Akemi's Anime World

Violence Jack Anime Review

Violence Jack Box Art

Violence Jack

1.5 stars / OVA / Action / 18-up

Bottom Line

A poorly-made series with decent action scenes, and VERY nasty content.

It’s Like...

...Fist of the North Star with more violence, guns, and misogyny, less logic and characterization.

Second Opinion

Violence Jack has quite a nasty reputation, and it well deserves it. However, I do not think this is the worst anime created as it has been billed on many anime review sites. Looking at it from another viewpoint, Violence Jack is not that bad at all, if you are a fan of blood and gore flicks.

Violence Jack has few good technical aspects about it, so I'll get those out of the way first.

The art is similar to other Go Nagai styles. Wild hair, realistic figures who have just enough detail to be believable. The action is well animated, and looks pretty good. The blood and gore is detailed, but not very realistic. The voice acting is laughable at best. It all sounds very forced and flat, like the actors were paid minimum wage for this performance.

If you were hoping for any sort of character development, you might want to look elsewhere. Same thing goes for the plot as well. Violence Jack is about as shallow as a glass of water. But you aren't watching this for the technical aspects, are you? You want blood and carnage? Then Violence Jack delivers every bit of it and more.

Violence Jack's reputation comes solely from the fact that it is there to show you just how low some people can be. It has been said many times that this anime's purpose isn't necessarily to show the power and destruction of Jack, but to show the depths of human depravity. Never before had I felt so dirty watching anime before, and this is coming from someone who owns all of the Urotsukdoji series.

I'm going to put a few slight spoilers here related to some of the very NASTY scenes in Violence Jack to further show how bad this can get. So please skip to the bottom of the review if you don't want to know:

-All of the men are portrayed as rapists and murderers, and they do just that. There is one particularly nasty scene in Evil Town, where a group of men shreds some girl, and you are left to see the aftermath.

-In the opening scene of Evil Town, a child is shot and killed. You then see the child's body lying there with roaches crawling all over him.

-Near the end of Evil Town, Jack kills the leader of Section B's girlfriend by beheading her. The boyfriend shows up to find his girlfriend's head, then proceeds to EAT HER DECAPITATED HEAD!! 0_o

-There is rampant lesbian rape in the first and third OAV.

Basically, you almost have to be a blood and gore fan to find anything enjoyable about Violence Jack. Even if you look at it as a slightly exaggerated look into human depravity, it's still not that great. Evil Town seems to be the worst as far as objectionable content goes, but the entire series gives off a really nasty vibe. I personally didn't find it to be all that enjoyable except for the action scenes. But it's not the worst thing in the world. It's very poorly made, and it deserves all of it's reputation as one of the goriest, bloodiest, and all-out nastiest animes ever made. Give it a rent if you're a blood and gore fan. If not, please stay far, far away from this thing. I don't think Go Nagai needs any more people coming after him with pitchforks...