Garo: Soukoku no Maryu

I've had this movie sitting around and finally got around to watching it this weekend.  For those who are unfamiliar with the Garo series, it's a series consisting of several tv shows, movies, and videos that follow a group of people called Makai Knights, which are basically modern day knights who use magical armor to hunt down demons.  The series is absolutely NOT for kids and was billed as something along the lines of being a "midnight violence action hero."  The series as whole tends to have a lot of violence and nudity.  The series also has a very strong horror theme to it, as if that wasn't obvious.

The first series, simply called Golden Knight Garo dealt with Saejima Koga, the man who holds the title and armor of Garo.  Supposedly Garo is the strongest of the Makai Knights.  The first series obviously introduces the setting involving the hidden war between the Makai Knights (and Makai Priests) versus of Horrors.  Horrors are demons born of human emotions that can either possess people or consume human souls.  The plot of the first series initially deals with Koga coming into contact with a normal human named Kaoru who by chance is caught in the middle of a fight between Garo and a Horror.  She is accidentally doused with the blood of the horror which has the unfortunate side effect of not only being extremely toxic, but attracts other Horrors as well.  So, much of the series involves the relationship between the two as Koga tries to not only protect Kaoru, but also try to find a way to save her.  As it goes on, another Knight is introduced and the plot becomes more convoluted as it turns out a corrupted Knight is controlling things behind the scenes to not only corrupt Koga's handlers, but also summon the Horror's god into the human realm.  Here's a trailer for the original series:

The first special follows which involves the introduction of another new Makai Knight and the revival of new menace, Legules.  Basically he's a demon on a whole different level from the average Horrors.  The overall plot involves Legules attempting to tear down the wall between the human world and the Horror's world.

Following the first special is the first movie, Red Requiem.  I had a hard time placing where this was actually supposed to occur in the series' chronology.  I think it is supposed to occur after the first show and the special.  This one introduces a new Makai Priestess named Rekka along with several others.  The plot mostly involves them trying to track down an Apostle Horror, one of the most powerful types of Horrors they ever encounter.  The movie was alright.  It was a 3d movie, for some reason.  I was a little disappointed in it actually because no new Makai Knights were introduced and the Garo armor itself was barely in the movie.  Here's the trailer to that though.

After the first movie, we get the second tv series, Makai Senki.  This one once again involves a corrupted Makai Knight running wild.  Unlike in the first series, the villain this time around is not completely possessed and knows full well what he's doing.  The villains mission is to use the power of the Horrors against them and destroy them once and for all.  Of course this doesn't work.  This show did a LOT more world building, introducing the Senate, the governing body that presides over the Makai Knights and Priests, the history of the Makai Knights, and it introduces several new Knights.  The show ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger with Koga entering into a contract with a demon called Gajari in order to save everyone.  The show ends with him having to leave to a place called the Promised Land to fulfill his contract.  And here's the trailer for that:

The Third series, Yami Wo Terasu Mono (the one who shines in the darkness) is pretty much unrelated.  It's set an unspecified amount of time in the future.  Koga is gone, what happened to him is never explained.  A new cast is introduced with two new Makai Knights ( who have very cool looking armor) and a new Knight bearing the title of Garo.  This new lead is called Dogai Ryuga.  He's not as cool as Koga and tries to be something of a rebel.  The plot of this one involves a self contained city-state in which Horrors have infiltrated key business and political positions and an evil human attempts to take control over a sealed Apostle Horror called Zedom.  This show was okay, but there were times they tried to be kind of artsy with it which got kind of annoying.  Plus the horrors seemed to lose a lot of their more unique designs from previous series and it was a lot more CG heavy.  Zedom was somewhat interesting in that he's the first high-ranking Horror seen in the series other than Kiba that's male.  All of the previous powerful Horrors were female.  Zedom is also interesting in that he is almost purely mechanical whereas every other horror has been pretty much organic.  Might as well put the trailer for this series as well:

Following that, there were two more movies.  One, a spinoff called Garo Gaiden:  Tougen no Fue.  It follows a pair of Makai Priestesses and has no other characters from Garo in it.

The other is Garo:  Soukoku no Maryu, which is the epilogue for the second series following Koga as he travels into the Promised Land.  Here's the trailer.

I was surprised by this one.  First, this is probably the only entry in the Garo series that could be considered family friendly.  There are no Horrors, nobody getting eaten or brutally murdered or worse as often happened in the shows.  I don't think there was even any blood in this.  Hell, there wasn't really even any nudity, and all 3 shows and the first movie all had nudity in them.  Those weird looking white, fish headed women in some of those shots were technically nude, but you really can't see anything, so I'm going to say this one is child safe.  The movie also has surprisingly decent CG.  That's really shocking because Garo has never had good looking CG.  The sets and creature designs are all extremely weird and look pretty much like what you'd expect from something from Keita Amemiya, the series' creator.  I could swear I'd read that the movie was supposed to be influenced by Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and it pretty well shows.  Actually, what this movie reminded me the most of was The Labyrinth or The Neverending Story.  The strange fantasy setting with all of the bizarre looking monsters really gave me that vibe.  There's even a strange, hallucinogenic party sequence that comes totally out of nowhere and reminds me of the ballroom dance sequence from The Labyrinth.  Something interesting with this movie, while the backgrounds are all CG and only a couple monsters are CG, almost every other creature is a puppet of some sort.  One of the characters even seemed to be a marionette.  It was very surprising to see how many creatures were done with practical effects.  I have noticed though that the marionettes seem to have carried over into Amemiya's newest show, Shougeki Gouraigan.

Overall, this movie was a surprising departure from the usual formula of the shows and was unusually tame, but still enjoyable.