Psychic Wars (1991)

Director:

Tetsuo Imazawa

Writer:

John Wolskel (english version)

Release Date:

22 February 1991 (Japan)

Tagline:

One Man's Desperate Race to Save The Earth From Anchint Demons!

Plot Keywords:

Demon

Cast

Alan Blyton	...	Ukyo Retsu (voice: English version)
Frank Rozelaar-Green	...	Elder (voice: English version) (as Frank Rozzler Green)
Julia Braams	...	Fuyuko Asahina (voice: English version) (as Julia Brahms)
Lesley Rooney	...	(voice: English version)
Lisa Ross	...	Shun-You (voice: English version)
Robert Chase	...	Assistant #2 (voice: English version)
Roger May	...	Prof. Takase (voice: English version)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Toshiko Fujita	...	Youni Shun
Hideyuki Tanaka	...	Ukyo Retsu
Hiromi Tsuru	...	Fuyuko Asahina

Directed by
Tetsuo Imazawa

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
John Wolskel		english version

Produced by
Akira Sasaki	....	producer

Art Direction by
Tsutomu Ishigaki

Art Department
Masato Itou	....	background art
Hiroshi Misono	....	art advancement
Miyuki Sato	....	background art
Hiromitsu Shiozaki	....	background art
Eiko Sudo	....	background art
Junichi Taniguchi	....	background art

Animation Department
Chisato Ikehira	....	in-between animator
Naotaka Isegawa	....	in-between animator
Tsuyoshi Komatsu	....	in-between animator
Takami Oshima	....	in-between animator
Osamu Sato	....	in-between animator
Masayuki Sekinuma	....	in-between animator
Masami Suda	....	animation director
Takeshi Takeda	....	in-between animator
Hiroshi Tanaka	....	in-between animator
Mihoko Tomita	....	in-between animator
Yukitoshi Yamaguchi	....	in-between animator

Distributors

• Manga Video
• Selecta Vision (????) (Spain) (TV)

Also Known As:

"Bestial Warrior Psychic Wars" - Japan (English title) (alternative title)

Runtime:

USA:60 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese | English

Color:

Color

Certification:

UK:15 | USA:TV-14

Trivia:

Based on a novel by Yasuaki Kadota.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Anime Abandon: Psychic Wars (#1.1)" (2011)

Soundtrack:

Kizuna

Occult anime thriller with good buildup, but abrupt payoff

PSYCHIC WARS (1991) is a short (51 min.) made-for-video Japanese animated occult thriller about a modern Japanese doctor summoned by the spirits of a group of Buddhist nuns to fight demons in Japan's distant past. It's got some very nice artwork and design and includes some picturesque scenery of Kyoto and ancient ruins in the surrounding countryside, done in a style reminiscent of the charcoal paintings of traditional Japanese art. The storyline is pretty straightforward, focusing on the hero's travels into the past of 5000 years ago to protect the early Japanese people from being wiped out by a race of technically advanced demons. The demons don't go quietly and a handful wind up escaping into the future where the hero, Ukiyo, continues the battle, only to learn that his girlfriend has a secret link to the conflict, putting him in a serious moral and emotional dilemma.

The build-up to the climactic series of battles is quite suspenseful, but the final action doesn't deliver much of a payoff. Things turn out much too easy for the hero, a doctor with previously hidden powers that have been triggered by a dying patient who's a reincarnation of one of the Buddhist nuns. The demons themselves are huge, grotesque, scaly beasts, too much like comic book monsters to be taken seriously. The final segment, in which the doctor must confront his girlfriend, is quite compelling, but ends too quickly. Perhaps a bigger budget and a longer running time would have allowed the story to play out properly. But this is a problem with many Japanese OAV (Original Animated Video) productions. A story that requires feature-length or multi-part telling is often forcibly compressed to standard one-shot OAV length.