Metal Gear Solid meets Tom Clancy in this dark and stylish spy anime

For all the variety and suspense that exists in anime, it can be surprisingly difficult to find a straightforward spy thriller to watch that doesn’t take a spin on another genre (Spy × Family‘s spy action riff on domestic comedies) or inherently supernatural (Darker than blue). There is anime-ish Jokers game, gogo 13And Eden of the East, Certainly. But if you’re looking for a dystopian spy thriller anime in the form of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series or Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six via Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series, you can’t go wrong with Shūkō Murase’s 2017 dystopian sci-fi thriller Genocidal organ.

The third installment in a trilogy of anime features adaptations of the late Japanese sci-fi author Satoshi “Project” Itoh’s novels, Genocidal organ is by far the best of the bunch. Ryotaro Makiharas The Empire of Corpses is based on an unfinished Itoh story, and boy – it sure does feeling like it, while Michael Arias and Takashi Nakamura’s Harmony is pretty decent all in all, but can’t quite match it Genocidal organ‘s streamlined visual style and thematic gravitas.

Set in the near future, Genocidal organ is about Clavis Shepherd, a member of an elite black ops team of neuro-enhanced super-soldiers tasked with hunting down “John Paul,” the CEO of an international consulting firm involved in a series of conflicts and genocides that seem to have him everywhere. track where he has traveled. To apprehend John Paul, Clavis is ordered to go undercover and get closer to John’s lover, Luci Skroupova, in hopes that she will inadvertently provide a clue to his whereabouts.

As he gets closer to understanding the full scope of John’s plan, Clavis becomes increasingly disturbed, not only by the moral cost of his own actions, but also by the realization of something he never thought possible : the existence of a previously undiscovered region of the human brain that, when stimulated, provokes uncontrollable acts of mass violence and extremism. In short, a ‘genocidal organ’.

Where Genocidal organ fills the gaps left by other spy-themed anime of its kind in its world-building and reverence for a fictional universe that exists in conversation with our own. The film is not only set in the aftermath of the fictional detonation of a home-made nuclear bomb in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo – a city known as the location of the longest military siege of the 20th century – but explicitly in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. “The day the Twin Towers fell in New York, something changed; we were swept up in the War on Terror,” Clavis says in a voiceover that plays over a montage of him walking the streets of downtown Tampa. “While there was some resistance to the invasion of privacy, we were overwhelmingly scared. As time passed, we voluntarily gave up more and more of our freedoms to feel safe. We never wanted to be traumatized like that again. But the fact is that it is impossible to be truly safe or truly free.”

If you thought that dialogue sounded like something you’d hear during a cutscene for a Metal Gear game, you’re not far wrong. After all, Project Itoh was a friend (and somewhat of a casual protege) of Hideo Kojima, the creator of the critically acclaimed tactical espionage action game series. The influence of the Metal Gear series is completely over Genocidal organ, with an emphasis on espionage, scintillating action, and a complex web of political loopholes and opaque interpersonal loyalties that make up the film’s plot. Then there’s also the frankly disturbing bio-organic military hardware and stealth suits that use material harvested from dolphin carcasses. Yeah, it’s getting weird.

Image: Geno Studio/Toho animation

Even the film’s aforementioned plot device of a hidden region of the human mind susceptible to manipulation is eerily reminiscent of the vocal cord parasites which are prominent in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Considering how close Kojima and Itoh were, with Itoh chosen to write the 2008 Japanese tie-in novel Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Kojima including a posthumous dedication to Itoh in the 2010 credits Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walkerit’s not entirely out of the question that Kojima was partly inspired by his late friend’s most acclaimed novel in making what is now (almost certainly) his last Metal Gear game.

Genocidal organ is a dark, fascinating, and morally gray thriller that gets a bit unhinged in its third act, but ultimately culminates in a chilling speculative military drama that explores the inherent ethical murkyness of American geopolitics and humanity’s seemingly insatiable predisposition to deadly conflict . Genocidal organ is probably the closest thing any later creative work – film or anime – has come to emulating the peculiar appeal of the Metal Gear series. But even without that context, Shūkō Murase’s film is a thoroughly entertaining spy thriller in its own right, with a cool protagonist navigating a terrifyingly eerie universe populated by existential threats from within and without. It’s a movie that feels as alien as the world it’s made in, which is precisely why it succeeds as a work of contemporary spy stories.

Genocidal organ is available for rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu.