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Wicked City Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Animated, Dolby Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 90 minutes Studio: Urban Vision Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2000-11-07 Buy from Amazon

From Amazon.com The premise of Wicked City has been used in a number of other anime features, including Legend of the Overfiend: Earth is linked to a parallel world of demons, whose inhabitants can cross the barrier separating the planets. Dashing Taki Renzaburo, a secret agent assigned to handle invaders from the "Black World," finds himself partnered with Makie, a gorgeous Black World woman. Their assignment: to protect Giuseppe Mayart, a bigwig coming to Tokyo to sign a 500-year peace treaty between the worlds. Mayart, who typifies the sniggering, diminutive lechers who often turn up in anime, hardly seems to warrant all this bother. Protecting him draws Taki and Makie into a series of exceedingly violent encounters with "radicals" from the Black World who oppose the treaty, including their shape-shifting, unkillable leader and a spider-woman with fanged genitalia. Blood and gore fly amid scenes of rape, torture, shootings, slashings, and exploding bodies. Yoshiaki Kawajiri directs skillfully, although the simian Mayart never blends into the realistic world of the film. Wicked City was a landmark work when it was released in 1987, and it retains a cult following. But many subsequent features--notably Mamoru Oshii's darkly brilliant Ghost in the Shell--have eclipsed it. Not rated; suitable for ages 18 and up for nudity, sexual situations, profanity, rape, violence, grotesque imagery, and violence against women. --Charles Solomon From Description When Desire Turns Deadly, There's No Place to Hide... For centuries, a secret peace treaty has existed between Earth and the Black World, a parallel dimension populated by shape-changers possessing awesome supernatural powers. But now, that pact is up for renewal and a militant faction from the Black World plans to do everything in their power to stop the treaty from being signed. The fate of the world now rests in the ability of a pair of special agents, one human, the other a shape-changer from the distaff dimension, to make sure things go according to plan. In WICKED CITY, director, Yoshiaki Kawajiri blends stylish eroticism, graphic horror and pulse-pounding action in such a way that it is easy to forget that it's only a cartoon. Not Rated: Contains violence, nudity and sexual situations. Parental discretion advised.

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