GYO: TOKYO FISH ATTACK Trailer and Release Date

Despite delays Gyo is about to be released and the lovely folks at the Terror-cotta label (the guys who gave us Revenge: A Love Story, and Death Bell) have sent me the UK trailer for the anime adaptation of Junji Ito’s weird fiction adventure Gyo. The release date is the 03^rd of September.  Here are the rest of the details and the trailer:

GYO: TOKYO FISH ATTACK

Giant, killer fish attack Tokyo!

Release Date: 03^rd September 2012

Synopsis

The story centres around Kaori who is visiting Okinawa and its beautiful beaches with friends when she find herself caught in the middle of a land invasion by bizarre and aggressive fish which scuttle on land with sharp metal legs. Things are about to get much worse for Kaori as she finds that the deadly fish are spreading from the island.

Technical Specifications
Special features:
Interview with Manga master Junji Ito

Horror, 2012
Certificate 15
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese with English subtitles.
Running time: 71 min

I pretty much loved what I saw.  The action was exciting and the visceral reaction I had to the body horror showed me how involved I was in the film and how good the artistry is. I felt it was a good adaptation of a tricky source and I scored it pretty high. Gyo is out tomorrow on DVD and it can also be seen on the big screen at Scotland Loves Anime.

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack ギョ (2012)

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack                            

Romaji: Gyo　

Japanese Title：ギョ

Japanese Release Date: 15^th February 2012

UK DVD Release Date: 03^rd of September 2012 (Terror-cotta)

Running Time: 71 mins.

Director: Takayuki Hirao

Writer: Takayuki Hirao (script), Junji Ito (Original Manga)

Starring: Mirai Kataoka (Kaori), Hideki Abe (Shirakawa), Ami Taniguchi (Erika), Masami Saeki (Aki), Takuma Negishi (Tadashi)

Junji Ito occupies a very special place in my life. He makes my nightmares. I can think of few other manga-ka or filmmakers that have had the effect of leaving me genuinely unnerved. Gyo (Japanese for fish) is the first of his stories to get an anime adaptation. Does it work?

Kaori is visiting Okinawa with her friends Aki and Erika for a grad trip. They are staying at a beach house owned by Kaori’s fiancé Tadashi’s uncle and are enjoying Okinawa’s beautiful beaches when she finds herself caught in the middle of a land invasion by bizarre fish which scuttle on land with sharp metal legs and spread a “Death Stench”. These fish turn aggressive and soon spread across the island and spread further afield to Tokyo where Tadashi resides. Kaori decides to return to Tokyo and find Tadashi. She hooks up with a freelance cameraman named Shirakawa but things are about to get a whole lot weirder than she could have imagined.

Anybody familiar with Ito’s weird fiction manga will know that his skill lies in taking something simple in an everyday situation like a physical feature or a desire and crafting something truly dreadful that twists relatable characters. Sometimes his stories become so unhinged that logic can fly out of the window but even then they are still affecting thanks to the mood, the ideas, and imagery which are so visceral. Movie adaptations struggle in conveying these stories and change things to make them more accessible as seen in the live-action Uzumaki and here.

The anime has been adapted by Takayuki Hirao who is the anime’s writer and director. He learned his craft under the guidance of Satashi Kon and even directed the first episode of the magnificent Paranoia Agent. Hirao has simplified Gyo’s story and turned it from pure psychological horror into a simple apocalypse movie that uses the brilliant animation to foreground the action and weirdness and the disgusting and brutal body horror. As a result Gyo has created a new nightmare for me… that of the sea and what lurks in it!

Have you ever stared out at an ocean and wondered what lies beneath the surface? Think about it. Oceans are large areas that have been barely explored and thousands of years of evolution have crafted so much life which is mostly undiscovered. This does not take into account the impact that humanity has had. The last few times I have looked out to sea I only thought about what was on the surface. What Gyo does is give vent to the sense of fear that surrounds the unknown and making the everyday crash against the monstrous.

GYO: TOKYO FISH ATTACK Release Date

It may be the summer and the Olympics might be getting me all excited but last night while I was watching Japan vs Canada in the women’s doubles last night (thanks to the fantastic service of the BBC) I received some spine-chilling information that left me on edge… The recent anime adaptation of Junji Ito’s horror manga GYO which was acquired for UK distribution by the Terror-cotta label (the guys who gave us Revenge: A Love Story, and Death Bell) has been given a release date of the 03^rd of September.  Here are the details:

GYO: TOKYO FISH ATTACK

Giant, killer fish attack Tokyo!

Release Date: 03^rd September 2012

Synopsis

The story centres around Kaori who is visiting Okinawa and its beautiful beaches with friends when she find herself caught in the middle of a land invasion by bizarre and aggressive fish which scuttle on land with sharp metal legs. Things are about to get much worse for Kaori as she finds that the deadly fish are spreading from the island.

Technical Specifications
Special features:
Interview with Manga master Junji Ito

Horror, 2012
Certificate 15
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese with English subtitles.
Running time: 71 min

Terror-cotta state that “Morbid manga master Junji Ito’s putrid and surreal story of mutant zombie fish that sprout legs and attack Japan is the most insane anime to come out of Japan since Urotsukidōji:  Legend of the Overfiend.”

While I’m not sure I would class it as the most insane anime since Overfiend, from what I have seen of it the anime is truly chilling and features a lot of body-horror and gory animation and I can assure you that all works of Junji Ito are really creepy – ruin summer days and leave me reeling from the existential and metaphysical terror creepy. That said I really liked the live-action adaptation of Uzumaki.

Gyo is one of the most well-known stories from legendary manga-ka Junji Ito who regularly has his weird fiction adapted for the big screen as the numerous Tomie live -action film show.

The anime is directed by Takayuki Hirao who learned his craft as an anime director under the guidance of one of the best anime directors ever, Satashi Kon (Paprika, Perfect Blue. While in his early twenties, Hirao was entrusted to direct the first episode of Kon’s first and only series, the critically acclaimed Paranoia Agent (which is one of the best anime I have watched). Hirao has carved out a name for himself in the past decade as one of the young anime directors to watch out for, becoming known for his over the top action scenes and intense camerawork most notably in massively successful Death Note animated series. The OVA was animated by Ufotable (Garden of Sinners, Coyote Ragtime Show). Get ready for some gruesomeness!

Update (19th August): The official website has changed the release date of the DVD to the 03rd of September.

Uzumaki (Spiral) うずまき (2000)

I hate Junji Ito’s horror manga. I say this not because his manga is bad but because it is bloody good and thus, bloody terrifying. His work has inspired such cosmic dread in me that whole summer days have been ruined and I have been left a shuddering wreck trying to convince myself that his horror can’t happen to me. Thankfully films based on his work are much more fun.

Everything starts with a girl named Kirie (Eriko Hatsune) staring at her town of Kurouzu from a nearby hillside. Something strange happened there. Cut to a few days earlier and Kirie is running through town on her way to meet her boyfriend Shuichi (Fhi Fan). She encounters Shuichi’s father Toshio (Ren Osugi) who is absorbed in filming a snail shell’s spiral. After meeting Shuichi she hears how bad Toshio’s obsession with spirals is. Shuichi has a bad feeling about the town which he believes is cursed by the shape of a spiral, something which becomes increasingly obvious as more and more people around town succumb to strange deaths involving spirals. It isn’t until Toshio dies that Kirie and Shuichi are spurred into action. With the help of Ichiro, a local journalist, they search the town history and find dark secrets linked to ancient mirrors retrieved from the nearby Dragonfly pond and a cult obsessed with spirals.

Do you know where spirals are? Everywhere! Lollipops, cakes, snails. Just look at your fingerprints, hair. Try your ears. Even the insides of your ears have spirals…  Imagine having spirophobia and want to destroy spirals or being so obsessed with spirals that you allow them to take over your whole life. The potential physical and psychological destruction is huge and amusingly demonstrated in this film.