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| I HAVE THE POWERRRRR |
Ooh. More obscure deep cut stuff to delve into, if ever so briefly. So. What do we have here? Something I'm not completely finished with, but I don't have much time left to do so. Besides, I have enough material to get through a post on it. This is Dream Hunter Rem, and... what the hell is it? Well, the three episodes of it I watched were released one after the other from 1985 to 1987 as OVAs. You can definitely tell because of all the blood and nudity. We'll get to that. You can almost treat them as short movies, since the latter two clock at just under an hour. The first is a 45 minute affair that has two separate stories in about 22 minutes or so, like a regular half-hour show would. What the hell is it? A cute green-haired anime girl who investigates the supernatural and dives into people's dreams to save them from demons causing nightmares. We are absolutely on brand, considering the first OVA was released the same year as Elm Street 2 which we did yesterday. Hell, the second half of that has the most Elm Street-like plot, involving a serial killer who dies and then comes back as a dream ghost to kill people while they're asleep. I'd say that one was my favorite of the ones I viewed today, mostly because it's absolutely goddamned wild with its imagery. Make no bones about it, this shit gets vicious. Heads come off and people melt and all sorts of other nasty nonsense. The sheer horror of it all is juxtaposed by... a cute anime girl who transforms into something off of a goddamn cheap fantasy novel, with a sword and bikini armor. Oh, and in the real world she's got a Magnum with silver bullets that have crosses engraved in the heads. Because fuck vampires AND werewolves at the same time, I guess.
Rem is absolutely a very strange series of episodes, and ones I find it hard to recommend. I did enjoy the third OVA, which mixed a headless horseman ghost with traditional Japanese samurai to have a headless samurai come back from the dead... but at that point it wasn't really about diving into dreams. It was just Rem fighting a ghost for 55 minutes. It was very good, but it didn't have the surreal crunchy dream quality to it. Episode 2 was the best in this regard, with dream kills and some quite striking imagery, but something about it didn't click with me. Even if it ended with the haunted clock tower the episode's vengeful demon was locked in turning into a giant robot and no I am not kidding holy fuck Japan. No, the thing that keeps me from shouting that you should go see Rem is the nudity. The original first episode was straight-up a hentai, and you can absolutely see where things would veer outside of PG-13 even in the later, non-lewd cut. It's questionable fanservice, to be sure, but it's only there for a short time. If that helps you any. I just had to bring it up because I don't want you bumbling into it like I somewhat did. There's two other episodes of Rem made in the 90's, called New Dream Hunter Rem. I'm going to delve into those but I've not as I write this. No, just the three will do for today. If nothing else, Rem is... a very interesting thing to watch. This is a short one as I am pressed for time, but you know. If the premise interests you and you don't mind the stuff I've tried to warn you about, fire up some Rem. It's bloody in spots and has some weird bits, but overall it's pretty neat. I think. I'm still really not sure.
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