Yadokari

This series is one that shows what anime is all about: a blending of two things, a half-way point between film and comic strip, between action and drama, between the minutely detailed realistic and the unfilmably fantastic, between artistry and entertainment. Designed, as the name suggests, to homage Films Noir (among other things), this is a long (26 eps) and quite complex story of Femmes Fatale, amnesia, assassination, mystery, conspiracy and betrayal, all in a classical Anime style that delivers great action and detail. There are those who say that this series is repetitive, and in a way it can be, but to them I say 1) watch it one episode per day or longer and not as a back-to-back fest, and 2) there are so very many series that are more repetitive, less exciting and more dull. One thing of real note that I noticed about this series was the music. So far Noir has 3 OSTs and it deserves them all for the classy and supremely invigorating music it contains. Overall I can't recommend Noir too highly.

It may interest people to know that this film was made without any recourse to Phoolan Devi herself and, when she did finally see parts of it, was so enraged that she announced that the film was not to be shown in India or she would cover herself in petrol and set fire to herself. I do not know whether it was shown at all or not, but given her standing at the time as a rising politician, I doubt it. Since then, I saw a report that she has been ousted from office and charged with further crimes from her Dacoit days, and has gone into hiding as a result.

Her own concerns aside, this is an excellent film, made all the more so by its refreshingly brutal approach; none of the rose-tinted melodrama one might expect from a typical indian film. It should be stressed that concerns about how feminist the film's messages really are and the like are essentially irrelevant: it's a true story. Her misgivings are, it seems, not with what is depicted but with the way in which the film depicts her.