Saturday, 30 June 2018

1000 Anime Link: Call Me Tonight (1986)


[Note: As I have neglected my other blog 1000 Anime greatly, this is the start of re-energizing activity on there, writing reviews and including links to them here. Some of them will have direct connection to this blog as many anime have abstract and unconventional material, so keep an eye out for more anime reviews in the future.] 

"The subject which this obscure thirty minute anime Call Me Tonight tackles, in the same decade where the beginnings of straight-to-video anime started and both this production and hentai anime came up as product for the format, is parodied directly within a film-within-the-film when protagonists Rumi and Ryo hide in a cinema. A sci-fi film where the tentacle aliens kill the male astronaut and have sinister intentions for the female one, stripping her for nefarious reasons. It's a sanitised take on a concept at its most infamous for Urotsukidōji (1987-1994), on one hand an epic of almost Lovecraftian narrative, nihilistic and horrifying yet complex and full of scale, yet on the other a problematic title in how it tackles its intentional sexual transgression on slanted gender lines, the males strong and turning into tentacle monsters, the women merely there for sexual violence from said tentacle monsters, justifiably condemned as misogynistic and offensive even in the butchered feature length cut you could buy on British video and DVD. And yet, just before that series came into existance, when it was originally a multi-episode straight-to-video anime itself, you have Call Me Tonight mocking that kind of story by showing a strong, sexually confident young woman literally taming a man who turns into such a monstrosity every time he gets an erection or aroused, trying to help him towards an adult, mature sexual life as his improvised therapist."

For the full review, follow the blog link HERE.

From https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSON6R0Eeoq6wFIEgFW00OlPPmyAMq2gOoj5NdwltTKkGEtIEAX

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