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So... Watched Tokyo Gore Police Last Night.
If man sends another Voyager to the distant stars and it can carry only one film on board, that film might be "Tokyo Gore Police." It uses almost no language, but what is seen needs no translation. It speaks in magnificent images, natural sounds, and blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. And some piss, shot at high velocity from the gaping vaginal wound of eldritch stripper with sewn up nipple wounds and alligator jaws for legs.
Tokyo Gore Police regards our planet and the life upon it. It stands outside of historical time. To another race, it would communicate: The human body is like a TARDIS; it contains much more blood than you might otherwise think to look at it.
The film was photographed lovingly over a period of probably about ten years by renowned auteur Yoshihiro Nishimura, who invented several never before seen techniques in order to fully realise his vision. Indeed, some of these techniques have never been seen since.
The film consists of awesome sights, joyful, sad, always in their own way beautiful. A friend came into the room while I was watching the film, saw a closeup of a man eating the wrong end of a circular saw and said, "That's beautiful." She wasn't thinking about the ad hoc dentistry. She was observing the iridescence of the matter streaming in great volume from the hapless police officer/extra’s mangled jaw – a panoply of crimsons, cadmiums (and in one instance, viridians) saturating every part of the diegesis until the very camera lens itself is splattered liberally with the contents of the nearest actor. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We are the beholder.
A large gathering of men, shaped in a rough circle, attempt to apprehend an escaped criminal. Their voices a rhythmic chatter, their automatic weapons fluttering like a cutlery drawer thrown at a cheating husband’s head. The bullets tear the criminal apart, but it doesn’t faze him. At some point the velocity of the barrage is so great, the man’s arm comes off. No matter – he takes the opportunity to grow a new one, made out of a chainsaw. Ruka, the heroine turns up wielding her own chainsaw. They battle. With chainsaws.
Their movements are more complex and intricately timed than the drummers at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. More inspiring, also, because they have chosen to do this as part of their destiny and have not been drilled. She is a mini-skirted, self-harming maverick cop one a single facial expression, out to avenge the murder of her veteran cop father. He is a nigh invulnerable genetically modified murderbeast. They have perfected their ritual, and in their faces we do not see strain or determination, despite the physical ordeal, but contentment and joy. Their movements have the energy of deep enjoyment. Finally, the criminal’s head and upper thorax are cleaved in twain, leaving Ruka to stand impassively as 250 litres of blood rain down on her. She doesn’t even gyrate.
There's the indescribable beauty of the police detective, driven to insanity by the removal of his manhood by the aforementioned alligator stripper, stumbling towards his heavily armed former comrades bearing a four foot long groinial growth that shoots explosive projectiles.
We see the delight on the face of a young Japanese girl, as she waves around a Wii remote. On the TV her actions remove the head of a condemned criminal. Her mother and brothers yelp with glee and compliments on her technique. In this moment, the girl is clothed in a beauty to render "designer fashions" threadbare.
A man with M16 rifles for arms, and also for legs, regards our heroine. His eyes look old and thoughtful. The sky is filled with the cold mystery of the universe. What is he thinking? How does he aim his guns? W.G. Sebold sais “Men and animals regard each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension.” What is Ruka thinking as she fixes us with obsidian eyes?
Will the aliens viewing this film comprehend some of the scenes? A villain with his brains on the outside and tiny Howitzer cannon for eyes standing before an artfully gigantic mauve moon, laughing. A cross between a flight attendant and a swimsuit model barks commands over the radio to a force of cops dressed as medieval samurai. Do they appreciate the sadness of her task as she sends wave upon wave of men to the deaths at the hands of mentally deranged hoodlums who can grow offensive weapons from the stumps of recently amputated limbs? They will probably understand mountains, waterfalls, volcanoes. But these are things that do not appear in Tokyo Gore Police.
TGP is paced so we can contemplate the places we will never go, the places we are destroying, the places where we might find renewal, the underwear of a schoolgirl who shoots acid from her nipples. It is like a prayer.