Mamoru Oshii’s First Stay-Motion Movie Is A Brilliantly Distinctive, Weird Diamond

Earlier than Patlabor, earlier than Ghost within the Shell, and earlier than he was recognized for his explicit model of philosophically minded anime, Mamoru Oshii launched an completely weird, wholly authentic science-fiction/neo-noir black comedy mashup referred to as The Pink Spectacles. A cat-and-mouse thriller if it had been directed by French New Wave-era Jean-Luc Godard and Robocop‘s Paul Verhoeven, Oshii’s early-career curio is each a severe reflection on the militarization of a surveillance state as a lot as it’s a kooky screwball satire.

The Pink Spectacles is shot virtually completely in wealthy black and white chiaroscuro. The 4K restoration, which simply had its North American premiere at Past Fest in Los Angeles, is impeccable, accentuating cinematographer Yousuke Mamiya’s harsh remedy of darkish, gentle, and shadow. Being that Oshii’s movie traffics a lot within the murky line between morality and depravity, the restoration is an particularly welcome replace.

Mamoru Oshii’s First Stay-Motion Debut Is An Endlessly Entertaining, Surrealist Fever Dream

In a dystopian near-future (shot in 1987, happening in 1991), Tokyo has grow to be unrecognizable, overrun by “city crime.” In response, the Anti-Vicious Crime Closely Armored Cell Particular Investigations Unit, aka “Kerberos,” is fashioned to battle evil. Clad in large, closely armored, pitch-black fits with the brilliant, neon pink spectacles that give the movie its title, Kerberos brokers have gotten uncontrolled and induced widespread ire over their brutal ways. The state decides to disband Kerberos, however Koichi (Shigeru Chiba), Midori (Machiko Washio), and Toribe (Hideyuki Tanaka) refuse to put down their weapons, so dedicated are they to their aggressive ardour towards evil.

Within the movie’s opening brawl — one in every of two sequences shot in colour — Midori and Toribe are injured, insisting that Koichi escape as long as he vows to return to them. Three years later, he finds a Tokyo so remodeled within the wake of Kerberos’s absence that the town now looks like a consistently shifting fever dream. In pursuit of his mates’ path, he finds the town has lately banned stand-and-eat soba noodle bars within the title of defending decency. So comically over-the-top is the state’s fascism that these as soon as widespread institutions have been relegated to the standing of heroin dens.

Although the movie is live-action, Oshii’s background and eventual mastery of anime is on full show right here. The Pink Spectacles is nothing if not cartoonish. At one level, the chief of the evil hitmen often known as Cats, Bunmei (Tessyo Genda), breaks right into a mambo dance. In an early assassination try, Koichi dispenses with a seemingly limitless horde of would-be killers on what seems to be a trend runway set. One particularly noxious working joke is that Koichi’s meals is perpetually laced with laxatives, so there are a number of sequences of our hero scrambling out of the room with agonizing diarrhea.

These repeated scenes of buffoonery are amplified by the type of sound and visible results synonymous with anime: the clack of footwear in an empty corridor, the profuse expression of shock or ache on a close-up of a face, the suspension of time, the complexity of world-building (The Pink Spectacles was adopted by two sequels and a manga collection). Followers of Ghost within the Shell will acknowledge the paranoia right here over totalitarianism and Oshii’s play with gentle and flatness of picture. However they may not acknowledge simply how glib and jovial the movie is, regardless of its unflinching darkish presentation of contemporary society.

Oddly sufficient, contemplating the timing of the discharge of this 4K restoration, The Pink Spectacles does share a lot in fashion of satire with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After One other, which equally incorporates a former rogue agent returning to the location the place as soon as he was king. Pulled out of the shadows, Koichi is positioned within the degraded middle of a convoluted wrestle between good and evil. Right here, that wrestle is stretched to its most, a taffy-like digression whereby these binaries not have any that means.

The Pink Spectacles just isn’t all the time profitable. It’s overlong, and steadily slowed down by its irreverance. However at its core, the movie capabilities as a elementary query about whom, or what, is accountable for the pervasive evil in any society. Is the federal government accountable for the degradation of its folks, or do the folks detract from the federal government’s skill to supply care? Who earnings from rot? In its most provocative type, Oshii’s movie poses the existential chance that if our world seems like a continuing, surrealist fever dream, maybe it truly is. Maybe we’re dancing our approach by way of a circus-like nightmare.

The Pink Spectacles screened on the 2025 Past Fest.