Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade Still Gets the Jugular

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is as serious as cinema can get. What could easily have devolved into a grim dystopian action spectacle full of bombastic bloodshed (for example…its South Korean remake) is instead a largely quiet exploration of emotional atrophy. Perhaps, in that way, it’s a much darker tale than any bullet storm ballet could conjure. If nothing else, it isn’t the kind of story most audiences expect from animation. Yet, it is exactly the kind of thematic content animated films are more than capable of exploring. It reminds of a quote related by physicist and theoretical cosmologist Janna Levin, “Reality isn’t overrated, but realism is.”

The film opens with a heavy exposition dump. That’s because the backstory of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade involves an alternative history for World War II. Suffice it to say, postwar Japan is an occupied nation. Rebuilding the devastated archipelago results in economic prosperity while fueling growing class division. Violent suppression of anti-government protests produces terrorist organizations. To stop these dangerous groups, the Kerberos paramilitary police force is created to brutally slaughter any dissidents they encounter.

Delving into the full lore means dealing with an intimidating amount of backstory. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, is only one film in a multimedia political thriller that has been told through radio dramas, novels, movies, and manga since 1987. Originally conceived by Mamoru Oshii, the sprawling narrative known as the Kerberos Saga may seem like an immense mountain of lore to scale just to enjoy one movie. Yet, the odd thing about Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is that one need not necessarily be versed in the entire mythology to make sense of events. That’s because there’s a simplicity to the narrative once the initial exposition dump establishes the premise.

The main story here is about a member of the Kerberos unit named Kazuki Fuse. During a violent riot, he encounters Nanami Agawa, a young teenager who has been delivering bombs to terrorists. Despite orders to shoot, Fuse doesn’t pull the trigger. Unwilling to surrender, Nanami detonates the satchel charge she’s holding.

Initially, it seems like the film’s focus will be on a soldier dealing with post-traumatic stress. In one haunting flashback, the audience sees what Fuse saw just before the blast; Nanami’s final horrifying expression as her defiance turns to terror as she’s blown out of existence. However, when others try to empathize with Fuse, understanding his reluctance to shoot a young girl, he confesses he wanted to fire but couldn’t pull the trigger.

This admission recalls that of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) when T. E. Lawrence shares that his desire to avoid combat isn’t an abhorrence of violence, but the concern that he enjoys killing. Similarly, since Fuse rarely speaks throughout the rest of Jin-Roh the audience is left constantly pondering his unshared feelings. Whatever ethics viewers hold may not be his too. It begs the question of whether morality is inherent or a social construct, especially as Fuse actively resists the compassionate part of himself.

This feeds into the overall thematic content of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. The film isn’t an action epic where bullets beat tyranny while blood paves the way to a brighter future. It questions any inclination to violence and what committing it means psychologically as well as emotionally—the personal dehumanization necessary to destroy others even if it seems for the greater good.

Furthermore, as the story unfolds, paranoia plays a part. The movie is closer to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) than V for Vendetta (2005). Various characters reveal duplicitous qualities as they manipulate one another for their own gains. The result is a tragic love story which is tricky to explain without spoiling the whole film. Suffice it to say, as Fuse gets in touch with his humanity after meeting Nanami’s supposed sister, Kei Amemiya, their connection becomes an unwelcome thorn making his goals harder to achieve. The film is then about the choice to remain a beast. As such it puts Jin-Roh in the category of movies where plot isn’t what matters, which is why the complete lore isn’t necessary to know, rather, what matters is how characters react to their circumstances.

Similar films such as Perfect Days (2023), Drive My Car (2021), or Five Easy Pieces (1970) all put the emphasis on character reactions instead of the plot. Case in point, everything in the Fast and Furious franchise is plot oriented. Events ensue and the driving force of the entertainment is what happens next. Jin-Roh could have been set in any reality, the exact events aren’t as important as their consequences. That gives it an odd universality.

Stories about dystopian societies violently suppressing dissent are a dime a dozen, but Jin-Roh stands out through its depiction as well as exploration of the concept. Frequent scenes show people in the streets of a major city. Often, they’re laughing, strolling casually, or outright having a good time. There’s little about these street scenes reminding us that they’re taking place in a dystopia. Jin-Roh doesn’t have an obviously bleak setting like Blade Runner (1982) or Brazil (1985). As such, the filmmakers conjure the horrifying banality of evil. The people of this society have largely accepted the oppression they’re under, and so go about their lives oddly casually.

Dystopias are usually presented with a certain imperial grandeur, especially in film. Whether The Hunger Games (2012), Fahrenheit 451 (2018), or Equilibrium (2002), the world is as epically impressive as it is oppressive. What Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade does differently from any other dystopia is make it seem unsettlingly ordinary, almost relatable. Those in power converse with calm rationality while oppression is left a largely abstract concept. Something people can chose to ignore so long as it isn’t directly harming them. This is all because Jin-Roh isn’t about the resistance to a dystopia, it’s about how horrifyingly easy it is for people to accept such a situation.

There are no scenes of jackbooted thugs dragging people screaming from their homes. Even the leaders of the oppressive police are depicted as composed individuals. When they discuss an embarrassing failure, voices get raised, but quickly return to softer tones. It’s markedly different from the screaming debriefings seen in V for Vendetta (2004) or the omnipresent Big Brother from 1984 (1984). Even the odious smugness of the ruling class in The Hunger Games isn’t as unsettling as the banal bureaucratic oppression seen here.

Perhaps, most intriguing of all, is that Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade doesn’t seem to have required being animated. Unlike anime featuring massive machines, supernatural martial arts action, or cyberpunk surrealism, nothing about this movie is beyond the realm of a live action flick. In fact, the preceding movies in the Kerberos Saga, The Red Spectacles (1987) and StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops (1991), were. And that live-action remake in 2018, Illang: The Wolf Brigade, would largely recapture the visual nature of the film.

The creator of the series, Mamoru Oshii, already had a solid career in anime. He stepped into the spotlight directing the TV series and film adaptations of Urusei Yatsura. However, he is, perhaps, best known for his work on the iconic Ghost in the Shell (1995) adaptation. His impressive visual sense combined with a thematic tendency to explore Japan’s relationship to the past and its future, often in philosophical ways, wrote his ticket to indulge in the creation of the Kerberos Saga.

Although the first films were hardly successful—they are an arthouse mess of whiplash tone shifts and Lynchian visuals which ricochet off incoherent material, often coming to a “disappointingly conventional ending”—they did still spawn a manga series. The first story arc in the Kerberos Panzer Cop comic would eventually inspire Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade.

According to Oshii, Bandai wanted an anime series based on the manga. Working on Ghost in the Shell precluded any involvement, so the torch got passed to first time director Hiroyuki Okiura. The Jin-Roh collector’s edition Blu-ray features an impressive interview segment with the creators of the film. Besides Okiura’s initial hesitation to direct—his proposals for the project were meant to get him released from the role but instead ended up giving the movie much of what makes it so moving like its love story—the section called “Speculate about Jin-Roh” also details several stylistic decisions.

The most important is the choice of colors. Meant to imitate old newsreels, the desaturated palette allowed for layers of paint rather than simply muddy shades. This gave Jin-Roh an old as well as dark tone that permeates its reality.

Within that cinematographic depth came a look which sets the film in the past without making it seem unfamiliar or distant. Taking place in the Showa ’30s (roughly 1956), Jin-Roh isn’t beyond comprehension for Japanese audiences, some of whom lived through the era. The movie’s political protests even echo the student movement of the 1960s as well as youthful counterculture efforts. Yet, I would contend anyone familiar with contemporary cities will still see something relatable.

While Jin-Roh lacks the phantasmagoria of Paprika (2006), this omitted flair prevents distraction from carefully orchestrated scenes. Details, particularly emotional notes, stand out because they aren’t lost in a cacophony of colorful imagery. As Stephen Prince observed in the article True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory, “It is not as if cinema either indexically records the world or stylistically transfigures it. Cinema does both.”

All films have some degree of artifice, even the most outlandish cinematic spectacles often attempt to dissuade people from perceiving the artificial nature of movies. Audiences are supposed to suspend disbelief, buy into the reality, and absorb the ensuing imagery. While some movie-makers like Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, or Todd Haynes blatantly embrace the artifice, and styles like German expressionism enhance it as well, their goal is to draw attention to what animation does automatically.

No one watching an animated movie thinks of it as reality. Consequently, there is an immediate sense of importance to what is on screen. Although every filmmaker chooses the visuals, viewers instantly recognize that intentionality with animated films. That’s because nothing accidental is on display. Furthermore, Scott McCloud proposed a notion called “amplification through simplification.” This essentially means stripping something down to its minimal components for conveying an idea. As such, there is an emphasis on certain details.

Faces in animation, for instance, are composed of only those details which convey a specific notion. This allows Jin-Roh to powerfully contrast the hopeful expressions of Kei Amemiya, her joyful desire to remain intentionally optimistic against Fuse’s stoic desire to be dead inside. Animation, therefore, means an opportunity to linger, emphasize, and simplify driving a point home while the audience remains safely detached. After all, there’s nothing real on screen, though there is a relatable realism being presented.

This includes a level of control over the acting no living performer could manage. When exaggerated, as they often are in anime, hyperbolic displays are never unnecessary details but emphasis. People don’t cry, they have veritable rivers running down their face. Then there’s no mistaking what’s being felt as the drama unfolds. Furthermore, it’s hard to look away when something intense occurs.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade covers so much territory it’s hard to tackle its myriad topics. I haven’t even gotten into its use of the fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, utilizing classical interpretations of sexuality alongside Bruno Bettelheim’s rebirth reading. Then there’s its clever limited use of extreme violence. Though depictions are extreme, their infrequency makes each instance more pronounced and potent. Reducing the film to one topic risks a myopic appraisal. Yet, make no mistake, Jin-Roh isn’t a perfect piece of cinema, although, it is a glorious display of the potential within motion pictures. The ideas it touches on spark fundamental quandaries about society and the human condition. What it makes a viewer consider can be haunting. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade isn’t about how we make the world better, it’s about how easily we can convince ourselves to make it worse. And these days, that kind of cautionary tragedy is all too necessary.