released 01 nov 08 / last mod 01 nov 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of Rumiko Takahashi's MERMAID FOREST -- an anime video in 13 episodes on four DVDs -- we meet Mana, a girl who is being held prisoner by a village inhabited only by women. As it turns out, the villagers are mermaids in human form. Eating the flesh of a mermaid can make humans immortal, if it doesn't turn them into mindless bug-eyed monsters instead. The villagers slay one of their own and feed her meat to Mana, making the girl immortal; since mermaids become immortal themselves when they eat the flesh of an immortal human, they plan to kill her and eat her in turn.
Mana is rescued by a drifter named Yuta, who is actually centuries old, having eaten mermaid flesh himself. She joins him in his wanderings, encountering humans who have become involved with mermaids and mermaids in human form, all of whom tend to have ugly agendas.
* Rumiko Takahashi is best-known for her humor series RANMA 1/2 and her fantasy-adventure series INU-YASHA; MERMAID FOREST is her venture into Gothic horror. It wasn't a good idea. Takashi's work is kitschy and cheesy, which is no real problem for a comedy like RANMA 1/2 and not much problem for an fantasy-adventure series like INU-YASHA, but it absolutely does not fly for something as self-serious as Gothic horror. Takashi's plots and character development are weak, and the production values do little to support the effort.
MERMAID FOREST is not credible enough to be scary or even interesting, and I ran out of steam before I got through the second DVD volume. If you want good Gothic-horror anime, try FULL METAL ALCHEMIST instead, but don't waste your time with this.
