Whether you like it or not, it’s time to skinny dip once again into the gnarlier end of the Anime pool where all sorts of unspeakable, Lovecraftian monsters lurk that have the libido of Pepé Le Pew and all the restraint of a terrifyingly horny viking marauder who has just made landfall after months in a boat. That’s right, folks; after taking in the unforgettable, sordid sights of Hideki Takayama’s throbbing, pulsating fantasy/horror epic, Urotsukidōji: The Legend Of The Overfiend, we’re taking another trip to hentai town to deal with its sequel, Urotsukidōji II: The Legend Of The Demon Womb.
However, while there unsurprisingly a large amount of deviant sexual content at play here, what usual draws people into this insane universe is Takayama’s deft hand at world building that make the constant and eyeball rolling grind of all the sex actually worth dealing with. Can this slimy sequel manage to keep it up where it actually counts?
Rather unconventionally – for a movie about rampaging sex demons, anyway – Urotsukidōji II doesn’t pick up where the first adventure ended, with perpetually turned on teen Nagumo achieving his terrible destiny by transforming into a lust triggered monster god called the Choujin, that brought the three worlds of humans, demons and the half man half beast jujinkai together in order to destroy all three. No, instead it takes a rather psuedo prequel approach by dumping us back somewhere in the middle to focus on previously unseen events that occured before a huge, winged sex-kaiju tried to murder the world.
First, we’re treated to a prologue that introduces a further, unsavory addition to the Urotsukidōji universe when we find that during the Second World War, Hitler tasked deranged scientist Münchhausen to access the paranormal with a huge, H.R. Giger style death machine that’s seemingly powered by dildos (look, don’t look at me like that, I just review this stuff OK?), only for the whole thing to end in disaster and the lunatic is shot on the orders of the Führer.
Years later, his similarly unhinged son, Münchhausen the Second, has taken up his father’s work and is attempting to reawaken Kyō-Ō, a god of from a legend that somehow is even older than that of the Choujin in a warped attempt to get revenge on the whole of humanity for the death of his father. The vessel he uses to his instrument of destruction turns out to be Takeaki, Nagumo’s beloved cousin, and his first step is to get his hench demon, Kohoki, to crash the plane that the innocent pawn is on. Somehow surviving the conflagration, Takeaki is in terminal condition, but in a blind moment of love for his relative, Nagumo allows a blood transfusion to take place that saves his cousin. But after getting Choujin blood pumping through his veins, the gradual transformation into the Kyō-Ō begins and it seems that not even the Jujinkai warrior Amano Jyaku or his sister, Megumi, can hope to stop it.
OK, so once again I find myself in the rather unenviable position of having to try and endorse a movie full of unpalatable content while not painting myself out as the undisputed king of the red flags, so once again I guess it’s disclaimer time. Look, we’re all adults here and if the thought of vast amounts of violent, inter-species, inhuman sex rightfully makes you screw up your face, then for the love of God, stay away. In fact, if anything, Demon Womb is actually worse for rampant intercourse than Takayama’s first installment despite the sequel having a smaller canvas and a shorter running time as near endless sequences of screaming frottage will no doubt have you racing to turn the volume down. None of it really adds anything to the story either and the relentless and repetitive pounding just takes up valuable screen time that could be spent enriching this nightmare fantasy world while not dialing back on the explicit horror. However, while a lot of these moments might have you flicking through a book or scrolling on your phone until we mercifully move on, the director does manage to tease some Clive Barkian moments of genuinely ghastly moments of erotic terror that actually prove to horribly memorable. For a start, the very words “Nazi sex machine” pretty much fill you with dread before you even see the bastard contraption in action an a moment when a woman giving her boyfriend motorist felliatio before an accident has her snapping her teeth shut is horribly effective.
However, moving beyond the more sexual elements of the film, Demon Womb proces to be a rather fascinating sequel as it actively seeks to add depth to the characters the first film tended to shove to the side. While the first film ended in a multiversal cataclysm thanks to the efforts of the cock-sure Amano Jyaku and the two kids destined to change the world (Nagumo and Akemi), Takayama indeed boldly sidelines all of that to intertwine a whole new tale that allows new and supporting characters to take centre stage.
The likes of the smug – possibly sociopathic – Amano Jyaku finally shows up in the climax to take care of some business, but it’s his pneumatic sister, Megumi, who does most of the heavy lifting as she becomes a romantic lead to the tragic Takeaki as he’s tranformed into a hulking, horned beast. In fact, the doomed romance plays out rather well, especially considering how rare genuine relationships in an Urotsukidōji movie actually are and it goes a fair way towards giving this installment an identity of its own as the original movie doubled down more on world building. However, I will say that Takayama is sort of repeating himself slightly as the corruption of Takeaki is a more romance themed take on the Niki character from Overfiend – but none of that matters once Demon Womb unveils it’s secret weapon.
While Overfiend was quite bold by not actually having any one being you could call an out and out villain, the introduction of Münchhausen II gives an over the top series the outlandish baddie it deserves. I’m not entirely sure who thought taking an immortal nazi diabolist and dressing him in giant shoulder pads, a cape and bright green, cockatoo hair was a good idea, but they definitely deserve a bonus in their pay packet. And even though he doesn’t really do much more than constantly laugh malevolently and deliver weirdly out of place trash talk (in the English dub he defiantly tells an attacking Armano to “get lost”), the sight of pale, cold blooded, New Romantic trying diligently to end the world proves to be the antagonist the series what screaming for.
Obviously – and rightfully – my raves will fall on a lot of deaf ears and while I truly don’t have the inclination to go any deeper into this particular sub-genre, there’s something about the proclivities of the Urotsukidōji series that just nails the genuinely horrific in ways you just don’t usually see anywhere else. On the other hand, hentai is what hentai does and anyone who feels that unrestrained, uncensored tentacles penises aren’t exactly their cup of tea are not going to get any judgement out of me.
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