Batman: Gotham Knight, The Machine Girl, & Rampo Noir

Batman: Gotham Knight is basically a series of short stories about Batman done in an anime style. The first one, Have I Got a Story for You, is a fine story, messing with the Batman mythos, but the animation style is just a very small step above Aeon Flux, distracting me and bugging me until it was over. Crossfire was creepy, and extremely effective. Much better visually, but still not very clear when it comes to plot. This trend is positive, and I liked the rest of them. They're not all particularly good, but they're an interesting twist. I think I'm going to stick with the Paul Dini series when it comes to my animated Batman. I like that this exists.

Rampo Noir is a series of four short films based on stories by Edogawa Rampo, who wrote the stories that Horrors of Malformed Men. These... are pretty much trash. The first one is complete trash, the second less so, the third less so, and the fourth less, but still, why the hell did I sit through the first one? The first story is all silent and has naked wrestling. Completely ridiculous. The second has naked bondage and melty wax sex. Ugh. The third one is about a woman who amputates her husbands arms and legs, puts them in jars, and then has sex with him. Ostensibly this is to keep him out of having to fight in a war. The entire thing somehow was stretched out to 134 minutes. Man, did I regret watching this.

The Machine Girl is a movie with special effects by the guy who did them on Tokyo Gore Police, Suicide Club, Noriko's Dinner Table, and Exte: Hair Extensions. That gives you an idea of how crazy this film is. It's just about halfway between the absolute insanity that is Tokyo Gore Police and Noriko's Dinner Table. Lots of spurting blood, cartoony villains (the main bad guy's wife is comically evil), a tempura arm, drill bra, decapitations, blood soup, a chainsaw foot, many gratuitous panty shots, and the titular Machine Girl who has an arm cut off and replaced with a machine gun. There's a sequel. I need to see it. Along with their new film, RoboGeisha.