This is another Sogo/Gakuryuu Ishii movie, much later than Burst City (I ended up not really watching them in order whatsoever), and this has been very high on my most anticipated to watch list for a very long time. I recall having a pirated version on my hard drive for a long time before the very nice Third Window blu ray came out and immediately buying that (thanks to my computer’s blu ray drive being Region B). So I had really really high expectations for a long time going in, tempered a bit by knowing the kind of movie Burst City was (very cool but not the easiest to get into) and knowing that this movie is from 2001. See – the title was all it really took to put it on my to watch list all that time ago, and I pointedly didn’t learn more about it and vaguely assumed (again) that it would be a contemporary with Tetsuo and more of a cool 80s cult thing. But rather it’s a 55m post-Matrix superhero goof that’s still really very cool! But I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed and disengaged – my own fault really though. One interesting thing though – I’d seen that Ishii was involved heavily with the TV Series Neo Ultra Q, which I’d seen previously, and it really shows in this actually. Not just because that series is like, black and white adjacent, but the vibe of the sci-fi story being told (I don’t know myself exactly what I’m getting at but like… a little serious/dark but not a lot? A little new Doctor Who adjacent maybe?) feels similar. It’s definitely interesting to be able to connect the dots pretty clearly between Burst City, this, and Neo Ultra Q – although of the three I confess Burst City is definitely my favorite at this time.