Review for Requiem From The Darkness: Vol.3 - Pain of the Damned (UK)

Introduction

'I only paid a pound for it. I only paid a pound for it.' That isn't a reassuring start to a review, but it is a little reassuring as a viewer when I sit down to watch this DVD. The first two volumes of Requiem From The Darkness haven't exactly inspired me, and my collector's instinct at work meant that I wound up buying the whole series. Of course that means watching the thing, which is where I start cursing that collector's instinct. Requiem From The Darkness is supposed to be spooky, chilling, and unsettling. Let's hope that the third time is the charm, or indeed the curse. Hell, I'd be happy if it manages to keep me awake.

Momosuke is an aspiring writer at the end of the Edo period in Japan. He's made a living writing children's riddles, but he would much rather be remembered for more weighty work. It's why he's currently wandering the country, looking for material to contribute to his 100 Stories. But that journey takes him in unexpected directions when he runs into three odd characters, Mataichi the Trickster, Ogin the Puppeteer and Nagamimi the Bird Caller. These three people wander the land, seeking out the darker, sinful sides of human nature, devising suitable punishment for the sinners. It's a twisted world of dark spirits and vengeful demons, and Momosuke is caught up right in the middle.


The next three episodes of Requiem From The Darkness are presented here on this MVM disc.

8. Field Gun - Nodeppo
It's a letter that spurs Momosuke to visit his brother in Kyoto, a letter that his brother didn't even send, but it turns out to be serendipitous, as there is a spate of mysterious murders occurring, corpses appearing with stones embedded in their skulls. Momosuke tells of a legend of a tanuki and a flying squirrel co-operating to attack unwary travellers, but there's a more prosaic explanation. One of the local pirates created a gun that actually fires stone pellets. But he's already dead.

9. The Unkillable - Kowai
Giemon of Inarizaka has been executed… again. What can you do with a murderer that keeps coming back to life? Ogin has a personal connection with this killer, as he slaughtered her parents when she was a child. Now that Giemon has been beheaded, it turns out that his head has vanished. It seems he may have come back to life and is now targeting the Samurai who captured him the last time, a man named Sasamai.


10. Flames of Desire - Hi no Enma
When an old man with a strange request appears, it spurs Momosuke into action. The man is looking for his prospective bride, wants to marry her despite her pyromaniac tendencies, and despite the possibility that she may be a hi-no-enma spirit. For Mataichi and his cohorts, it seems like a ripe opportunity to reap some vengeance, but Momosuke swears to go ahead of them and save her.

Picture

Requiem From The Darkness gets a 4:3 regular transfer. It's a standards conversion as usual, but it's a striking animation style that doesn't particularly suffer as a result. Requiem is full of shadows and darkness, uses a limited dark pastel palette, bold lines and strong contrasts to create and build on a very effective spooky atmosphere. It's a gothic looking anime style, eschewing the traditional clean and slender lines for something more grotesque and warped. It's a style that would be at home in a Tim Burton movie, although it may just be too creepy even for him. It's made all the more unsettling with a veritable menagerie of character designs, with traditional looking characters like Momosuke and Ogin, interacting with escapees from a Judge Dredd comic. Mataichi and Nagamimi are far from what you would consider normal anime character design, and the same ethos applies across the board.

Sound

You have a choice between DD 2.0 English and Japanese, with optional subtitles and a signs only track. The show gets a couple of easy-listening jazz style theme songs that seem at odds with the tone of the show but wind up working surprisingly well with the moody and atmospheric imagery. I went with the original language track as usual and was happy enough with that, but what I sampled of the English dub was quite pleasant to listen too, well-acted and with the cast suiting their characters. The sound isn't all that expressive, but it's distinctive enough, and puts across the creepy and unsettling aspects of the animation well.

Extras

The disc gets the usual animated menus and jacket picture, and you can enjoy a 5 minute slideshow line art gallery, an art setting gallery with 10 images that you have to click through, and trailers for Full Metal Alchemist and Gunslinger Girl.

Conclusion

Four times! Four times I fell asleep while watching this disc. It's only 75 minutes long, but it still invokes deep slumber in me. And even when I'm not drifting off, it's turned me into some kind of human goldfish, in that I'll have forgotten what happened thirty seconds previously, and neither do I have the inclination to skip back and find out. In fact, were it not for the fact that I take notes as I watch, there would be no episode synopses for this disc, and I can't attest to their accuracy at that.

Requiem From The Darkness may be stylish to look at, and dripping with atmosphere and a spooky aesthetic, but that doesn't distract from the dull, monotonous, plodding narrative, the wafer thin characters, and the sheer lack of any hook whatsoever. There was nothing at all on this disc that sparked my interest, invited me to partake of this world. In fact it's more akin to a dry recitation of facts than a gripping storyline. A couple of the episodes on this disc may break from the routine a little, in introducing Momosuke's brother, and revealing Ogin's back story, but they still don't escape from the drudgery of the storytelling style.


Actually, I think I'll leave it at that. I just don't recall enough of this disc to go any further into the episodes individually, or comment on how the characters developed. In fact, my abiding memory of Requiem From The Darkness: Volume 3 is that of constantly being jolted awake by the end credits theme, and skipping back ten minutes to see what I had just missed, only to be dozing before they came up again. There is a lot of good anime out there, and there is plenty that is not so good. But boring anime is rare. By its nature, anime is fast paced, colourful, and energetic, yet Requiem From The Darkness manages to defy all that anyway. Only one more volume to sleep through.