#Project Itoh

[trulyunpleasant]

You might be physically taking part in battle, but you're not really there. Something's missing. I'm sure the same goes for your comrades too. You kill enemies right in front of your own eyes yet you never feel the accompanying emotions or reactions. You wonder whether the intent to kill was ever really yours. You start to doubt whether you can take ownership of the deaths that you cause."

Project Itoh, Genocidal Organ

[screamofdespair]

Genocidal Organ (2017) - Direction / Script / Storyboard / Character Design by 村瀬修功 Shuko Murase

[iratesherlock]

* THE EMPIRE OF CORPSES / JAPANESE / 2H 6M / 2015

— The movie's original Japanese name is 屍者の帝国 the romanization of this is Shisha no Teikoku. — Hosoya Yoshimasa as John Watson and Takasugi Yoshimitsu as Sherlock Holmes. — Murase Ayumu as Friday, Hanazawa Kana as Hadaly Lilith, Kusunoki Taiten as Frederick Burnaby, and Yamashita Daiki as Nikolai Krasotkin. — Directed by Ryoutarou Makihara, produced by WIT Studio, and distributed by TOHO Animation. — Based on the novel written by Project Itoh and co-authored by Toh EnJoe. — Favorite Quality: The animation is incredibly stunning, specifically the movements of the revived corpses; though, honestly, the entirety of the design of the corpses from their animation to their sound effects is incredible.

The Empire of Corpses is a movie based on Sherlock Holmes in the absolute loosest of ways; however, it is a story being told using familiar characters and, while most people don’t consider it an adaptation, I’m going to. To explain my thoughts, I need to explain what this movie is about, and why you normally wouldn’t find it in places listing adaptations of Sherlock Holmes (or, if you have, why many others haven’t). The easiest way to understand this movie is to consider it a retelling of John Watson’s adventures in the war—if the war was about finding Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s work so that John can fully reanimate his deceased (currently undead) research partner. In this borderline dystopian world, Dr. Frankenstein’s reanimation of his monster was something that the whole of society tried to replicate and now corpses are used as unpaid labor, soldiers, or any other type of work dangerous to the living; however, these corpses do not have souls, thoughts, or opinions. The only corpse recorded to have a soul is Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, but his notes that indicated how the late doctor was able to do this have been lost—until recently, which is largely where the story starts. After John Watson illegally reanimated his deceased research partner Friday, he was drafted into the war to find Dr. Frankenstien’s missing notes due to his deep understanding of and desire to recreate the human soul to keep his promise to his friend and bring him back from the dead as an individual. There is much this movie tries to fit into its runtime, sometimes to its detriment. I was fairly confused in major moments throughout the story and needed to look up what was happening; however, I will be open I sometimes have context issues and don’t believe this confusion was fully the fault of the writing. That does not mean the writing was flawless, there were times it certainly could have been clearer or better paced to keep the audience from being lost. While it sounds like I didn’t enjoy this movie I, quite frankly, was enraptured by it, it is the most confusing mash of characters and storylines that I have ever seen—like an original doctor character was written and then John Watson’s story was somehow shoved in with no explanation. I loved it. There is likely a significant amount of context I didn’t understand as I have yet to read the manga or the novel (which has not been fully translated). It doesn’t feel like an adaptation; I don’t think it fully is one, but it still fits into a retelling of John Watson’s past. The premise is really what makes this movie what it is, I found it while looking for something else entirely, and couldn’t help myself but immediately watch it regardless of anything else I had to do today. The art style does not immediately stand out; it is par for the course if you have seen any significant amount of well-made anime, but it shines in its animation. It is beautifully animated, with the characters' movements, alive or otherwise, so distinct and fluid that it is visually appealing. The subject matter of the movie does mean that it leans heavily into body horror and violence, and there are scenes animated wonderfully, that are extremely difficult to watch if you have a fear of medical procedures (specifically needles). The sound design for this movie was also incredible, I don’t particularly remember much of the music, but the sound effects and background noise were incredible. The sounds of bones, footsteps, explosions, and movement were so well done that some scenes were only great because of the sound design. I highly recommend this movie if it is something you are interested in, it’s something so entirely out of left field it’s difficult to review without simply telling you you need to watch it just to understand and be as confused as I am. So do it, watch the movie, and be confused and intrigued.

[tori-go-ya02]

2024/03/20　伊藤計劃命日に寄せて

文章は「人という物語」より

[studyinspectrum]

屍者の帝国 "The Empire of Corpses", the 2015 animated movie based on the book of the same name

in the year 1818, a book called Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly was published. it tells the story of a man named Victor Frankenstein who reanimates a conglomeration of body parts as a scientific experiment. it's often regarded as the first widely publicized pieces of science fiction literature and has had a huge influence on modern pop culture and namely the horror genre to this day.

Satoshi Itō, or better known as Project Itoh, was a Japanese science fiction writer and essayist who was friends with Hideo Kojima and even worked on the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots novel tie in. Kojima would even show Itoh advance content to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker to Itoh against the NDA standards of Konami at the time.

in 2012, three years after the death of Itoh due to cancer, the book Empire of Corpses, or in Japanese, 屍者の帝国 (Shisha no teikoku) would be published posthumously. the book was then turned into a movie three years after that, directed by Ryoutarou Makihara and produced by Wit Studio. Wit Studio is responsible for other popular anime shows like Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, Ancient Magus Bride, and very recently Spy x Family.

You're probably going to ask why I'm talking about this book and movie in an essay for a Sherlock Holmes review blog. well, the main character's name is John Watson and yes, it is literally supposed to be that John Watson.

Warnings for Empire of Corpses is as follows: Racism, slavery, body horror, body mutilation

read the rest of my review on my bearblog here!

[bloodbeam]

“God is dead. Which meant that sin was now solely in the realm of humanity”

Genocidal Organ by Project Itoh

[c-schroed]

"You've read those science fiction stories where humans manage to digitize the consciousness and upload themselves to some computer network. We do that, and our bodies will be nothing but antiquated dead media as far as our souls are concerned. It's not hard to imagine a few soulless bodies lying around between the piles of magnetic tape and flash memory cards in my office once we evolve our consciousness beyond the need for the flesh." "Really?" I asked. "I always thought it was the other way around. That the soul was just a function of the body—a means to keep it alive. Once our bodies find something more suitable to propagate themselves and are able to trade in these old souls, then it's we who become the dead media." That caught him off his guard. The professor sat with a blank expression on his face for a few moments. Then he laughed out loud. "True enough! A very radical idea at first blush, but from the perspective of evolution, I'd say yours is more correct. Perhaps it is I who was caught up in an antiquated notion of the human soul as something sacred and unique."

"Harmony" by Project Itoh, 2008

This. "Harmony" by Japanese Author Project Itoh is, in my eyes, the best book ever written since Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein". Because of discussions like this.

Because of thoughts that take a turn into a direction I have never heard of before. Because of conclusions that are at the same time absolutely novel, weirdly fascinating and devastatingly uncanny. Because of masterful foreshadowing.

Gosh. I really love this book.

[ssc-chico]

</etml>

[flowgninthgil]

I wasn't expecting watching madoka magica to make me remember all this time I spent watching animes.

100% forgot to keep my watched-anime's op/ed playlist up to date.

RIP deleted videos that were the only trace of whatever I watched after I lost that bloc-note text file that I used as a back-up some time after I started losing interest in anime and noticed some of the openings had been deleted.

Big up to Black Bullet for making me discover nightcore and me thinking people were just going too far to avoid copyright.

C³ too, for making me love bloody lolis, and having this banger of an OP

Akame Ga Kill for being among the last animes I watched in that "phase" but probably one that I loved the most.

Lucky Star, because it's a crime how late I discovered it. (like 2018-2019)

Kubikiri Cycle, I keep remembering it everytime I get into one of those rememberance moments.

I'd need to take a day or two on a anime website and search one by one every anime that came out before 2017 at the very most, but right now I'm marking it all here:

because it's easier to find things there than on a youtube playlist that's half deleted/private videos.

I hope some people will find something to watch because so many of them were soooo good in my mind.

Also, considering what anime I remember and the theme I was going for, I don't know why the heck it took me so long to find the queer community.

And since I've yet to put it there, my most fav anime ever is Harmony, a movie from the Project Itoh.

Best Movie I've ever watched.

Damn, this thing went from "This anime made me remember a part of my past I forgot about" to "I really liked those animes, even did this in the past, what it'd become?" to "Please, those times were awesome, I wanna share it again"

May whomever read this have a great day/night

[screamofdespair]

Animation Director : 村瀬修功 Shuko Murase

[tokyostreetlights]

[koidump]

this is yaoi right ?

[tori-go-ya02]

イトプロ

2023/03/20～10/02

[acquired-stardust]

Anime Spotlight #3: Project A-ko (1986)

Join Ash as she takes a look at an underrated pride month anime classic and formative movie in her journey navigating queerness - it punches way above its weight and is well worth your time. Perhaps the greatest queer anime popcorn flick of all time, Acquired Stardust's spotlight on 1986's Project A-ko is here!

As previously discussed, time and tide can play funny tricks with our memory and perception. To that point, there's a special sort of magic that old media facilitates. Separation from the people and circumstances that produced it goes a long way towards helping us disconnect from preconceived notions and expectations to experience works more at face value. For a brief amount of time the brain is tricked into allowing itself to believe that this ancient work of art exists somehow outside of time and place - apart from not only the underlying political and cultural factors but also the individuals that birthed it.

Project A-ko is a work that synergizes incredibly well with this psychological trick but is perhaps doubly impressive when looked at in its proper context.

Released theatrically in June of 1986 (only a little over a month before Studio Ghibli's first official project Castle in the Sky) and named after Jackie Chan's 1983 Project A, Project A-ko was born out of the staff behind foundational hentai OVA series Cream Lemon deciding to pivot and make a mainstream movie for theaters. Carrying a similar spirit to Project A, Project A-ko is a sci-fi action-comedy that smashes together the absurd and the mundane brilliantly.

Opening with a scene entirely in English (even in the Japanese language version) that sees a spaceship fall to earth and destroy the coastal southern Japanese city of Graviton, we flash forward 16 years to our protagonist (the eponymous A-ko) waking up to walk her friend C-ko to school for their first day. Deeply steeped in Class S tropes that had been popular in anime since the 70s that saw homoromantic relationships between women become somewhat normalized, C-ko catches the eye of rich and elegant classmate B-ko who immediately becomes overwhelmingly (and inexplicably) infatuated by her and deeply jealous of the relationship C-ko shares with A-ko, which stokes a rivalry for the affections of C-ko that gradually becomes more unhinged as the movie rolls on, even managing to slip in an unexpected cameo from an American fast food icon.

It is here, beyond the basic setup, that Project A-ko begins to coalesce into something far better and much more clever than it has any real right to be. The lead characters, at first basic archetypes generically named but actually containing multi-layer puns, are wonderfully self-indulgent, given tons of room to come into their own and become a surprisingly strong ensemble. Gender, gender roles and sexuality are portrayed with a fascinating nonchalance (the likes of which is also featured in anime of the time such as Dirty Pair, as made clear with a very popular post on this very site). Fight choreography is shockingly good for the experience level of all involved (who by this time had mostly been known for their involvement in adapting Rumiko Takahashi's manga Urusei Yatsura).

The soundtrack (also in English and very of its time) matches the tone of the film in the best ways possible and helps to shape the film into something that is all too rare in the world of queer media: positive, happy stories celebrating the love people have for each other without getting too far into the weeds of angst and tragedy that is unfortunately often part and parcel with the real life queer experience. The Japanese voiceover cast features a stellar lineup of actors including Miki Ito, Emi Shinohara, Michie Tomizawa and Shuichi Ikeda (as well as a very early appearance by Megumi Hayashibara), and needless to say they knock it out of the park. One potential pain point is C-ko's loud and obnoxious nature, which despite being a central part of her character is toned down in the English dub. If one finds her to be especially grating, which is one of anime's hallmarks in this era, the English dub is serviceable enough.

Watching Project A-ko was a formative experience for me, with its Goku-esque lead becoming a hero of mine. The final shot of the movie still manages to make me emotional every time I see it. Its simple concept of 'the superheroes and supervillains in your everyday life' is executed wonderfully and the bright-eyed, saccharine tone is an incredible breath of fresh air in contrast to the misery that queerness (and, more often, external reactions to said queerness) often brings about in our lives. There is so much to be said about this movie but as is so often the case with anime spotlights, it's hard to get granular without spoiling the experience and I'd much rather you see it for yourself than have it spoiled for you in what is in all likelihood the first time you're hearing of it.

They say that the best queer media is often accidentally made by straight men who have no idea that they're making queer media and that holds true for Project A-ko, who's character designer/animation director Yuji Moriyama says they simply hadn't put much thought into in that context which is unfortunately believable - although Project A-ko receives several sequels, they get progressively further away from the shockingly refreshing queer love story that is the relatable heart of the movie, contrasting its rising stakes and insanity that culminates with a three-sided battle that once again causes widespread damage to Graviton City.

But such is the beauty of old media - for a brief hour and a half we are able to allow everything but the thing we're watching to fade away. To take it at face value. To see ourselves in these archetypal characters, and to brim with pride as they become engaging characters all their own. To hope that perhaps one day the world will treat queer people with the same sort of complete nonchalance featured in this movie, and to hope that we too may one day be able to have the sort of relationship between A-ko and C-ko in our own lives.

A gem hidden among the stones, Project A-ko is undoubtedly stardust.

-- Ash

[bloodbeam]

“You can’t interrogate a dead man. You can’t ask him any questions, and you can’t ask him for forgiveness.”

Genocidal Organ by Project Itoh

[c-schroed]

It was just me and the six-legged goat in the back of the truck. The goat had been put together to army specs, so no pink was involved. Everything was drab olive, smoky, dirty—the colors of war. I had been told that the six-legger's control mechanism consisted of cultivated horse nerves specially trained for the environment. The original horse came from local stock, so they were used to the mountains, Uwe said.

"Harmony" by Project Itoh, 2008

In the marvellous science fiction novel "Harmony", Japanese author Project Itoh describes autonomous vehicles like airplanes or legged robots that have animal brain tissue in their control mechanisms, so that their computer systems have quick, almost intuitive access to information about how to use wings or legs. In 2008, when "harmony" was first published, this must have been a weird but fascinating thought. Bionics put to the extreme.

I first read "Harmony" in 2018, after watching the absolutely congenial anime adaptation by Michael Arias and Takashi Nakamura of Studio 4°C. And ever since this time I increasingly have to think about machine learning and artificial neural networks when I'm reminded of "harmony". And about how very clever Itoh's vision of the future was and still is.

No, the computers of the future won't need real brain tissue. But simulating the neural network of a goat to enable a mobile robot to climb some rocks? Pretty clever.

Pretty clever, Project Itoh.