Gyo - Death from the Sea - DVD

Content: The three friends Kaori, Erika and Aki wanted to make actually only a relaxing weekend vacation at the sea. But not only are they greeted by horrible stench at their holiday home on Okinawa. They also suddenly find themselves confronted with a shark in the middle of their holiday home, which has seemingly come ashore from the sea on mechanical legs. These strangely mutated sea creatures are cavorting everywhere and preying on humans. While the manly Erika and the shy Aki stay on Okinawa, Kaori makes the dangerous journey back to Tokyo to find her friend Tadeshi. She actually makes it to the megacity, which has also been overrun by the deadly sea creatures, but this is only the beginning of an apocalyptic nightmare in which Tadeshi seems to play an important key role...

Gyo - Death from the Sea is based on the 2001/2002 two-part horror manga by Junji Ito, but for the anime adaptation, director Takayuki Hirao has at times departed significantly from the original. Hirao's film presents itself as a mixture of bloody horror and some bizarre, sometimes a bit unsavory humor, mixed with a bit of suspense and a pinch of eroticism. The idea of the story itself holds a lot of potential and sometimes its apocalyptic realization can also fully convince atmospherically. The problem of the film is its humor, which does not always want to work and is limited in particular to unpleasant exhalations of the people infected by the mutated sea creatures.

In such moments, the feeling arises as if Gyo - Death from the Sea wants to be particularly weird and delightfully absurd, although the film is rather flat and tasteless in these scenes. That being said, this abstruse fish horror does offer 70 minutes of entertaining entertainment. Especially when small and large sea creatures drag a bloody trail of destruction through Tokyo on their mechanical legs, it's just an unrestrained macabre pleasure.

The story itself, however, becomes more and more convoluted, which then dulls the fun a bit. And the fact that the ending then also remains rather open and seems to rely too much on a possible sequel additionally gets in the way of an all-around positive overall impression. So Gyo - Death from the Sea is rather a simple fish stick than a tasty trout: for the small hunger in between it's okay, but the maritime horror anime won't stay in your memory for a long time. Nevertheless, for all who like it sometimes weird, disgusting and bloody, well worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The image of the DVD is very clean and has both a decent image sharpness, as well as a very respectable color mixing. Overall, the picture leaves a pleasantly atmospheric impression that definitely does justice to the film's gritty action. The sound offers some nice surround effects, but remains rather directional and restrained for long stretches, with dialogue primarily setting the tone.

Extras: Except for trailers, the DVD unfortunately has no other extras to offer.

Conclusion: Gyo - Death from the Sea is weird, brutal, a little tasteless and quite entertaining. Even if the humor used here and there only works to some extent, the story itself is well and also entertaining implemented. Certainly not a particularly profound masterpiece, but fans who like it a little more absurd, can risk a look at this maritime horror anime!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp