Hoichiro Ohma works in an office. Everybody knows him as a silent, humble man. Even his girlfriend, Nanase, doesn't suspect that he could be something more, but he is. When a person dies as a victim of murder; when someone kills himself with a curse on his lips; when someone's death needs to be judged, he is there, for he is a Judge Of Darkness. Following the Laws Of Darkness, with a book made of human skin and an unusual parrot, he pronounces judgement over living criminals that would otherwise go free.
(Source: ANN)
Nenhum episódio encontrado.
Comentários
animegorey
The concept of this story isn't that bad. They could have done more with it. Action is a bit lacking and it's rather generic at best. It's short (thank god), but still has low rewatchability as there isn't much there to make you want to rewatch it. Animation is typical of it's age. Characters are easy to forget and anime as a whole is worth watching if you seen most of them and are experimenting with OVAs or something. Easy to find cheap on dvd if desired, but there's much better anime to spend your money on.
literaturenerd
It's now the month of October, so I thought I would review a spooky horror anime! Then I realized just how few good horror anime actually exist. At least there are a decent number of God awful horror OVAs from the 1990s, so here's Judge! The manga is from the 1980s and is written by the same dude who created the far superior Gallery Fake. That manga/anime about art forgery that you've probably heard of but haven't seen because almost nobody has. The anime is a single episode, 40 minute OVA from 1991 that was animated by JC Staff. This was a few years before JCStaff graced the world with Garzey's Wing. Also like Garzey's Wing, Judge was one one of the bad titles forced on to Central Park Media because it bombed hard in Japan. Central Park didn't have a lot of confidence in Judge and released it without fanfare into bargain bins across America, where it can still be picked up for usually around 1-3 dollars on a cheaply printed DVD.
So what is Judge about? This is an anime all about the legal bureaucracy of the afterlife. Time for some background information. In the Abrahamic faiths, there is only one God and He alone is in charge of judgement. It's an open and shut case whether someone goes to heaven or hell, so there is no afterlife bureaucracy. The very concept is utterly absurd to someone brought up with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. In traditional Chinese folklore, the afterlife or court of the Jade Emperor worked basically the same as the legal courts and government of Zhou Dynasty China. The next life is just a continuation of this one, so of course the gods settle their disputes the same way as the Chinese government. That means TONS of bureaucracy, confusing power structures, bribery, and red tape. Unsurprisingly, this Chinese view of the afterlife was heavily influential on their neighbor Japan. Shinto is a very loosely organized religion that doesn't have 1 central book equivalent of the Bible or the Koran. As a result, it actually absorbed quite a bit from Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, and even Hinduism. Remember that giant red guy named Enma from Dragonball? You've probably seen him in other anime as well. He sits at a desk all day and judges souls. Enma is the Japanese translation of Yanluo Wang, which was China's regional spin on the Hindu god Yama. They're all the same dude.
Judge takes this very traditional, East Asian view of the afterlife and makes it even more ridiculous by making it function like modern, Western legal procedure. This is an anime with a shinigami called the "Service processor of darkness" who delivers legal papers and informs clients that they've been served. That should let you know what kind of fucking insanity you're getting into.
The main character is some dweeb who looks like Otacon from the Metal Gear Solid games. He's a meek salaryman who gets abused all day, but is secretly the "Judge of Darkness". At least in the English dub. He's actually not a judge at all, but rather the "Prosecuting Attorney of Darkness". His job is to deliver divine punishment to evildoers who managed to escape the law of mortals. He reads them their crimes, then tortures and kills them in this life before dragging them to Hell. His first task is to kill this bastard who forced a secretary to embezzle tons of money from his corporation, then murdered her and staged her death as a suicide. We learn this because he delivers all this information in a melodramatic monologue to himself for no reason. All while driving his dastardly foreign car. Otacon puts on lipstick, gets a perm, does his nails, and transforms into the prosecutor of darkness! He kills the first dude by drowning him wrapped in an American flag to symbolize his greed. Awesome!
In the next case, Otacon has to go after his boss because the boss paid an assassin in South America to kill his business partner. I mean his day job boss, not his afterlife boss. This time though, the prosecutor of darkness is met by the defense attorney of darkness! Despite being the prosecutor of darkness for many years, he had no idea that a defense attorney of darkness existed and was quite surprised by this. The gods decided that the whole divine punishment thing was unfair and gave permission to a Catholic priest who sounds like Droopy Dog to be the defense attorney of evil. This guy knows that his clients are guilty and the prosecutor is only going after them because they escaped mortal justice, but he believes it's his duty to help evildoers escape. You also know the defense attorney is the bad guy because he charges 500 million yen for his services while the prosecutor works pro-bono. This guy is a divine being who works directly for the gods like a shinigami, but charges heavily for his services! Why?! What does he even do with that money? I think Bennett the Sage in his review had the only logical conclusion: he blows it all at the strip club.
Here is where Judge becomes a masterpiece. The 2 spirit lawyers engage in a magical legal battle! They fire lasers at each other and summon demons all while screaming legal jargon, written by-laws, and obscure statutes. Imagine a Family Guy cutaway gag about Jewish Harry Potter. That is EXACTLY what this scene is! At this point, the boss gets served by the service processor of darkness and is summoned to appear before the 9 judges of the supreme court of darkness. I'm not going to completely spoil the ending, but what happens is just as stupid as the rest of the series. All while taking itself COMPLETELY seriously. Judge never has an ounce of self awareness throughout the entire runtime. It has no idea how stupid and insane it is!
Another highlight of Judge is the insanely terrible character art. These are some of the ugliest characters I've seen in anime. However, it's quite different from your typical, ugly looking anime. The character art in Kaiji isn't exactly pretty, but the style is very consistent. Every character looks like they belong in the same world. That is NOT the case with Judge. Some of the characters like the boss look they belong in an entirely separate anime. The boss is drawn to look like a Grey Alien, but he's not. He's just supposed to be a normal guy and nobody mentions that he looks completely different from everyone else!
I just skimmed through some of the bullshit and insanity of this anime, but I HIGHLY recommend watching the whole thing. It has to be seen to be believed. I would have probably given Judge a 1, but it made me laugh so hard that I gave it a 4. I made the mistake of visiting the MAL forums last night and met some Zoomer elitist who thought Fairy Tale was what a 1/10 anime looked like. This is exactly why more people need to watch anime like Judge. Only 1,000 people on all of MAL have seen this piece of shit and I want to change that!
Toran71
This doesn't deserve such a low score! This is was awesome for what it was. It's an early 90s OVA you get what you see, it's nothing crazy high quality but they're usually fascinating and this one is no exception. The story in this is one of the coolest and most well thought-out depictions of Japanese occultism I've ever seen in anime. The entire thing is steeped in mythology and lore about death and hell and deities like King Enma, stuff like that. If you've heard of an Onmyoji before thats what the main character is based on, amongst other things. Eventually the story went somewhereI wasn't expecting but absolutely loved. Like demonic Law and Order. If you're looking for adult goosebumps style anime, this is it. It almost reminded me of an episode of the Twilight Zone in a way.
aweser
Yami no Shihosha Judge isn't a known anime for a reason. The concept of the story is rather interesting but it doesn't work well as a horror. The main character resembles Clark Kent. He is a nerdy and kind guy at work but when no one is looking he turns into a super hero whose goal is to bring justice upon vilains (by killing tchem ofc). We don't get to know why is he that way, who exactly is he and what is his story. He definetly isn't a "generic good guy" but unfortunately he isn't memorable either. When it comes to the art & musicthey are fairly ok for a 1991 anime. My only objection is that the music sometimes doesn't match the scenes.
And finally the most important aspect: "Why is YSJ not good as a horror?".
#1 There were only 3 scary scenes in the entire movie. It definetly is not enough for a horror that lasts 48 minutes.
#2 All of these scenes were really unrealistic. Maybe it's only me but i don't find magical books, weird deformed ghosts and birds which can cut you scary.
#3 The ending didn't leave me with any tention. When the story came to an end i felt as if nothing has happened. I think that if it was longer it might have been much better but it all happened to fast.
To conclude i don't recommend you YSJ unless you are an otaku hipster and want to show off your anime knowledge.
Sidewinder51
rate:6 (fine) seen via english dubbed Judgement has always been known to occur. From how we were raised to the religion we fall under. Although, the exact rules of death are unclear. Seeing, how you must be dead to be aware. With no accurate documentation of witness reflections we can only guess how it will play. In comes this movie to fill the blanks to from what we already know to be true. Like -plot is believable. Plot left me with no raise questions. whom am i to say mediums exist or not? Or the dead can speak or not. Such questions most do not have answers for. Plotis also very thorough. Anyone can make a stand and set a scene but you can tell from the words they used that they did their research for the area of study.
Dislike
-in rare times in the film i was struck in awe! For example, if i were to pay you a hefty sum for a job i expect to know everything. Not to find out before it is too late. Yet, the way the constructed the character it had it seemed like he would care enough to do that. However, why didn't he? In short, the character development is a tad askew.
Drz3wo
Yami no Shihosha Judge is not bad I have to say, but It`s not good either. The story and concept behind it is quite promising but the way it is showed in anime destroyed all the potential that it has and made it an average animation. This adaptation was made in 1991 and when you takie this into account the animation and sound effects is quite good. However music sometimes doesn`t fit current situation and gets annoying over time. To begin with character design is nothing special. Main character is a quiet office worker and at the first sight nothing unusual stands out about him that onlypassively watches everything around him . His second judge "form" is an total opposite. This contrast makes him kinda interesting but it`s the only thing that will get viever attention when it comes to characters.
The storyline in Judge is chaotic and the only thing that matches horror genere is a way that anime follows the plot. Jumpscares with "demonic" bird and a book made out of flesh are not enough to scare the audience.
For me Yami no Shihosha Judge is a mediocre OVA that can kill some time but surely there are better animations to watch and I would recommend something different than this.
nullgolem
I watched a hard dubbed version. I like supernatural and occult themes, and you have a lot of modern day superstition in the japanese that runs through media like this (or even stuff like Tetsuo Body Hammer) The setting is quite decent setup for a story. The title 'judge' is a bit of a misnomer as the main protagonist isn't a judge.... he is more like a prosecutor for the wrongfully deceased/ but also seems to be an investigator as well.... "Spirit Lawyer against the darkness" is a better title for this movie. (it's actually a bit like mashup of phoneix wright ace attorney meets shinmegami tensei) the anime doesnt explain a lot of things and plenty is confusing...
setting was cool but its a very short run time for a lot of lofty conceptualizations, to make it worse something as abstract as this and condense down to a smaller run time is made a bit obscure by what i'm going to assume is a poor translation (not sure how many versions of this are out there) This is a shame it could have been really intersting and been a heck of a good mystery too. Still the setting alone is interesting enough to make up for the inconsistencies and lack of story. However these factors combined really limit the payout of a proper setting and what could have been a really good story, what we are left with is other aspects which aren't that strong...
The characters are not so fleshed out or even consistent. I'd say that they are terrible characters due to the way they are poorly presented through the setting of this story. Not too often in anything where the protagonist is this inconsistent and low key. This doesnt really have villains but they are far more memorable.
the music/sound is very average. nothing stood out.
animation and drawing is okay, it's consistent and all but i didnt find any aspect of it notable. My experience/taste in this dept is generally low but it pretty much looks like a good deal of things made in same era as this. The film does explore some strange and garish looking video sequences when the weird gets wierder and this flows nicely with the story, I could only hope to makea bit more sense of it. I found nothing unsightly to look at, lazy or grainy (and there is a lot of old stuff that is)
However, the movie has a great opening intro leading into the central plot and features another alternate setting that looked cool visually and had some flavor. I would say that the best bit is easily the first 5 minutes. IF you like old anime (or just like intros) from 89-94 the first five mins might be worth a peek but aside from that this ultimately was pretty half cooked, and not really meant to be digested by a western audience... Stuff is abstract to begin with, inconsistent, doesnt translate right and then to top it all off there is a bit of cultural barrier to interpreting what Judge offers in such a short run time... even if you like the supernatural/mysteryhorror type genre. theres just not quite enough meat on these bones and whats there tastes a bit bland.
I would be curious to read the manga of this one and check out what else the creator did as there's some nice creative and vision element here (the strong points) but it doesnt properly express itself here in this form.
dxdnelion
Yami no Shihosha Judge have an interesting premise. Our main character is known as a clumsy and moron guy but it was just his disguise. In reality, he is one of the 'judge' from hell to punish those who have committed crime and get away from the law. His judgement was based on the book of the human skin, whereas it shows him who killed the victim and how this happened. I wish this could be rebooted and made as a series instead of the movie. The movie didn't do this series justice, it makes the whole storyline a bit rushed; confusing and unappealing. Overall, itwas a decent watch. Giving it 6/10.
Trill_Bread
Yami no Shihosha Judge or simply as "Judge" in the english dub, is a supernatural-horror story about a salary man by day that moonlights as a drag queen by night in order to torture and punish criminals who have escaped justice. The main character of this story is Hoichiro Oma who is a blend of the Peter Parker/ Clark Kent archetype of the picked on nerd in the office who seemingly acts as the obedient flunky to his superiors, but in reality is the last remaining heir of an ancient bloodline that practices cross dressing and supernatural law as the "Judge of Darkness" (akathe Prosecuting Attorney of Darkness, the english dub "simplifies" this by calling him a judge but also makes his naming scheme not make sense); who harasses, tortures, kills, and then drags to hell the souls of criminals who managed to get away with their crimes while dressed as a transexual.
The program opens up with a book being opened and slowly turning pages for an unnecessary amount of time. Finally a transition occurs and the program brings us to a jungle where a wounded man wanders up a river before being murdered by an unnamed mercenary. The show then cuts to the title before beginning at a skyscraper where we are introduced to Oma and the majority of the supporting cast for the episode: the blue haired Nanase who is Oma's girlfriend characterized by her constant nagging for Oma to nut up in general, the literal corpse skin colored bug-man Koji Kawamata who is Oma's boss, office hotshot Ryuichi Murakami who often physically bullies and verbally belittles Oma , and Yamamoto an account and Murakami's lover. Kawamata and Murakami have secretly been embezzling at the company; Murakami had been getting Yamamoto to help him with the embezzlement under the pretext that they would run away together like lovers.
Oma bangs his girlfriend while Murakami and Kawamata have a business meeting where Kawamata pressures Murakami to make sure that the crime can not be linked back to them because the accounts they embezzled from are coming under investigation the following day. Murakami in turn pressures Yamamoto to disappear and take the money out for him. Following this sequence we are introduced to Oma's evil looking parrot that embarrasses Nanase by repeating her sex cries while they eat breakfast. At the office there's a general sense of chaos as the police investigate the embezzlement and the sudden disappearance of Yamamoto. Feeling scared she calls Oma, begging him to pass along a message to Murakami that she did what he asked, that she loved him and got rid of all the evidence linking him to the crime. However when Oma relays this to Murakami he is instead rebuffed and beaten by an indignant Murakami, who takes the message as a blackmail attempt from Oma. They are interrupted by a security guard who informs Murakami that Yamamoto had apparently committed suicide; but a brief evil flash from Murakami implies he had a direct hand in her death. Oma agrees to keep the embezzlement a secret, but then transitions into his drag outfit at night to stalk and hunt down Murakami, who for some inadvertent reason is confessing to staging Yamamoto's suicide in a spoken monologue to ham-fistedly drive home the point that he's an evil murderer. Oma as the Judge of Darkness attacks Murakami with a flock of birds who break his windshield and then peck at him before he begins to hallucinate a grotesque version of his own world. Murakami is then confronted by the Judge of Darkness, who explains his powers, his judgement book's texture (it's human skin) and history in a needless exposition to his victim so the audience can get some understanding of why Oma chooses to dress like a drag queen in order to hunt down criminals. After failing to bargin for his life, Murakami is then told his crimes that he is being punished for by the parrot which sends futilely Murakami running for his life. From the pages a demon is summoned who grabs onto Murakami, before transforming into a literal fucking blanket that makes him fall to his death. Oma/Judge of Darkness lords over Murakami's corpse from the cliff while the blanket is revealed to actually have been the American flag. I guess it's symbolic for capitalism being bad or something, the social commentary felt really out of place and out of no where and is not really followed up on.
The rest of the anime centers around the aftermath of the murder from the beginning of the program, who turns out to have been the vice president of the company Yamanobe. While at the funeral, Oma notices Kawamata acting strange and is saddened when he see's Yamanobe's son grieve for his loss. Using his judgment book he divines how Yamanobe died in the beginning of the program, and his powers deduce that the mercenary was hired by none other than Yamanobe's best friend, business partner, and Oma's boss Kawamata. The program then introduces our final main character, who is only known as "the Defense Attorney of Darkness", a nasally voiced catholic priest like figure who acts ad a public defender to oppose the Judge (who is really the prosecutor of darkness) and not allow him free reign. The program takes a serious nosedive at this point (as if it was good in the first place though lol) with the introduction of this character, mostly because his functions don't make sense. The Defense Attorney knows his clients are guilty, yet he is portrayed as a type of "lawful evil" character who charges exorbitant fees in the name of god to keep these criminals alive, all while withholding information that could be critical for their client's survival. Despite appearances the Defense Attorney isn't trying to grift and lead his clients to his deaths, however that ends up occurring because of his negligence in explaining anything to his clients about the spiritual world. Additionally when Oma as the Judge of Darkness first meets him, he has no knowledge of him at all despite the fact that Oma claimed to have studied and known all the ancient history of his clan and their judgment, so it makes the Defense Attorney feel really forced and tacked on while undermining Oma as ignorant about the workings of his own powers. While I understand it was necessary for the plot to have some kind of character to directly oppose Oma so the story wouldn't be repetitive, the writers should have put more thought into making a character that works.
Kawamata ends up agreeing to the fees of the Defense Attorney after barely managing to survive an encounter with Oma, only thanks to a charm the Defense Attorney had given him minutes before. Together the pair lure Oma out into the open while camping out in snowy mountains, leading to a literal spoken word legal battle between the Judge and Defense Attorney like they were in a magical girl anime. Oma gets his ass beaten and has to get saved by his parrot before falling off a cliff and seemingly dying. Satisfied with his victory, the Defense Attorney and Kawamata go home. However Oma is not done yet so he sends his parrot to attack Kawamata, marking him with a summons to a superior court of darkness. Using the last trick up his sleeve, Oma sends his spirit to his girlfriend Nanase in order to posses her and send her to act as a medium in order to transport Kawamata and the Defense Attorney of Darkness into going to superior court. Kawamata and the Defense Attorney then face the 10 judges and Yamanobe's spirit in order to settle the dispute between the judge (Prosecutor) and the Defense Attorney of darkness over Kawamata's involvement in Yamanobe's murder.
The final court case's deliberation is the most ridiculous segment of the program. The Judge of Darkness fails to prove that Kawamata is guilty, but he still ends up getting him punished because of the most absurd turn of events. Yamanobe gives a positive character witness of Kawamata which leads to Kawamata developing a guilty conscience and wanting to escape the room, only to touch a magic mirror which literally confesses your sins. Kawamata refuses to admit what his mirror self confessed, and was strangled to death by his reflection. The Defense Attorney only shakes his head disdainfully admonishing his client for touching the mirror even though Kawamata had no knowledge of the mirror or what it would do to him. Also the existence of the mirror begs the question of the point of the entire court system or need for judges, why even have them when you can just have the defendant touch the mirror and find out if he's guilty or not. The program ends with Oma having dinner with his girlfriend at a restaurant and encountering the Defense Attorney of Darkness once again, and they both psychically communicate and vow to uphold the laws of darkness leaving room for a possible sequel (thankfully it didn't happen).
Overall Judge is a mostly goofy foray with interesting concepts and horrible execution. The idea of punishing criminals who escaped the normal means of justice is an interesting concept, but the reality of a drag queen summoning blankets to toss people off cliffs isn't as appealing.
