Labyrinth of Flames

Original Title: 炎のらびりんす
Romanized: Honoo no Rabirinsu
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Galan is a high school kid with a dream--he wants to be a Samurai. That mainly means he spends most of his time in an elaborate Halloween costume watching old movies, but hey, it's a start. Things change for Galan when his refined schoolmate Natsu gives him a real, live, sword... and promises more if he just comes to visit her hometown. The catch? She lives in the wilds of Russia in an isolated village where she's royalty. And there's also a little domestic dispute over who Natsu is going to marry... and a plot to steal long lost treasure... and a busty American reporter... and several people who want to kill him. If Galan survives, it'll be one heck of a vacation.

Review

Rating: 3 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-06-24

Aside from the fact that this title features neither a Labyrinth nor a significant amount of flame (must be a metaphor or something), I learned three things watching it: Nishijima is a skilled director with a major underwear fetish, underwear fetish movies work better as over-the-top comedies, and bad "guys" are more limber than good ones. I'll come back to that third point later, but Labyrinth of Flames is the answer to the question "Exactly what would happen if you crossed Agent Aika and Jubei-Chan the Ninja Girl?" Cartoony, manic, crude, occasionally disturbing, and apparently filmed by a very short cameraman, this is another title that takes a fairly well-made anime production (Samurai comedy in this case), and spices it up with a nearly constant barrage of panty shots.

Let me repeat: When I say lots of underwear, I mean lots of underwear. Depending on your taste, the underwear alone may make this worth watching or avoiding entirely (if you loved Agent Aika, stop reading right now and go get Labyrinth of Flames). But, if upskirt camera angles aren't enough to base a decision on one way or the other, I'll give you my take.

Now, I didn't like Agent Aika much--too far beyond good taste with nothing redeeming--so I'm going to have to make some comparisons here, since I was surprised to find (and rather embarrassed to admit) that I actually enjoyed Labyrinth of Flames. For one thing, it isn't quite as bad as Agent Aika--a tad more restraint is shown with the underwear (especially at the beginning), and there is very little actual nudity, which gives it a little more credibility as being more than borderline hentai. For another, the fact that it's a comedy (and raunchy, very silly one at that) makes all the low-angle shots seem more humorous and in tune with the bawdy themes. Finally--and this is what really counts--I thought that it was pretty darned funny.

Be warned--even though I kept laughing at it, I still finished the show feeling like I should take a shower or something. Be further warned--I have a whacked-out, low-brow sense of humor, and Labyrinth of Flames is most definitely whacked-out and the lowest of the low-brow. There are a few creatively screwed-up moments, but for the most part the jokes are numerous, cheap, entirely tasteless, and relatively dirty. A few parts are shameful (or just plain lame) enough to push the limits of my sense of humor, but on the whole it was deranged enough to keep me chuckling. That, and the entire second half of the second episode is a drawn-out and very silly battle that I thought had just the right blend of pseudo-drama and outright chaos.

If you look past the humor... well, you won't find much, but Labyrinth of Flames is still the best Russian-themed Samurai comedy I've seen. Of course, it's the only Russian-themed Samurai movie I've ever seen, but it does have a bit of the classic anime charm of Nishijima's other work. Of most note is the collection of lovable loser characters, foremost among them Natsu's devoted servant, Kasumi, who ends up stealing the show (especially in the first part--she might as well have been the star).

Kasumi is one of those anime personalities that you can never get enough of--loyal, incredibly cute, willing to sacrifice her body (in the most bloody of ways) for her lady, willing to stoop to any low to bag a man, and hooked to an IV from start to finish. Yes, the first severely anemic anime heroine. In fact, a character who is cute, slightly perverted, underclothed, bleeds a lot, and makes fun of a disability, all at the same time, pretty well sums up the production as a whole.

Visually, Labyrinth of Flames has a standard look and feel to it, but since this is by the man responsible for Project A-ko, it's done right. The character designs are very cute, with just a touch of originality to them, and lots of variety in their costumes (absolutely all of which, of course, involve very short skirts). The backgrounds are generic, but the art (especially the character art) is attractive. I particularly liked the character animation--important, since a lot of the gags are purely "physical"--and there's also a totally pointless but appealing little dance sequence.

The music is a thing to behold... well, unremarkable would be a better word for most of it, but the end theme is a lively, classical Russian piece that is simultaneously so catchy and completely out-of-place that I absolutely loved it. Oh, and remember that limber comment a while back? The backdrop to the credits (à la Agent Aika) is each of the female characters in various states of undress and various seductive poses... and the bad gals seem to be quite flexible.

The voice casts in both languages are all around good. The Japanese acting is again anime-standard but high quality. Galan has an appropriate mix of whiny and cheesy stud, and Natsu's dad (by far the weirdest character) is great--a touch of gruff and plenty of... well, "eew." You have to see him to really understand. Among the many female characters there's a nice mix of voices, with the standout again being Kasumi--ultra-cute, over-the-top, and not quite as innocent as you'd expect.

The English dub is also good, especially considering how hard it is to dub wild comedy well. All the casting works, and although Galan perhaps seems a little too straight, things are spiced up by a very appropriate cheesy Russian accent and Carrie's even more appropriate less cheesy Southern accent. On the topic, Carrie's Japanese actress, though certainly not passing for a US-native (much less a cowgirl), does a remarkably good job with the English her dialogue is spiced up with--considerably better, at least, than a lot of more serious productions.

Bottom line: Labyrinth of Flames is well made, well acted, nice looking, incredibly tasteless, filled with huge amounts of exposed underwear, and an equal amount of very stupid and very screwed-up comedy. Those of you out there who can appreciate this sort of giggling frat-boy comedy know who you are. Just don't watch it with anyone you want to convince of your maturity.

Related Recommendations

Agent Aika. It this particular case, that's a complete sentence (even more panty shots, though the plot is somewhat less silly). Amazing Nurse Nanako is also in a vaguely similar vein. For similarly fun action-comedies, but with less crude humor and visible underwear, you might check out Gokudo, the Project A-ko movies (Nishijima worked on the first one, but the second is the most similar), and the ultimate high-speed comedies Elf Princess Rane and Excel Saga.

US DVD Review

I'll make it simple: This DVD is so good I couldn't believe it was made by US Manga Corps. After years of second-rate DVDs, this disc includes everything you could possibly want. Of course there's a very crisp video transfer, clean stereo audio, and a subtitle track, but the disc also includes a thorough chapter index, complete Japanese voice actor credits (both at the end of the program and in the menus!), an art gallery, character sketches, textless opening and closings (more interesting than usual in this case), a rather amusing text interview with the director and character designer, an even more amusing, live-action "documentary" on the making of the dub, and one of their standard little DVD-ROM programs, which includes art, the script, and cast. Easily the best DVD I've seen out of USM so far, and has just about anything you could ask for, plus a few things you wouldn't have thought to. It's about time--now keep it up, guys.

Content Guide

Rated 16+ by USM with good reason--gross, bloody, and rather lecherous.

Violence: 2 - There's a bloody samurai movie within a movie at the begining, and a couple of graphic pratfalls later.

Nudity: 2 - Only brief actual nudity (mostly in the credits), but there are a LOT of panties.

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - Some implied hanky-panky, and a lot of crude jokes.

Language: 3 - Some crude language.

Notes and Trivia

There are a couple of elaborate and very random Russian-themed attacks in the production: "Bugachov Zugobra! Emergency Brake!" and "Tokachev Jump, Comrade Gagarin, Earth is blue! 1961! Vostok reenters the atmosphere!" The latter refers to Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, who orbited the earth in the Vostok 1 space capsule in 1961.

As for the former, "Bugachov Zugobra" is a mis-re-Romanization (or Russianization) of "Pugachev's Cobra," a flashy maneuver developed by the ace Russian pilot Victor Pugachev. It involves pulling the nose of the aircraft up very sharply, which drastically decreases the aircraft's speed in a short amount of time, so it loosely fits the "Emergency Brake" description. It's also apparently a crowd favorite at airshows. The translation error likely occurred because the English translator only had the phonetic Japanese to go off of, and they guessed poorly at what it was intended to be saying.

A couple of name notes: "Labyrinth of Flames" is a direct translation of the Japanese title (OK, technically the main title on the original was written in Russian, so I can't tell if it's accurate), but the title of the first episode is a bit trickier: "Chonmage Rabirinsu? Raburinsu?" is accurately translated as "Samurai Labyrinth? Loverinth?", but if you want to be literal "chonmage" is the name of the half-bald samurai haircut. In a somewhat more creative translation, Erola Suppaatoka's name (a bit of a pun) was changed to the similar pun "Erola Nakedoff" in the dub and subtitles.

Availability

Available in the US from US Manga Corps on bilingual DVD.

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