Gyakusatsu Kikan

Watching this movie will not be your typical experience. By the end, you will either love it or hate it.
For some, this movie is a bootleg copy of "Ghost in a Shell" while for others the movie is far more than a "deep anime" trying to answer the existential problems of today's world, is a statement.

Before starting the review I'd like to say that I don't recommend this movie to casual watchers. Is a movie with a lot of philosophical, anthropological, and political themes.

With all of that said here is the review:

Part 1. "The Absurdity of the World"

When you watch Genocidal Organ, you will always ... feel a little bit off about the movie and what it tries to convey exactly. Is it a movie about terrorism? Is it about patriotism? Is it about the meaning of life? Maybe it is about the horror of war?
Well, in order to pinpoint exactly what the movie tries to convey, we have to understand a few key details about it first.
You see, my dear reader, this is a movie that follows the philosophy of "Existentialism", and, in the manner of a "Sartrian" work, we can see a pattern of alienating the viewer from the action in the movie. This alienation is what we call "the absurdity of the world". A strange feeling inside us that makes us confused or even angry or afraid due to the fact that we see familiar yet strange things, things that are normal and we take for granted... Yet at this very moment, all of these normal concepts become totally estranged from us. This is what the movie likes to call the "Genocidal Organ" or in popular terms "The Absurdity of The World".

If you want to learn more about this philosophy, you should watch this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bQsZxDQgzU

Now that we talked a bit about the movie we should talk a little about the author as well since his personal life had a major impact on the story.

Part 2. Project Itoh

So who is this person?
Well, Itoh Satoshi was a web designer and novelist, but this is not the important part. You see, Satoshi befriended Hideo Kojima, actually, he was one of the "few people" to understand Kojima. This very friendship started Satoshi's passion for writing Metal Gear fan fiction and later on Genocidal Organ. In 2001 He was diagnosed with cancer. During his cancer treatments, he wrote Genocidal Organ and submitted it to the Komatsu Sakyō Award contest in 2006 (winning the contest). His Metal Gear fan fiction experience combined with his private life problems lead to the creation of a unique story known as Genocidal Organ, something that will kill its own "self", a metaphor for humans and humanity as a concept.
So while you are watching the movie you might feel a lot of Metal Gear influences.

Part 3. The Movie

Considering such an interesting author and source material, the movie doesn't fail to deliver an equally interesting story. With action pack sequences split by lengthy world and character-building segments. Even if the movie is only 114m long it will feel like 4 hours one, not wasting any second with meaningless scenes. The animation

Part 4. The problems and final verdict

The Animation - While the scenes are cinematic and the color schemes are nice. The animation itself feels very "low quality" and outdated for a 2017 anime. Considering that the same studio made Samurai Champloo, Deadman Wonderland, and Ergo Proxy, it is odd that the final product feels so rough. But the problem isn't the rough animation, the real problem is the unnatural mix between 2d and 3d that just sticks out in your eyes.

The Sound - Soundwise the movie is solid, it doesn't have any worth noting problem. With that said sounds and music aren't that memorable.

The Characters - Saying that Genocidal Organ has memorable characters is a huge overstatement. By the end of the movie, I had already forgotten more than half of the names in it (including the main's character). You will not get attached that much if at all to the characters, but considering the theme of the movie, it is fitting, not the best idea but still, fitting enough to not care.

The Story - The story is very similar to Tom Clancy's type of plot. There is not a lot to say about it. The story players out exactly as you'd imagine.

Overall the movie doesn't excel in anything. The art style is pretty common, similar to shows like Jormungand, Black Lagoon, or Ergo Proxy. The animation doesn't impress and the story is predictable offering little entertainment value. So if that's the case why did i rate it 7 instead of 4, 5 or 6. Well, that's the movie does put a lot of accent on details. From military procedures and banter between the soldiers to civilian life and the environment that builds the right atmosphere, in the dubbed version every character has, its own accent based on his native language adding to the flavor and immersion in the story. Oddly enough it manages to deliver the idea of Globalisation better than a lot of movies. In my book that's worth more than 5 or 6. Even if it is on my favorites list, I just can't rank it higher than 7. It is a mediocre movie at worse and a decent/good at best. You either love it or hate it.

I watched Gyakusatsu Kikan, also known as Genocidal Organ. Here are my thoughts:

I feel like military-themed sci-fi media such as this is one of the rare things that western entertainment does better than the Japanese (or at least used to).

This movie does an okay job of creating suspense. The pacing is fine and it is competently directed.

There were relatively few action scenes. I was expecting this to be a lowbrow sci-fi action movie, but it was slightly more complex than expected. However, you should be warned that there is a female love-interest character in this. Thankfully she does not suck up much screentime, although her ... presence is influential.

As far as the story goes, it was fairly generic near-future sci-fi. However, I will say that the involvement of linguistics was creative, or at least somewhat unique. Genocide is a significant theme in the story, as you might expect from the title. The movie is pretty morose, and you should expect people dying and a lot of bad things happening. When it does occur, the violence is pretty graphic.

The characters as a whole are pretty generic, and not much character development takes place during the movie. I would have liked to have witnessed more interactions between the soldier characters. The focus on special forces soldiers did appeal to me, and I wish this aspect was examined even more in the movie. This is definitely a reflection of my own biases though (I have been interested in the psyche of SF soldiers for a very long time, and have listened to at least hundreds of their interviews over the years).

In terms of sci-fi elements, there's some cool technology but nothing I hadn't seen before. Some of the futuristic combat technology was sorta neat I guess.

Audiovisuals were adequate. The soundtrack was adequate but unremarkable. Voice acting was at best adequate, although there weren't many opportunities for a VA to showcase their talent anyway. Animation quality was fine, although hardly high-budget blockbuster anime material. Some of the European cities featured in the movie looked okay; otherwise, the visuals were fairly lackluster. Facial expressions were decently animated at least. Also, although infrequent, the action scenes did sound and look decent – not spectacular, but decent. I usually enjoyed them. They are shortlived though, so don't let that be your motivation to watch this.


My overall rating: 5/10
It was adequately entertaining and I never considered turning it off. However, there was nothing exceptional about this movie, aside from perhaps the use of linguistics in the story. There was some neat technology, but nothing much beyond your typical 'future soldier' stuff. As a whole, it felt like a pretty generic sci-fi military-themed movie.

I wouldn't recommend watching this unless you are obsessed with sci-fi or have some strange fixation on genocide. If you are seriously interested in this work, you should probably just read the source material. If you just feel like watching some futuristic combat, scan through the movie and watch the action scenes I guess.

It has some really cool military action scenes. With a cool spin on the future and how sci-fi adapts into the real world.

But otherwise the plot is kind of not that interesting and there is a lot of dialogue that feels like filler. Just to stretch the movie out into a normal movie run time.

The idea reminds me of Ghost In The Shell, and the world is also sort of going down that cyberisation route but it never really felt like any of how they arrived at where they are made any sense. It was all just very convenient.