Midnight Eye: Gokuu II

Its clear cut this sequel to the first Midnight Eye is not as good. It has many of the elements, if not almost all of them that makes Yoshiaki Kawajiri's ovas so brilliant. It has the gorgeous, sharp character designs that lend themselves to the witty yet steadfast heroes and the badass femme fatales we love to root for. It pits them against an unscrupulous, calculating asshole of a villain with a dash of high level crime/government corruption that adds a menancing edge and dispells petty cartooniness they may have. Finally theres the awe inspiring mechanical or body horror artwork that lends themselves to unforgettable, ... kickass death encounters between the heroes and a bizzare melange of ruthless mooks. Except Midnight Eye II does not have that last element; arguably the most essential one that drives the entire momentum and pacing of these action ovas.

The action in Midnight Eye II is good but merely standard and not strategically spaced out throughout the runtime for maximum impact. To add insult to injury, the villains are split between the evil military officer and his bioengineered psychic weapon experiment, who is not clear cut evil. These Yoshiaki Kawajiri ovas do not work so well against a sympathetic enemy like this and as mirrored by the characters deliberation on whether to kill the psychic bioweapon, leads to a less focused plot overall.

What lets the action down is the incompatibility of the main character's powers and abilities (or at least the underutilization of his hacking abilities) against the militaristic nature of the villain whilst still sticking to the solely action focused formula of the first ova. We dont see mech suits or gunships being deployed against the hero, only soldier goons. It would have been far more satisfying to see Gokuu overcome more insane odds with use of his hacking powers. The final encounter with the psychic enemies is more up to par but the damage is already done, the ova has already suffered from a lack of exciting enemy encounters that keeps these ovas engaging from start to end.

The finale however is great, with a nice plot twist and the use of a novel weapon whose blueprints was stolen from the pentagon by Gokuus hacking abilities. A very nice piece of cold war contextualising for some subtle sociopolitical commentary and worldbuilding. If only there was more of this exciting action throughout more of this ova!
And no, the origin of the Midnight Eye is still not explained, though that would probably be opening another can of worms.

This psychic military experiment premise was done better in another Yoshiaki Kawajiri work, the second ova of Cyber City Oedo which is much more focused thanks to its mindless cyborg enemy and greater focus on bureaucratic intrigue and has far more spectacular setpieces. Midnight Eye II is worth a watch as a high production retro ova with gorgeous art but is ultimately an average action sci fi anime of the time.

The 1st time i saw midnight eye part 1 and 2 was back in 1997,98 via an rental videotape i never brought back, i was from that point on a keeper! I did a review of part 1, part 2 goes further in the story, wich goes more in to an emotional side since a fine lady is involved. Animation just as good as part 1, nice background sketche´s, futuristic but less important chara. and no involvement in police depart. anymore sadly. It still has some good late 80´s tracks to keep up, and WAY more violent scenes for a cyberpunk cultclassic compared to part ... 1, less mysterious `happenings` is involved but thats up for u to decide!

"Battle of the bullshit powers"

I recently saw the first installment into this duology, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The animation quality and the 'style' of that film were both fantastic, which elevated it for me in spite of the lamest main character in the world (fully equipped with nonsensical bullshit powers that vary in strength depending on what the scene requires) and a very teenage-boy attitude that permeated the entire thing (which can be fun when it's not done to excess, and I think the first installment straddled the line quite well, if we disregard some very silly one-liners). However, this is a ... review regarding the second installment, so now that I've set the scene...

It is a much lesser film. It keeps all the bad things of the first installment, while decreasing the quality of what made the first film so memorable. The story is passable, and probably better than what we saw in the first installment, but other than that it's pretty much all downhill. One of the best features of the first film, the animation quality, has deteriorated. The art is still quite well done, but we now see a lot of repeated animation sequences, often with so few frames of animation that it is very noticeable. The powers of the main opponent seem to be designed mostly for ease of animation (slap a red bubble on him and a few squiggly lines while he stands still and it's pretty much good to go). The main characters powers are as silly as ever. He extends his staff to pole-vault out of skyscrapers, he pole-vaults with such excellence that he can easily catch up to speedboats, and so on. His attitude and outfit are both as absurd as they were in the first film, and his 'hack into any machine at any time' seems to have very strange specific requirements, because he only ever seems to be able to hack into and control machines when it would allow for a 'cool' scene, never to be able to easily breeze through and kill/evade his opponents at any time he would want to. He can hack into any computer at any time which allows him to control various monitor-screens, construction-equipment and even satellites, but a speedboat? No, would never work of course, a bad guy is using it. His powers are so extensive and absurd that he just has to either forget that he has them or the enemy needs to have elaborate coincidences work in their favor so that he can't use them, otherwise he'd just win every encounter always without a hitch (which pretty much happens anyway, but still). When the film brought out the technology called "inter-dimensional missiles" I knew that the writers were just making shit up without any regard to rhyme or reason. This isn't a movie that is silly enough for inter-dimensional missiles to exist.

Nope, I can't recommend this. It's just not good. It's not a complete waste of time to watch if you are inclined to do so, but the first film gives you everything this one does but much, much better.