a review of 尸体派对:迷失的舞步
Recently I picked up a copy of Corpse Party: Blood Drive for my beloved PS Vita only to find out that it's the third chapter in one of those rare horror game series that actually tells one continuous story, as opposed to the likes of Resident Evil or Silent Hill where each entry is connected through things like the setting, imagery, or mechanics, but are largely their own self-contained tales. So in order to ensure that I'm not completely lost while playing it and avoid adding to my already massive backlog of games with the earlier titles in the process, I've decided to check out the franchise's anime offerings. The first of which is this 11-minute prequel OVA. It's primarily focused on exploring the character's relationships. Mainly by going over who has a crush on who. The problem is that it's so brief and the interactions so inconsequential that you'd have to be among the most obsessive members of the fanbase to find any sort of value here. I have a hard time believing this enriches or deepens the overarching narrative in any way, shape, or form. The most interesting content it has to offer is it's depiction of the original Heavenly Host Elementary murders. It's a shocking, disturbing, and extremely gory sequence. However, in order to witness it in it's full glory you need to track down the hard to find uncensored version. Doing so comes with a trade-off though, as watching anything beyond the deaths may cause your FBI agent to put you on a registered sex offender list. For whatever reason there's a scene early on where one of the protagonists has his little sister barge in on him while he's in the bath, completely nude herself, and practically demand to be allowed to "wash his body." Not only is this grossly incestuous in nature, but they had the audacity to fully depict her naked body to boot. Animated or not, that's pedophilia in my book and absolutely disgusting. This is immediately followed by another bit of tasteless fan service where a young lady is repeatedly groped in a non-consensual manner by another girl who's relationship to her is undefined. It's not nearly as egregious, but still very creepy. Were this whole thing not bordering on degenerate fetish porn I might have been a little more forgiving as it's just more pointless than anything. I really hope the Tortured Souls mini-series isn't bogged down by this kind of stuff too, because I'm really enjoying the twisted narrative of the video game I'm playing and would love to experience its predecessors in this easier and faster to digest manner before getting too far into it. Anyways, sorry Corpse Party fanatics, but I think this footage could have stayed missing.