31 days of Horror: Day Three: Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack (2012)

Directed by Takayuki Hirao

My first encounter with Japanese Manga creator Junji Ito was his late 90's horror masterpiece, Uzumaki. The Uzumakie manga  was among the best pieces of horror fiction I have ever read. Lovecraftian, and epic. The film adaptation was less successful, but still very interesting. The next thing released in English (that I read) was Gyo. a less ambitious, but still wonderful story that asks the age old question, What if sharks had legs, and could chase you around your house? Even starting from such a sill premise, the resulting work was exciting, gross, and even scary. Today's movie pick is the brand new anime adaptation, which if not wholly successfully, is still a lot of fun.

Three young women are enjoying a summer vacation by the sea, when things are interrupted by fish with legs. At first just a little fish. It's quite stinky, and skitters around in a menacing fashion, but isn't really that bad. It's when the giant shark shows up that things get really scary. But even that is just the beginning. Soon thousands of fish of all sizes are skittering out of the ocean, and running rampant in the cities. This brings about an near apocalyptic nation wide panic. Kaori, our protagonist, decides to head back to Tokyo, to find her fiance, and a young photojournalist she meets on the plane comes along for the ride hoping to get to the bottom of the story.

 Our two heroes encounter riot squads, mad scientists, and more of those pesky land sharks. Meanwhile Kaori's two friends left behind at the sea side are having adventures in body horror all their own. This adaptation simplifies, and streamlines the story from the manga quite a bit, to fit the run time of an hour and ten minutes, but still manages to be an entertaining ride. The atmosphere of creepy menace from the book is not quite as pronounced, and so I would recommend this movie as a nice way to sample the story, but if you like what you see at all, you should follow up with the manga itself.

Or will it...