialogue sounds clear. There are no obvious flaws in audio sync, not that sync is easy to check on animation.

    The score, from Masamichi Amano, is interesting. It uses a variety of influences, including some very obvious Middle-Eastern sounds, and some heavy percussion (not all using conventional instruments).

    Only the English soundtrack uses anything but the front channels. The English track is far from the most amazing surround exercise you'll ever hear, but it does give a much better separation of dialogue from score and sound effects.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menus are static with music, and not at all difficult to use.

Gallery: Storyboard Images

    Ten pages of images.

Original Trailer (0:44)

    There are heaps of spoilers in this trailer — skip it until you've seen the feature.

Trailers: Madman Propaganda

    Here is a stack of trailers in standard Madman Propaganda format, allowing you to select them one-by-one. As fas as I can tell, the only thing these trailers have in common is a profusion of blood. The trailers are:

• Twilight of the Dark Master (0:57)
• Psycho Diver (0:36)
• Ninja Scroll TV Series (5:01) — seems like multiple trailers concatenated
• Wicked City (1:28)
• Berserk (2:04)
• Hellsing (3:39)
• Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (1:54)
• Blood the Last Vampire (1:03)

DVD Credits

    A single tasteful screen showing the credits for the Madman team responsible for this DVD.

    This title is available on DVD in Region 1, with the same features as this one, except that we get a lot more trailers than they do. By the sound of it, their transfer is not a whole lot better than ours, so I suspect you can choose to buy this one in the region of your choice.

    A somewhat gory horror film with an above-average plot, not so well realised as anime.

    The video quality is adequate, impeded mainly by fairly heavy aliasing.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are fairly basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall