M.D. Geist & M.D. Geist II - Death Force (1986/1996)

 

M.D. Geist

Directors: Hayato Ikeda and Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Riku Sanjo

(Voice) Actors: Jason Beck as M.D. Geist, Dave Couch as Colonel Kurtz, Joan Baker as Vaiya, Kip Kaplan as Marsh

 

M.D. Geist II - Death Force

Director: Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Koichi Ohata

Based on the original script by Riku Sanjo

(Voice) Cast: Jason Beck as M.D. Geist, John Hollywood as M.D. Krauser, David Fuhrer as Eagle, Greg Stuhr as Breston, Joan Baker as Vaiya, Vincent Bagnall as the Major

 

On the futuristic planet of Jerra, a member of an experimental super soldier project, christened M.D. Geist, reappears on the lands in the midst of a full blown war between the Nexrum Army and the Regular Army, alongside the threat of a robotic doomsday weapon called the Death Force being unleashed. And this begins one of the more infamous anime for a certain generation, which is not well regarded but for its distributor, Central Park Media, was so well selling (and well regarded) it even used one of its most distinct designs, powered armour, as their "company spokes mecha". Truthfully, the head of CPM John O'Donnell LOVED M.D Geist and used his influence to push the OVA, even turning the titular Geist as the company's mascot¹. It is a sympathetic thing - we all have favourites - but O'Donnell had the virtue of owning a company which he used to fund a director's cut, fund a 1996 sequel and create the equivalent of a Criterion Collection DVD release¹. And, personally, M.D. Geist is really nihilistic and ridiculous animation from an era of "violent cartoons", which is an acquired taste and CPM itself sold itself on until they closed out in 2009, at the time when this was no longer practical marketing as anime's perception (and audience) changed over the Millennium.

Now, it has to be established that I viewed the Director's Cut, the original version from Japan the debut of Koichi Ohata, a notorious director in anime for this and Genocyber (1994), a co-director (Hayato Ikeda) arguably included to contrast the perceived inexperience of Ohata¹. The original version was haphazardly put together with screenwriter Riku Sanjo to the complaints of the animators themselves¹, and also had some notorious animation faults, all of which the Director's Cut was meant to resolve. The Director's Cut draws out an actual plot and corrects the animation mistakes, but with jarring changes in the type of animation. The existence of the production has to be taken into considering with how M.D. Geist originates from the vast production line of 80s OVAs that this among so many, where the video tape market and the Japanese economic boom at the time meant the money was there to make animation for this market of all forms. At only forty seven minutes, the story here barely covers a lot. It is instead a post apocalypse tale, openly riffing on what the Mad Max films and Fist of the North Star brought to the table earlier in the eighties, but instead bringing in as its lead a sociopathic blond figure named Geist as the badass, imprisoned originally in stasis and crossing paths with the plot when he fights over sci-fi American football gear-like armour. The murkiness of his characterisation is one of the curiosities of the production, especially when you get to the sequel, but Geist is a cipher to archetypes from this era in pop culture.

Underserved, and an unfortunate in the entire two part franchise, is Vaiya who is a female leader of a gang who becomes enamoured to Geist, trying to seduce him only for this to be the rare anime to not have a chauvinistic male character with a libido. Her character, through both parts, is one of the most trodden on in terms of how visibly useless she's made, her monologue of the idiocy of war and soldiers as hyenas not exactly touching Toshiro Mifune's rant against the samurai in Seven Samurai (1954) no matter how hard it tries, particularly as the work, like other Koichi Ohatai productions like Genocyber, are insanely nihilistic in terms of hope being non-existent and death a constant in bloody detail. The production does undercut this seriousness in how, especially with the English dub, the plot terminology, the plot itself and line readings in the English dud contrast with some curious pieces, the "Brain Palace" where the Death Squad is a great example of this. One legitimate piece of praise, however, is the music. The songs by Hironobu Kageyama, famous for the Cha-La Head-Cha-La theme from the first Dragonball series and throughout that franchise, are bombastic, especially in the one solidly entertaining scene of Geist fighting the robotic death machine equivalent of a Russian stacking doll. I did not expect in M.D. Geist interesting synth jazz in the score, other times all the wailing guitar solos to fill a rock album from the era, graphic moments of intestines being split and robots exploding set to eighties saxophone and a nicely dense, odd score.

M.D. Geist's action scenes show some talent, but they are also part of a work which is a structurally messy, especially when you get to the finale, the sole plot drive inevitably the Regular Army (sic) attempting to stop their own doomsday device of killer robots (who look like robo centaurs) from wiping out the planet. It is documented that the context came from the creators coming up with cool scenes first¹, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does in this context have a sense of not trying to tie them up together at all, particularly when the final plot twist is abrupt, when Geist turns the Death Force back on. I do not want to bother with a spoiler tag for it either; it will not rob the context for how absurd it is and an almost deadpan comedy to the scene in the English dub.

Ten years after M.D. Geist was made and became a successful release for Central Park Media in the US, head John O'Donnell helped both a Director's Cut of the original to be funded, and allowed Koichi Ohata to make a sequel, following the results of Geist, as a viscous sociopath with an erratic behaviour spectrum, setting off the Death Force of robo centaurs to destroy the world of Jerra in the prequel. Obviously everything is worse than before, as now robo centipedes which eat human beings to power themselves exist, and the survivors try to salvage what they can to survive. The last vestige of humanity is a fortress ran by M.D. Krauser, a blue skinned former super soldier whose nobility is unfortunately matched by a God-like ego. Things are already signposted to get very silly and with significant issues in the production just from the first scene - a car fleeing from robo centipedes, messily animated with the set-up exposition in the English dub a words-per-second stream of consciousness from a character we never see again, which as jarring as that sounds. This first sequence alone enforces just how this does arguably, if you want to enjoy this as a "bad anime", top the original even if you need the prequel’s context to make it work.

If the first M.D. Geist represented the notorious anime OVAs of the eighties, then befittingly its sequel is the representative of the nineties equivalents, where it belongs to the kind of gruel and absurdity that would get replaced in the 2000s onwards by the OVA market being phased out, the few exceptions a string in the 2000s, and mainly from then on tie-in to existing series or tie-ins which allow for more sexually explicit specials of shows. The English dub arguably adds a great deal, especially as Krauser has all his lines e m o t e d as to reach the back of the theatre. In terms of structure, it is far gorier than before but scenes are truncated with gaps in the plotting, all whilst it is now jazzy sax solos in the score from Yoshiaki Ohuchi. Death Force has the convoluted plot trajectory of whatever Geist himself is meant to be, the villain destroying everything in the end yet at times presented as meant to be an anti-hero. M.D. Krauser in contrast, who has erected the last bastion of hope for humanity, a moving fortress, is doomed for the hubris of believing himself to be a God, alongside hiring a scientist who unfortunately wants to capture Geist to experiment on. Vaiya is still lost as the lead heroine too, now with amnesia and with a sense of more rudimentary existence despite having a lot more to do with her romantic relationship with Krauser than she did last time.

Death Force, with its jarring plot twists, feels the more ambitious, with a larger plot by Ohata yet absolutely unable to tell it without shorthand. More vivid characters populate the environment (such as an evil scientist or his henchmen, a mere torso who uses robotic limbs that can be attached and detached to him), and just more gruesome in lieu of Ohata's reputation, but with the compromises and struggles to get it made more notable than even the prequel. Death Force even does a Gunbuster (1988-9), its last act abruptly cutting to black-and-white animation as M.D. Geist and M.D. Krauser have their final fight. Gunbuster, a well regarded earlier work from Hideaki Anno, the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) and co-director of Shin Godzilla (2016), had to use this for budget, but it worked for the drama of that story, whilst here there is some style, a little colour in the eyes, but it is contrasted by the messiness of the production. Ending in an abrupt child impalement that should not be funny were not it not for the voice performance in the English dub, followed by an even more abrupt death, the animation budget is even less existent and you see a work barely crawling out into existence. Certainly the sequel has the bright, gaudy colour of the era, not comparable in the slightest to the original's eighties production, even if the character designs and world has not changed drastically, but irony is found too in how far later the production was funded. Not because it was ten years exactly after or so, but because by the late nineties OVAs were past the boom of them during the bubble economy of eighties Japan and were about to see the righting on the wall the decade soon after.

As much of it is a sympathy for its weird history why I liked this sequel over the other original, but i appreciate the pair together as a one night double - some of it has to be derision from my part in an affectionate way, wondering how the hell the original M.D. Geist got a wider legacy than better or more schlocky OVAs, even without John O'Donnell's involvement still selling tapes. Some of it is admiring the car crash as a whole; all with a bad taste as its childish nihilism and how silly it can be. Ohata’s directorial career really came from that OVA era as, whilst he directed series and tie-in specials for other work, particularly the series Burst Angel (2004), past the early 2010s he has stayed in areas like storyboarding. His reputation does come from the notorious string of OVAs like this which came from the time, and particularly the reputation of M.D. Geist, and how it managed to become a mascot for a company which went the way of the dodo as anime fandom trends changed, is going to be the thing I will reflect upon between these two entries as, honestly, to anyone else but me showing sympathy for them, others will find them utterly absurd to watch.

 

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1) As documented Justin Sevakis - Anime News Network founder, a former employee of Central Park Media, and founder of video/DVD/Blu-ray production company MediaOCD - about M.D. Geist's relation in the company HERE.