Fantasia Report: Ashura
Early word on Ashura was that it was pretty but ultimately a little hollow. Mark Mann concurs. Check the trailer here then read on for his review.
In this fantasy epic by Japanese director Yojiro Takita we learn that demons spurt glowing green blood, laugh very obnoxiously, and tend to be most powerful when they take the form of really hot babes. To be honest, this film might work better if it were entirely converted into cover art for paperback fantasy novels in the bargain bin at Chapters. You could paper a small city of adolescent male bedrooms with the images from this movie, and then you wouldn't have to deal with the plot, the characters, the ideas, etc. Yes, this is a very campy film, though not, I suppose, without its creepy charm.
It would be pointless to go too far into describing the plot of Ashura, but let me try to give you the gist. The inhabitants of Edo, a sort of sprawling, Babylonian circus/brothel, operate somewhere between the realm of humans and the realm of demons (the realm of angels being absent). The demons like to possess humans and then chew on people, so a taskforce of elite swordsmen called the Demon Warders is put together to maintain order. But the Demon Warders themselves derive an almost demonic pleasure from killing the demon-possessed and showering in their gooey green demon blood. Finally, one Demon Warder named Izumo, the strongest of them all, has had it up to here with slaying demons and decides to become a thespian. Unfortunately for him, he accidentally falls in love with beautiful Tsubaki, the future human vessel for the demon queen Ashura, whose kingdom will ascend upside-down from the sky (?).
To give you some sense of the tenor of this movie, at one point Bizan, a demon head honcho, tells Tsubaki that the only thing that can awaken Ashura is ‘a surge of emotion'. Well, Izumo gives Tsubaki the requisite surging, Ashura awakens inside of her, and their relationship becomes pretty complicated (though not as complicated as all that, after all). This is a pretty steamy scene, in which Ashura-to-be slurps up the blood out of Izumo's shoulder wounds. Then, as they're surging together, she says, “As the red hot blood flows from your body, mine drinks it in." The heroic Izumo gallantly takes this bit of news in stride.
Ashura is a movie that at no point ever ceases to try to be very dark and serious (apart from a bit of poorly delivered slapstick cross-dressing humour), and at no moment does it ever feel either dark or serious. It does manage to pull off fetishist weirdness, however, and the visuals are often very sumptuous. At its best, it looks like something Jim Henson might have done, replete with wild costumes and creatures, 80's makeup styles, and a very Labyrinth-esque final showdown on crazy Escher stairs. This movie might be worth the watch just for its bizzaro excesses, not least of which is the music for the final credits: My Funny Valentine.
Reviewed by Mark Mann.
