Subject #002 - Roots Search: Life Devourer X

Or - Nothing Says God's Wrath Like Tentacle Monsters

I'm going to start this entry off by saying this one was meant to go up earlier this week.  Due to technical difficulty, however, it was delayed.  When I say technical difficulty, I mean my computer, rather inexplicably, began to lag to Hell and back several times playing this, including fully shutting down at one point.  Considering the myriad of bad films I've played on this thing to date, that says something right there.  My computer hates this one more than I do.

Now without further ado, let's take a look at the little monster, shall we?

This week we're going a ways back in time, to the wonderful age of the mid-80s and the OVA boom of the day.  For anyone not familiar with this, this was part of the phase when anime was on the rise as a big industry.  Not surprisingly, this meant a lot of people wanted to invest in it.  This lead to a lot of companies throwing sponsorships in, often times for straight to video one off projects.  Much like the initial 'straight to video' boom of the US, though animated and skirting more than just the sex restrictions that were so often an issue here.

Some of the OVAs of this era have gone on to be hailed as classics and are still praised in some circles to this day.  Sturgeon's law being what it is, however, quite a few are then cast aside as failed experiments where something or other just didn't work out.

One of these, and this week's consideration, is the 1986 OVA Roots Search.

Alongside getting greenlit during the boom where just about anything with a willing staff and some financial backing could get animated, Roots Search was also riding in part on something of a more timeless trend and one that was also in pretty full swing on this side of the Pacific as well at the time - the fine art of imitation.  In this case, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie Alien had pretty well pumped life back into the idea of the sci-fi monster movie, and sure enough, many other productions jumped on board trying to catch the fever.

It's with this in mind we begin this little story with our designated small cadre of victims - researchers on the far off space station Tolmeckius.  The four-man crew: senior scientist Marcus, ESPer test subject Moira, Moira's boyfriend Scott, and Norman, who seems to be just there as far as this movie's concerned, are carrying out research on psychic abilities, though strangely it seems only two of them are actually invested in the research, and one of them largely for the sake of having plot-related visions.  But, most of these people exist to die, so no sense getting too worried about that for now.

 Let the record show, this is how they choose to show
us that Moira and Scott are a couple.  Maybe it's just the
translation, or the fact this is rushed development, but this
just feels more inadvertently creepy than it should for what was
probably meant to be a passing joke. 

Their research gets cut off when they receive signal of a ship coming barreling out of warp space.  For the record, we TECHNICALLY get a look at these guys beforehand, but it's largely just through a montage of them getting wiped out.  So really all that amounts to here is affirming the rule that any sci-fi film taught that the station crew will break - a spaceship set adrift = automatic death sentence.

Even BEFORE they find this thing.

 

On the ship our brave yet foolhardy team find three things - a wounded survivor, a load of corpses, and the suspiciously faced alien pictured above.  Of those, the wounded person is set aside at first while only Marcus seems to deduce that the distinctly creepy alien is probably why everyone else is dead.  On his orders, they jettison the Freudian-faced being.

...and then the trouble starts.

One by one the crew are now being picked off by a mysterious assailant who can read their minds and play on their worst traumas.  The previous ship's sole survivor, Buzz, confirms the suspicion the alien is responsible, but can only offer a healthy dose of paranoia as the small group are whittled down one by one in rather messy ways.

Given the OVA is only 45 minutes long, it's only a few victims in before the alien decides 'subtlety be damned' and turns the entire ship into a tentacle riddled den of horrors that'd do David Cronenberg one proud.  As you can guess from all of that, story isn't really a strong suit of this OVA.  This all being without getting into the big reveal of the last act where

...there's really nothing I can't say here that you probably aren't
already thinking, is there?

SPOILER
The alien proclaims itself a messenger of God that seeks to punish all of mankind for its sins.  As reveals go, this one doesn't really go very far.  We're not even left with an idea of if it's a bluff or just an excuse for the OVA's altogether vague finale.

THIS is the proclaimed messenger of God, for the record.

Sort of underwhelming, isn't it?

END SPOILER

Granted, the entire basic story in and of itself probably wouldn't have been winning any awards as it is, but the running time certainly doesn't help matters.  At 45 minutes, one can only generate just so much suspense, especially from a monster that preys on the psyches of people we barely know.  It also doesn't help that this baby is the sole effort of its director, Hisashi Sugai (well...this and a production credit on M.D. Geist.)  Though the script was in a bit more experienced hands thanks to Michiru Shimada having already cut her teeth on a couple of titles prior (including Dirty Pair and Urusei Yatsura.)

Of course, likewise, with time constraints even she can only manage so much here.  Even the voice cast, despite containing numerous established and, at this point respected actors, can really only generate just so much interest in a group we know are mostly doomed before this is all over.  The fictional characters don't even seem to feel terribly invested in their own plight at times.  When they find one of their comrades viciously impaled by large chunks of metal that seem to have been formed out of nowhere, one would think they would try to get his corpse down or at least question how the Hell those large chunks got into his quarters.  Instead, they move on to the next scene and talking about how pleasant looking out at the stars is.

No.  Really.

We go from the above.

To this.

Did everyone hate Marcus THAT much? 
Or are they hoping Norman will clean it up?

In terms of technical aspects, the animation's actually not bad.  Nothing jaw-droppingly spectacular, but certainly a better effort than last week's more recent Mars of Destruction.  Similarly, the art is a step up, if still somewhat generic for an 80s sci-fi one-off of the era.  The music, outside of the rather pleasant end theme by Kumiko Kaori, doesn't age particular well.  In several scenes it comes across feeling a bit too much like someone is just bringing their hands down on the synthesizer keys at random and running with whatever notes are played.  It could certainly be worse, but it doesn't really lend itself well to atmosphere or memorability.

Overall, I can't say with any confidence this one really qualifies as our worst ever yet, though at this point, it's certainly one of the lowest points I've seen so far.  Its overall technical merits are a cut above last week's offering,which gives it a slight edge, though those merits are still just average.  Any good will from that edge, however, is then squandered by the ultimately rushed storyline, vague characters, and rather clumsy twist that never really seems to amount to anything.  It's something of a shame given how many of the people involved in this one were established or would go on to do much better work than this.

...but then, everyone gets a mulligan.

Well, this one was bad.  Though unlike last week's 'everything just fails' this was more of a specialized 'we'll fail in one area so spectacularly it will bring everything else down with it.'  Again, I don't think this is near the bottom yet, though I have to commend them for trying, if only for the fact this leads me to further dread what sort of Lovecraftian monstrosities will await me on further descent.

 ...and speaking of that, let me close by saying,
Either Moira never bothered with theology
Or the Old Testament (aka Insane God) got retconned out
somewhere down the line in this future.