Midnight Panther

Midnight Panther; Animated erotic fantasy thriller, Japan, 1998; D: Morino Yousei, S: Miho Sakuragi, Yayoi Nagasawa, Yoshido Nikaidou, Akihiro Tano

Somewhere in some alternate medieval world, there live three girls: Lou, Kei and Sonya. During night, Kei transforms into a panther and kills two con men who were passing by. The red haired Lou slays dragons in order to make medicine out of them. The dark haired Sonya chokes a peasant to death during intercourse. They work for an old lady and hide as entertainers in a circus. Their new assignment is to finish off the evil king Bado which seems like an act of fate since Lou is his sister, while the old lady adopted her when she was banished away. The girls enter the castle in order to entertain the inhabitants, but then Bado dies while sleeping with Lou who put poison on her skin. The girls then leave.

"Midnight Panther" is one of the low examples of anime genre, with a running time of only 1 hour that offers wonderful animation and trashy story. Besides a few scene of senseless splatter violence where blood flies all over the screen, in addition with little care for the characters, there is also a bizarre fight of the heroine with two monsters, giving it an element of fantasy. There is also the element of hentai since there are erotic scenes present, satisfying themselves with distorted moments of intercourse, without any psychological depth or emotions - ironically, these moments are the best ones drawn in the film and without compromise exaggerate it (for instance, Sonya and her 'lover' talk while intimate) and push it in order to take the attention away from the poor character development, relationships and thin plot. When Lou argues with girls about how even she can seduce in one scene, that's very sweet and blandly made, grasping for a moment the authentic charm of Japan's mentality that needed to be more present.

Grade:+