#studio 88

Rod Serling steps into view, looking just a little more rundown than usual. "Picture of a man," he starts, "a man so violent they named him Violence Jack. Now, picture if you will, a town so vile they named it Hell Town. A subterranean town of debauchery and dastardly deeds. A town that would go on to inspire an OVA so evil it would take on the moniker of... EVIL TOWN."

He takes one final drag of his cigarette, sighing deeply. "That's the signpost you see up ahead. The signpost that signals your entry into… 1988's VIOLENCE JACK: EVIL TOWN." Thinking the crew is no longer rolling film or sound, Serling spikes his smokes on the floor. "This thing is just vile, repulsive even. This Go Nagai fella, well, he's just a nasty little freak!" 

In the world of post-apocalyptic media, you have everything from shows and movies about zombies to funky little Italian dune buggies. Dwindling resources. Familial bonds put to the test along endless stretches of barren asphalt. And then you have one of the best sub-genres: Inexplicably Big Dudes. Like Fist of the North Star, Go Nagai's Violence Jack manga fits right into that mold. Unlike Kenshiro and co., though, Jack is willing to explore every dirty little nook and cranny of what our bleak future has to offer. 

Folks, it ain't pretty. 

Deep in the depths of the appropriately named Evil Town, a small group of survivors crack open a wall to find the colossal Violence Jack just kind of standing there. Apparently he's been standing inside this wall for six months? When they let him out he's just kind of like, "thanks." From there we transition into a battle between Evil Town's A, B and C Zones, each with their own unique brand of denizens, with Jack ultimately playing a pivotal role in who lives and who gets torn to shreds.

At first Jack partners up with the Zone A folks, promising to help them take on the slice of beef known as Mad Saurus, who hails from the extra loathsome B Zone. Before long, though, he finds himself teaming up with the women of C Zone, who are almost all fashion models—with a couple wrestlers thrown in for good measure—since they were heading to a fashion show in Kyoto when disaster struck. How convenient! Jack is tasked with protecting them from the brutes and rapists of both A and B Zones, so either way you slice it this is destined to culminate in a Big Dude versus Big Dude Beefdown. 

Over the course of roughly one hour, kids die horrible deaths, women are savaged in the most unpleasant of ways, there's cannibalism, necrophilia; basically nothing is off limits in the world of Violence Jack, more so here than anywhere else. It's all fairly reprehensible… and the animators at Studio 88 went obscenely hard on it! Director Ichiro Itano—yes, he of the famed style of action sequence that came to be known as the "Itano Circus," featuring incredibly stylized aerial combat and missile volleys—made sure his animators put all their blood, sweat and tears into the blood, sweat and tears on screen. Everything from the extremely gross depictions of sexual assault to Jack's expert knife play, which usually ends up splitting heads in half or sending punks into a somersault of guts, is depicted with the kind of love and care one might put into a sentimental Mother's Day card. 

Studio 88:

Lindy Hop Dance