Format: Region Free Blu-ray, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English and Japanese Subtitles
Length: 125 minutes
Production Date: 2015
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
Halle, Ray, Anna, Eisuke and Tyler are teen boarders at the prestigious Nazca Academy. Besides being close friends, they are also preparing to present a yet undecided topic at the upcoming school festival as part of the Research and Creation class. Halle’s sister, Natsumi is having trouble sleeping and concentrating. She constantly finds herself out in the forest near the school late at night not knowing how she got there. Eventually one morning she faints during breakfast in the cafeteria. Halle is concerned for her welfare especially after she discovers she has been to the cram school called the Genius School. The cram school is the talk of the Academy, with strange rumours circulating that they hypnotise the students who then have prefect recall of whatever they read.
The group decide to ask Professor Yoake of the Space Sciences division to help. Through hypnotic regression, Natsumi recalls that she was actually abducted by grey type aliens and taken aboard a spacecraft, however an accident occured before the aliens could complete some sort of procedure on her brain. The professor hypothesises that the aliens have inserted a mind controlling chip inside her head which cannot be picked by a CAT scan (how convenient!). The following day at one of the professor’s lectures, Ray enthusiastically decides that the group’s topic for their presentation at the festival should be “The Truth About UFOs and Aliens”. This is in part to find evidence of the creatures that abducted Natsumi and to find a way to protect her. Rather than leave the school during the summer break, the five of them stay at the academy to prepare their presentation. Eisuke and Tyler overhear a group of students saying they are going out into the forest late at night. While Eisuke says that they should keep it a secret, Tyler follows the group but loses them in the forest. He sees a light and realises it’s a spacecraft. He tries to run but is abducted.
The next morning he admits to the group of his abduction. He tells them that a beautiful blonde humanoid alien from the Pleiades star cluster explained to him that the grey type aliens that abducted Nastsumi are actually cyborg worker drones who work for an evil reptilian alien race (paging David Icke). While the group is disbelieving at first, Halle then admits she too was abducted the previous night by a monkey-like alien from Alpha Centauri. She too was told the same story as Tyler and also that the reptilians have infiltrated the militaries of China, Russia and America and are trading military secrets, and also the cram school and Nazca Academy. The group then gather up as much evidence they can in order to expose what is going on for their presentation at the school festival.
However on the day of the presentation they discover all their files and even their backups have been deleted. Obviously it’s a conspiracy! Those dastardly reptilian aliens have infiltrated the school and have foiled their plans! Ray decides to expose the reptilian’s plot anyway and makes an impassioned speech saying that Natsumi, Halle and Tyler have all been abducted while admitting they have absolutely no evidence for their claims. Despite being heckled, Ray continues on, but the principal decides to end the debacle and gets up on stage to stop him. Anna then notices a light shining through the window and attempts to alert everyone to it. The light suddenly levitates both Ray and the principal and sucks them out of the auditorium. The pair find themselves inside an alien spacecraft where a giant goat-like alien being warns them that the reptilian alien race is plotting to take over the Earth.
Well, let’s start at the beginning; Kofuku no Kagaku (or most amusingly in English, Happy Science) is what is termed in Japan as a “New Religion” or in laymen’s terms a cult (if it quacks like a duck…). Due to the Aum Shinrikyo Sarin Gas subway attack in 1995, Japan has looked upon these cults with high degrees of suspicion, however are relatively tolerant of them. Happy Science’s leader, Ryuho Okawa, claims he can channel the spirits of Muhammad, Jesus Christ, Buddha and Confucius, though the cult seems to be mostly an offshoot of Buddhism. Much like Scientology, the cult vastly overestimates (or flat out lies) about the amount of followers it has (12 million) and sells tons of self-help books, lectures and novels by Okawa. Originally in the late 1990’s the cult seemed to be prophesising the apocalypse as per the Nostradamus prophecies. When the four horsemen failed to show up, Okawa switched gears to predicting an invasion and takeover of Japan by China and North Korea. The invasion theme ties in with their political wing, Happiness Realization Party, who are just as barmy as you’d imagine. Happy Science also adds other new age spiritualism into the mix including bog standard UFO and alien lore.
Somewhere along the line Okawa made so much money off his gullible followers he funded films based off his books and teachings. In the late 1990’s he produced the live action film “The Prophecies of Nostradamus”, but hit pay dirt with their second feature film, the 1997 anime film “Hermes: the Winds of Love” (the only Happy Science film to get a commercial home video release in the US). Like clockwork every three years another anime film from the cult appears in cinemas and as long as the faithful show up, the films will continue to come out in the same manner. To appeal to a wide international audience, every film since 2000 has had dubs and subtitles in multiple languages, though the films haven’t had any home video releases outside Japan other than “Hermes” (the dubs and subtitles do end up on the Japanese DVDs and BDs). There’s also been a push to have the previous anime film “The Mystical Laws” (which also got a limited run in the George Street Hoyts cinemas in Sydney in 2012) and this film nominated for the Oscars, but both attempts have failed.
The reason for the Oscars snub is obvious; the films are batshit fucking insane. Oh sure some of their films start out quite normal, but soon devolve into complete insanity, with strange fantasy elements and blatant proselytising. While in this film (the Japanese title literally means “The Secret of the UFO School”) it’s all bog standard populist UFO conspiracy rot to the 70 minute mark (which is weird enough), when the spiritual nonsense makes its appearance with the professor sending the teens’ souls into a UFO via some bizarre machine he’s constructed. They then travel to other planets, meet strange aliens (one insectoid creature they meet claims he often enters Eisuke’s body in order to watch anime), and find spiritual enlightenment. 20 minutes later were thrown back into the plot and the climax of the film, where massive and unbelievable plot twists take place as the reptilians make their move. It also has what is easily the most bizarre and unexpected transformation of any main character I have seen in any film in recent memory. It’s like something out of a 1970’s Go Nagai manga like “Devilman”, only weirder. Add in an absolutely out of place insert song in English which is probably the most bizarre love song I have ever had the displeasure of hearing.
Despite many of these films being squarely aimed at young audiences and anime fans in general, no one seems to bother with them outside the Happy Science faithful. And not for lack trying with mainstream advertising and pitifully trying to hook an audience in with “top Hollywood talent” like Jennifer Beals (of “Flashdance” fame) in the English dub. That part of the film promotion is odd as Beals’ character, Inkar (who looks like a modern version of Maetel from “Galaxy Express 999”), has only a handful of lines and appears for couple minutes maximum. The director of this film is Isamu Imakake whose only real mainstream directing credit was the “Captain Tsubasa: Road to 2002” TV series. Other than that he’s directed two other Happy Science anime films; “The Mystical Laws” and, easily my favourite of their films, the utterly insane “The Laws of Eternity”. I can only assume Imakake is one of the faithful. Like the other six anime films the cult has released, the animation (by Brain's Base) is at best workman like. It really feels like there isn’t a whole lot of love or pride in the work. Imakake also provided the character designs which don’t fare all that well when animated. There’s a lot of off model animation in the film. The CG is also a mixed bag. Some of the sequences look quite spectacular, while a few, like the dragon during the climax, look utterly appalling.
After watching all of Happy Science’s anime films over the years, I really find it hard to believe that these movies could be used as recruitment tools. They’re just too bizarre and at times incoherent for anyone who isn’t already under the spell of Ryuho Okawa to be entertained or inspired by. For people who haven’t drunk the Kool Aid the response is usually laughter, bemusement, boredom or confusion. While this film is a bizarre, strange train wreck, nothing can top “The Laws of Eternity” I’m afraid. However what really baffles me is how these films, which are nothing more than vanity projects of a cult leader, manage to get commercial theatrical releases in Japan every time. 5.5 out of 10.
Remaining Backlog: One movie, also waiting for second parts for three shows to be released before viewing them.
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