Rated 3 out of 5
Mythos Shadows in Japan
A young woman collapses on a Tokyo street, muttering the name "Misa Kuroi"-and then dies. At the city morgue, two police detectives discuss Misa Kuroi, a figure they believe to be nothing more than an urban myth, a supposed teen-aged witch who investigates strange cases. As it happens, while they are talking, the real Misa Kuroi slips past them and enters the morgue. She examines the corpse and determines that it has been eaten away by parasites from another dimension.Following a clue in the dead female’’s belongings, Misa goes to a nearby high school for girls. Misa befriends a student named Aya and enrolls in Aya’’s drama club. Hikaru, the "Chief" of the drama group, assigns Misa a part in the current play, which seems to incorporate many occult elements.
The girls from the drama club use a holiday period for extra practice at an old house that once belonged to Baron Etori, the founder of the high school. During one practice session, while Misa is in another part of the building using the telephone, Hikaru and the other girls fall into a trance and begin to invoke the Seven Angels of Darkness:
·Atorakunakua, god of the spider (Atlach-Nacha);
·Huster, god of the wind (Hastur);
·Tsatugua, god of the underworld (Tsathoggua);
·Nialratohotepu, god of chaos (Nyarlathotep);
·Dagon, god of water;
·Shupunigras, god of the black goat (Shub-Niggurath); and
·Cthulu, the sleeping god (Cthulhu).
Misa returns and interrupts the ceremony before it can be completed, but evil forces, in the form of misshapen cloaked figures, have been unleashed. One by one, the other girls are killed by the creatures of darkness, until only Misa, Aya, and Hikaru remain. Misa attempts to expose the source behind the eldritch events at the house, and this proves to be the long-dead Baron Etori. Etori’’s spirit claims descent from the Weitly (Whately) family, notorious servants of the demon-god Yog Sototo (Yog-Sothoth).
Etori’’s spirit informs Misa that the deaths of the other students have been arranged as sacrifices to Yog Sototo. In return, Yog Sototo will give full human life to a Homonculus, an artificially created being. Puzzled by this, Misa banishes Etori’’s spirit-only to learn that both Aya and Hikaru are Homonculi, created by Etori’’s magic in years past.
Somehow Aya lost her memory of her unnatural creation, and was raised by foster parents, believing that she was a normal human being. Hikaru, however, is working in consonance with the Baron’’s plan. She kills Misa, and then begins the final arcane preparations to sacrifice Aya to Yog Sototo. Hikaru feels this will make her completely human.
But Misa’’s mystical powers enable her to return from death to defend Aya. In the confrontation with Hikaru, Misa blasts Hikaru with sorcerous energies-which also cast Hikaru back through time, where she appears on a Tokyo street, dying as she speaks the words "Misa Kuroi". . . .
The storyline is a bit murky-why Yog Sototo or the Angels of Darkness would care about making a Homonculus fully human is not obvious to me. But I did enjoy the movie, with its modest Cthulhu Mythos references, and its rather somber protagonist. In addition to being an enchantress, Misa is also a Buffy-style fighter; in one sequence, she hikes up her skirt, pulls a dagger out of a thigh sheath, and starts carving up a band of robed zombies.
I found it interesting that whoever did the English-language translation did not recognize the original sources for "Huster" and "Tsatugua" and the other Mythos names, and instead tried to phonetically transcribe the Japanese versions of these names back into English.
I’’ve seen a couple of reviews of Misa that referred to elements of nudity and lesbianism, but none of that appeared in the print I watched. (Although it was clearly implied that some of the
