Anime spinoff offers
no new ideas
The year is 2034. The population of greater Tokyo includes growing numbers of commercially manufactured androids known as "boomers" that serve as truck drivers, helicopter pilots, police and prostitutes. When boomers malfunction or are misused by humans, a secret unit of the A.D. Police steps in to straighten things out.
|
"Parasite Dolls" Japan, part of the Extreme Asia section, playing at 5 p.m. today and Oct. 30 at Dole Cannery cineplex
|
The film consists of three interconnected stories that take place over seven years. In "A Faint Voice," Branch member Bazz Nikvest and his team try to solve the mystery of the malfunctioning boomers, while a lonely boomer falls in love. In "Dreamer," female officer Michaelson goes undercover as a prostitute to find the killer of boomer prostitutes, and in "Knight of a Round Table," a boomer-hating politician puts a plan in motion to destroy the boomers with a "domino bombing system" and frame Nikvest for the destruction.
The third story also ties up loose ends by revealing what happened to Nikvest's wife, why he doesn't like boomers and why he doesn't carry a gun.
As with anything that involves the Japanese language and culture, it's possible that there is more to these stories than Americans will understand, but they still appear to offer no new ideas for adult sci-fi fans. Stories about conflicts or friction between humans and humanoid artificial intelligence, for example, have been genre staples for decades.
Nikvest's rudeness to his boomer partner, Kimball, is a cliché that goes unexplained until well into the final story, even though Kimball saves Nikvest's life and risks his own to help the team. Maybe the Japanese writers are assuming that their culture has become much ruder and more Americanized by 2034!
Character development is at its most interesting and elaborate in "Dreamer." Michaelson, stung by Nikvest's apparent lack of interest in her, wonders, "Am I a woman to Bazz?" She then finds her confidence shaken further by Eve, an illegally modified boomer prostitute, who is more beautiful and sexually alluring than she is.
Eve, a boomer who dreams when she sleeps and who appears to be capable of human emotions, becomes the most interesting character in all the stories. Unfortunately, what could be a fascinating and challenging psychological drama about blurring the distinctions between humans and androids never escapes the familiar boundaries of potboiler sci-fi.
There are also some serious holes in the plot. Are we to believe that a car on an expressway could outrun a rocket-firing Mi-24 helicopter gunship?
The resolution of another story involves a mysterious character that does not appear to be either human or boomer, and whose origin is never explained. (Fans of "Bubblegum Crisis" and "A.D. Police" might understand the significance of the mysterious red figure, but the figure's origin and capabilities don't conform to anything that we're told about this future society.) The transformation of an animal into a giant robot also defies logic within the rules of the story.
Anime fans who don't understand the language will find additional entertainment value in the subtitles. One character assures another that a potentially difficult task will be "a piece of cookie," and when items are found that need laboratory analysis, the order is given to "bring them to the parlor."
Click for online
calendars and events.
